Shoes with Wings

By Hiranya Borah

The travelogue is based on my visits to 35 out of 37 States and Union Territories of India and a few visits to some other countries. Most of the State capitals of India have been visited more than once by me. Moreover, a few important cities of India, including some of the state capitals, have been visited more than even ten times by me in the last four decades. Similarly, I made 10 foreign visits till today about which readers may like to know some of them. The Foreign countries visited by me are, Australia, Austria, Phillipines, Thailand, Bhutan, China, South Korea, Malayasia, Hongkong (a part of China) and US.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Hiranya Borah
• Release date: Feb 22, 2022
• ISBN: 9781005052393

Hiranya Borah

Born in a teachers' family in a village of Assam, a province of India, Borah started his journey of writing at a tender age of eleven. He published two novels in Assamese language and other fictional and non-fictional stories in Assamese periodicals during his college days. Then Borah almost stopped his literary activity for more than three decades. In the meantime he became a Gender specialist.However,so far, he has published more than one hundred and sixty five books on this platform in English and one book in Hindi within a span of five years. The books are on different topics like inspiration,romance and love, humour, ghosts, suspense thriller, children etc and those are written both in prose and poetry.Eight English and two Assamese books are also available in printed form. 2nd edition of his first book, 'Random Thoughts' is also in the public domain.

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Shoes with Wings

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Hiranya Borah

Copyright 2022 Hiranya Borah

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Preface

I am able to write this travelogue because of constant encouragement from my lovely wife, Monalisha, my children Anusuya, Ayusman and Anwesha and my spiritual daughters, Avneet and Deepika. I am also thankful to my lucky charm Jahanabi for her encouraging words and for providing photographs for fifty percent of books. Similar thanks to Amrin also.

However, without constant encouragement from my friends and readers, I could not have written a single chapter of any of my books. For that, I shall remain grateful to all of them.

I shall fail in my duties, if I do not express my gratitude to my parents, brothers, sisters, friends, foes and teachers for their unequivocal support for developing my personalities, which may be good for some of you and bad in the eyes of my foes.

Last but not the least; I am thankful to Smashwords for publishing this travelogue as an e-book on their platform.

Author

Chapter I: Shoes with Wings

We inherit many traits from our parents, irrespective of the fact whether we like those or we do not like those at all. I am no exception. Liking for travelling I have inherited from my mother. Even with limited resources she had travelled more places than my father, who did not like travelling at all. Now, I hope to pass on the instinct to the veins of my offspring even though my wife likes to stay at home more than travelling outside, even though she also claims otherwise.

I have already visited 35 out of 37 States and Union Territories of India; the two UTs, viz. Ladakh, and Lakshadweep, I am yet to visit are very small in size. Most of the State capitals of the large states have been visited more than once and a few have been visited more than even ten times by me. Even after 10 visits to those capital cities, I am always looking forward for another visit to know something more about that city.

Two habits of mine may be in my forte: one- addressing a public meeting/ students for hours and two- hunger to travel and making friends from all sorts of life. I always try to observe all the things around me minutely as far as possible on every visit to a city though I cannot claim to be a keen observer of life. I have both good and bad experiences while travelling around the country and around the globe. But I always use to share, as far as possible, only my good experiences with my friends and therefore in this chapter also readers may find only the good parts of my journey and good experiences in the city I had visited. However, for a fair comparison between two cities or amongst the cities I have already visited, I try to mention some comparative aspects of different cities with others.

Chapter II: Visits to Indian Cities and Resorts

During the long and eventful married life of mine with my wife, spanning over more than three decades, we have visited many Indian cities or places of tourists’ interests. As a couple, we have visited almost all the state capitals and almost all the major cities of the country in the last three decades. We have experienced many memorable incidents in those cities to tell our grandchildren, if we are blessed to have. Experiences of visiting some of those cities are shared below.

Agra: The historical city of Agra is about 200 KM from New Delhi. This was the capital city of Mughal Empire in the early part of their rule in India. Though this city is famous for its mausoleum of Mumtaj Mahal, wife of emperor Shahjehan, Taj Mahal, constructed by Shahjehan, grandson of Akbar the Great and son of Jehangir, there are many other historical places nearby Agra. Shahjehan was the fifth emperor of Mughal Empire which was founded by Babur after defeating Lodhi Sultanate in 1521. His famous ancestors were, Babur, Humayun, Akbar and Jehangir.

Shahjehan who used to love his Mumtajmahal so much so that, after her death while delivering their fourteenth child, to make her immortal, he constructed this architectural marble marvel which took almost twenty years to construct this most popular seven wonder of the world.

All the modes are available from Delhi and other important cities of India to reach this city. Except air, we have visited this city by other two modes of travel more than once. As stated earlier, Agra is also famous for other than Taj Mahal, Agra fort and ‘Rani Ki Mukbara’. Fatehpur Sikri, the capital walled city during Akbar’s era is also not far from Agra. If one hires a taxi from New Delhi one can visit Mathura-Agra-Fatehpur Sikri- Jaipur in one visit within two- three days. There are bus services also to visit these cities in one go.

Actually, I took my wife to Agra just after our marriage on the way to Gowalior for an official visit. On our first visit we did not stay overnight at Agra. But after few years, both of us stayed in Agra overnight to see Taj Mahal in moon light. Seeing Taj Mahal in moon light was a visual delight for both us which we still remember.

