Trip to Remember...

We had been planning this trip for a while, so when we came to know that one of our friends was going to a conference to Banff, me and my brother decided to tag along. It was a short one night trip as we had to come by Sunday and do seva at local mandir. I changed my Friday shift from evening to morning and left work at 1ish. My brother and couple of friends were waiting for me and we decided to go as soon as I came out of the train station. The road journey was pretty typical with a stopover at Tim Hortons (Canadian equivalent of Starbucks but only cheaper) for coffee in between.

It’s amazing how the geography of the land changes as soon as one arrives near Rockies. The first indication that Rockies were around the corner came when we saw cars coming form the other side with snow on their bonnet. Suddenly the Rockies came to the view from nowhere. Beautiful snow had covered parts of Rockies like a white sheet trying to cover the harshness of the mountains with softness of the snow. We were all enjoying the beauty of the place and in no time we were in the beautiful town of Banff. We checked into the hotel and our friends freshened up and went to their conference.

Me and my brother decided to go out, check out the town for the evening and have a nice meal somewhere. On the way to the town we clicked some amazing pictures but the night was setting in and the picture quality was not coming out that great. The first thing we noticed outside our hotel was a deer lazily grazing without a care in the world. Ah, we were in God's own country.

The Banff market was under renovation but even then it was buzzing with people. It reminded me very much of Indian hill stations like Mussorie, which are always buzzing with tourists. We checked out some bike places and decided to go biking the next day. Surprisingly, we were spell-bound by the the mall in the middle of the town. The Mall was the most unique we had seen ever. It looked more like an Opera house with wonderful architecture and sculptures of real life skiers all around it.

After going through most of the market we decided to have our dinner at a Thai Restaurant, Thai Grill.

The ambiance of the place was beautiful and serene with sculptures of Buddha all around and an exotic bright orange color for the wall. Brother decided to order Pad Thai, while I picked on an exotic pineapple rice dish and exotic it was.

Loved the dinner except that one of the small chilly stuck in my throat and almost choked me. Yea yea, I have become that typical NRI, who speaks like “kitne mirchi hain isme, kaise khata hain tum log”…lol.

We ended the night by trekking back to the hotel but on the way saw one of the most amazing sights of the famous Fairmont Springs Hotel, which is an amazing, gigantic hotel in the midst of jungle over the Bow river and is very Switzerlandish. The sight of the hotel in the night was a sight to behold; we actually had to stop at the corner side to admire the surreal beauty of the place. We could not wait for the adventures of the next day to begin.

(to be contd.)