One of my friend had been studying in IIT kanpur, and this was his last year in the IIT. Even though he had asked me to visit IIT several times, I couldn't make it before. Figuring the this will be his last year in the IIT, me and 3 others decided to give a visit to him.
5 days, and thats all we had. We thought of covering IIT and some other places near by. Initially we planned to take up some trek near
Dehradun/
Rishikesh, but due to lack of time, we cut our-self to just visit places and enjoy our trip.
Day 1:
27th March, and we left
Bengaluru to
Delhi. After having a good heavy breakfast at the airport lounge,we reached Delhi around 1 in the noon. We had a
zoomcar booked from Delhi for our trip. From the airport we directly headed to the zoomcar pickup location. After completing the formalities, we were all set, ready to go.
With no destination in mind, we decided to visit the nearby
India Gate. Though it was pretty crowded and the temperature around too quite hot, we hardly spent half an hour here. After having some snacks at the local eateries, we decided to continue further.
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| The India Gate |
We manged to reach
Haridwar only by night, and booked stay at some
Oyo room online.
Day 2:
The next day, we visited the
Haridwar Ganga Ghat (
Har Ki Pauri). Every morning pooja's happen in this Ghat, at the time of sunrise.
Purohits take aarati of river Godeess
Ganga, and people will be queued up to witness this holy tradition. Also, arati's happen even in the evening, at the time of sunset. After taking a dip in the holy river
Ganga, and after witnessing the Arati, we decided to move further. Our next stop was Rishikesh.
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| Sunrise over river Ganga at Haridwar Ghat |
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| Har Ki Pauri |
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| The actual Indian tooth-brush |
Rishikesh was another 25 kms from Haridwar, According to Etymology, Rishikesh, means a name of
Vishnu composed of hṛṣīka meaning senses and īśa meaning lord, thus Lord of the Senses. We managed to reach
Rishikesh by around 11 in the morning.
Rishikesh is famous for its temple, the hanging bridge, yoga, and river rafting. With quite some time of the day left with us, we decided to do the river rafting.
Since we didn't have any pre-booking done, after reaching
Rishikesh, we started to inquire about the rafting and other adventure activities. After inquiring some 3-5 places, we found that the price of all adventure activities has been raised now. Now there has been a authority set and rates are made uniform for all. And for the rafting, we had been given 4 options:
- Rafting for 9kms , at 500/head.
- Rafting from Shivpuri, 14kms,1000/head.
- Rafting from marine drive, 24kms, 1500/head.
- Rafting from Kaudiyala, 32kms, 2000/head.
Since that the time was almost noon, operators werent ready to take for rafting from Kaudiyala. Finally after some bargaining, we decided to take up rafting from Marine drive. The main starting point of rafting for Marine drive is around half an hour drive from the Rishikesh center. After the warm up and know-how session, we began our rafting.
The rafting took us around 1.5-2 hours, with some very good rapids in the path. Some of us were even thrown out of the raft into the mighty river Ganga. But overall it was a really good experience.
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| And thats our raft! |
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| Cliff Jump |
After finishing our rafting, we still had some time left. We thought of heading to do Bungy jump, but figured out that the in order to reach there it takes around 1 hour. Hence we decided to do the Bungy jumping next day. Now that we dint have anything from morning, we decided to fill our stomach and headed to the most famous
Chotiwala restaurant, near the temple. The restaurant is famous for the full meals , and its varieties that is being offered.
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| Chotiwala ! |
After having a good meal, we were set off to explore Rishikesh. We headed to the
Ganga ghat to witness the evening Aarati, after having some roadside mouth watery snacks. Again just like Haridwar, the Aarati is performed on the banks of river
Ganga, twice a day, once in morning, and once in evneing. The evening arati here was a bit crowded, with a mixture of localities, tourists and travelers.
After witnessing the Aarati, we headed to our stay. We had booked a backpacker hostel for our stay, which turned out to be a good experience as well.
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| Famous Ram Jhula |
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| Well lit Ram Jhula |
For the next day, we had planned to visit
Kunjapuri for sunrise the early morning, and then head towards Dehradun and Mussoorie.
Day 3:
Though we had planned to visit
Kunjapuri for sunrise today, none of us could get up that early in the morning. Automatically our plan to visit the
Kunjapuri for sunrise got cancelled. We straight away headed towards
Dehradun .
Dehradun to
Rishikesh is around 45kms and is a journey of around 1.5 hours.
Dehradun was just a pit stop for us enroute to
Mussoorie. But now that we were already in
Dehradun , we decided to visit a place or two.
After searching for places around, we found
Robbers cave(a.k.a Guchhupani) quite interesting. This cave was all cool, with water flowing along the cave, making it a cool and pleasant place to visit. By the time we reached
Robbers cave there weren't many people around. The robbers cave is a 600m stretch of cave that runs along the small river stream. The cave also contains a small waterfall caused by the flowing river.
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| Robbers cave |
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| Waterfall inside the Robbers cave |
By the time we finished exploring the robbers cave, it was already noon and we were quite hungry. After having some snacks, we next straight forwardly headed to
Mussoorie.
