Part 1: The escape to a holiday!

How does one plan a holiday? With me more often than not, it is a pure random process. You have holiday conversation with hazaar friends, discuss hazaar places and budgets, and then one day you just fix it with the last person you ever thought would actually go beyond the planning stage!

So it happened that after exploring potential places like Lakshwadeep, Himalayas and so on, Pinkie actually invited me to travel with her to Mizoram and Tripura. I had been wanting to take a break and with an opportunity to do so in Dec-end and Jan-beginning, I decided that this was a good idea.

We agreed that we wont really plan. We will go wherever we feel like going, stay wherever we felt nice and just make sure we reach Agartala at the end of the holiday. Pinkie offered to take the responsibility to get information on places and hotels, and to my lot felt the job of booking my own tickets to reach Silchar, Assam.

I suck at net banking and credit cards. Life for most of us has become a series of passwords- each password unlocking life services to us..from banking, to laptops to mails to etc...And my memory struggles to keep up with the live stream of passwords that keep getting formed with every new account, atm card, password protected document and email account! So here again I struggled with forgotten passwords and failed....loathe to call the customer care and get a new password sent to my adress..I simply got it done through my net and password connected friend a.k.a Pinkie!

So the travelling day dawns and my mom is more worried about my packing than me! She is scurrying in my room, watching me pack with a restless zeal and commenting on every aspect of packing- ofcourse negatively! Even after I am done with packing, she keeps reminding of the smallest of things I should be carrying and is convinced that I will still forget and leave something of importance behind! To add to the stress, I realised that my train was not being listed in the Indian Railways website nor in the phone enquiry when I tried to find out if it is on time! Calling up the station was useless as no one was picking up. I decided to go ahead to the station and find out for myself! So to cut the long story short, I reached the station and found out that my train did exist and that indeed for the first time in my life, I had not forgotten anything while packing!

The train was to Kolkata, from where I had to take a flight to Silchar to meet Pinkie. I entered a train full of chattering bengalis, which made sure that I could not watch any movies nor read a book. As soon as thet train reached Bengal, one co-traveller loudly exclaimed- "Oh so good to see bengali script and to be rid of those jalebi scripts (read kannada, telugu and oriya)!"

My friend Madhu had come to pick me up in Kolkata and I entered the city with an excitement that I generally feel when I am in old cities. I love the feel of the history that perpetually hangs between old buildings and intricate by lanes. But my travel plans kind of destroyed my new year plans and city roaming plans!

I reached Kolkota on 31st and my friend with the worry that I would not be able to catch my early morning flight, cancelled her new year plans to stay at home! So some interesting party at some Bowring Club passed us by while we tried and celebrated the same with the old residents of the building! And there I became the curious case of the girl with a backpack and travelling to north east! The watchman who helped with my bags was flabbergasted and kept telling the residents that the backpack was taller than me and I was insisting that I would carry it myself! So the dinner turned out to be a question and answer session about what I did, where was I going and so on. So Madhu and I had my dinner as soon as possible and scooted from there! And the new year arrived and I left for airport in the wee hours of morning- my holiday had in reality started now.