Sydney Sojourn

Many Indian people go to Sydney, either for business or for pleasure or for both.

A few of the people, who have some time to spare, go to the Blue Mountains for sightseeing and come back disappointed, saying our Nilgiris are far better than those Blue Mountains. In fact, even our Sahyadris look as good as the Blue Mountains. I do not think the Blue Mountains are in any way unique rather run-of-the-mill kind of mountains.

However, very few people go to the JenolanCaves, which can be visited on a day tour from Sydney, and which are decidedly distinctive, though not unique. They are just 70 Km from Katoomba in the Blue Mountains.

Somehow, Indian tourists do not do much research before going to a country. As a consequence, they sometimes miss out on an opportunity to see the spectacular sights. I have come across at least three couples, who visited Blue Mountains but did not see the JenolanCaves because they simply did not know of their existence.

The tourist companies also do not mention such attractions in their brochures if they are a bit out of the way and if they (the companies, I mean) have no intention of taking the tourists there.

Moral of the story is that, you should research the Net before going to a country.

During our sojourn in Sydney, we checked out all the interesting places The Opera House, the Taronga Zoo, the Paramatta river ferry, DarlingHarbour, the Botanical Garden, the shopping malls, you name it. I even walked across the HarbourBridge from one end to another with a friend, had our coffee and ice-cream and came back by ferry. Sydney ferries are great.

On Saturday, we took the JenolanCaves full-day tour from Sydney. This tour goes via the Blue Mountains.

Katoomba in Blue Mountains has the steepest railway track in the world.Originally it was a part of the mining tramways constructed before 1900 AD. Now it is a tourist attraction on par with any roller-coaster ride.

There appears to be a caveman lurking in Avi. He is ever ready to visit any cave. I too find them interesting.

We had visited Luray Caverns before, but found that the JenolanCaves are far bigger than Luray.

I am uploading some photos here.

We came back from the JenolanCaves, dead-tired, hungry and shabby with dust. The whole-day travel had wrung us out, but there was a very famous opera Carmen playing at the Opera House. Of course the tickets were very expensive, but I wanted to see that opera. The last stop of our tour bus was the Opera House.

What we did not foresee was that the bus would take so long to reach there. It stopped at all the regular stops (and some irregular ones) to offload the tourists and reached the Opera House just 5 minutes late.

We ran up the steps and asked for the tickets. We were told that as the show had started, we could not go in. It would disturb the artists. However, we could go in during the interval.

Suddenly, the tiredness that we were trying to ignore, spoke up sharply and we decided to call it a day.

I wonder what kind of figure we would have cut had we managed to reach there 5 minutes early. We would have attracted a lot of unwanted attention and disapproval by the elegant, well-dressed crowd that patronizes an opera. So, in way, it was a good thing that we missed the show.

But, I am still sorry that we missed the show.