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Travelogue

My trip to the land of Maharajas!

Sabrina Hasan Shoily

Is it just the effect of winter or is it me getting lazy for no valid reason?! I myself cannot believe that I haven't been writing since the last five weeks! I hope my readers have missed me! Well, anyways, I'm back and this week I'll be writing about my recent trip to India!

My parents love traveling and almost every year, during Eid we go for a foreign trip. This year was no exception. Having visited places like Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, United Arab Emirates, France and England, we felt it was high time that we visit our next door neighbour, India!

We had only one week in hand and decided to visit four cities: Delhi, Agra, Mumbai and Kolkata. Our trip started on the 23rd of October. At that time, we thought that Eid would be held the next day so I remember calling up my friends from the plane before it took off and inquiring about the sighting of the Eid's moon! We reached Delhi quite late at night and decided to start for Agra early next morning.

The next day was 24th October, it was the day of Eid-u-Fitr in Delhi but people in Agra were still celebrating Ramadan! We reached Agra at around 3 p.m. and our first destination was obviously the majestic Taj Mahal. All of us know more or less about the history of it so I am not going to repeat them. All I will say is that the experience was…amazing! I was simply awestruck by the architecture of the Taj Mahal and the history of it was equally heart-touching! After spending all day at the Taj Mahal we came back to Delhi at night.

Next morning, we went on a Delhi Tour. We visited most of the historical places of Delhi such as Delhi Fort, India Gate, Qutb Minar, Rashtrapati Bhavan, Rajghat, Delhi Jama Masjid, Humayun's tomb etc etc. After a tiring day, we drove all the way to Gurgaon, Haryana to meet one of our family friends. Visiting their place was followed by a little bit of shopping by me and my mother!

On the 26th, we woke up early to catch a flight to Mumbai. Mumbai was really different from Delhi. Delhi was a pretty calm city whereas Mumbai was really advanced! All day we visited places like: Gateway of India, Juhu beach, Worli beach etc. the next day was dedicated entirely for shopping! Mumbai is like a heaven for shoppers like me….starting from the famous shops like 'Globus', 'Pantaloons' to places like Linking Road (it's like our Chandni Chawk or New Market) where things are extremely cheap, shopping is something that I will never get tired of! On the 27th, we watched the hindi movie 'Don' in a theatre! It was a really great experience, because I have never watched any hindi movie on a big screen.

The following day was 28th October, after spending half of the day shopping at Mumbai, we headed towards Kolkata. We decided to visit famous places in Kolkata the next day. We woke up really early the next morning and traveled almost two hours away from Kolkata city to a place called Ichhapur. We went there to visit my paternal grandfather's birth place. It felt really great to return to my roots and witness the 100 years old building where my grandpa was born and brought up. After lunch, we returned to Kolkata and visited Victoria Memorial Museum, Howrah Bridge, Science City etc. All these places were really beautiful and worth visiting.

We seriously shopped till we dropped in Kolkata! The rest of the day and the following day, the 30th of October was spent in shopping! Then finally, in the evening, we took a flight back to Dhaka. I was pretty tensed due to the blockade but thankfully, we came back home safely.

India is a country which has successfully preserved their heritage and all their historical monuments. Visiting every country of the world is an enriching experience in itself and my trip to India was no different!