You are currently browsing the category archive for the 'Travel' category.
Talks about the recession have spread all over the world. The media is going frenzy every single day over the same issue. Everyday I read news about another country going into recession. The US and the UK seem to be the worst hit. And of course as always the effects are being felt here in India too. People who’re employed also seem to be cutting down on spending, while the govts in the developed countries are encouraging people to spend more amid job cuts. In fact, recently when I was going to buy a new MacBook, I called up one my best friends who’d returned from the US to inquire about the price of the notebook. However, I was astonished by his reaction to the fact that I was buying a new MacBook when there are people who don’t have enough to eat. He was just back from California which probably has been one of the worst hit by the recession with photos of closed down shops printed on every news paper. India probably is the only country where the effect of the recession has not been so severe. Yes I know about these IT companies firing employees showing absurd reasons. Some other industries too are busy shedding some “Fat”. In fact, I being employed in this so called Indian Information Technology industry, can feel the wave of nervousness around the office corridors, while the companies are still making tons of profit and also declaring them quite proudly in their quarterly reports. Sometimes I just wonder about things happening around me and force myself to the conclusion that probably my brain is not yet properly equipped to understand all the dynamics of this complex world. May be I don’t want to. I still have fond memories of the Birmingham beer festival last year, when I was sipping ale lazily. In fact, as I write this blog I’m wearing the CAMRA t shirt I bought, perched lazily on my cozy office chair on a Friday afternoon. I guess its doing the job of providing me with inspiration, to follow my dream and open a bar of my own, where I can serve beer to people over rock music and may be, crack a joke or two..
Life is a screwed up thing. This world is a screwed up place too. I feel like giving up everything and go on a long vacation to Goa. May be, then work as a coast guard; certainly not inspired by Baywatch but I’d have the luxury of playing in the sea, all day long. It may so happen that I’ll get sick of it too. Change seems to be quite a part of life and so is our human nature resist it. In the last two months I’ve traveled more than 12,000 KMs, lived in many differenct places scattered across different time zones and geographies. Of course it’s taken its toll on me. One moment I find myself listening to Led Zeppelin and the next moment I switch to Sheryl Crow!! I feel like quitting everything. But again I see all the air-conditioned sedans on the road while I breathe diesel hanging from an auto-rickshaw. I see people suffocating inside the wooden buses of West Bengal Surface Transport corporation with sweat dripping down their every visible organs. Then I also see men in their Lungis pulling rickshaws breathing the same diesel. It makes me sad. While I feel sad about all this shit, people hanging from buses and auto rickshaws stare at my nine inch long hair tied up neatly behind my neck into a ponytail. Some of them giggle at it too. Then I find myself in a little cubicle staring at a computer screen, going through what seem like never ending lines of code, which of course I’ve lost every interest in, since a long time back. But I stare at it because I get paid for it! Boy, now I sound like a phoney, whom I hate the most. Now I’m starting to hate myself.
For the first time in life, witnessed snowfall. Milky white. Its soft and beautiful. Grass looks even greener with snow. Almost near Nirvana.
Nov 16, Friday night; took a bus from BLR to Hyderabad. Nov 17 and Nov 18, visited Salarjung museum and Snow world. Eat street revisited. Back to BLR on 19th. Completed my 10,000 KMs of travel inside India. Feels like I’ve achieved something. But again anyone with enough time and a little bit of money can do it. So actually feeling like a stupid asshole. But was never was disappointed with any of these journeys. Learnt a lot from them.
Deleted my Orkut account with 76 photos and more than 1K scraps and 137 friends, on the day of Christmas. No idea why. Probably it was just a new way to start the new year. Had a beer bath at 12.00 AM on 1st Jan, 2008. But new year is not looking new anymore.
So this post is just to congratulate myself for completing my 10,000 KMs inside India and deleting my Orkut profile!!
Dos:
Do everything in Goa except for Donts!!!! LOL. Yeah follow this rule.
Donts:
Dont go for a PIMP which u easily get. Especially if u r not a local!!! There are many strories that we heard from local Goans and u better believe it…
The tan is slowly starting to fade. Its been more than 3 weeks since I’m back from that heavenly place. But as usual this time also, a bit late to write about it. All the snaps in place in Flickr, but just a bit careless about WordPress!! 
. Every Sunday I thinks of finally posting something, but again get lost watching several episodes of Friends, back to back. Today was no different. But anyway finally posting it. The 4 days experience will be too hard to forget. So just wanted to jot down some points and free advices!
