Date: Dec, 27 2006
Birmingham-Bradford
I woke up at 9:30 am and then woke my friend who was accompanying me on the trip and sleeping like a dog.
It took me an hour to get ready, the next step was to call the cab....usually the cab arrives on time-ie. with in 5 minutes after the call but this SOB took more than 20 minutes to arrive.
We reached the coach station with only 5 minutes remaining for the bus to leave....
Bus...National Express service no. 321....
finally the bus left for bradford...and the trip started atlast.......
The first 30 minutes were very exciting as the view from the window was wonderful, as the time passed the journey was becoming more n more lousy....because the sun had gone down it was dark with the rain and the surroundings were not even visible.
Atlast we arrive at bradford accompanied by the drizzle,,,,,,,at the bus station bhai sadi was there to receive...from there we walked to a local store(remember it was drizzling all the time) bought some grocery and house hold stuff and then had a cab which took us to 133-Gladstone street....a 2 star residency......not a perfect hotel but still it had all the basic necessities for the living and entertainment.
Had a UKFC zinger with fries....and the program for bowling was on the cards.
Later in the night around 9:30 we left for bowling to hollywood bowl ....had some fun...i mean by bowling..10 guys were there in all 2 groups of 5 each were made....85 was the highest score in the1st group and in my group top score was 106 n i stood 2nd with 101...bad night...:(...but never mind...that day ended here.....
Date: Dec, 28 2006
The next day.....woke up at 1:00 pm.....spent some time at the internet...doing what..nothing...:)..believe me its also very hard thing to do..i mean by doing nothing...
around 3 pm we thought to have some English breakfast which included....pan cakes, bread, eggs, beans with chees, mayo and some tropical mix juice flavoured like the cough syrup....and to add the desi touch.....tea arrived....!...after the breakfast at 3:30pm went again to internet doing again NOTHING...
Later in the night went to the movie NIGHT AT THE MUSEUM starring BEN STILLER....it was a nice comedy flick.......after the movie came back home and had the dinner...and it was BIRYANI.....wat a end to the day.....wonderful....!..after that went to sleep cuz my dream mates were waiting for me;)
Date: Dec, 29 2006
As usual woke up late...infact very late....had the breakfast comprising of eggs n bread...came to internet...doing nothing....later in the night program for the club n pool was finalised....
so went to club at 11:30 and then to pool at 3:00 am spend 2 hrs over there n then came back home at 6 in the morning..the date was changed to Dec, 30 2006..
Date: Dec, 30 2006----->contd
at that time I decide not to sleep ptherwise i'll mis my eid prayers....but i slept...wake up 9:00 to get the 9:30 prayers....got ready in 15 minutes n ran to the mosque....after the prayers came back home and slept again and then woke up at 6 in the evening....came to internet....for 10 minutes...and then decided to have breakfast....although it wasn't the time for breakfast but who cares...so i went to the kitchen..and there..it was the green chicken...under heavy fire..i mean the dinner was getting ready....so i waited for it...and till then decided to have a shower....after the shower had the dinner...and get ready for pool...but what happened next is a lil strange...as after the dinner i felt heavily influenced by the sleep..so i went back to sleep as we had to cath the bus the next morning at 10:20 for london....
Date: Dec, 31 2006
Bradford-London
Wake up at 8:30....had the breakfast of puris and sabzi of aloo and chana....yummmi...it was jst too delicious to tell.....:)
called the cab to get the bus station and then had in the bus no. 561...the journey towards london started at 10:30....the travelling time was 5 hrs....damn...!
the journey was made entertaining when 3 guys enter the bus wearing some techni color dresses...aka govinda...but the guys were brits...as they were drunk..soon one of them started to sing a song....and time by time....some words were thrown at the bus driver also...after some time they lie on the bus floor....why...nobody knows.....!!
Finally we arrive at victoria coach station and made our way to east london.....where the delicious achar chacken was waiting for us......while having dinner we discussed the last night of 2006 and were lanning how to welcome 2007...finally we decided to go to london eye for the new yr's eve fireworks..so we left at 10:30pm and reached london eye at 11:40 where thousands of people gathered to welcome the new yr in style....
Date: Jan, 1 2007
The clock struck 12 and the fireworks started.....and continued for 20 minutes and during these 20 minutes the night was converted into day and the sky was filled with firecrakers of different colors.
