Even this trip was planned in my morning train travel. For Mumbaikars this is no surprise. We in Mumbai travel far for work. And being very social like other Indians, we cannot stop from chatting to the person sitting next to us. This is how we form long lasting friendships in these journeys. Since we have reserved compartments for ladies, we gel better sharing each other’s joys, sorrows and problems. So when Sheila and Yasmin saw a movie of Shah Rukh Khan “Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi”, and wanted to visit Golden Temple in Amritsar, they told me to plan for the trip. They also wanted my mother and My husband, Nandu to accompany. In short they wanted to relive the magic of our Kashmir Group.
I did the planning as per everybody’s availability. My mother opted out as she had visited the place before. The itinerary was Mumbai-Chandigarh-Shimla-Chandigarh-Amritsar-Chandigarh-Mumbai. This was a 7 days plan From Saturday, 7th March to Saturday 14th March, as we were going to fly to and fro Mumbai-Chandigarh.
Shimla cropped up in this plan much later as somebody told Sheila that in early March you would get to see snow in Shimla. She always wanted to see snow in India. We came to know just one week before that Nandu would not be able to join us as would be going to UK for office work. That left only 3 of us, Myself, Sheila and Yasmin.
We left Mumbai on 7th March by Kingfisher and reached Chandigarh by 5.15pm. We had arranged for a car, which was waiting for us at the airport. We immediately started our onward journey to Shimla. Chandigarh – Shimla is around 3-4 hours by road. The road is totally through hills. It is well maintained and smooth. Every bit of journey is evident of Shimla being a summer capital of British Raj. We reached Shimla around 9pm. We were taken directly to the guesthouse we were put up at. Accommodation for this whole trip was courtesy one of our best friend. She arranged for our say in her company guesthouse. I am not going to divulge her name, not because of the fear of a long line of my other friends, at her door, but for purely selfish reason. I don’t want to jeopardize my chance for many more such trips.
We were served a nice, freshly cooked dinner and were provided a sufficient bedding to keep the chilly weather away from our bodies.
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