The Kanatal trip: Holyland, Haridwar

Post capturing the morning bliss and soaking in all the fresh air, I headed back to my tent.


Just a few hours left for us to start our return journey. The more time passed by, the more I was falling in love with the place. This generally does not happen to me as I am hard to please but the place had this uniqueness attached to it that it won me the moment I lay my eyes on it: a union of the calm, the enormous, the humble, the graceful.... like a cookie you had that was heated up to the right temperature for it to melt in your mouth.. ummm!


Anyway, home awaited me ... After a quick hot bath, we arrived at the dining area with our packed luggage. The stay seemed so short now and I was already thinking about coming back for a longer visit. Breakfast done and we sat outside with tea and coffee to say our last goodbye to the place.   


Thanking the people there for making our stay so good, we loaded our luggage in the car and started the descend. Next on our agenda was to stop over at Tehri Dam and from there to Haridwar. Since  we wanted to see the grand scale आरती that happens at हर की पौढ़ी, we left at 1130. Wel, we could have started earlier but our bat mobile just would not start and needed a kick to get warned up.

Our driver told us that general public is not allowed on the dam so we could do some boating at Tehri and after that he would drop us at the haridwar station. Just boating was not our idea for fun so we cancelled Tehri and decided to go straight to haridwar station. 

The drive was long and tiring. With the window on my side unwilling to wind up completely, the chill started to give me a headache. I decided to pull up a jacket and doze off, which proved to be a good decision as I had not slept much the day before.

We made one small stop at a construction site because of the view the place had.. simply breathtaking !!

Ya, We loved all the posing.. who wouldn't :)


Starting the journey again, I went back to sleep...

Haridwar:
The setup of tents was all for the preparation of Maha Kumbh.. Around 1330-1400 hrs we had reached Haridwar station. With finances settled, we proceeded to the station entry.. No we are not heading back home yet.. So much to see, how could be go now. Moreover, we had some 10 hours to utilize for which an amazing plan had already been chalked out.


Step 1: Check in the luggage in the cloak room. For frequent travelers who have checked out of their hotel, this is a boon. No worries about carrying all that luggage! It took us 5 mins to locate the cloak room, 2 to buy a lock for Sanghi and another 5 to get the luggage registred. That simple!... We were ready to spread our wings now.


Step 2: A quick snack for lunch, basically whatever good we could get. For now it was some cake...


Luggage taken care of, semi lunch done, we headed out of the station.. It felt like one of those college days, me and sanghi out on the streets with no specific agenda in mind, the first sign of being a true traveler.. वेल्ले लोग हम दोनों..


While travelling to any place, my idea of fun is to see it from the eye of a local.. As we walked towards the temple from the station, we crossed a spice market, then utensils and finally we were able to spot what our hippie eyes were looking for.. JUNK JEWELERY! We started to load ourselves with bangles, malas, ankelets.. whatever our eyes fancied. The weirdest of my shopping there had to be some speciality papads which goes to show that food is my first and foremost weakness.


I was trying to look for something that spoke of the place but could not find anything... so junk jewellery it was.

With the time of the aarti gaining on us, we headed towards the banks of ganges and saw this man making exquisite offering made out of flowers.

Haridwar is a chaotic place otherwise. We found ourselves a place to see the aarti and it took longer than expected to start. A fact about the daily prayer that happnes there is that the diya's for the aarti are lit at the same time. It was a sight in itself.

Finally we saw what we came for!

Hungry as hell, we asked the locals around for a place to have a decent meal. Two suggestions came up: Hoshiyaar Puri and Big Ben!

errrr, Big Ben?! Anyway, we moved on asking more shop keepers and hoshiyaar Puri seemed to be a popular choice. On a funny note, the name of restaurant was just not registering in my mind and I asked this local girl where Rajnikant hotel was... telling her people have suggested us to eat there. The exprssion on her face were note worthy! I laughed and told her the name was a bit odd so we dont remember. She gave a smile and told us its Hoshiyaari puri and gave is directions.

Following the path, we reached the place finally and it found it to be a hit among the locals as well as tourists. We ordered an array of things coz we had not eaten since morning and hogged and hogged!

Done with dinner we stepped out and saw we still had 3 hours to spare. Without having any meetha, I was looking around for a place to get something good: jalebis and ladoos maybe. This time we asked the shopkeepers for a nice place to have mithai. Prachin Mathura Wale was enormously suggested so we started the walk.

The place served some amazing besan laddoos. We had a few of them and moved towards the station.

Though the wait at the station was long, it was quite eventful with a bunch of monkeys scaring us (no fault of theirs as they were just just sitting silently next to us having biscuits), our quest to find a clean loo, an opiniated man in his late 50's spreading gyaan to a couple and the unbearable waiting room.

To sum up, the trip was a success and would act as a building block to many more to come.