Day 1 (29/09/07)
* Reached g0A by 12.00 PM and took a taxi look around for a place for our heads.
* Found a place somewhere near Miramar beach. It was a dirty beach that time, but should be fine by now.
* Used the bathroom well and had lunch at a restaurant.
* Ventured out around 4.00 PM to go for a stroll along Miramar beach, which we didn’t find quite interesting.
* Took a town bus to Mandovi river near by, which is famous for its boat rides. Bought map of Goa for 20 bucks.
* Booked ticket for a 5 of us and boarded the boat. I don’t if “boat” is the right word to use. It was a big one.
* That one hour was fantastic. We’d beer and Brezeer inside. Danced to the music. Clicked a lot of snaps. hmmm yeah some hot chicks were on board too!!!
* We came out from the boat, a bit hazy.
* Came across a PIMP outside from whom we heard this line. “Sahab, Ladki chahiye kya raat ke liye?? Mast maal hai mere pass!!!”
* I’ve no idea what we’re looking like that time, but sure had great fun when one of us asked him, “Bhaiya, ladki leke kya karenge???”.
* Well that was a tough question for him to answer and the fact that we’re laughing our hearts out to that question, made it worse.
* Had a big discussion about that pimp, since most of us met a pimp for the first time!! Many ideas started budding up in our hazy and lost minds as we’re walking all the way to Panjim market.
* That was a Saturday night and the Market looked not much alive.
* As far as I remember, there was goddamed Cricket matched going on between India and some other damned country.
* Went to a church standing tall in the market, which I think every visitor goes to and clicked some snaps; one of which my current profile picture in Orkut!!
* Had dinner in Bar+Restaurant.
* Reached Miramar beach somewhere near 10.00 PM and found many couples coming out from the darkest areas of the beach!! Probably playing some kind of dirty games. No idea. U go and find out man!!
* We’re in hotel room in next 30 minutes and were too tired, so slept like donkeys.
Day 2 (30/09/07)
* We’re up by 9.30 in the morning. Had our breakfast and planned the entire day for North Goa.
* Took bikes on rent. One Passion, one Splendor and one Activa!! Thats all we could find after 2 hours of waiting. Filled them up.
* I’d the map with me and was the guiding star for them. So we started heading North.
* It was a fine Saturday morning and we’re cruising on nice Goan roads.
* Our first target was Sinquerim beach and then Fort Aguada.
* Sinquerim beach was a cool place. We found some crowd there. Clicked some snaps then headed towards Fort Aguada.
* I’ve no idea if that was the place where “Dil Chahta Hai” was shot at, but the place was pretty neat. The view of the sea was wonderful at some of the places. All of us became photographers there. We started clicking almost anything that was even slightly interesting and posed for snaps too. Yeah we became models for some time there!!
* While coming out of that fort we realized that all of us wanted to pee really bad. It was hot and we had lot of water on the way. And the worst thing is there no place to let go!!! Ahhhh!!! There were people all around. Ritesh was badly afected!! Anyway we did on our back in the Jungle!! Yeah, the really Indian way. On the road itself.
* The next target was Calangute beach. Yeah I know. If you’ve ever been to Goa, you must be quite excited by now.
* Calangute beach is one of the most hippiest beaches in Goa. Finished lots of Budweiser there. Had a tattoo done on my right arm. By that time my arms were pitch dark out of sun tan.
* Watched all the chick around and had lunch at Jerry’s place.
* Went up more North and reached Anjuna beach. Another hippy paradise in Goa. But we couldn’t find anything interesting there.
* So headed up more towards North and reached Vagator. It was better than Anjuna. Clicked a lot of snaps. Headed towards Baga beach after that.
* Baga was a cool place again. Its almost like Calangute. Lots of beach side shacks can be found there. Beer was everywhere. I could find a lot Firangi’s reading books over beer!!
* Spent our entire evening at Baga beach. Returned back to Calangute beach by 8.00 PM.
* Spent some time at Calangute again and went back to Panjim market and treated ourselves with a pure vegetarian Goan Thali. But believe me that “Solkadi” tasted awful.
* Were back in room right after.
Day 3 (01/10/2007)
* We’d planned this day for South Goa. But it was a bad day. Everything was a mess on this day. We headed towards South thinking about Palolem beach.
* Palolem, which was more than 50 KMs form Miramar was quite far place to reach. Still we headed towards south. Reached Margao somehow.
* We were stopped by police which fortunately was just a routine check.
