This happened when I was sitting and talking with my friend Vishal on the evening of 18th June 2023. I was visiting Hyderabad back then, and we were talking about random things, and then came the topic of tripping. Randomly, out of nowhere, my friend said that he wanted to go on a trip, but his condition was that he would go only if we started the trip that same evening. Omg, I felt like—what did he just say? He is sometimes moody, and his mood switches like Bangalore’s weather. His one sentence that evening was, “We just need to get out of Hyderabad this evening.” He wanted to get out of the city at any cost. The moment he said that, I started asking where exactly he wanted to go. But the answer was, “I don’t know, but I want to get out of Hyderabad.” With multiple Google searches, we thought of going to Darjeeling. But I am a person who plans trips well and then executes them. He is the one who doesn’t believe in planning always, and he thinks plans don’t happen as planned anyway.
I even told him, “See, we have decided the destination, but let’s plan it well and start in two days.” But he held on, saying, “I will come only if we start today, if not, leave it.” First, we thought of taking a flight, but it was too expensive. We thought of not going directly to Darjeeling. Instead, we wanted to make the trip a little slow and of longer duration. We decided to trip for 10 days and stay in Darjeeling as a relaxing spot for 3 days and 4 nights.
Now, we had the plan of staying in Darjeeling as the last stop, but we had no clue about our first stop. We thought of taking a bus as an exit from Hyderabad, as flights were costlier and train tickets were unavailable. But we were still not sure about the destination. Looking at the map, the next best city near Darjeeling and also an option for an overnight journey was Vizag. Vishal agreed to it, and he just wanted to book tickets as he kept on saying, “We need to get out of Hyderabad today,” and finally, we booked tickets to Vizag from Hyderabad.
Fact of the matter is, I was visiting Hyderabad for 3 days, but the trip which we planned was for 10 days. First of all, I had got fewer clothes than needed, and second thing, I had made payment for my hotel for 3 days. Somehow, I always carry 2 extra pairs of clothes, which indeed helped me. Then I requested my hotel, saying I will leave today but come back after 10 days and stay there for 2 days with no extra charges to compensate for my payment. Thankfully, the hotel guy agreed.
Finally, it was all set to go out of Hyderabad. I guess we had a bus around 11 PM. I had nothing to pack, as everything was packed already. I called Vishal, informing him I would come to his hostel soon. The thing I heard was his concern—he didn’t have a trolley bag with him. I said, “It’s ok, take whatever you have with you.” But he said a big NO! Immediately, he said he would borrow it from his friend. He disconnected the line without answering my question.
If I remember correctly, we had our pick-up point at L B Nagar metro station, and we went by metro to the pick-up point, as the metro station is right next to Vishal’s hostel. At L B Nagar metro station, we met one of Vishal’s friends, and they spoke for some time. I still remember his friend got a bag of snacks to use during our travel.
After waiting for a couple of minutes, we boarded the bus. Now, the fact of the matter is, we knew that we would reach Vishakhapatnam, i.e., Vizag, by 10 AM. But we had no clue where we would go once we reached. I mean, we had to search for a place to stay. The best thing I spotted as soon as I started searching for a stay was Zostel. I booked it immediately. The rest, we thought we would decide once we reached Vizag. The moment we booked our stay, we were happy to the core as our journey began, and I could not believe that I was actually on a trip. I also thought it would be exciting. In the next part, I will share with you what happened in Vizag—and Vishal still talks about it whenever we meet…
To be continued…
Link of next part would be pasted here once loaded..