Ok, so here I am after almost a year, trying to recollect that trip to Kutchch undertaken by me courtesy the Gujarat Tourism.
Regardless of what any tourism department tells you about the time of leaving for any journey, we all know what the 'Indian Time' is. I had set out from Gandhinagar towards the Tourism department hotel-the starting source of my journey as I did not want to be late.
However, I was the first to arrive, no wait, 2nd to arrive at 5:45 am in the morning at the gates of the hotel. The 1st one was already a gentleman who had come down all the way from Calcutta to experience Gujarat the night before.
As a young guy, you expect and pray hopefully that there are atleast 2 people like you, but God has a wicked sense of humor. I was the youngest in the 11 odd people in the group with rest being elders.
So there were the lawyer couples from Pune, a couple from Mumbai, the Bengali, a geologist cum traveler, a retired bank manager from Lucknow and 3 other people from M.P. The department had given us a tourist guide from god knows where, as he seemed completely lost himself. In the whole trip, it was difficult to ascertain as who was the guide, the official one or the driver of the minibus.
So, we started our journey at 8:00 am on our way to Bhuj via Bhachau. The trip was insignificant except for some jokes being told and occasional stops and talks. We thought that the guide would educate us about Kutchch, but after the general introduction, he went to the back-seat of the bus and started snoring. The driver was the 1st one to initiate conversation and started giving primary information about travel to his nearest passenger. One Uncle decided to part company with his wife and sat alone behind me snoring or sight-seeing outside the window. So much for 40 years of marriage!
We stopped at Morbi, now a city, once a royal state and the place where my Dad decided to enter this world.
Stay on for my next post on Morbi and its interesting information.
Kuldip
