The winter holidays were approaching, but I had no specific plans for it. I did not have any interesting idea. Then one evening I heard my parents talking about travelling to India. And I were to accompany them. I was overjoyed at the news.

We left for Biratnagar on the morning of December 31. Our driver Ramdai pushed the accelerator to a speed of 136 km/hr. Wow! It was fantastic. But the speed did not last for long as my father cautioned him to slow down.

We reached Guwahati on January 4. There we visited the temple of Kamrup Kamakhya Devi. We were told that when Lord Shiva was carrying the corpse of Sati Devi, the private part of Sati Devi had fallen here. Later it was developed as a Shakti Peeth, a sacred place to gain power. There were many pilgrims from different parts of India.

We visited Umananda (temple of Lord Shiva), located on a small hillock in the middle of river Brahmaputra, the largest river of India.

The other places we visited were the Samadhi temple of Rishi Vashistha, and Balaji temple. Balaji is a complex of newly built temples, which stand there as a model of South Indian architect. The complex was so clean and beautiful; I wished our temples in Nepal could also be maintained like this.

We then reached Puri, the sacred place of Lord Jagannath. The temple has three big idols of Balaram and Subhadra (Lord Krishna’s elder brother and sister) and of Lord Krishna himself, who is known as Jagannath. Puri is situated next to the Bay of Bengal and our hotel was on the opposite side of the beach. We could get excellent views of the waves from our room.

With help of a guard, I swam quite far away from the beach. I experienced that swimming in the sea is quite dangerous because the waves carry tons of sand particles. I enjoyed swimming in the sea so much that only the cold due to the evening breeze made me come out of the water.

We wanted to stay here for a few more days, but the message of Bhagwan Shree Sathya Sai Baba was beckoning us to reach Puttaparthi at the earliest.

Then on January 13 we reached Pattaparthi for Sai Baba’s darshan. When Baba entered the Sai Kulwant Hall, he blessed all present with his loving smile. I do not know why, but whenever I saw him, tears rolled down my cheeks.

Then we went to Kolkata. I found Kolkata to be densely populated, polluted and unclean, but a great place for businessmen and shoppers.

The temple of Kalkatte Kali is famous and so is Tarakeshwor (Lord Shiva), which is located at

a distance of about a two-hour journey by train from Howrah.

The Kolkata Zoo is really big. It took almost one full day to have a quick walk around the zoo. I saw a white tiger, lion and lioness, which I had not seen before as they are not in our zoo

in Jawalakhel.However, our vacation had come to an end and we had to return home, but I would love to visit Puttaparthi and Puri again.