.................. Into the ‘BEHAD’
This blog is totally an uncensored version of the true story of which many versions have been foretold. All previous versions concealed some or the other portion of the zing (or zaniest of things!) this adventure (or rather misadventure) had offered us! All characters and incident are 100% real.
It dates back to exactly two years and two months- Dec 29th 2006 final year at college, first semester exams had been over, yippee...New Year time!!...Me and Swati (my friend, my roommate and partner in most of all the zaniest things I have done during my college days) entered into a truce that time and the conditions were this being the last New Year in college, it had to be different. My college- H.B.T.I, Kanpur located in ‘Eastern’ UP---Now when I accentuate on the word ‘Eastern’ UP it has its own connotations… just to delineate the context I would say…it was the admission to an elite Government college which bought us to Kanpur…otherwise I wonder if at all we would have been out there…well Kanpur and the entire Eastern UP punch is totally another piece of story which can have its own sequels and volumes...so before I dither from the topic I shall keep it apart for another blog...
Me and Swati being a total travel freak (or buffoon or whatever) thought that Eastern UP isn’t a place we are coming back in future after passing out from the college so why not grab this moment of New Year to vroom out of the city for a couple of days and go far into the East...exploring the unexplored, charting the uncharted journey…and so thats how our truce materialized.
Prelude:
Well going for such trips is an easy task but more of the cerebration goes into planning and most important convincing N number of your friends to get their asses settled on a single destination. It becomes all the more harrowing with gals with their bosses (oops boyfriends!) who wouldn’t let them make their own the decisions…but Man! We dint have the luxury of time as our practical exams were scheduled just 3-4 days down the line.
-> New Year is the time for which most of the people plan in advance...leaving no more space for impromptu travels..
-> It’s the time when those vacuous pizza parties and bacchanal come alive.
-> New Year eve girls get an opportunity to get dressed to the nines.
There had been an overnight party which was scheduled at our girls' hostel. With a few waste attempts of asking out couple of friends from our group we finally relented and decided to go on our own. Where all the girls had been busy buying their New Year dresses, gowns (the kind’s divas like Priyanka Chopra would have chosen for Miss Universe contest!!....the only difference being there wasn’t any contest here!!!) Swati and I were busy carving out our itinerary…We gathered information from the honchos around and fixed on a place called Vindhyanchal, 5-6 hrs from Kanpur...Information from the horse mouth was that it has beautiful waterfalls, forts and temples around etc etc.. Well just some FYI this is the same place where Aishwarya Rai and Bacchan family went before getting her married.
Every enticement comes with a Statutory Warning which is more or less intently ignored. So we too got a warning: this place is a kind of ‘Behad’ so guard it girls...Well kudos to my ignorance that even after spending more than three years in Kanpur I had no clue what does ‘Behad’ mean...for me it was like a bucolic place we were being admonished against…but then few more warned that in Vindhyanchal and nearby areas naxalites and stuff could be a little dangerous…so we were supposed to tread safe especially in the night. So determined & positive was our demeanor that all we could hear in such warnings was ‘could be’ ‘a little’. With the entire mortals stuck on their corporeal New Year Plans both of us finalized our trip.
Off the Hostel:
We left hostel at 4am in the morning…made an entry of ‘leaving for home’ at the register out on hostel gate (off course we wouldn’t have been permitted by the warden for seeing places around Kanpur!! Huh!! and none of us were supposed to step out of the hostel before 6am unless some emergency like train and stuff )…it was a typical winter morning with bone hardening cold wave, thick fog and totally dark (no sun before 7am). Due to heavy fog, 95% trains get delayed by 1-4 hrs or in worst case even get cancelled…for us going to our destination within a stipulated time was the priority and not the means by which we reach there. Frankly speaking we dint get any prior reservations done not because we wanted to save some money but to pickup the earliest train for Vindhyanchal. The Super fast train had already left and Lalkila Express we boarded was only 1.5hrs late so 6:30am we were off the station. This train was heading to far east and had people from myriad cultures like Bengalis, Biharis, etc.
