On my Friends Request...

Hi all...
My first blog seemed, short and crisp, to one of my dearest friend......And a request of describing my not so recent trip(Oct last weeks) with my parents came from my friend...So here I go, with this second Post of mine....

A trip to Delhi by my parents was planned a long time back... They take all the details before venturing out to a new place.... And before I could list them out the places I planned to take them, they already had a good list of the places they did loved to visit.... And that made me easier to plan the trip....

The place that topped the list was ' Tso-Pema' , at Himachal Pradesh... I did hear my appa, mentioning over the phone enquire about the plausible transportation... I had searched in google... but could not find it... and was wondering if such a place existed.... My parents interest in Tso-Pema was purely due to religuous reason...

My parents arrived on 18th Oct by the NE Express... And I was glad to receive them... Weather in delhi was good... Delhi is good to visit during Oct and Nov... Rest of the year.. either its too hot to handle or just chilled out.....

Our first destination was Dehradoon... Mussorie and Haridwar being the side dishes... Mussorie being a hill station, I felt I was taking my parents to places similar too Sikkim.... But they enjoyed the trip.. My friend Beckham was the perfect host at Doon.. Haridwar trip was gr8... one of my friend Manish's native place... and his mum is a darling.... We went to almost all the temples and had a gr8 evening at Hari-Ki- Paudi, by the sides of River Ganga.... Appa had a slight fever in the night and I was worried whether we could make the trip back to Delhi by the nite express... But we made the trip.. Thanks ama for being so assuring... I love you.....

We did Delhi sightseeing in the evenings, after my classes were done.. So weekends were kept for long distance trips..I sat with ama and searched 'Tso- Pema' again.. and this time I was lucky, Its popular as Rewalsar.. Got all the details and also more details from my friend Parul, who belongs to Himachal... My senior Pratiksha also came along for the trip...

We reached Mandi,in HP, early morning.. it was cold... The wollens came handy... We hired a cab till Rewalsar and the cab driver was a friendly chap.... His Hindi was sweet and the songs in his cab was all that dard bharey of mid nineties.. I thought he must have been heart-broken... Much too my thought... :)

We reached Tso-Pema at nine... Monastery in Tso pema is famous for its historical past... It is believed that the great Guru Padmasambhave had came to Rewalsar and the king there had ordered his men to burn guru... And when the orders was executed, Guru was found to be seated in a Lotus and a lake emerged where he was burned...
We Hired two rooms in the monastery itself... It was reasonable.. Rested for sometime.. Offered our prayers....And headed for our lunch.. Lunch was Tibetan cuisine, myself and di did not enjoy the meal eventhough my parents liked them... The lake in Tso-Pema was serene.. and we headed to the caves where Guru Padmasambhave meditiated... It was a gr8 experience... The caves are still maintained and many of the monks still meditiate there.....

We planned a visit to Manali and Kullu for the next day, and hired the same cab fellow.. Nite at Tso-Pema was similar as in Sikkim.. Quiet by 7.. We settled for North Indian dinner at nite.......... :)

Trip to manali was beautiful... We were driving opposite to the flow of River Beas...... Seemed similar to Sikkim but the experience was differnt... The valleys were beautiful and on the way we had a good sightseeing... Kullu Dasera festival was on.. We did a fair amount of shopping... :)

The same nite.. we boarded a bus to Delhi... The trip was a memorable one... and the one thing I found that people in Himachal loved the most is mid nineties Hindi dard bharey songs.. I will let you know how I came to this conclusion later... :)