Tip!!....U shud Know which Fuel ur Car Eats.....:)

A common saying runs through the Male Dominated Society, 'Girls and Cars do not gel well- and it is one of the most dangerous combination'.

Well ofcourse I do not accept it like any other member who forms the 'Better Half' of the World, and even after 20th May, 2011, I will adamently continue to believe, we girls can drive a car as good as any of you guys. But the hilarious but unfortunate incident I had experienced on the aforementioned date will definitely make the Guys scream out loud 'See you are proving yourself that you Girls are really not trustworthy when it comes to driving'. But I would like to know what a Guy would do if forced into the same situation, and I have only a single answer for that. Probably I will share my thought at the end of the narration.

Well the 'true story' begins on the morning of 20th May, a bright sunny Friday and incidentally a National Holiday in Denmark, the beautiful Scandanavian Country. It was a long weekend ahead with 3 days to 'do as you like' and we had a tentative plan outlined just to explore the western part of the country without halting anywhere specific. Seemed like a tiny adventure not to plan the trip and just go with the flow stopping wherever we want to stop and clicking random pictures on our way. Europe always presents its serenity to you when you are driving along the countryside.......

Oh, I apologise for not introducing the other part of 'We'. She is an amazing friend whom I have picked up along my Path of life in a foreign land and I have a really bad influence on her. She is a very sober girl, with a nice happy life, and till that day, no crazy element in it. Well after that day, her life changed, and now she has come a long way to take up my baton and infact surpassing me in her biddings most of the times. But I really love her maturity compared to my insanity...:)

Without further ado, I will continue with the narration. My lovely companion reached my place at 10:00 am sharp as decided on the previous night, only to find a locked house and a 'Yet to Wake Up' very impunctual indesciplined female, sleeping away to glory. She should have rethink her decision then of what she had signed up for. Well, no point in crying over spilt milk...:). I woke up really embarrased for my lack of organization, and in a breakneck speed got ready for the Road Trip. When I was getting sober, she packed a lot of food for the entire journey, coz we were really unsure of the route and had no idea whatsover, what we will get to eat and drink. So along went Parantha and Soya Curry, and Coke to add on to it. After we were all set and done, we went through all our arrangements to ensure we are not forgeting anything and then set the Tomtom to the desired destination. It showed that we are due on a 1 and half hours drive for our first selected destination, which is precisely covering 139 KM.

Good start to think of it now, and she was super excited because she loves driving and infact is a very good driver. I was just sitting in her wake and getting ready with the cam to start capturing and memorising our trip. It was a lovely day with bright sunny weather, which was a rare stroke of luck as most of the summer days are rainwashed in Denmark. We were happily chatting and rocking in the tunes of Hindi Party songs while the speed reached 140 KM/H, and we rarely noticed it. We passed from one city to another, the big one being Kolding, and the view along the road was spectacular. I need not go into praising the nature, as everybody has watched DDLJ to realise how extreme beauty Europe Suburbs holds for its spectators...

Kolding, the biggest city on our way to Fano.....

One of the landscapes on our way.....

After covering lovely pastures and a lot of beautiful green and yellow fields, we reached our destination, a place known as Esbjerg. I would not go about describing the importance of the place because it is completely irrelevant for the current incident. But it is one of the major port cities of Western Denmark, as we noticed a lot of cargo ships bound for England. We do not have any major reasons to select this city as our destination, but as I was looking through the map of Denmark, the name fascinated me for some unknown reasons. Also, I learnt about some small island retreats nearby this place, and thought of exploring the lonely beaches.

 The Map showing the Route which we followed (Red dots marking the major stop overs, Fano being the Destination)

On reaching Esbjerg, we started to steer our way through the small city. It seemed very obvious that if we keep on driving straight, sometimes or the other we would definitely hit the sea. Well, unfortunately it proved that it was not so obvious. After roaming around the lonely streets of the unknown city for half an hour (It was a National Holiday and there was hardly anybody on the streets), we decided to refill our gas as we were completely unsure about the next course of action and it seemed sensible to have the tank full incase we face an emergency.

Here I would bring in the pretext to which I mentioned earlier what a Guy would have typically done in our place. Since the tank was half filled, he would have simply ignored the cautious move of refilling it for future trouble and happily continued his pursue of the Beach.

