Interesting Place Names

 Passed a place called Garam Pani today, and a railway station called Lanka yesterday. Also a raliway station called Hojai yesterday. Our local guide to the North East comes from Margherita- a town near Tinsukia in Assam's upper end. I had incidentally visited it in 1983 during my MBA internship.

Vietnam had a street called Hang Bong. No idea why they want to hang the Bong.

Karepalli, Chimalpahad and Tadkalpudi were names of stations along the Bhandrachalam Road to Dornakal railway line-our lifeline growing up.

Yellandu was one of the places our coal mining company had started mines in. We all enjoyed descending into inclines once in a while.

My First Trip to Assam

 During my summer internship, in 1983, I first went to Assam, all the way to Tinsukia near Dibrugarh. And stayed there for 3-4 days to survey some plywood manufacturers for my employer, Widia. This was an amazing experience. My first foray into the North East. It was green. Lots of wooden homes were built on stilts to stay safe from flood water, I am guessing. Very welcoming people, and simple food available at the roadside eateries.. dal, rice and a vegetable, accompanied by a green chili. 

I went by shared transport of any kind that I could find, and visited some places with exotic names like Margherita and Doom Dooma, as part of my job. 

Later, I visited IIT Guwahati once, and loved the campus. Not the humidity, though. Also went and saw the Bramhaputra river at a spot nearby. In between, we did go for some admission work at Guwahati. 

My first flight ever was from the first trip too- Dibrugarh to Kolkata.

Quaint Summer Holidays

In the good old days (post-1960, when I began gracing this planet), there were only trains if you wanted to go long distance. And reservations were difficult to get. But we did travel to many places, as my cousins, aunts and one uncle were spread far and wide, not to mention my mother's aunts and uncles. So it was that we covered Satna, Indore, Jabalpur, Jalgaon, Pune, Nagpur, Delhi (on way to a Kashmir holiday, no less, in 1978). Mostly it was in the summer, as that was the only time we kids had holidays. I don't remember the discomfort one bit, though. We also went to Haridwar and Rishikesh one time, and it was a memorable trip. Usually, our black and white camera rolls captured the pics before 1983, when colour first appeared in them.

 After we moved to Pune, my parents' anniversary. My great-aunt is in this one-we once visited her place near Baramati in a bus+bullock cart!

 One of the typical gatherings of relatives-this was in Patrakaar nagar, Pune.

and this is a recent one at my Nagpur abode, with a cousin and hubby. Nagpur being in the centre of India, you can't avoid it wherever you travel by train.

There were also trunks and hold-alls, because we travelled second class sleeper, and had to carry our own bed rolls in those. Stations on the way held fascination for the unique goodies they sold. I remember buying a basket of Oranges from Nagpur on one trip, and an earthen pot of gulabjamuns from Fatehabad or some such place near Indore or Ujjain. Both yummy.

One summer on my internship, I travelled solo to the end of Assam from Tinsukia, and that was fun too. Doom Dooma and Margherita (I am not kidding) were some place names I remember, where I went in (Bajaj?) Matador shared taxis.