Hi readers,
Oh! what a relief !!!Finally we have arranged all our tickets to Sandakphu and it seems that most of the part of our tour has been completed. But n…IT’S THE BEGINNING….Sandakphu is inviting with its open arms and saying, “Come & enjoy my beauty”.’
Let me describe that how it was made possible that in a peak touring season, it is hardly possible to confirmed tickets for a large troop. For those who don’t know, why is it impossible to have confirmed tickets even before 90 days of the journey, please allow me to inform you that, Bengalis are travel lovers and Durga Puja is the ideal time to quench their thirst of traveling and touring and also take a break 4m their busy schedule. Last night (June 28, 2009) it was decided that Rabin, Abhra & I would go to our nearest railway ticket reservation counter i.e. Sheoraphuli at when the dawn would be breaking in. Besides it, Sid & Avishek would try for the ‘e-ticket’ from their home.
Today at 4.30 AM, I woke up, got ready and started waiting for the duo – Abhra & Rabin. Around 4.45 AM they came to my house and finally we were on our way to Railway Reservation Counter, Sheoraphuli.
When we reached there, we hardly found any crowd, as we had expected. So were delightful for the moment but getting closer to the counter, we discovered a folded A4 sheet which reveals the enlisted names for booking ticket. So we did the same to be next on the queue.
It was 4.52 AM. The counters will open at 8 AM, so we have to wait for a long time and we started to do so. While we were loitering and gossiping on the premises, many people came and enlisted their names. But we noticed that there were 4 brokers/agents (DALAL) who kept saying that they would make Confirmed those tickets which were in the ‘Waiting List’. They also tried to convince us but we refused them. It is my kind request to all the readers that please do not take any help of these agents and please make them abandoned. If you find any malpractice is being done by them, just protest it fearlessly as they are all spineless cowards.
In the mean time, around 6.30 AM, I called Sid to wake him up as he had to do a very important job. At last, the waiting for 3 hours had come to an end and the counters had been opened at 7.45 AM. We made the queue gradually and stood before the counter. Suddenly we found that one broker was trying to insert a person before us but we protested back strongly. Our protest forced the broker & the person to get away. When there were 6 candidates before us, it was 8.05 AM; suddenly my phone rang……Ohh…. It was Sid’s image flashing on my cell phone’s screen…. Surely he had some news for us. I answered the call in a trembling voice… Hello…. Sid told me, “Raj, I’ve just got the tickets of six (Mrinal, Avijit, Avishek, Sid, Saikat & me) and now I’m going to book for the remaining 3 (Abhra, Arghya & Rabin). You must not leave the queue, please hold the standing” and he cut the phone. Then I informed the others as Sid told me. After a half or a minute, I rang Sid and told him that what happened, he replied that he was feeling the form. It seemed to me that a second was like an hour long. Finally, at 8.11 AM Sid again called me to say, “Yes, we have all the tickets confirmed; we are going to Sandakphu……..”
Monday, June 29, 2009
The Planning & Suggestions, June 28, 2009
Hello Everybody,
We are two friends, Raj & Sid. Today we thought of a blog in which we can describe the whole details of our trekking to Sandakphu. We have 9 guys in total in our group (Mrinal Pyne, Avijit Sanyal, Avishek Mukherjee, Siddhartha Bandyopadhyay(Sid / Guddu), Molay Dutta(Raj), Saikat Ghosh, Abhranil Basu, Robin Chatterjee and Arghya Dutta). We will introduce our members in details gradually as our blog will move on.
So, we gathered at Mrinal's house to discuss about our route, bookings of railway tickets, hotels etc. We decided that we would start our journey on 27th Sep, 2009 on the holy occasion of Maha-Nabami. We targeted the 3141 Teesta-Torsa Exp. for our journey from Kolkata(Sealdah) to New Jalpaiguri. At the end of discussion, we decided that I(Sid) & Avishek would try through the Internet(http://www.irctc.co.in/) seperately and Raj, Abhra & Robin would go the railway counter at the 'earliest' morning. We planned that we would attempt in all the possible way to book the railway tickets although it was perfectly 90 days remaining our jounrney and before tommorow morning the booking of railway tickets is not possible. The reason behind it was the time we planned our journey during Durga Puja and according to our experience in that time its very very difficult to book the tickets.
We are two friends, Raj & Sid. Today we thought of a blog in which we can describe the whole details of our trekking to Sandakphu. We have 9 guys in total in our group (Mrinal Pyne, Avijit Sanyal, Avishek Mukherjee, Siddhartha Bandyopadhyay(Sid / Guddu), Molay Dutta(Raj), Saikat Ghosh, Abhranil Basu, Robin Chatterjee and Arghya Dutta). We will introduce our members in details gradually as our blog will move on.
So, we gathered at Mrinal's house to discuss about our route, bookings of railway tickets, hotels etc. We decided that we would start our journey on 27th Sep, 2009 on the holy occasion of Maha-Nabami. We targeted the 3141 Teesta-Torsa Exp. for our journey from Kolkata(Sealdah) to New Jalpaiguri. At the end of discussion, we decided that I(Sid) & Avishek would try through the Internet(http://www.irctc.co.in/) seperately and Raj, Abhra & Robin would go the railway counter at the 'earliest' morning. We planned that we would attempt in all the possible way to book the railway tickets although it was perfectly 90 days remaining our jounrney and before tommorow morning the booking of railway tickets is not possible. The reason behind it was the time we planned our journey during Durga Puja and according to our experience in that time its very very difficult to book the tickets.
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