After this entertainment we planned to go home but found ourselves in a very critical sitution, we were stuck at the waterloo station with no access to the tubes and any sort of public transport and the panic doubled when we realised that one of our friend was missing and we had to find him. The cell phone network was also down which created ample of disturbance in communicating with our friend. After 2 hrs of fatigue we finally managed to find our lost friend and move to a place where acrowd of people were heading towards a train fully loaded to its maximum capacity but anyhow we 6 guys got our feet in the train. Rite then we saw another empty train arriving at the parallel platform, without thinking or asking anyone one of our friend, who was lost earlier, jumped for that train and so did the rest of us....after 5 minutes the doors closed and the train started to move...this movement brought some smileys on tensed faces and in this excitement we waived to the people left behind on the platform but soon again the panic started when we realise that this is a national rail service and we are heading somewhere outside london, we all were stunned yet excited to complete a journey. After few minutes the train stopped at the station where the same left alone guy took off from the train and we followed him again not knowing why we were doing so...Amazingly this decision turned out to be rite and we found the access to tube from the station, this was the direct tube service to our destination but at a very long route.
The train got loaded on every station and we safely arrive at our destination, went to a fast food place to have something in our late night dinner,,,,,went home had dinner while discussing today's advernture and then slept somewhere around 4:30 am.
It was one hell of an adventure and a new yr night that will remain in my memory forever .... although it was a nice outing but no way near the new yrs night at the TIMES SQR NYC...
We woke up at 1 pm in the day.....and had very delicious half fried eggs made by bhai Talha, the resident of the flat where we were living in london....
Later in the early evening we went to meet one of aunts who lives somewhere at edgware road, when we arrived at edgware and I called her but she sounded as she dont want to meet me....and made some lame excuses, there went my plan down the drain and we came up with a new plan of having a dinner at nearby lebanese resturant.
The food was damn good...consisting of shawermas, hamous, mutabbal, grilled chicken, shish kebabs and shish koftas with the drinks(non alcoholic). When wwe finished it started to rain pretty heavily.....but still we went to have an ice cream on my insistance.
Later we went to vist a shopping centre HARRODS which was the replacement in a plan for BUCKINGHAM PALACE due to the heavy rainfall.
At the harrods the discount offers were attractive only if would had some extra quids...after the short trip of place we went out where my mate Nadir was stunned by the collection of some world's most expensive vehicles including maybach, rolls royce, mercedes kompressor 6 door limou. From there we took a bus to leicester sqr and had a photo session in the middle of the road, from there we head to london bridge and continued the photo session, it was damn cold there we browse the place in a glance, after that we were off to home...on the way back we stopped at kebabish resturant and had for the dinner...then bhai sadi took us to anand paan shop----the place was filled with various kind of masalas......there were various kinds of mixtures named after famous south asian celebraties like........Amitabh Bachan, Karishma Kapoor, Kareena Kapoor, SRK, Hrithik Roshan, Amisha Patel, Kajol, Reema, K3G etc...After taking the mix of all these we finally made our way to home......and slept around 2:30....in the night...
Date: Jan, 2 2007
We woke up at 10:30 am and got ourselves ready in 20 minutes for day full of entertainment including london eye, river cruise and madam tusaaud museum....
Our first destination was to get the tickets for these 3 places which was one hell of a task as there were many people waiting in queue, it took us around half an hr to get the tickets....then we head to the london eye...took the half an hr ride came down and ran towards the cruise as it was leaving in 15 minutes.....the cruise took us on river thames and was providing the brief introduction about the surrounding. It was the 40 minutes of highly enjoyable adventure.
Then we reach the MT musuem at 3:30 pm...during the 3 hr stay in the museum we encountered some famous celebrity wax models architect to portray a real life look, followed by the ride throught the ages of England.....it ended with a short movie about the stars hosted by a beautiful young lady in the red. But we only took the beautiful memory of that lady in the red whn we came out of the museum. Thus our trip ended in the disappointment of not taking any pictures with her which we thought of...It was the end of our beautiful day's adventure from there we went to book our tickets for the next day's return to birmingham....and after getting our seats confirmed we head to east hounslow for some fast food stuf...and after that went back home.....At home we were entertained by the ever alive comedy show by umer shrif and moin akhter and after we slept at around 5:30 am in the intending to get up early and catch the bus at 2:30 pm..
Date: Jan, 3 2007
London-Birmingham
Unlike our plan of waking up early, it turned to be totally opposite when we found ourselves in the situation where 2 of our mates might mis the bus to bradford...but some how we quickly packed out things and headed to the coach station, luckily we reached there just in time and bradis got their bus...
Me and Nadir had to wait for half an hr as our bus to birmingham was at 3:00pm, till then we had our brunch.
Finally our bus arrived....(by the way our bus number was 420)...we go on the bus and took the front seat and were joined by the beautiful young lady just one seat ahead of us....The environment of the bus was very warm and soon we found out that the ac of the bus is not working and the lousy driver could not do anything till 30 minutes or untill we reach the motorway...all the passengers were feeling warm and started to take off their warm clothes and so did the beautiful lady sitting ahead of us.
Finally we arrive in birmingham at almost 6:00 pm....
Got our luggage and took a cab to home.
This was the end of our week long adventure starting in 2006 and ending in 2007...
The route was Birmingham-Bradford-London-Birminaghm.
