Muzzooorieeee day 2

Day 2 Mussoorie:

We'd planned to get up at 7:30 and get ready fast and go around.... we got up at 8:40 ... once again, Anish started screaming ... "kya sote rehete ho yaar" and then we got ready quickly and went down to have breakfast... once again, not so good... we then got into ricks to go to the taxi stand. It was already around 9:30 when we got to the taxi stand. At the stand, we had a long long discussion about where we should go... and it was decided we would go to lake mist, yamuna bridge and kempty falls. We tried our best to bargain a little but were thoroughly unsuccessful :P ek paisa bhi kam nai kiya usne... plus.. when we asked him to give us ambassadors, he didnt even agree to that. finally, after a lot of pain, he agreed to give us one alto. The motion sickness-prone people (Sharada, Anish, Anvita and I) got into the alto and others got into the van. There was some confusion about where we would go first... Anish wanted to go to Lake Mist second, the driver said it could only be first or third ... and eventually, we were off to Yamuna Bridge. On the way, we stopped at a couple of places to click some pictures. In the car we sang songs ... but Anish got all sleepy and Sharada's throat was gone... so it was basically Anvita and me who were doing the singing. The ride to Yamuna bridge took about an hour and it was a pretty beautiful place. The usual photography session ensued ... first on the bridge.. .then we went down to the river. It was a very quiet and serene place. Sharada got unusually lost in her thoughts and chose the farthest possible rock to contemplate on her hygenic life :P I tried to take a different (less steeper) route to the river, but it ended in a herd of goats and a very steep path down. I was feeling kinda reckless that day... and decided to go along with it ... I did manage to get down successfully :) Anish found his own rock to sit on and look into the distance (basically, he was hoping someone would take his "natural" pic :P ) The others, were all lined up on a horizontal tree trunk and were clicking shadow pics. Then, there was a rock just adrift and I very much wanted to get on it... but the flow of the river was quite fast there and had I not been in the reckless mood I was in, I probably wouldnt have been the first to attempt going on it. I virtually had my heart in my mouth when I reached the rock because my feet had gone cold the flow was really scary and there was no place to hold and pull myself on the rock. Anish and Aashish were coolly laughing at my misery :-/ Once I was there, everyone wanted to come .. and one by one Aashish, Anish, Sharada and Anvita made their way to the rock too. We were sitting there for quite a while clicking away random pics. The taxi people finally called us back and we started going back ... In the whole going back process, Anvita dropped Aashish's camera in the river and luckily it didnt flow adrift... but it was fully drenched in water. Aditya asked something about "kitne ka THA wo" and Aashish was like .. "THA nai.. HAI !!!" (@AA: How is the camera btw?) On the way up, we clicked some more shadow pics on that tree trunk (as the ones in Aa's cam were probably destroyed :P) we were looking really stupid from the bridge as Kunal and others were telling ... wahaan se ... we got back into the cars and headed for Kempty Falls...  The Kempty falls took about half an hour to reach and from there it was a 10 min walk down to the falls. Frankly, the falls were a bit of anti-climax. This was the prime sightseeing point of Mussoorie and it didnt even seem like a Fall. Plus, there were some people continuously removing sand and gravel from some sort of swimming pool below it. It was pretty cold there too. We had Maggi at the Falls and in the cold weather, it simply tasted awesome! Needless to say, chaai bhi piye the ... and we got a nice mini-campfire burning around which we all sat. We started heading back up after that and on the way, Anvita crackked "chanawala" Wihle coming down, Anvita had bought chana from a vendor and she wanted some yellow "dal" for which he was charging extra 5 Rs. On reaching the falls, she found that the vendors there were not chargig the extra 5 bucks. So, while going back up, she says "Kaise chor ho aap ... neeche waale to iske 5 rupaye extra nai maang rahe! " Anish Aashish and I burst out laughing! It was hilarious... bina soche samjhe kuch bhi bol deti hai.. and then she argued half the way up ki maine kuch galat thodi kiya... wo chori hi to kar raha tha ! Upar chadte chadhte everyone started feeling hungry ... Aditya was of the opinion that we should make this climb a regular part of our daily warm up and I was totally for it :D We were to go to Lake Mist next, and what a stupid thing it turned out to be! First of all, the place where we were taken had no lake in sight. Then we were told that upon entry, we would be taken to the lake and in any case it was an artificial lake so it couldnt be very big... we told him that let one of us go inside check out the lake and then decide whether all of us want to go in ... he flatly refused for that ... and we decided to hell with it! It seemed a very stupid place.. not a single person around except for us and the rates for entry were so HIGH! OMG!! We went back up and asked our taxi walas to take us to some other place instead (kinda reminded of of that Mall in Kanpur!) and he agreed to take us to a temple. The temple also had a long climb up but the views from the top were breath-taking! We also saw an owl and a woodpecker .. it was a very quiet and peaceful place.. by the time we left from there, everyone was deadd tired and hungry. We realized that we did not have any money to pay the taxi walas, so they had to take us to an atm first and then they dropped us off at the library square. It was around 5 then... already time for Aashish to leave :( and the sense of trip coming to an end loomed over everyone. Aashish's taxi was at 7 ... and we had our meal and headed back to the hotel. once in the hotel, we wasted no time in getting under the blankets... aashish had to pack and leave.. and he took away my camera for the much awaited "bonding session" :P (abhi tak wapas nai mila hai camera) .. we started watching movies.. pehle I Robot, then Transformers, then Pearl Harbour ... in between we were supposed to have dinner but were in no condition to get up. Chuun and Aditya went for non veg and we asked them to get some biscuits and amul kool for us. Thoda sa room service se order karwa liye and till 1-2 we were watching movies, then some friends.. and then finally good night. The valley looked very beautiful from our room at night. It was like a sea of yellow stars stretched across the valley .. at 3 AM, Sukhada msged saying that she had finally reached! What a torture it must have been for her! And with that, another awesome day came to an end ....


(why am i the one subject to THIS torture always? I get so sad while writing it :-/)