* Found ourselves in a big traffic jam in Margao. Were very hungry but had a very bad breakfast that morning.
* After all these mess ups none of us were in a mood to see Palolem beach. We started thinking about Norht again. North Goa had really impressed us. We’re forced to turn or bikes NORTH.
* North was calling us bigtime. We’re ready take the pain to go.
* We traveled all the way to Arambol beach which was I think more than 70 KMs form Margao. But we made it and it was worth it.
* It was the most beautiful beach we saw in Goa. All of us jumped in to the see. It washed off all the pain from such a long travel on such shitty bikes. Clicked a lot of snaps while in the sea.
* All of again became beach photographers and models. Check out some of the snaps!!! They are hotttt..
* Headed back to Panjim market again. Had a Punjabi thali dinner this time.
* Haunted the market for wine, as the very next day was Bapu’s B’Day and unfortunately its a dry day.
* Went into fairly good looking wine shop and shopped for some good Goan Port wine and whites too.
* We were all too tired from biking, so it was time to sleep.
Day 4 (02/10/07)
* We’d no plans for this day. But we’re checking out from the hotel and we returned our bikes. So had no options.
* Asked the proprietor of the hotel for advice. And booked a taxi to visit Donna paula and Old Goa.
* Donna Paula was good. But that day was especially humid and we were sweating a lot.
* Next was Basilica of BOM Jesus. It has a huge altar. Its beautiful. Believe me. I was almost lost clicking snaps inside it. Then one more church and museum. The architecture so wonderful, that you cannot stop yourself from clicking snaps.
* It was awesome. Then we visited 2 temples and had lunch.
* Then it was time for a final visit to Calangute for the last time. Had another tattoo done on my left hand. It was a Batman this time.
* Headed back to catch the bus back to BLR. The thought of it was itself depressing, but had come back anyway.
Finally forgive me for spelling mistakes if any and wait for another post on Do’s and Dont’s. Go Goa!!
I just don’t know why I get late in posting things. I’ve no idea. I think laziness or may be moodiness. Now I’ve got the mood after drinking a couple of beers and breezers. That too at 1.00 AM in the morning! Anyway this post is about Pondicherry, which I’d visited a couple of weeks back. This time it was me and Chirag. Till Friday evening there was no booking done. When we called up the travel agents found that nothing was left for Friday. So had to do it on Saturday, which also had dependency on availability of tickets. But didn’t want to waste the weekend when we’d a plan. So booked the tickets immediately for Saturday and reached Pondicherry by 5 AM on a Sunday morning. Bus journey was painful in that Non AC bus. Chirag had a lot of complaints about mosquito bytes. The time we got down from the bus several auto wallahs started following us. All of them promised us to take to a good hotel. But don’t believe them. They’re all wolves in sheep’s skin. All big time bastards. One of them robbed us of Rs. 40 for only 1.5 KMs. And got us into a dirty guest house. Since it was around 5.30 AM, we took a little rest. Headed out to discover Pondicherry around 8.00 AM. Had our breakfast. Nothing special. Typical South India breakfast. Dosa and Idly vada. I wonder sometimes how do the South Indians get all the necessary nutrition from such food. We’re told in Bangalore that, bikes are easily available. Quite untrue. Don’t go by such advice. We found a Pulsar only after wandering 1.5 hrs in the market. Anyone you ask would tell you to go “Straightaaaa..”. They don’t say “straight” as its normally said. But they say stretch the last ‘a’ to make it sound like ‘aaaaaa’. Straightaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa……….. Ok okay. Finally we found a old Pulsar, but was quite fit for the need for the moment. So took it for a rent of Rs. 150 and fed it with 2.5 ltrs of petrol, which was enough for Pondicherry. Must confess here, there nothing much to see in Pondicherry except for European/French architecture. That was when I realized that one should read blogs before making a plan for such trips. And thats the reason probably I’m posting this. My first advice would be, don’t go to Pondicherry for its beaches. One was dirty and meant for fishing and another was entirely laid with stones. So beaches are just for a lazy stroll. Spend some time in the French colony. Its worth spending some time at. European architecture can be found every where. Of course Tamil is the default language in the area, every street name is written in English and French too. Not a problem for foreigners and the other Indians also. We went into the Aurobindo ashram. Quite serene place. One more thing people in Pondicherry are very nice. At least