Auli Trip, Day 3

Day 3, 2 Feb 2011:

I couldn’t sleep the whole night, thanks to a blocked nose due to excessive playing in snow. I was waiting for my alarm to ring so that I can get up and get ready to go.

5:30 AM: Alarm rings! I was up in a flash. It wasn’t as cold as yesterday or may be my body now got adjusted to the climate. I got ready and woke up my friends.

7:00 AM: One thing which impressed me on this trip was our perfect time sense. We absolutely followed the time we set for everything and so as planned, we were on our way to Ghaziabad.

8:00 AM: We were enjoying the picture perfect scenery outside when we heard a sound TAK! TAK! TAK! and the car comes to a standstill right on the middle of the road. Driver said he was unable to change gears and thinks some stone hit the car. We got out of the car and pushed it to a side. It was so very cold that morning and we were wearing bathroom slippers as our shoes became wet playing in the snow yesterday. My legs became totally numb and I couldn’t even feel my toes! I was helping the driver with fixing the jack, when I see Harshed, our creative photographer, gleefully clicking pictures of the place, unmindful of the car trouble. :P

9:00 AM: Nothing was happening no matter what the driver did. All we know is that the gear box is stuck on 3^rd/4^th gear! We asked few locals if there was any mechanic shop around and found out there was one 10 kms ahead and we decided to drive on that gear till the garage. With a load of 5 people, driving the car in single gear on ghat roads, somehow we reached the place and found a car workshop. While the car was getting repaired, we had our breakfast.

11.00 AM: Mechanic was still working on the car and finally he gave up! He said the only option was to change the gear rod, spare part for which was available nearest in Rishikesh which is 200Kms far! The gear rod was stuck in 3^rd gear (luckily if you may call that). Any other gear, it would have been difficult to drive the vehicle. The driver decided to drive the vehicle till Rishikesh/ till whichever place the car can go! The only problem was with the ghat roads. On the way down driving the car was easy but if there is an upward slope, all of us had to get down the car and walk till the point the slope ends and get in the car again. We did this 6-7 times, sometimes even walking for a km. :(

2.30 PM: We travelled around 100 kms this way and finally decided enough is enough! We couldn’t walk any longer. We called the travels guy and told him we have had enough with the car and decided to settle the account then and there. So we got down at Rudra Prayag, settled the account and were on our own. We then got into a private jeep which was going till Rishikesh. On the way we had two delays of 30 mins each, once because of land slide which blocked the road and second time because of some rock blasting.

7.30 PM: We were at Rishikesh finally. All of us were damn hungry as we didn’t eat anything since breakfast. We had dinner and then went to the bus stop and sat in the Delhi bound bus. The bus started only at 8.30. We were all relieved that finally we are heading home but the torture isn’t over yet ..

12.00 AM: I wake up to see the bus in the midst of a really really looong traffic jam (5Kms long) somewhere near Roorkee! Nothing was happening. All the vehicles were switched off, no one’s moving, I guess hoping for a miracle to happen and the road gets cleared automatically :P

1.30 AM: The traffic gets cleared slowly and we were moving once again. Phew!

3.00 AM: The bus reaches Ghaziabad and luckily we got an auto immediately.

4:00 AM: Finally! Finally! We reached the campus. It was one heck of a roller coaster ride. We were thanking our stars for having reached safely after everything we went through. I didn’t even have the energy to take bath, just crashed on the bed.

10.00 AM: Alarm rings! Time to go to the class .. :)