"Good Bye!"...."Bbye, meet you after the winter break".... These kind of adieus echoed the whole campus, as the schools were closed for the winter break. Mixed feelings of joy as well as sorrow filled hearts of every child. Sadness of parting away from friends and joy to have a whole winter to enjoy with family. Jumping, giggling and shouting "Vacations....Vacations.....", 6 year old me entered my house. Throwing the school bag on the sofa, ran straight away to the kitchen- for there would I find my mother preparing the yummiest delicacies.
"Mommy, where are we going to spend vacations this time?", asked I, curiously. "This time we are going to a place called 'Ahichhatra parasnath'(To my readers, this is a pilgrimage site situated in Uttarpradesh, India)", replied my mum. Knowing nothing of the place, I was jumping in excitement. First question just answered and I already raised another one, "When are we leaving?". And the answer made my excitement doubled up already-"Day after tomorrow ", she said.
That night I was imagining various things- how it would be there. What fun we all would have. How amazing it would be to go to new place and lots more. My brother and I kept some of our toys too to play on the way to Ahichhatra. The journey was a long one, provided we were to go to Delhi first , from where we had reservations in a connecting train to moradabad, and from there another train was to take us to Ramnagar(the place where Ahichhatra was located).
"Wake up! Divya.... Don't you wanna go for vacation?", hearing these words said by my father, I quickly woke up. Finally, it was the day. We were to leave for Delhi. I quickly got ready. We left for Delhi via a bus. We reached there by evening. That night we stayed at our relatives' place. Next morning, we reached the railway station on time.
This was the very first time that I was old enough to observe things while travelling by train. I was really very excited to travel in a train. Those whistles of trains leaving and arriving station were already stealing my attention. Everything was making me more and more excited. Finally, we boarded the train to Moradabad. It was so thrilling, when the train whistled and with a shook, it started moving.. I loved climbing to that upper berth. Having food sitting there with family, felt like a different kind of a picnic. At times, I would move to the window seat, to have a look at the scenery. So basically, I was completely enjoying the journey.
It was around fifteen years back, internet wasn't a common thing back then. We got to know from a Ticket Collector, that the train was running late due to fog. How could it matter to me, I was just a kid. Finally, we reached the Moradabad station. We got to know about the platform of our next train. We were on the overhead bridge, when we saw the train which we had to board, leaving. That moment, I felt so heavy in my heart. Though, I was a kid back then, yet it felt like something really bad had happened. My parents calmed me down and assured that everything was fine.
On inquiring, we got to know that there wasn't any train to Ramnagar until the next evening. That place was quite unknown and booking hotels and stuff wasn't that easy, atleast at our place. We were a bit upset sitting there in the waiting area, when a humble old man saw us disturbed and called me. I told my father about it. So, we both went upstairs to him. He asked about our problem and told that he was some person in-charge there and told us how we could get accomodation for the night there itself. He also told that there is an early morning train which we could board to reach our destination.
Next Morning, we boarded the train and finally reached Ramnagar. Ater unboarding, we asked the cab drivers to drive us to Ahichhatra. We were thinking by now that everything had fallen in place, until the cab driver said, "There isn't any such place over here". To our astonishment, everyone denied about the existence of that place. That excitement was now turning into some other feeling. Those tensed expressions on parents' faces were enough to make us worry. Thankfully, we met some people, who told us that, there were two places named the same and we had reached the wrong one. In all, that whole journey from Moradabad had been in vain. Our destination was in opposite direction.
What happened next was that after all these twists and turns, we finally headed correctly to our destination. And yeah, of course the journey became a really memorable one. At that time, it felt crazy, but thinking of it now just makes me feel, hadn't it been full of twists, I had not been writing it down here.
K