Pilani, Delhi and Agra

I was having my dissertation VIVA at BITS,Pilani on 28th of April 2006.. We decided to combine this visit to Pilani with a trip to Delhi and Agra during the long weekened of May1st...

We started our trip on 26th night by the DN662, the Bangalore-Delhi AirDeccan flight..The flight was delayed by an hour and we reached Delhi at 00:30 am on 27th... We decided to spend our time at the airport itself and then took a cab early in the morning to ISBT,Kashmere Gate to go to pilani.. On the route to ISBT, we could see all state houses like, Pondicherry house, UP Bhavan etc .. We also passed by the memoir of the Dandi march and rajghat, virbhoomi, shakthi sthal etc.. We could get a bus to Pilani at 7am.. The bus went via Rohtak, Bivani and Loharu to reach Pilani by 1pm.. Most part of the travel was thru Haryana. All you could see was dry land on both sides and the sun was so sharp that you couldnt keep the windows of the bus open.. There are places were water is kept in earthen pots on the road sides from where people drink water and fill water bottles. All over this part I was seeing that people drink water by keeping their hand near the mouth and pouring water to their hands.. I have never seen anybody drinking water like this early..At Pilani, the main road was blocked and there was a bit of confusion about how to go to Pilani as the bus took the by-pass.. But the bus reached the bus-stand some other way and then a guy in the bus helped us with the way to BITS campus and getting a cyclerickshaw from the busstand as he found that we are new to the place and not very comfortable speaking in Hindi.


The cycle rickshaw guy dropped us the VFAST hostel or thier guest house. We couldnt get an A/C room there as everything was occupied and had to settle for a room with cooler. As soon as we put our things in the room, we went for lunch at the mess in the guesthous. We were really hungry as we didnt have anybreakfast that day. The food provided there was neat and decent. And then withdrew to our rooms for some rest.. Evening we went out for a walk around the campus, found the DLPD division where the VIVA is supposed to happen.

The day of VIVA was also Anurag's star birthday.. We started the day with a visit to the saraswati temple in the campus. It was a beautiful temple in marble. I learned later that the temple pillars were adorned with sculptures of Einstein and other famous scientists which I didnt notice when I when to the temple. After breakfast at the guesthouse mess, we went to the hall where VIVA was supposed to happen.. There was 1.5 hrs -2 hrs long orientation before the VIVA when they briefed about the history of BITS, the education pattern there and then about the VIVA procedure. My VIVA was scheduled for in the morning itself with Mr Rohil. There were two others who were supposed to make their presentation to the same prof.

Two people - Abhilashi and Balamurugan had their VIVAs before mine. VIVA went well and I was free by 12:30pm. We then paid a visit to the new library building of BITS. Thats a really beautiful building with lots of reading area and computers for online classes etc. After that we went ot the Birla museum in the campus which was closed for lunch. We had lunch and then after resting for sometime, we came back to the birla museum. They have a coal mine model inside the museum in addition to the exhibits on energy sources, vehicles, pharmacy, chemistry, electronics etc. Skylabs outside the museum seems to a a snackbar popular with the students here. With that we retured for the day.

On Saturday, we took a Delhi bus at 5:30 in the morning. This bus took a different route than the one we took for the onward journey and we reached Delhi by 11am.. We took a cab from the ISBT to Pahargunj which had some hotels as per Budget hotels website. But by the looks of the area, we felt its not a safe area to stay. Then I had to reach for a colleague from Delhi and her father suggested a place in KarolBagh. This was a decent plance and we checed into this hotel. After getting fresh we had lunch at Pizza hut opposite to our hotel and then went to RedFort. RedFort houses a few museums inside it now and the entry includes an entry to all these museums.From RedFort, we proceeded to RajGhat, the samadhi of Mahatma Gandhi. We paid our respects for the Father of the Nation there. From RajGhta the path leads to VirBhoomi, samadhi of Rajiv Gandhi. VirBhoomi leads to Shakti Sthal, samdhi of Indira Gandhi. From there we went ot ShantiVan, samadhi of Nehru and samadhi of Sanjay Gandhi. While we still hadnt covered VijayGhat( Lalbahadurshastri, lalitha shastri and Sankar Dayal Sharma), ekta sthal( samadhi of ZailSingh) , Samta sthal( jagjeevan ram) , kisan ghat(Charan Singh), we quit going around and went back to the hotel.

