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Monday, July 7, 2008

There and Back Again - A Travellers Tale (Part I)

The Journey to Ayodhya

My Journey began at 9:30pm when I left with my Aunt and sister for Ayodhya from Tatanagar (Jamshedpur). The remaining berths around were empty and I thought that they were empty and someone will later occupy in the night as it was departure time already but then immediatly two more people (mother and son) came in and occupied there seat next to ours. Then after some time it was time to sleep.

As I knew that we would reach our destination earliest by 11 O’clock. I tried to sleep as long as I could, because its really hard to pass time in the train. I got up after we had passed the Varanasi (Banaras) station. Although my sleep had been broken when a vendor came it the compartment shouting "Paper - News Paper, Hindi newspaper english newspaper". It was July and the monsoons had arrived, the view of the country side was really amazing; green fields, ponds filled with water and people working in the fields. Here are a few pictures I took with the help of my cellphone from the train.





My sister had given me a copy of "Angels and Deamons" which I haven't read till then. I started reading the book to pass some time. The train was suppose to be at Faizabad (my destination) by 12:00 pm or so. But, it was now running late by at least an hour. Ayodhya (the I had to reach) station comes on the way but the train does not stop there so we had to get down at the next stop i.e. Faizabad. Sometimes the train stops at Ayodhya, due to some signaling issues, so we had planned if it does stop we will get down at Ayodhya itself. To our disappointment the train did not stop in Ayodhya. But, it stopped at 'Acharya Narendra Dev Nagar' the only station between Ayodhya and Faizabad for about 20 minutes. That's when we were really annoyed. After sometime we reached Faizabad and then took an auto to Ayodhya and then a cycle rickshaw to our home in the village. It was about 2:30 pm when we reached home.

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