Day 5:
Today we were going to leave from my cousin's place to go to one of my dad's cousin's home. Before that, they were going to come pick us up and take us to this place called "Siddhachalam" which is a Jain temple built in a hill station type location and is situated in over 120 acre land. When they came to pick us up, we bid farewell to my mom's cousin's family and left their place around 10:30 in the morning. Again, this was first time that my brother and I met my dad's cousin. In fact, my dad met them after long time (maybe after 12 to 13 years). We reached Siddhachalam around 12:00 pm and we prayed there and had lunch at the "Dharamshala (temple kitchen)". The food was too delicious. This place is managed by 2 families who live at the location and they care of the temple and also cook food for the people visiting the temple. The temple was also recently renovated to build "Shikharji" which is basically a lot of "deris (small temples)" which contains the footprints of all the Gods. These small temples are scattered around the 120 acre land.
This place is so beautiful and peaceful that you can just come here for a weekend to get away from all the noise and crowd of the city and have a peaceful and pleasant time with your family. After all the Darshan (praying), we started heading to my dad's cousin's place around 2:45 pm and reached home about 4:30 pm. We relaxed a bit and then had dinner together. The rest of the evening concluded with the democrat convention speeches and some Indian soap opera :).
Day 6:
Today we were going to leave from New Jersey to go to New York to one of my other cousin's place who lived in Hicksville, NY. The morning was pretty relaxing as we didn't have anywhere to go except to get up and get ready. We had nice family lunch and then we headed to the Matawan station to catch the NJ Transit to NY Penn Station. We said good bye to the family and headed to the station. Again, the NJ Transit train from Matawan to Penn station was very nice since the ride was smooth, had nice and comfy seats, and not crowded. I wish I could say the same for Penn Station. We got off at Penn station and it was completely different story. I felt like I have come to a bus stop in India where people are rushing, pushing, going crazy to get out of the train and catch their next bus/train whatever. Penn station was packed with people!!! It was insane.....and on top of that, we had to catch another train to go to Hicksville....that too on a different train!! So first we had to find where the Long Island Rail Road (LIRR) track is so we can figure out where the trains take off from. Then once we figured that out, we needed to know which track the train takes off from for Hicksville. Unfortunately, they don't list the track numbers until 7-10 minutes before the train time, so we had to wait for the track number to be listed. Luckily, my cousin's husband was coming early from work that day and decided to take the train with us so he could help us out. And I was soooooo glad he came with us!! The LIRR train was packed with people, and can you imagine 4 of us trying to find a seat with 4 carry-on bags + 2 personal items :(. It was a disaster!! We all found 4 different seats and my brother-in-law stood all the way in the train (he said he was used to it). After all this chaos, you would think that we would have a smooth ride....no way! This train was worse that the NJ Transit train....the seats were small, there was no overhead compartment to put our luggage, and it was packed with people....seats were not comfortable and the train had too much turbulence that I felt like sitting in one of those roller coaster rides (except it didn't go upside down). We were happy to get off at the Hicksville station after 45 minutes, but we still had to walk a little to get to the elevator and then to the parking garage where my brother-in-law's car was parked. Thankfully, their home wasn't far from the station so we could only relax after getting to home. My cousin came from work early and we met her after almost 13 years!! It was good to see her and her daughter. We freshened up and then had dinner together. I felt being very tired from just from the LIRR train ride, but we had to get up early next day to start our Gray Line tour. More on that in the next post....
For now, I think you have had enough to read about my experiences of the NY already without even starting our tour of NY :P...haha.
Note: I didn't mention anything about the train tickets earlier, but since now I have finished talking about Day 6 it would be a good time to bring it up. NJ Transit train tickets are very expensive for a one-way ride depending on where you start from and where you need to go, but from my previous 2 experiences it cost us about $59 and $55 one-way for 4 people to get from Jersey City (Secaucus station) to Princeton Junction and from Matawan to Penn station. NJ Transit does not have any kind of discounted tickets for peak or off-peak times, but LIRR trains do!! LIRR train rides aren't cheap either, but they have cheaper ticket prices during off-peak time (which is anytime excpet 6-10 am in the morning and 4-8 pm in the evening). So it would have cost us $11.50 for one-way to go from Penn station to Hicksville but if we go in off-peak time, it would cost $8.25. Even better, if you know you are going to take more than 5 off-peak rides then you can buy the Ten-Trip tickets which is about 15% cheaper than the regular off-peak ticket which is what I did. We knew that we were going to come back to NY for our Gray Line bus tour, so we decided to buy the off-peak ten-trip ticket which saved us some $$.
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