Our plan was to go to Agra on Sunday morning. As per the information our hotel reception, we went to new delhi railway station by 7 am to catch the 8 am train but couldnt get tickets. The next train was at 11:30 and hence we decided not to go to Agra that day. We took the metro to Central Secretariat which is close to Rashtrapti Bhavan.From there we took an auto to take us to RashtrapatiBhavan, India gate throu rajpath and then to the parliament and finally to the lakshminarayan birla mandir.
Rajpath was really nice place with lawns on both sides and lots of children were playing cricket there. The kids were jumping to the canal there to beat the heat. Rashtrapati Bhavan and Parliament were just quick views from the outside. At india gate we just walked around the place and read the writings there. From Birla Mandir , we walked towards Connaught place. Everything was closed at Connaught place as it was a sunday morning.. we walked around and then went to the bus stand to see if we can get get a bus towards KutabMinar. The guy at busstand directed us to Jantar Mandir and said from there we can get bus towards Qutub Minar. So went to Jantar Mandir. I couldnt make out anything about how they determine time using those constructions or how they determine the angle of heavenly bodies there. We could get bus towards KutubMinar from there. Kutub Minar, except for the tower the mosque is badly damaged. The iron pillar that doesnt rust and the kutub minar tower are still seen there. Right next to Kutub minar is the Malini Ramini dance bar where Jessica Lal got killed. From Kutub minar we proceeded to Lotus temple or the Bahai temple. It is a beautifully maintaining temple with volunteers maintaining the quiet atmosphere. Bahai faith doesnot have any idols or any religion or creed difference. The temple is made in the shape of a lotus using white marble and has nine ponds surrounding it. By the time we finished going around Lotus temple we were tireds and returned to our hotel.

Monday morning, we checked out of the hotel by 4:30 am and went to the railway station. We could get tickets to Agra by the 6am Bhopal Shatabdi. I was travelling by Shatabdi for the first time and really enjoyed it. We reached Agra at 8am. We left our baggages at the cloak room and went around Agra. Our first stop was TajMahal. TajMahal is really marvellous. The work on white marble is really beautiful. The main building is where ShahJahan and Mumtaz are resting while ShahJahan's two other wives are sleeping in the two building on the sides. The outer forts of TajMahal is adorned with the same kind of ornamentation as TajMahal but in red stone. From TajMahal we went to Agra Fort. Agra for is a beautiful place. It houses the palaces where the mughal emperors used to leave. It is in a section of this palace that ShahJahan was kept in prison. Taj Mahal can be clearly seen from this section of the fort. The view would have been really beautiful when Yamuna is filled and not as contaminated as it is now. This palace was initially build in red stone by Akbar and was then build in white marble by ShahJahan. The intricate work in stone in parts of this palace looks like wood work. After the fort, we paid a quick visit to the garden and then to a UP handicrafts shop and then took a bus back to Delhi.

The travel back was horrible. I cant finish a description of this trip without writing about the travel back. Almost 60 kms away from Agra, our bus had a flat tyre. So we lost more than an hour there. Then once we were near Faridabad, our bus had a sideways collision with nother bus. There was not much damage and our driver drew on with out stopping. Byt the time we reached next junction, police waved our bus to stop and then we had to take another bus to Delhi. This bus was already full and all the passengers from our bus made it too crowed. The journey then onwards with our luggage was really tiring. Meanwhile we got a message from AirDeccan that our flight is delayed by 2 hours and hence it will start only at 10pm. This actually gave us some time so that we need not have to be worried about being late for the flight. Then by 7pm we got down somewhere in the outskirts of Delhi city and took an auto to the airport. By 8, we were at the airport tired from all the travel of the day. As wee stand in the long inching queue for checkin, there is an announcement that the flight is further delayed and will start only at 11:30. It was a long wait after checkin and then finally we took by 12:15 and reached Bangalore at 3am in the morning..