Mussoorie was another 35kms from here, around 1.5 hours more, but the road to
Mussoorie was just amazing. Wide roads with curves and a breath taking view, what more could one ask for.
After reaching
Mussoorie, we decided to visit
Mossy falls.
Mossy falls is in fact a small waterfall located in a serene and peaceful environment.
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| Mossy falls |
From mossy falls we decided to head to famous
Mussoorie lake.
Mussoorie lake is a man made lake located few kms before the actual
Mussoorie town.The lake has boating, along with some adventure activities including zip lining, paragliding, etc.
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| Mussoorie Lake |
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| Paragliding at Mussoorie lake |
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| Flowers in the garden of Mussorie lake |
We next thought of going to
Kempty falls, but it was almost near sunset and hence we had to skip it.
Instead we decided to explore
Mussoorie town by walk. We parked our car and headed walking towards the
Camels back road. This is a scenic walk way with unlimited scenery all around. This walk way also covers the
Hawa mahal view point, and
Camel rock view point, before finally leading to The crowded busy Mall road. The mall road is where the entire
Mussoorie lies. One is definetly bound to find whatever one requires in this road, right from eateries, pastry, dress, books, gifts,etc. Also, not to forget, the famous
Ruskin Bond author resides in
Mussoorie, and there is one shop along the Mall road, where you get autographed books by
Ruskin Bond.
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| View from Hawa Mahal view point |
After exploring the
Mussoorie town, we decided to call it off for the day, and headed back to our hostel.
Day 4:
We didn't have much to do in
Mussoorie and moreover we had to reach Kanpur by the next day. Hence we started back to
Rishikesh to complete what was left off, the
Bungy jumping. But unfortunately for us , it was a weekend, and upon reaching the
Jumpin Heights location, we found that the slots for the day was already booked. It was then that we realized that we should had booked our slots for weekends. Disheartened , we left from
Jumpin heights to explore the hidden beauty of
Rishikesh.
We were roaming freely, along the river stream of
Ganga, sitting by the sides of rock and enjoying the beautiful scenery. Along side us were few couple of foreigners who too were relaxing, enjoying, meditating. The place was all calm cool and refreshing that we just dint want to go away from it.
But it was already noon and we had to head back to Kanpur from
Rishikesh which was like a 12 hours drive. Just when we were about to leave
Rishikesh, one among us decided to give a final try for
Jumpin Heights and called them. We were all filled back with excitement when they said that they have slots for us as some group of people who had booked their slots cancelled it. Hurriedly we went back to the same
Jumpin heights again,this time filled with excitement and some pinch of fear. It was a first time experience doing
Bungy Jumping.
Jumpin heights, was originally founded by an ex-army men, ex Capt. Rahul Nigam, and offers a Bungy jump from the height of 85mtrs. The number 85 mtrs might really feel a small number to you when reading , but the moment you stand on the edge of the deck and look down your world just crumbles down to pieces.
That was the moment that I realized, post looking down from the edge of the deck, standing 85mtrs above, that it really takes large effort to convince your inner self that yes, you can do it, that yes, you too can jump.
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| And this is where one jumps! |
But the jump was really amazing. The free fall was just like heaven, but the spring rollbacks were pathetic. I ended up swirling like a ballerina dancer in air, after free-fall. But overall it was really a great experience.. Though personally I felt the prices (Rs 3650) were overpriced, but if you are gonna pay for the experience, then its actually worth a go.
After finally finishing the
Bungy jumping we started to head back to Kanpur. But, we were again hungry and hence we set to explore
Rishikesh again. This time we headed near the
Lakshman Jhula. After parking our car, we set towards
Lakshman Jhula on foot, and on the other side of the river, were a numerous cafe, restaurants located. We decided to visit the most famous
Little Budha cafe. The cafe was all full the time we reached. But luckily we got a side seat, overlooking the beautiful
Ganga river over sunset. After having some variety of foods here, we had to head back to Kanpur.
Kanpur was still some 12 hours from here, which meant continuous driving all night. But the zoom car which we had had a speed restriction of 80kmph, and driving at 80kmph over the long never-ending highways especially at night was more challenging.
Day 5:
Somehow driving whole night, we managed to reach Agra, in the early morning hours. We decided to visit the famous
Taj Mahal, for sunrise. The early morning view of
Taj mahal was really good, and we also witnessed a foreign couple getting engaged before the famous
Taj Mahal.
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| Jilaukhana in front of Taj Mahal |
From the
Taj Mahal we straight forwardly headed to Kanpur, which was another 4 hours from here. We managed to reach IIT Kanpur finally, and had an amazing lunch at one of the hostels there. The IIT is quite spaciously placed and definitely makes you realize that you are in IIT.
Post lunch, we had to head to
Lucknow, to drop our car and also to catch our flight back to
Bangalore. Finally our adventurous trip ended in
Lucknow, and we bid bye to Lucknow just to visit again.
Overall the trip was good. With an excuse of visiting IIT, we visited quite few other places around.
