Floating at Hoogly

My recent trip to Kolkata was a good weekend break. It was a work trip and not a city exploring..wanderlusting trip but never the less I really enjoyed it. The stay was arranged at "Hotel Floatel" , India's first floating hotel and it was really a floating hotel on the banks of Hoogly river, the view from my room was really beautiful (I had a river view room) and I enjoyed watching ferrys carrying people from one river bank to another. The Howrah railway station was just across the bank and Hoogly sure was a busy river.

I also visited my fav. restaurant at Kolkata "Flurys" and had a yummy black forest pastry. It was followed by some money wasting shopping trip at Vardan Market. The trip to Kolkata will never be complete without the streetfood and I gorged on Puchkas and a Kolkata style of Uttapam and Dosa...I have never had such yummy streetfood. My knowledge about Kolkata has increased lil. bit and I plan to do increase it more.

Around Guwahati- Bihu and Brahmaputra

Guwahati the gateway of North East India and a city where I have spent many, many uncomfortable and few confortable nights @ Hotels, frens places and yeah at Bus stations and Rly stations.My first memory of Guwahati dates way back to 1987, that was the year when the whole family went on a vacation together to North Delhi. I was 6 yrs old and my elder sister 9, we went to Delhi via Guwahati and what I remember about Guwahati is....the dirty Rly Platform and the Bus station when we came back from Delhi. Guwahati was my transit city to travel to Delhi when I was studying in Delhi, the bumpy bus ride from Imphal to Guwahati followed by the torturous train journey till Delhi by NE Express or Brahmaputra...the train journeys were good when we travelled by Rajdhani...but that was rare. I have been to Guwahati with many sets of people...my sister, frens,dad, mom and many time all alone.

Guwahati as a city has lot more to offer then be just a transit city, like Kolkata which is my current transit city I have always wanted to see the real Guwahati,minus the bus stations and rly station. This happened on my way back from Shillong, me and "E" had planned a day stay at Guwahati...I called up frens to ask the "Must See" places in Guwahati and sadly they had no clue...I guess I will say the same if someone ask me abt Imphal..so I used my google searching skills and found out few places...the no.1 in list was a Boat Ride at Brahmaputra River and we were at Guwahati on a very good day, it was Bihu Celebration day and the whole city State was celebrating Bihu, a fren of mine "M" had suggested us to visit the Bihu Festival ground at the "Shantilata Ground". I had never seen live Bihu celebration and seeing it for the first time was awesome though I do not understand Assamese but it was fun watching people and listening to sweet assamese songs. Bihu is like the "ThabalChongba" for Meitei everyone was having a good time and I really enjoyed my first Live Bihu experience.

The leisure boat ride at Brahmaputra was really awesome...the only mood spoiler was the boat guy cheating us with 300 bucks.I could have just bargained (which I am very good at) and refused to pay more but then the boat guy looked very shaady and weird. We had an entire boat to ourself (one way) and went upto a Shiva Temple ghat....the best thing about the river ride was the sunset view from Brahmaputra...which I think is one of the best sunset I have seen till now. The mighty Brahmaputra river has much more to offer I am sure, me and "E" wanted to visit "Majuli" the river Island in Brahmaputra but it was far from Guwahati. After a long time..tt was nice to stay at a comfortable place and explore Guwahati as a "TOURIST" and not worry about about my next train or bus.