thats what we noticed in the whole day that we’d spent there. Roads sometime suffer from traffic jam but road rage was absent. Everyone seemed quite happy and cheerful. No tension at all. And chicks!!! My god…. I’m an atheist. But they’ll force you to believe in God. But I still maintain that I’m an atheist. But chicksssss………. I saw one girl I don’t think I can forget her face ever. She was a goddess man!!! Chirag and I though, its worth taking a snap. But one thing I forgot. Turning off the FLASH. Fuck man. Chirag slowed down the bike and clicked the button. And suddenly what happened was a bright light got fired from my Canon hand canon and everyone was looking at us. Quite embarrassing. Huh.. Couldn’t really help it. Forget it man. We had to push the bike to its limit after that accident!!! Lol. Hadn’t booked the return ticket. When we’d discovered that there was nothing much to discover in Pondicherry, It was time we did it. We booked our ticket online at a cyber cafe on the same Sunday evening. Liquor is dirt cheap in Pondicherry. Thanks to the no tax rule there. Liquor shops can in fact be found at every 100mtrs. It surprisingly cheap. I don’t know about prices in Goa, where I’m going at the end of September!!!! Yippiieeee.. Thikin of buying a Goa T-shirt form Tantra or Offbeat. Chirag bought a 2ltr jar of whiskey bottle. I bought a small bottle of red port wine and a big bottle of white port wine. Both of them turned out to be very good. Ended the day with diner and went back to our shitty guest house. In the morning headed off for bus. When we showed our printed E-ticket in the KSRTC counter the lady there couldn’t believe her eyes that it was a real ticket. Anyway thanks to KSRTC the driver recognized the ticket. Got into our “Airabath” AC bus. Reached Bangalore somewhere around 3.30 PM. Visit to Pondicherry is good for one day only. Don’t plan a stay lasting more than one day. You’ll probably run out of places to see there..
Snaps : http://www.flickr.com/photos/vegdevil/tags/pondicherry/
Landed in Bangalore last Monday evening. 11 days of long vacation at my native place. I guess a bit rare in IT services industry. 65 unread mails in the client mailbox and 150+ in the official one. Had to clean em up. No excuses. Laziness is evil! Hard work for three days. Today sick leave just don’t wanna go to office. Or may be just to post this. Ate home cooked food and prasad from Iscon temple almost like a pig. Went to college on a holiday; Just to recollect where we used to sit and what we used to do.. Sikhar Chandi.. A small trip down the memory lane. Met some old friends. Clicked a lot of snaps. Brought sweets to the “no sweet” land. Mission accomplished.
Snaps : wwww.flickr.com/photos/vegdevil
After a long depressing period of 9 months, I’m going home again. 12th July is the day that I’m waiting for. For 11 day I’ll be eating home cooked food and lots of sweet, which seems to virtually non-exsistent in the South. And the sweet that can be found here, is next to impossible to eat. Rasgoollas almost feel like rubber here. Gulab Jamoon stinks. They just have the names. Now going for the real taste for few days. Ohh, Shit this is again some kind of a travel blog!!
As usual Air Deccan has fucked up. My flights just got rescheduled from morning 7.30 AM to evening 8.35 PM. Can you beleive it. But this happens only in India. So next time if ever, no more Air Deccan. Bastards!! I’m not a big homesick fellow. But anyway the thought of going home is somehow keeping me in a good mood. Not caring about office work anymore. In just couple of days I’ll turn on my ugly “Out of Office assistant” in Outlook. That’d be the happiest momment. No more worries about the goddamned mails from the clients. At least for 11 days.
I wasn’t posting anythign untill today. But as I’ll have to start preaparing for the trip ahead, I’ve just posted two posts below; which I should have posted long time back. Hehehe… Anyway again blogging after a long time. Feels good!! Hope I’ll blog on time in the coming days..
Gosh!! My blog is almost becoming a travel blog. This is my third continuous post wherein I’m blogging about some sort of travel again. I think I should use some specialized travel blog site, instead of WordPress. Wot say guys?
Now coming straight down to the point, Let me tell you, KP stands for Kumar Parvat, the highest peak in Karnataka, in the Western Ghats. Just wanted some kind of trek before the monsoon sets in. This time three relatively inexperienced trekkers, including me, started planning for the KP trek. We’d no idea about the weather condition there. As usual Chirag started collecting all possible information, including stuffs about leeches. From the beginning itself we started having lots of issues. We didn’t have raincoats. Just had enough food for and sports drink and one jacket each.