But being girls, we are dictated by Mother Nature to think of all the pros and cons before taking a step, and we moved inside a gas station to refill the half filled tank. As in any other European countries, it was a self help gas station, but the Emergency Care Taker was also on leave owing to the holiday. We faced the first problem as to the mode of payment, as we always had somebody or the else accompanying us in all the journeys and we never bothered to query as to how the gas is filled. But luckily enough, we came across a Boy, who was also refilling fuel, and I pledged him to help us out in the process. The best part about Danes is undoubtedly their willingness to help though they look really intimidating to me as I am a slight person compared to their well built stature. And this Teenager was no different, both n terms of helpful nature and intimdating structure. He took all the pain in understanding our English, and did the transaction by himself to save us the explanation of the procedure in abominable English of his (maybe its a rude comment on ones expertise on a language, but it was nonetheless true!!). As soon as the transaction was over, he hand gestured me to start refilling the tank, and only then I realised to my shock that the car was stationed at the wrong direction, so the pipe would not reach the lid of the tank. I asked my companion to move it quickly and position it in the right direction, but it was too late by the time we managed to reposition it.

First Shock of the Day: 100 DKK gone in waste, the transaction expired, and the pipes sealed themselves. We should have realised the indication of quitting the process then, but as usual I insisted on for a second transaction, and this time we succeeded in the process. While filling, I noticed 3 pipes each labeled as Petrol, Diesel and I have forgotten the 3rd one. I asked her which one to put as the car was rented on her name and I assumed she would know which gas to put in. But she casually asked me to put 'Diesel' adding that the last cars that were rented from EuropeCar were Diesel, and the Car Rental never specified the fuel type while handing the car to her. So she is not 100% sure but her best guess is Diesel, and since we never had a choice to verify we went along with the refilling, lest this transaction would have also declined. After refilling, we thanked the Boy and asked him the way to the Port, and couldnt understand head and tail of the direction he gave, but set out with renewed spirit for the mini quest.

Port of Esbjerg where we parked our Car before leaving for Fano

After another 10 mins of travelling down the serpentine lanes of the city, we saw a sign indication Fano's direction. Overjoyed we followed the sign, and suddenly the huge port opened up in the viscinity. We squeezed our car to a tiny parking slot and headed for the Ticket counter to enquire about the place and Fano. Next 3 and a half hours went on in a daze of visiting the lonely secluded island playing in the soft sand and stretching ourselves in the virgin nature.

The Vast Stretch of Sandy Beach with only 2 of us as Tourists

After a prolonged photo session, playing in the cool water, and finally getting into the sand and relaxing, we thought of leaving for our next destination 'Molby' and 'Ribe'. We boarded the ship back to Esbjerg and got into the car, all set to hit the road when the thunder struck. She started the engine and it made a weird noise....then the next few hours were one of the most strenuous periods of my life. Travel brings food for thought, it widens your emotional range, develops your personality, but also teaches you not to be a cry baby and dependant......a good lesson to learn in the face of hard times.

I have always been in my own comfortable circle with a lot of very capable friends ready for rescue lest I face any trouble, not to speak of my amazing parents who have tolerated all my insolence with harassed but smiling face. But getting your neck in deep mirk is acceptable in ones own country, where help reaches you @ the speed of light, but you can hardly expect the same luxury when you are suddenly stuck in the middle of an unknown land, thousands of miles away from home and even hundreds of miles away from your temporary home. And we found ourselves into the exact situation that should have been avoided under all circumstances.

Well, the car made undecipherable noise and started staggering all the way from the harbour to the first signal, and each moment our morale was steadily going down. I tried to convince my company that it is nothing, probably, she is a little apprehensive from the beginning to take the lone responsibility to drive a car, and her nerves are giving away to panic. 'If we keep driving, the noise will stop' was my lame statement and thought to keep us calm. But ofcourse a damage has been done, and it was not recoverable. So by the time we forced drive the car to the next signal, it gurgled and came to a standstill. There stood an unmovable Ford Icon, with 2 completely bewildered girls out of their wits and not a single soul anywhere near the signal. I am not sure why we didnt start crying (I was actually laughing at our situation, a curious case of insanity, panic always tickles me to laughter) given the magnanimity of the situation and exactly what gave us enough courage to do all the things which followed next.........