Vindhyanchal:
Our journey ended after 8hrs and at 2:30pm we were at Vindhyanchal Station. This place looked decent (at least from the station point of view). Now we loitered around a bit to find a hotel to check in. We had to interact with few of the local people to get a rough idea of the place…
Here started the reverse grill on us…where are you girls coming from? Where are your other friends? Are there any boys accompanying you? Are you all alone?!!!...blah blah….
We were diplomatic enough to say our other friends (BOYS esp.) are coming by another train. This place being a pilgrim had no hotel there but just a few dharamshalas…Before we could go around word had already spread at most of the main places around that two girls from outside have come to visit here all ALONE. Starting to decipher ‘Behad’ more tangibly now we opted for taking a Govt room available at station itself at least it had round the clock police security. We ate the local food, traveled in the local tempo (a kind of six seater with totally different structure I had never seen before) and visited the nearby temples (one of the Hindu pilgrim). The evening nearby the dark mountains had been awesome…the Cinderella bell was ringing right inside our mind that we were warned by the localites to come back to the civil areas before the sun set and it gets dark…it was totally dark until we back and then had dinner in a restaurant where most of the people already knew that we were traveling on our own…The station room was cozy enough but our phones were royally screwed not just coz they needed to be answered every now and then with calls from home but also their battery was out. Swati’s phone had an amazing screen that no numbers did show on it and my charger was spoilt and would only charge if it was kept intact to the phone only in specific position…so we took chances to charge my phone which was all the more important as it had all the important numbers.
Next day 31st Dec, we were off to Azamgargh…we saw beautiful waterfalls…
Waterfall Story:
This waterfall required us to travel 1hr by local commutes. It was a journey uphill. Then we had to walk all the way inside the huge gate. It was massive arid arena which seemed kind of haunted on a winter morning with not many visitors showing up. We walked inside incognito. It had an amazing fall and to appreciate it well required us to walk on the slippery stones in between the water patches. At such places you often find the local people who start walking beside you to tell about the historical stories connected with the place. We too had such people around without any effort. They told us if you want to see the real falls you should go deeper into the grooves where you actually see the historic paintings made of blood. The story behind theose paintings was that a lady (few 100yrs back) was getting married but due to heavy rains on the day of wedding the entire ‘baraat’ drowned while crossing the fall. She was aghast and to vent out her excruciating pain she painted her wedding images on the stones of the cave from the blood of dead people. Huh!!! Sounds spooky!! So it was for us! But been there that far now couldn’t have missed on seeing it!!. Going to the cave required us to walk through the thorny bushes…on and on we were going deep inside…just two of us and those two localites. We were heading to nowhere but away from the main area into the isolation. Our girly instincts were on, to smell danger before it even reeks out. Finally after adopting all the facial caricatures to convey our discomfort & throwing numerous suspicious glances at those two guys…the cave came…to our dismay (Again !!) there was only traces of some paintings…not worth travelling through the thorny path in seclusion.
Chunaar:
Later headed for Chunaargarh…
Now just to give a bit of background we all remember Chandrakanta (yeah that serial!!) More importantly it was a book totally fictional written taking backgrounds from this place itself… We were thrilled with the idea of seeing all those palaces and forts present in there though few of the people around said that it has just a fort not a big deal!…(but our minds were flooded with images from that serial itself)…but it required us to travel an extra 2 hrs from the main town so total 5 hrs we ere back…journey again in local transport…When you can’t control the events around its best to be a part of it and just laugh around. I have this habit of interacting with local people, understanding their culture, and try to behave as one of them till you are there…though Swati was aggravated by this act of mine, I had already adopted the local accent (off course in a distorted way...wasn’t that difficult)…Now we had become immune to constant galore by everyone wherever we went as if we were foreigners not Indians!!!!...Perversion was in air! A pathetic hag in the local transport tried to flirt with us by offering us Peanuts and stuff (LOL!!! We were getting acquainted to a new custom of philanderers!).
