Memoirs: My last trip to London!

THERE AND BACK AGAIN

(This was a report I had to give in to ITC, my sponsors, to which company I had pledged brand loyalty until I started reading Marxism in college! I unerathed this at home, while looking for something else in a CD promisingly labelled "PC Backup". I wrote this just after the trip, so that was sometime July, 2004. Funny.)

[ December 16, 2004: The first time I hear of the Grand Prize – a trip to London.

June 6, 2005: After a whirlwind experience at Mumbai and at Delhi, before I know it, I’m on a plane to London.]

DAY 1:

It’s an early start. At two a.m., half asleep, my mother and I board the British Airways flight from Indira Gandhi International and sleep through most of it.

Immigration counters, conveyor belts and 10 hours later, we are out of Heathrow and into the damp, cold morning. It’s London all right.

*

Our hotel in Bayswater turns out to be a lovely three-star inn on a tree-lined square off busy Queensway.

We are quite exhausted, but manage to walk along Queensway and later, along the famous Oxford Street.

A soak in the tub, some local FM and early bed.

DAY 2:

Ah, the day of the H-O-H-O (er…the Hop-On-Hop-Off ) Tour.

The weather clears up and it stays warm the rest of our stay.

We spend the day cruising the streets of London and Westminster in an open red double-decker bus; stopping at sites from the historic (St. Paul’s Cathedral, Trafalgar Square, Tower of London) to the curious (a pub called ‘Hung, Drawn and Quartered’, and monument called, well, ‘Monument’).

But the best part is when Big Ben chimes, “Come Back Whittington”.

Post tour I fall asleep in sunny Hyde Park with a bucket of strawberries by me.

DAY 3:

The Evan Evans Tours coach-bus starts its all-day journey to Oxford and Stratford through the charming Cotswolds.

Walking through Oxford University, both my eyes take in all the familiar names - the colleges of Trinity, Christchurch and Exeter- but my mind’s eye sees myself studying there someday.

*

We soon reach Shakespeare’s Stratford-on-Avon, listening to our guide quote effortlessly from Merchant of Venice. Inside Shakespeare’s Tudor home, we walk on the same stone floor as he must have paced, thinking, “To be or not to be”.

Nearby, Anne Hathaway’s cottage nestles among pretty flowers, housing the very bench on which Shakespeare proposed to Anne.

A nice touch is English Tea in the teashop outside.

Back in London and highly inspired, we call it a (wonderful!) day.

DAY 4:

We become celebrities for a day, walking the red carpet with our favourite stars and famous heads of state. No, not at the live8 concert, but at Madame Tussaud’s.

Next a stop at 221 b, Baker St., home to the great Sherlock Holmes, and now to a museum in his name.

The rest of the afternoon is the bit I love. A ‘Beatles Walk’ around town: the Magical Mystery Tour that ends at Abbey Road.

DAY 5:

A dream come true – the Evan Evans guided tour of Westminster Abbey is the most awe-inspiring and fantastic experience ever!

We walk among greats like Shakespeare, Newton, Auden, Eliot, Johnson and Churchill, and marvel at Queen Elizabeth and William the Confessor.

History there does not just stay. It lives.

DAY 6:

All too soon, I feel, it’s already time to go. Truly, London has some magnetism to it.

But on the way to the airport, as we look at the photographs, we smile and say, “Wow” because nothing else can describe the trip.

What’s left to tell?

We get home to India safe and sound and then back to Lucknow to family and friends eager to hear the tale firsthand.

*

So here I am, my feet back on the ground (finally!).

Still,

Nothing could match the feeling I had when London swept me away.