Central Park

Salt Lake central Park is rather far away and by the time we coordinated to arrive in convoy with Shelley and Andy riding with him, it was around 7:45. Himanshu, a long lost brother of Kartikeyan, zipped me, Francois, Wanja and Pete down from Ranchi, there. We would have made it in record time, but Shelley being from Chandigarh and not familiar with Salt Lake wasn’t able to keep up with us after we took off from rv point at ITC. I was on mobile duty with Andy and Nil who decided to walk across from his house across the road leaving Dev enjoying his birthday sleep! Sid and Tony were also there.

Nil was able to give us a guided tour starting from the map of Central Park marked with every Japanese lamp and Pagoda. We walked over the bridge past the fishermen who have to pay Rs.150 if they catch fish upto 15 kg. We saw them making the bait with ants eggs and sweets! The artificial lake, in which Nil used to swim up till 7 years ago, isn’t too deep. We didn’t see any umbrellas or love birds! There were egrets but there were so many cement pandas and crocs that we nearly mistook them for more artificial animals! We saw an elephant slide in the Children’s park and Wanja and the others were most distressed to see an 8 legged elephant that had been carved in two. Sid and Wanja fled from the topiary dinosaur and Andy took more Jurassic Park pictures. We posed in an evolutionary pyramid where normally flowerpots are placed! By 8:30 Sid was shooing us out of the garden and though we walked under the pergola we couldn’t get out that way. We doubled back and swapped passengers. Andy came in our car and Wanja went with Sid and Tony.

We were 9 for breakfast at the Taj and sat at a smaller table closer to the pool. Zoria, visiting the Taj to take her friends staying there to Chandernagore, brought 3 T shirts from Pradeep. These were given to Tony, Andy and Wanja (Yvonnick’s African bride). Yvonnick wasn’t able to join us on Sunday and on Tuesday he was busy posing for wedding photos with Ruth in a borrowed wedding gown from Mother Teresa’s and orange make up! I’ll leave you with that picture.