Gangtok Gone!

Goodbye! Have a great trip!!!

The day we were waiting for dawned this morning. Shekhawat and his troupe of merry trippers took off by the 7:25 am Indigo flight and as you read this, they would have landed at Bagdogra Airport in Siliguri, before undertaking a four-and-half road journey to their destination in Gangtok. They are expected to reach their hotel by 5:30 pm.
This marks the culmination of nearly six months of planning – airlines and hotel bookings, repeat cancellations and re-bookings, drawing up itineraries, firming up on the composition of the group and so on. Never before has so much time been invested on a trip so short – just about six days.

Santosh Tyagi (right) serves Ram Navami prasad

Jagmohan Papneja (right) distribues prasad of Shirdi Sai Baba   

These guys would be back on April 2. Theirs is like the Introduction being bigger than the book!
But that’s all very fine, so long as the mood stays upbeat for the duration of the trip. Shekhawat had called up the Garden from the airport early morning to inform that everybody had checked in properly and more importantly, he could manage a window seat in the aircraft, just behind one of his ‘saalis’.
Srichand Arora in turn informed him that inside the aircraft, there would be beautiful maidens in uniform and make-up moving up and down the aisle and a couple of them might even give him the glad eye. “Don’t ever make the mistake of turning them also into saalis,” he warned Shekhawat. “Those women are called air hostesses.”
The other good news trickling in is that the weather has cleared up in and around Gangtok. After two days of unseasonal rain (bringing temperatures down to near-zero levels) the sun peeped out of the clouds this morning.
This has come as a major relief for members of the group who were hard-pressed at packing rain coats, umbrellas and additional warm clothing in the eleventh hour. Now that the weather has ‘improved’, they can look forward to a pleasant trip.
Meanwhile, at the Garden, Santosh Tyagi celebrated Ram Navami with prasad of suji-halwa and boiled gram. She had done the ashtami puja at home yesterday. Also, a Sindhi couple in the Garden had brought us prasad from a visit to the Sai Baba temple at Shirdi. Jagmohan Papneja distributed the offering among the 15-odd who attended the exercises.
Bihari Milwani:
The group has gone on the auspicious day of Ramnavami. All expected difficulties and hurdles will vanish and everyone will enjoy. We are expecting the photos and videos on WhatsApp.