It's not just on paper

Bhopal was the venue for our class trip in year 2011. This upcoming visit to the capital city of Madhya Pradesh had raised a lot of expectations, especially in me. I thought of the city as a huge metro with public buses plying through every street. I imagined it to have infrastructure as good as New Delhi and people as casual and carefree as in Mumbai. The actual city however was a comfortable combination of both the conventional and the contemporary. Old Bhopal , which was our prime site of visit, reflected the aura the reigns of yesteryears. It spoke of the majestic dynasties and made a spectacle of its enormous and magnificent architecture. Venerable Antique: The bus ride from Bhopal Railway Station to the Old City, from across the dazzling Upper Lake, takes one through gigantic gates overhead and exposes one to sights of people plying on motorcycles and rickshaws. With its large Islamic influence, one spots a Mosque, big or small, alternating every three residential buildings i