Our plan was something like this. We’d travel from Bangalore to a place called “Gundya” which is on the way to Mangalore. From Gundya we’d planned to take a bus to Kukke from where the trail of the trek starts. We stuck to our plan. Had a tough time finding a bus from Bangalore to Gundya. The ones we found were already packed, as it was a Friday night. Finally found a private bus. A congested one and not so comfortable one. 380 Km journey. No push back seats. Nothing! Reached gundya 6.00 AM in next morning. Saturday. It was raining there and we’re fucked up. Gundya is nothing but a small place with one police check post and two shops. We discovered that we’re even more fucked up, when we started asking around for direction to Kukke. The road that connected Gundya to Kukke was closed for some kind of construction work. No heavy vehicles were allowed except for auto rickshaws. Found an auto rickshaw almost at around 8.00 AM, who agreed to take us to Kukke 22 KMs from there for a sum of 300 bucks. We reached the place we wanted to. Small, clean and nice village. The famous Kukke Subramanium Swamy temple is there. Hard to believe but food is free there. We’d breakfast at a nice looking restaurant there. Finished our chores. Rahul and Chirag went ahead to visit the Subranium Swamy temple. Being an atheist to the core, waited for them outside the temple.
We started our trek at 9.00 AM. The rain had stopped, but it was muddy all around. We could see the majestic Kumar Parvet from the village street. Lush green dense forest from the bottom to the top. On the top, it looked like some kind of golf course. We couldn’t stop ourselves. Clicked pictures like maniacs. Now it was time for us to get started on our mission. We walked almost more than 2 KMs on a muddy track to reach the trail. The entrance to the trail looked scary. It was dense forest, drenched with rainwater. The trail was looking muddy. We could found something written on a board there in Kannada, which of course non of us could read; later found out that it was warning for bears inside the forest from two other guys from Hyderabad. We started trekking. We found scorpions of virtually all colors. After a while we started spotting leeches. By the time we’d already trekked 1.5 KMs we started to find more and more leeches. I also noticed some crawling up my shoe. We stopped immediately and wound scotch tapes over the bottom of our pants. But nothing could stop the leeches. Fucking blood suckerz. After walking a bit more into the woods I could feel those ugly fucking creatures entering my skin. And I was correct actually. I found almost 7 to 10 leeches on each of my feet. Same was the case with Rahul and Chirag. We started removing them. But, by the time we could remove one; two more were crawling up on us. The situation was completely uncontrollable. The decision of abandoning the trek had to be taken. Finally I gave up and told them that I was going back. They’re bit shocked but started climbing down with me as they also didn’t have much choice. It’d also started raining by then. We just rushed down the hill collecting even more leeches. We reached the bottom; the only thing that was there on all of our minds was to remove those blood suckerz. We almost got naked under a tree. A couple of leeches were entering my skin making a hole in my socks. The rest were just crawling on my socks and shoes. It was a horrible condition. All of us were busy removing them. After we’re done we came back to the village to book a guesthouse and our return ticket to Bangalore on the same day. Actually we’d received wrong information about the place. We’re told that it would be almost barren land till 30% to the top. We’re also told that there would be no leeches till the peak of monsoon. But what we saw was completely the opposite. We’d just increased the attrition rate of that particular trek, but were happy that we didn’t have any more leeches. Fuck man!! I’d a long shower in the bathroom while Rahul was busy cleaning his wounds from the leeches. He was bleeding profusely but somehow the bleeding stopped after some time. We’d our MTR packets and bread for lunch.
We still had the entire afternoon and evening to spend there. We started off to see the river Kumardhara. Not a very famous river. Not worth visiting, but had nothing much to do. Chirag was almost stoned and started dancing in the river. Had good time there. Shot some videos and snaps of him doing all sorts of crazy things. Came back into the village. Strolled along the streets. Clicked some snaps, which are being listed by some of the most interesting snaps from KP by Flickr. Feels good to hear it. Hahahehehehee.. Checked out some of the shops around, but found nothing worthy of buying. It was drizzling a bit. Had evening snacks cum dinner. Went back into the hotel room. Got freshen up a bit and started packing things up. Had to catch the bus at 9.00 PM in the night. Checked out from the Hotel at 8.15 PM. Reached bus stop. It was still drizzling and I could still feel those leeches crawling up my skin!! Not a very good experience indeed. The bus started cruising through dense forest. All three of us slept off. When we woke up it was 6.00 AM, Sunday, in Bangalore. Got back home, safely!!
Snaps : http://www.flickr.com/photos/vegdevil/tags/kumarparvat/
