The Road Monk

It was 7 am when we reached Delhi and we decided to take up the retiring rooms in the New Delhi railway station, so then it would be easier for us to take delivery of our bikes which would be arriving next morning.

Sriram said he will go check out the retiring rooms and asked me to wait at the platform. The booking counter was supposed to open at 8 am and Sriram just like every other extremely patient Indian citizen waited till 9 am. The govt. officials did it again. The startling fact is that the govt. officials exhibit amazing consistency irrespective of language, culture, climate and state borders in work by not working at all. I guess he was not like every other extremely patient Indian citizen in the queue; he got back frustrated and cursed them for obvious reasons which weren’t of any use to anyone other than him to reduce his frustration.

We then strolled around highly congested and dirty streets around New Delhi railway station to find a reasonable room, we managed to get one for 400 rupees, and it wasn’t that close to the station. For a traveler like me in tight budget and in wake of recession the rent seemed a bit more, but there were not many options left and we weren’t ready to search for other rooms, especially after all the ordeal that we have been through. So we took the room and threw our huge shoulder sapping heavy rucksacks which had all the clothes for fifteen odd days, all the tools for ominous reasons. We had taken spanners from size 5 to 22, all types of screw drives, 4 spare tubes, one litre of 20W-50 engine oil, a huge crow bar which looks like it was taken out from a computer first person shooting game like Half Life or Doom, for removing the tyre. It seemed to us the crow bar was capable of doing more than removing the harmless tyres, it could quite easily expose the anatomy of the brain of a human if used hard on one’s head, and the punctured brain could be easily removed. I am not quite sure about on how to replace one though.

We relaxed for a few minutes, before we took nice a nice cold shower after two idle days that we spent in the train. People used to say that an idle mind is a devil’s workshop; thankfully no such demons occupied my empty top floor because it was gripped in frenzy due to all the commotion to get our bikes loaded in the train.

We then went to shop for the few items that we had left behind at home; and then to check out the bike loading procedures and problems that accompany while loading at the New Delhi railway station. The govt. employee’s impeccable consistency across the language, culture and border barriers was once again proved. It was the same; we would have to shell out 2500 bucks for a bike to get it back to Chennai. A porter by the name Kisan came in to help as usual and asked 2500 to load it. Stored Kisan’s mobile number. Coincidently Kisan was one of the very few words I knew in Hindi, which means farmer. From which I guess bike loading brokering has to be more profitable than farming in India.

Sharad Pawar the agriculture minister apart from running BCCI should know about this situation. Without second thoughts he will ask Sonia Gandhi for the railway ministry instead of agriculture.

Time for a Top Tip. If you have plans to become a farmer in future, forget it and start loading bikes in train and the bonus is that you are not dependent on monsoons.

Coming back, we knew we have to start out bike loading attempts by 1-Oct to get our bike loaded as our return was on 3-Oct from New Delhi to Chennai.

It was 1.30 pm and we decided to see the Akshardham Hindu Complex and Birla Mandir, but not before indulging in the inevitable. Headed to the room and slept like an alligator without any movement. The alarm woke us up at 2.30 pm. We started to Akshardham, came to nearest bus stop and Sriram got the directions and bus number. Thank god I did not do it solo; if I had, the only direction I could ask the delhities will be for Toilet. They would not understand any of the words in English, no one knew English and I knew only a few words in Hindi.

305 is the bus that we had to board to reach Akshardham. We waited for 15 minutes and no sign of 305, asked an auto they asked 50 rupees. Damn! The recession, I blamed it and continued to wait for 305. We got one immediately. Twenty rupees and twenty minutes we were there in Akshardham.

Akshardham

Impeccable is the only word I can say about Akshardham, never seen such a detailed architecture and sculpture in such a scale and with minute of details everywhere all through, anywhere else. I have been to most of ancient temples in South India and to be honest Akshardham really was impeccable. Sadly, the central monument was closed for renovation work after a fire accident in July 2009 and will be opened only in Nov 2009. The Akshardham also holds the Guinness world record for the World’s Largest Comprehensive Hindu Temple. It really is one of the places that any one should not miss to see in India.

After that we made it on time for the aarthi and bhajan at the Birla Mandir Lord KŘsnâ Temple. It really was a great spiritual experience of my life. Sriram also had the similar experience feeling the tremendous vibrations in the temple especially because of the bhajan. We knew we had got all the blessing from KŘsnâ and we more than ready before embarking on the journey.

Returned back to the room after a good dinner in a small dhaba and packed up the backs as we had to vacate the room by 9.00 AM tomorrow morning and decided to enact the alligators for the night.