We had clicked lot of photographs at Taj Mahal on our every visit like any other visitors to this magnificent monument. On our first visit to Agra, as we had planned to stay at Gowalior for few days, we could not spend much time at Agra.

However, the most memorable visit to Agra of us was with our younger daughter when she was only seven year old. On that particular visit, we hired a taxi from Delhi to Agra for two days as our daughter had vomiting problem while travelling by bus. Unfortunately she vomited several times even when we travelled by a taxi on that particular visit. After that visit I vowed not to take Anwesha anywhere. But that warning helped her and she never had any problem in travelling by road afterwards. Interestingly, her next visit was to the TajMahal by a car with us when the family of my sister in law from Guwahati visited us for a week or so. Might be because of maturity in age or my warning had a positive effect on my younger daughter though I know that my warning had no practical value.

I had also visited this famous city accompanying both senior officers, officers from foreign countries, friends and relatives many times. Therefore one of my friends jokingly commented before my other friends, ‘I has visited Taj Mahal so many times, I fear one day Shahjehan will come out from his coffin and will request I not to come again and again to show his ugly face to his beautiful wife, Mumtajmahal.’

To this I retorted back, ‘Actually, Mumtaz Mahal, not Shahjehan, came out from her coffin and told me exactly that what you have said.’

I felt extremely lucky to visit the downstairs to the see the actual graves of Shahjehan and Mumtajmahal which has now been banned for the visitors. At present only replica at the ground floor can be seen by the visitors.

Similarly, after few months of Kanak’s visit up to the third floor of Qutub Minar of Delhi, entry to the Minar had been banned after a tragic accident when few dozens of people died due to a stampede inside the tower.

While travelling to Agra one can also visit Mathura and Vrindaban, two holy cities of Hindu religion.

What I dislikes most about Agra and the tourist places near about Agra; behaviour of the hawkers, the guides and most importantly the priests/ Godmen of the holy places, irrespective of religions. Behaviour of these groups can only be compared with some thugs on the streets. Their attitude to loot the foreigners by cheating or by demanding exorbitant price for any commodity or against providing any services is not liked by any foreign tourist. Though I have not faced any problems from the flinching auto rickshaw or taxi drivers (I always visited these places by private/ own/ Government vehicles only), I heard many things about them as well. All the concerned people should ponder on this issue for a sustainable tourism in the state.

Jaipur:

The Pink City, Jaipur boasts of many magnificent palaces, like City Palace, Jalmahal alongwith few beautiful fortresses within the periphery of the city. This beautiful large city is also having all modes of connectivity from all the cities across the country. Though I have visited many times Jaipur alone due to some official engagements, as a nucleus family, we visited Jaipur only once and that too long back when our elder daughter was four and our son was two year toddler. To be precise, we visited the Pink City, Jaipur in 1991.

Though there were lot of good memories about that visit, the visit was marred by a freak accident of our elder daughter. When we went to see Amer fort, she had a bad fall on the floor of the Kali Mandir and had head injury. She bled so profusely we became extremely worried for her. I alongwith the guide had rushed to the Government Dispensary of the Amer town which was almost five hundred meters down the fort. She got three to four stitches on her head and her head had to be bandaged. Till now whenever we discuss about the accident, both of us thank Goddess Kali Maa for saving our daughter on that fateful day.

During that particular visit, we visited Hawa Mahal and Jal Mahal of Jaipur alongwith the main market of the Pink City. So far Jaipur market is concerned; it is full of colourful dress materials and ornaments, ranging from highly priced articles to throw away priced articles. Precious stones are another attraction to visit Jaipur for the high-end tourists across the globe. Jaipur is also famous for Jaipuri quilt, very light but very warmth in nature.

Contrary to Agra and Mathura, guides and local vendors of Jaipur were found to be very polite and cooperative.

South Kerala:

We visited almost all the cities of south Kerala in one go in 2013. We alongwith our younger daughter went Trivandrum by an afternoon flight from New Delhi. As it was a hoping flight (first stop was at Cochin), it took more than four hours to land at Trivandrum airport. The newly constructed Trivandrum airport was one of the most beautiful airports of India. It had two main terminals; one for the domestic passengers and another one for the International passengers. As the flight by which we travelled was an International flight, we got down at the international terminal. A car was waiting for us arranged by the local NSSO office for the entire period of our stay in Kerala. Similarly, the Directorate of Statistics, Government of Kerala had arranged for our stay for the entire period at different places well in advance. Though, I paid all the expenditure from my pocket, advance arrangement by these offices for the logistics gave peace of mind for us in the entire period of our visit to different places of Kerala and Madurai, only city of Tamil Nadu we had visited during that tour. We will be remained grateful for their help for arranging of the logistics; particularly we are thankful to Dhar Sahaab (NSSO), Madhu Sudanan Sahaab (NSSO) and Balakrishnan Sahaab (Directorate of Economics and Statistics, Government of Kerala).

Our son was to come to Trivandrum by bus from Bangalore where he was working at that time, to join us in our visit to different places of South Kerala. After landing at the airport at 8-30 PM, I telephoned our son to know whether he had reached Trivandrum or not from Bangalore. He told me that he had already checked into a hotel and would join us in the morning at the government state guest house where we had reservation