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Review of Executive Lounges at New Delhi Railway Station (NDLS)

During my recent trip to Uttarakhand , I was faced with a problem I had never encountered before. We were passing through Delhi, but we had hardly any time in the city. On earlier visits when I have had to change trains/flights at Delhi, I have always arrived in the morning and left again at night, visiting relatives in between. This time, I was arriving in the city at night, and leaving again early in the morning. There was hardly any time to visit people. I would only have a couple of hours with them before I’d have to leave again. For the first time, we considered booking a hotel, but there again, we were hesitant about the actual hotels, the costs involved, and the logistics of getting from the airport to the railway station and then back again from the station to the airport.  That’s when we remembered reading something about a corporate-managed lounge at Delhi station. We soon figured out that we could book online and pay by the hour. Besides, we also learnt that there wasn’t ju
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Off again, on another trip!


The biggest festival of the year – Diwali – approaches, and, more than anything, we look forward to the vacation that comes in its stead. We usually celebrate the festival at home, lighting lamps and bursting crackers, but this year, as you know already, we can’t celebrate the festival, and are free to travel.



We have chosen to travel into interior Maharashtra this year, combining spiritual destinations with something different. Our main destination will be Nanded, to which I have managed to get train tickets. From then on, it will be us depending on local buses to get around and see as much of the places around as we can. On my radar are Aundha Nagnath and Parli Vaijnath, two important Shaivite shrines in Maharashtra, which also figure on the list of 12 Jyotirlingas. If all goes well, I will be on the verge of completing my Jyotirling circuit soon.

Also on my list is the Gajanan Maharaj Sansthan at Shegaon, a place I have heard lots of, but haven’t yet visited, and that is where we plan to be for Diwali.

After all that spirituality, it is time for us to relax and enjoy a bit of nature before we head back to the concrete jungle, so my final destination will be the Lonar Crater Lake. This is yet another place which I have planned to visit for a long, long time, and am keeping my fingers crossed, hoping it all works out.

This is slated to be a budget trip, trying to keep costs under control, since we have already travelled much more than expected this year (and spent a lot more too, if I may add!). Besides, we are also trying to sneak in some more travel before the year is out! How far we succeed depends on whether we manage to keep to our resolution to avoid hiring vehicles and travel completely by local buses. While that really isn’t as daunting as it sounds, remember that we have Samhith in tow, so it is indeed a challenge. We tried it from Mumbai to Nashik, and were quite successful, but this trip is much longer, and thus more of a challenge. We have booked a few tickets online, so those parts of the journey are already fixed, but the rest has been left to chance, and the efficiency of MSRTC!

I will be away for just over a week, and meanwhile, have tried to schedule posts for most days. Enjoy reading them, keep coming back.... and wish you all a very Happy Diwali! 


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