A RIDE TO THE LAND OF CAMELS...!!

November 4th to November 12th marks the extravagant affair of cattle sale, renowned worldwide as the Pushkar mela. As soon as a traveller enters the state of Rajasthan they are greeted with a rainbow of colors, the locals all dressed up in colorful attires and traditional jewellery, smile and welcome tourists from everywhere. we found the same hospitality showered on this trip of ours. And this is where my story begins...

so, let me first start by telling that this was a  long awaited college trip!! we started off on the night of 4th for Agra. 16 students with 2 professors ,we were all really excited !! as soon as we boarded the train and we started our journey, freshly packed homemade snacks opened and it was declared a no sleep night, we played songs, danced and took selfies until our fellow passengers, after putting up with our noise for the longest of time,pleaded us to sleep , half of us did finally sleep while the other half decided to taste tea and coffee at every station on the way for the rest of the night, we reached agra at around 8 in the morning 2hrs late than our scheduled time, the getting off from the train was an adventure in itself!!  we were all half sleepy trying to keep up, till we reached the station but all of a sudden we realised that we had to get off in 10 minutes . Our destination prior to this shock was AGRA CANTT. STATION but we had just realised that reaching agra cantt station was of no use, since the booked YMCA youth hostel was 12 kms from there, while old agra city station which we were about to reach in the next 10 minutes was only 5 minutes from  our booked youth hostel, anyways everybody panicked, all the bags were stacked up at the gate, the halt was supposed to last only 2 minutes, there had never been a more organised chaos  that I saw than the one we experienced that day! as soon as the last of our bags landed on the platform the train sped away, we were shocked tired but the happiness of realising that the trip had officially begun, was evident in all our smiles, we all took our bags helped friends and went for the station exit, we split into groups of four and took 5 auto rickshaws and within 5 minutes reached the youth hostel agra, our abode for the following night.

 

 every one reached the assigned dormitorys ,took their favourite beds and dozed off for an hour. After what seemed like only 5 minutes our professor came in to tell us that we were supposed to start our journey at exactly 12 noon, and so began the the adventure of shared spaces and limited time, we talked, we sang, we danced our way to get ready, locked our suitcases while cabs were booked for our city tour, we first stopped at a hotel to eat, after which we proceeded to Agra fort where we took a guide, photographed the marvels of the mughal era, and the wonderful architectural marvel of the city fort. The palace which is a replica of the red fort from the outside, houses many beautiful mural decorated marble structures which give a fascinating view of the taj mahal from its windows, the Agra fort was basically used to exile the old and weak emperor Shah Jahan , by his own son and the most cruel emperor of the mughal dynasty Aurangzeb. The fort is a large estate and to completely tour the whole place it will take at least 4 hours of nonstop walking, but since we had only one day to see the whole of Agra, we went through the whole place in about one and a half hours. Since the focus of the trip was photography we made the best use of the time we had,  and at around 4 we reached the Taj mahal where we took an electric rickshaw for the whole group and reached the gates,  took tickets went inside and dispersed capturing the magnificence of the Taj in all its glory from different viewpoints and perspectives, while having fun, taking selfies and also enjoying the journey till the sun set. Before leaving we had a group picture infront of the Taj, we made memories, many of us got new profile pictures and thus the city tour ended with smiling faces and tired minds ,  but the night had us half asleep half awake since we had a train to catch for next destination at 5 in the morning.

we boarded the ajmer agra intercity chair car at about 5 in the morning, our next destination definitely being  Pushkar - the home to the ship of the desert. but the journey to the destination was also a glorious feast to the eyes.

to be continued......