We wasted, rather she wasted 15 mins in trying to start the car, when finally both of us realised it is not going to happen. Reality started sinking in: we are 2 girl in an unfamiliar city on a national holiday, which means no help could be found. It is 4:30 in the evening and would be dark in another 4 hours or so, by which time we need to find a way to fix the car and go back home.Once we realised that there is no way that we an drive the same car back home, we tried to investigate what is the problem with the car. A small ray of hope was still lurking in the corner, suggesting that their might be some error which can be solved by pushing some button. A common feeling of hope when you are not at all aware of the mechanism of the machine you are using, you just pray to God that it is some minor fault of yours which can be easily rectified. So we got down from the car in order to seek some help. After a long time we spotted a lone car passing by the other side of the road, and she literally ran behind it to attract the attention of the person driving it. Desperation does make us do crazy things at times.

A Dane came out of the car utterly taken aback at the insistence that effected in the speech she delivered while trying to explain our situation. Finally, he came upto the car and tried to start it. It kept on making that annoying noise and was rooted to the spot, immovable as before. So he went out, oened the bonnet and tried investigating the cause of the sound. Even he was unable to comprehend the situation, when I politely asked, 'Could you please tell by looking at the engine that whether it is a Diesel Car or a petrol Car?'. He was amused at the question, probably thought that we must be crazy to drive a car and not know what fuel it requires. After a good long time, he told ' I am not sure, but if it were Diesel, it would have been written somewhere, and since no information is there, it might be a Petrol Car'. He did not need to finish the sentence because by that time I was very much sure that only a wrong fuel can make your car stop at the middle of the road without any previous warning. And to think how much effort and money we had put in to enforce the wrong fuel.......

The Unfortunate tortured Car pushed into a parking space, just before we abandoned it....

I do not want to go through the painful narration of the incidents that occured after, but at one point we were seriously considering to stay back and spend the night in the car (No hotel could be found vacant after walking through the whole town). Thankfully owing to my previous experience of Train in Europe, I decided to take a chance to find out if there was any train which goes back, and found out that by changing 3 trains we will probably reach our place by 9:30. We just locked the car and left it at the parking and dropped the keys in the closed Europe Car Office of Esbjerg.......Finally boarded the train and unceremoniously put an end to our tiny adventure.

Returning by the train......

It sounds funny now when I narrate it, but in those 2 hours of panic and frenzy, it took a lot of energy to figure out how to escape the situation and reach safely. I was never more glad to reach my home.......

Fond Memories of Childhood Adventures Part 1: Hazaribag National Forest

Date: Presumably somewhere around June of 2000

It sounds like 'Summer of '69', my sweet reminiscence of the 'Rains of '00'.......Jokes apart, this was one of the most amazing trips I had in my childhood. If I start thinking now, I always had a habit of getting into trouble since long, and my travelling had made me a container of hilarious and mad incidents. Since the day I decided on chronicling my experiences, I was focusing on recent events, but suddenly this idea had struck me. I have travelled to various parts of the country (jungles have always been my favourites), and I do want to share some long lost past events which were equally engaging, maybe more. So, while I am going a little low on my current travel plans, I will try to keep blogging with sweet memories of my past.

This was a trip I took with my family and couple of Family friends. With course of time I have almost lost contact with one of them, who happens to be my greatest buddy since I was wearing diapers. Narration of this story seems like a good way to remember her and feel the sharp pang of pain at her drifting away from me. Yet again I am happy at the thought that I have still managed to hold onto the other and cherish the strong bond we share as on today (considering just three weeks back on my return from DK, we had puffed the same weed hidden in the bathroom, it is a pretty strong bond, indeed). Our parents had planned for this unusual trip to the dense forest of Haazaribagh National Park, newly opened to public for night stay at that time with bare minimum amenities. We only realised what bare minimum means after reaching the depth of the jungle, but I will hold my words for that part of the story for the time being.

Important Details:
The Park: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hazaribagh_National_Park
The highway from Dhanbad to Hazaribagh is 128 km, and good resorts are available, while the dhabas have amazingly tasty food.
You can book the forest bungalow (very dilapidated in 2000, hope they have improved it now):
http://www.tourism-of-india.com/hazaribagh.html

Incident 1: The Resort on the Highway

We took a jeep from Dhanbad to Hazaribagh town

Once we reached Dhanbad by train, we had the most unhygienic food on Earth as lunch (the bowls in which they served daal aka yellow water exactly resembles the hand bowls used by local barbers while haircutting, to dip their fingers). After satisfying our hunger we set out towards the town of Haazaribagh, a good 128 KM ride to a very beautiful resort on the highway. And it was in one of the rooms of this resort, that the first drama of the journey was staged.