Chunaargarh against our hopes turned out to be a total fiasco!!! It had a Fort which was ok kinds!!! (surely wouldn’t appeal if you have seen Agra Fort or any fort in Jaipur)…Since it had very less visitors it was converted to a training haven for Police officers… L L!!! The moment we were in, we were not just stared at but also surrounded all around wherever we went by these perverted trainees…those guys looked as if they have not seen girls since ages or just saw them only on TV…Just two of us on this trip so we had missed out those occasions of getting clicked together…this was the time!!!! Hah!!! So since these upcoming vanguards of our society (watchdogs), these police morons wouldn’t leave us alone…we handed them the camera to take our pictures together…
It wasn’t dark until we left Chunaargarh so returned safe and sound to Vindhyanchal. Checked out of the room in a gust as we had to head on to Azamgarh 30min away from it to catch the only available train back to Kanpur…reached sharp at 7pm to station we somehow made it to the train which was all set to go…
Train way back to Kanpur
Train: Brahmaputra Express; Final Destination: Delhi...since this train was heading to Delhi it had a kind of familiar looking people in it…We were so damn relaxed out in there after a whole tiring day and N no: of myriad experiences…At that time it was then more than 4 years then that I had been traveling by train all by myself from and to different places and under assorted circumstances. So have had considered trains overall safe...But this journey had the most unexpected to offer- 31st Dec night people can have their own ways to celebrate no matter where they are…The seat next to us was occupied by a sardarjee uncle and a guy traveling with him…they had their forehead smudged with tikka and started a normal train banter…since they had come to visit temples (like us!) they offered us Prasad…meanwhile I cud sniff the obvious…Swati poked an elbow to assure if they were not drunk…then more of celebration and more of shots of whisky must have been raised in the door passage (FYI : Drinking & Smoking is prohibited in trains)…now this guy’s booze turned out of control and he started talking out loud…it is then we chose to change our seat for the time being...I was being cursed by Swati: U sniffer dog when u smell all the trivial things around how cud u miss the obvious!!...How cud I’ve explained her that every drunkard doesn’t end up putting up an act like this!...Anyways the moment we started stepping away from our seat this guy rushed behind us calling us ‘U r like my Sisters…I am not going to be messing it up for u…blah blah’ Holy shit!!!...somehow sardarjee took him apart for a while & later we pretended that we were asleep…our sleeping bags had the military print and with that some of the mongrels got an impression that we may have folks in army. By the time the guy was obviously shooed away…Next station Allahabad we changed the entire compartment…No wonder later Swati told me that sardarjee was constantly wincing at her!
Finally when Kanpur arrived at 11:45pm, for the first time out of these 3.5yrs we felt at home there…After being in the eastern ‘Behad’ it was big city for us…modern and safe as never before!!!
12:15am (1st Jan,2007) we were back in hostel where the New Year Party was still on.
Epilogue (yeah bound to write it this way now…coz only at end I realized this piece of writing has extended all decent restrictions of word limit!!)
Quotidian excitements of girlhood have different connotations for every gal in question. For us after almost a month of exams and the same old college drab this Adventure trip was a big kick off and with its capacity to offer the unexpected, gave us a fair share of adrenalin rush. The more you get close to the nature, the greater is the depth you can fathom inside yourself. Back in hostel next day we were surrounded by many girls to learn more bout our journey…girls by final year had stopped taking our unconventional (ok! at times bizarre) ways by surprise coz for them we always had been atypical kinds!!! After this journey many folks visited these places with their whole gang. Later in March we (this time with our group) visited Nepal which was amazing but the kind of experience we had in Vindhyanchal & Chunaar were totally different and unique in its own way.
