Highland Trip

Trip: Highlands in Scotland

It has been really long time since we both went on a long trip. Last we went to Goa I believe and that too long time back. So this long Easter weekend was a perfect time for us to enjoy sometime together.

We were not in perfect health conditions, both had cough and cold so we were very skeptical about any plans .I decided at last moment to go on a highland trip. The weather forecast was not promising but still the spirits were quite high and I booked the tour.

I am missing Jumbo as never before nowadays. My hands are itching to go on long drive but since there is no chance of getting a car in UK till you have International driving permit I had no choice other than going via a tour operator. I googled and the first option I got was Highland Experience. The website looked quite authentic and there were some good reviews on Trip Advisor too. So I decided to go on a trip of Isle of Skye. This trip covers complete Highlands and Isle of Skye too. I remembered Udit a lot as we made two plans to Highlands but both failed. I booked the tour just in nick of time as from the next day it was full. So it is advisable to book at least one week in advance in case of long weekends.

As a starting point we began with our regular preparation of listing down what would be needed and putting it together. We bought lot of fruits, cakes, snacks and noodle (cup and maggi) for backup. It becomes very difficult to manage two meals in a day if you are vegetarian abroad. So cup noodle becomes the first choice as you just need hot water to add and prepare a meal. Believe me you will get hot water everywhere J

So all set bags ready, backup food, camera and mobiles loaded with lot of favorite songs.

We took bus 27 which dropped us near Royal mile. It was 7:25 AM when we started. The bus was supposed to start at 8:30 AM and we were asked to report before 8:15 AM. As usual we were reached there early and spent some time near the parliament square. There were three buses going on Tour to Skye and our bus was the last bus. Soon a Volkswagen LT46 arrived which was our bus. There were two other Merc buses.

So the bus which was supposed to take us to Isle of Skye was a 148BHP 16 seater minivan. We pushed our luggage in the back store and grabbed our seats. The guide and driver was John Paul and he looked an energetic person to me. 11 of us joined from Edinburgh and rest 5 were supposed to join from Glasgow. One of the guys was late and it delayed our start. We started around 8:40 AM from Edinburgh. Soon we were on Motorway M8 which leads to Glasgow. The traffic was fast and it started our journey of Scottish history. As expected John Paul was quite a knowledgeable scot and he started the journey with 5 million years old big bang and how English and Scottish plates collided and created the natural division between these two societies, cultures and later countries. There are few interesting sculptures also en route to Glasgow.

We picked rest of the guys from George Square. It is one nice spot having so many statues and giant Glasgow wheel. This wheel looks like London Eye. We started again from Glasgow at 10:00 AM approx.

So in a bus of 16+1 people there were 15 Indians, 1 American and 1 Scot. Amazing !!! Even here also we were in majority J

We continued on M8 towards the Loch Lomond and it started getting very beautiful drive. We were seeing outside and just tried that we don’t miss even a single sight. Soon we reached the Loch Lomond which was basically our first stop.

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