We 3 kids had an early dinner and came back to one of the rooms when the parents went down to the dining hall for a lazy dinner. We decided to make full use of their absence and rapidly started searching for all the strategically hidden alcohol. I was exhilerated to lay my hands on a bottle of Bacardi Rum (Aqua- Do not get this nowadays, maybe Bacardi have stopped manufacturing these, which is a shame) and instantly poured out the aqua blue liquid in 3 glasses. It was a very ill made peg, but in those times I used to be an inexperienced soul. As we were about to sip on the blissful liquid, one of the 3 Masketeers wanted to try her hands on a fag of smoke out of pure curiosity and a desperate bid for breaking those well formed rules.

Here, I have to deviate from the narration a little to insert some background information crucial for understanding the next series of events. My father, till date makes his own cigerette, wrapping the minced tobacco in a thin sheet of flammable paper (a very simple process, which is common to all smokers). The sweet little girl had her eyes on those raw ingredients (Tobacco Packet and Paper stack), when she felt that sinful desire. But when her intentions became clear to me, I realised that both of them wants me to actually make the thing owing to the fact that I should be en expert when I see my father doing it everyday for several times but I could not master the art by mere staring at his work. Afer a little struggle she lost her patience and snatched the paper from my hand stating that we have very little time left to us before our parents return. I appreciated her concern and sipped on my glass when the only guy in the group sat rigid with his glass frozen in his hands. He was the most decent person in the group, and he despised smoking and drinking. But still his frozen expressions seemed unnatural to me. I followed his stare to find the most shocking sight in my life till date.

Sitting across the bed, there was she with a matchbox in her hand and a white rolled paper sticking out of her mouth. For a single moment it seemed to me that she successfully rolled the smoke and now trying to lit it. But before I could realise that there is something wrong (as the paper was lose and not properly rolled), she lighted the blasted thing, and it burst into flame. 2 seconds of bewildered astonishment, follwed by 1 second of frenzied panic led us to jump from our comfortable couches and throw ourselves towards her. Her painful screams hit the four walls and struck us. A closer look at the situation revealed the thin paper, still burning was stuck to her upper lip with the little secretion of saliva (the paper is rolled and stuck with saliva to form the cigerette, so the gum is triggered by water), and as a result the fire is kissing her lips. I hit her face with a swing of my palm and the paper thankfully detached itself and fell on the green carpet where before dying out it produced a tiny hole. The calm boy had his reflexes fast enough to prevent the hole from enlarging by some inches and giving our poor parents a monetory shock apart from the moral ones....But, alas a considerable amount of visible damage was already done, as she had burnt her upper lips in an ugly black scorch mark. My mind started racing as to finding a quick and effective solution to the problem at hand and it seemed from all sides we were surely grounded this time, there was absolutely no way to scuttle out from the messy affair. To add to my miseries she was her crying out loud like a small child, and when we tried to pamper and soothe her for the pain, she sobbed and disclosed that she hardly cared for the pain in the lips but was increasingly tensed for her eyelashes which had burnt out with the sudden outburst of flames, and she strongly felt they would not regrow!!!!

I felt an upsurge of anger at this stupidity, but refrained myself with tremendous will power to slap her hard and tell that she was solely responsible for her actions. And now I would have to bear the brunt of all our misdoings which otherwise could have been hidden and forgotten easily. But the situation demanded for a calm head and clear thought process. We cleared the room and stripped it off all the proofs, my share was to drain the glass of aqua in my mouth, while he found it more convenient to drain it down the commode. Under any other circumstance I would have pounced on him to prevent such a wastage, but in the light of present affairs my self control was again admirable.

I can hardly remember the series of events which followed this, as all my feeble explanations, her constant never ending sobs over her lost eyelashes, his almost sinister silence were more than evident of the lies I was trying to put across to. I realised I failed miserable at my first ever attempt of crafty stories, when my mother after the entire narration brought me back to our room and delivered the following: " Please try to remember henceforth that we have passed your age with the same amount of lies and I would not question you further to force you with more embarrassing lies. But a request and advice from my side, please do not mix alcohols while you are drinking as that is the most harmful for liver." This is one advice I try to follow till date!


More incidents on this trip to follow as soon as I get time to pen them down. So keep an eye on the upcoming posts...;)