Ajai's posts

It's a long and steep descent down from the Dhangkar Lake! The Dhankar Monastery can be seen on the sharp rocky outcrops, while the confluence of the Spiti and Pin Rivers fills the landscape far below.

Few 100s of hours of work later the website is finally up. Sarika worked on the design and coding, while I worked on collating & producing content. The photo essays of my travels are predominantly based on photographs (as the name suggests), with the written part capturing essential highlights and facts of the places visited. A total of 17 posts have already been published on the site, with 4 still “work in progress”. The site can be viewed at: https://collectingmoments.in/

Do have a look; it provides an enchanting journey across various exotic destinations in India and abroad. Ideal for armchair travellers in these days of restricted travel! The “Gallery” section has selected photos, while the About section also includes the background of Sarika, without whose help all this would have remained a dream!

Watching on a mobile NOT recommended, as the magic of the photos will be lost!

During my trip to Lucknow in February 2019, a casual remark over a drink with Harsh turned the novel suggestion into a real possibility. Why not try the Couchsurfing way to explore new destinations! A new concept, especially for us the “older” generation, we thought of giving it a try. I registered on their website and started by sending out requests. Unfortunately, it appears that the members too felt the same as everyone seemed to be busy on the dates we requested! Hope wasnt lost, efforts continued and finally in between the sheaf of rejection messages, the “maybe” appeared. Not yet confirmed. Some wanted more information, some were curious why to retired Army-men were looking at couchsurfing! The first confirmation I received was from a bachelor in his mid-20s. I am sure it more out of curiosity than anything else.  

The plan was to cover eight nations and working on a tentative timeframe, the duration worked out to 34 days. Keeping for adequate time in each country to have more local experiences.  

All countries were covered by the Schengen visa, except for Belarus. Belarus however, offered up to 5-day stay visa-on-arrival. This facility was only available if one arrived at Minsk by air. But to apply for the visa we needed to have confirmations of all travel and stay for the duration of the trip. A spree of hotel/hostel booking through the internet followed. And for all the travel between the various destinations. Flight, bus and ferry all made up of portfolio. Schengen visa now required biometrics to be taken. Harsh landed up in Noida in for the appointment for the visa on 24 May 2019, at the Norway desk of VFS. Coincidently, Norway was our first and longest stay, planned for 6 days. 

The visa went through smoothly. and then it was waiting time till departure - and sending of “requests” for our stay at various destinations. We had a majority of places covered with either confirmation or “maybe” before we left. For the rest, we decided to keep the reservations in the hotels made for visa purposes. We cancelled the rest. 

Baggage was also a concern about how much we could carry in the different modes of travel. 20 kgs check-in we assumed should be safe everywhere, This worked, except at Stockholm airport, were we got fleeced! More about it later. 

June passed and I was at the airport early morning on 01July to catch the 06:30 am Turkish Airlines flight to Oslo via Istanbul. Harsh joined me at the airport directly, looking dapper with his beard and hat. Since we were early, we checked into the airport lounge and decided to celebrate the commencement of the journey with breakfast and beer at 5:00 am! Auspicious start for us. 

Had never flown Turkish Airlines and was not sure how it would be. Turned out to be a nice experience - comfort, hostesses and food. An hour and a half layover at Istanbul and we reached Oslo at 05:00 pm, local time. Istanbul was a beautiful airport, I was wondering how we could rate our Delhi one as among the best in the world (as per hoardings all over there). 

Istanbul Airport 

We had a couchsurfer tied up at Oslo and adequate time to find the place in daylight. We needn’t have worried about darkness - it remained dark for only about 4 hours at night! We found an Indian origin person selling the metro tickets and so got rough directions on how to reach our destination, which required one change en route. The change from the Airport Metro to the city metro was a bit complicated and after a few hits and misses lugging around my check-in baggage, a backpack and a bulky camera bag, we discovered the line a few levels underground! A short ride to the destination. No one seemed to know the address of the house we were looking for. Finally, the metro information office staff looked through Google Maps to point out the rough direction to us! Off we went for a walk along the city streets till more by instinct we spotted the road mentioned in the address - many places during the next month we reached our destinations more “by instinct” than any other way!    

Fortunately, Bimal, our host, was at home when we reached. He had taken the option of “work from home” that day because of us, luckily. It was late afternoon when we arrived, it was a typical bachelors studio apartment. But comfortable and well located near the town centre. We came to know later that house rentals were not cheap in such locations!  A hot cup of much-required tea while we chatted to get to know each other. Bimal turned out to be an excellent cook and made a delicious chana using all the fresh spices while we sat in the kitchen having a beer! A Japanese friend of his came along to join us for dinner, making it an evening well spent. Bimal was from Rajasthan and had been in Oslo for nearly five years and well settled. Into lots of travel and adventure activities. He did mention that when he first received our couchsurfing request, he debated for over a week before accepting it, wondering what he would have in common with us, considering the age difference! But then finally accepted us, to see how it went! By the end of our 3-day stay, I am sure he would have enjoyed our company as much as we did his.