Traveling to Jammu for Ritvik’s Wedding: A Memorable Trip

It feels like yesterday that Ritvik and Ria were school going kids and suddenly on Monday, Ritvik is a young man and we were attending his wedding ceremony. The cliche “How time flies” is true, it does fly. Ritvik’s dad Ranjeet, is a school friend, even though our time at KVHV didnt overlap, we never missed a beat in becoming fast friends. That Ranjeet is also a Taurean and speaks the “Eicher map” lingo like Krishnan helped tremendously in cementing the friendship further.

Shalu and my mother adopted each other, so Ritvik and Ria call Amma as “Nani” not “Daadi”. 🙂

As soon as Ranjeet posted the wedding card on our Whatsapp group, I booked the train tickets. Vande Bharat has very convenient timings and we assumed that we could maybe visit a temple as well during our maiden trip to Jammu. Well, that was wishful thinking.

Maiden Trip to Jammu

Krishnan and I were going to Jammu for the first time. Amma and Appa had been to Mata Vaishno Devi, in 1991, but we are yet to receive “Mata ka Bulava”🙏🏿. There are two Vande Bharat’s that go to Jammu and further onto Katra. The morning Vande Bharat departs at 6 am from New Delhi and reaches Jammu Tawi at 12.43 pm. On Aug 18th, it left from New Delhi station only at 7.55 am, a clear two hours late. There had been a cloud burst at Kathua so the tracks had some issues.

We were up between 2.30 to 3 am on the 18th and were ready to start by 4 am. The New Delhi station is about 30 kms from Gurgaon and approximately an hour away if it’s early in the morning. First we received a message that the train was an hour late, then it got further delayed to 7.55 am. I sent a message to Ranjeet around 5 am saying we might not make it if the train gets delayed beyond 3 hours…. and sent him the following pic as well.

Dilip Ji, our trusted taxi service provider was on standby and finally picked us up by 6.10 am. He drove really fast because we felt we were a little delayed in starting from home.

At the New Delhi Station, it was a moment of Deja Vu… 28 years back Krishnan and I had landed at the same station as a bankrupt couple unsure of how our life will pan out. Bhagwan has been kind and with the blessings of our parents and elders, we went through those turbulent times and lived to tell the tale. An interesting fact … The Vande Bharat Express train was leaving from Platform #14 which didnt exist when we came in 1997 :). Our country’s railways have been transformed in the last decade !!! All thanks to Modiji’s government.

The train started on the rescheduled time, but kept stopping every now and then. We were upset with how dirty the places around the train tracks were… really sad that we don’t give a damn about Swachh Bharat :(:(. It was raining on and off as well. We must appreciate IRCTC, the catering arm of the Indian Railways for the fantastic food onboard the Vande Bharat. It tasted fresh and was truly tasty, not some reheated gunk.

We had one more surprise in store for us …. just as we neared Kathua, our phones lost their network. Initially we thought it was a temporary glitch but later realised that prepaid SIM cards don’t work in Jammu for security reasons.

We got off at the Jammu station around 3.30 pm… and it was pouring. The Jammu station seems to have been left behind in 1980’s, because there were rivulets and tiny ponds on the floor plus every now and then you could take a shower as the roof was leaking or there was no roof :(. We somehow managed to come out of the station without getting wet and caught a cab to reach the hotel. Note : There are four taxi unions at the Jammu station. You HAVE to take a taxi from one of them, Uber etc are not allowed to come into the railway station. It’s a monopoly just like Fasttrac had a monopoly at the Chennai airport in the not too distant past.

We were greeted at the hotel with this info board –

We slept after eating a small meal, as we were truly tired, especially Amma. Got up around 7.30 pm to get dressed for the wedding. A short elevator ride brought us to the wedding venue.

Pratyaksha and Ritvik’s Wedding

Enjoy the wedding festivities through my amateur photography :).

Return Journey

We took the 7.10 am Vande Bharat from Jammu to return to New Delhi yesterday, Aug 19th. The train was late by 5 minutes and it reached New Delhi by 2.30, about half hour late. This time we exited from the Paharganj side, just took us 20 minutes to cross 400 metres :):). The rest of the 30 kms trip was done in 40 minutes. Again the food was excellent and the toilets were clean.

Some interesting pics of the Jammu station and the train journey back to Delhi.

Congratulations to Ritvik and Pratyaksha. Best wishes for a wonderful life together. Congratulations to our dear friends, Ranjeet and Shalu, and to Ritvik’s sister Ria.