Hinterland Tales

Been in central Hindustan for a good 10 days now. Back to dear ol' Mumbai. Travelling helps you develop a perspective thats unparalleled.

Even more so when you do it in solidarity. Like my trip to Indore. A lovely nawabi place. Where even the Hindi dialect has a lilt of its own. The poha and jalebi combo is its speciality and a killer one at that.

Its commercial and everyone has some business of their own. I seem to have this very uncanny carmic connection to this city. When I was last here , it poured so much , that I was stranded at the airport for 6 hours and had to go hunting for accomodation at 1 in the night as my flight got cancelled.

This time around , in the middle of winter , as I was entering a dealer counter  , the clouds burst open in a furious shower coupled with hail for a good 40 minutes. My sales team looked at me in complete bewilderment and pronounced that I must have been the reigning queen of Indore in some past life as I seem to bringing in unprecedented showers each time I went there! Hmm...now thats an interesting thought:)

Then , proceeded to Dilli. Visited my aunt , uncle and cousin. It was great fun catching up with them. The winter spell that enveloped me in Indore grew stronger manifold here. It was good fun crawling into the comforter into the cold cold night.

Suddenly the trip metamorphosed into a group activity as the entire division(at office) conglomerated to travel together for a conference at Khajuraho.

It was a lovely journey. Delhi-Varanasi-Khajuraho. To state that Khajuraho was cold. Now that would be an understatement of sorts.

It was freezing. I was suited up and layered up to the core.It was a great experience. Very hectic but interspersed with a lot of fun.

I witnessed 3 sunrises , visited the "famed" temple , did the jungle safari ,had a rendezvous with the samba deer, prowled in the river lodge while gorging down authentic "kullad" food cooked in earthen ware on clay ovens , sat around loads of bonfires , partied a night away dancing to loads of "desi beats"...all this and more...

The Samba deer is a weird animal. The male have antlers and the females do not. They have a beard! Their expressions are to die for. It is the most indescribable feeling in the world.

It has a tiny face and a huge body. Huge flappy ears, droopy eyes and a nuzzly nose. The expression , if I may attempt to describe it is a mix of" I am so bored" to " Wassup" to " Leave me alone" to "Get me out of this jungle"...okay , I give up.  I remember back in school we had an entire chapter on the dancing deer. Turns out it was our dear deer(pun intended) in question!

The Son et Lumière show was a let down. For a city that has such a high influx of tourist populace this ought to have had a more advanced system in place to popularise and increase its saleable value.

On the whole its been a lovely forthnight. We literally lived upto the "We work hard , we party harder" thumb rule and voila it was magic:)

Alls well that ends well. Now its back to business and lots more of it...which reminds me I need to catch up on 3 idiots!

All is well:)