Thoughts & Transpirations

18 Meters Below & 50 Meters above Sea Level

2009-01-27T02:14:00.000-08:00

After getting inspired by snorkeling during the Christmas trip, I was determined to go deeper into the water. I made up my mind and finished off the theory for the certification for diving in the sea through the month of January & I was ready for the Chinese New Year holidays for the four open water dives required for the certification. I had planned well in advanced this time & booked the tickets for Krabi, Thailand since the diving season on east coast of Malaysia was closed due to monsoons. And from the earlier experience from the Phuket trip, I had made myself better equipped with information since this time I was going to travel alone as the group from last time had different things on agenda.

I caught the cheapest flight around..People love Air Aisa around here because it makes travel possible for so cheap!

After getting down at Krabi I directly took the ferry to Phi Phi Islands where I was planning to stay during the next 4 days.

Approaching Phi Phi

I started chatting with this Irish girl, Ciara, on the way. She was in her early twenties and traveling around the world for few months. A German guy also joined the conversation. He told us that he tried to book accommodation but everything was full and he could not find anything. Now I started feeling the excitement..though I knew I would certainly get some help from the diving school, it was high season and cost was surely a concern. So we planned to share a room to find a better deal.

After reaching we inquired for a while and finally settled for one at the Princess resort near the beach. Since we only had one key and different plans it was going to be some issue but we managed. I visited the diving school to finish the paperwork after a brief walk on the beach. Saw this interesting board in front of a dive shop...made me feel good that I am going to be REAL traveler according to them.:)

I was introduced to my instructor Joost, an elderly Dutch guy..felt a little comfortable in the safe hands of an experienced fellow on the first dive in the ocean!

Later that night I went out for dinner & some drinks with the new European friends. The German guy, Oliver was on a 5 weeks vacation and also visiting for diving and was planning to dive at different spots in Asia starting from Phi Phi. Ciara was not sure but she signed up for the diving course next day.

With Ciara & Oliver

I had a theory exam to be finished so retired early. Also wanted to be fresh for the early morning dive. I was already feeling the excitement and don't know how many times I dived during the night..in my dreams. :)

Early next morning took around 45 minutes boat ride to the diving spot called Bida Nok...and the fun began!!

In the next two days we made 4 dives around 45 minutes each. Sharing some of the videos from that...
All videos were shot by Marcella from Visa Diving Shop, a specialist underwater videographer. Thanks Cella for recording the memorable moments!

Well, these videos will just give a glimpse of what I saw..but does not even come close to portray what I experienced. As I feel even the videos are insufficient, I will not even try any futile attempts with words. There is no sound but mostly it would have been the videographer's breathing bubbles and the boats on the surface. :)

The fun begins..

The Descends

It is a stunning world out there...and even the best of aquariums come no where near to showing it as it is!

During some reading on what I would get to see, I found out that the main character in the film Nemo is actually called aNEMOne fish. Hat's off to Pixar for the name they came up with!

The next two videos actually are the cream of the pie..the best of the diving experience!

The camouflage, the organisms have underwater is just indescribable! You wouldn't even know that you are not looking at a rock but a fish or something else is also hidden right in front of your eyes! See this video too see a cuttlefish change not just its colour but also its texture!

And seeing a shark in its natural habitat does not compare to any other...

And as I say in most of my posts..all good experiences come to an end..and this one too was no exception...interestingly there was a quantification of it this time around..as it could be measureed in terms of the pressure gauge showing the air remaining in the cylinder!

The Fun Ends

But the fun continued for a while even on the boat..

I now have official permit to dive till 18 meters which we reached during the last two dives. Another two guys in the group had got certified as dive masters after a month of training or so..but they had another small test to pass..which we all were invited to see..drinking a bucket of beer using a snorkel! Since a snorkel closes the nasal openings it essentially meant that the bucket was to be finished in one breath!

Night life in Phi Phi was sure fun..Thai Boxing & Fire shows were interesting features in the bars there..Usually drunk tourists would get into the ring to win free bucket of booze..[yeah its 'bucket' there not a bottle :)]..but they are not as fun to watch as the local professionals.

Thai Boxing Ring at the Reggae Bar

Fire Show at the Apache Bar on the beach

Tourists having fun at the Fire Show, Apache Bar

I had another day on Phi Phi and I decided to experiment with rock climbing. It was not going to be high but high enough for an initial attempt. I signed up with CAT's climbing where Ryan, an American in his twenties, guided us pretty well knowing that we were beginners. Niv, an Israeli was another beginner along with me. Martina, George & Alexandra were a little experienced in the group. We headed towards the cliff from the beach..this was the area of Phi Phi island where we had had lunch during a one day boat trip from Phuket.

The Mountain that we climbed..

After the initial briefing I started the first attempt..

I followed Ryan's instructions, use hands just for balance and legs for all the body weight..

It was a very tiring...took me around 15 minutes to reach the top but I felt like I had ran a marathon.

The view from the top was amazing which according to Ryan was the most fun part of the climbing anywhere in the world.

It was a new experience but frankly I had enjoyed diving more than climbing. Technically I had just climbed around 25 meters but we already started 25 m above sea level.

But I think I had been higher up the day before to the View point to see the sunset..but it was a climb over a man-made concrete path..so the height even though higher did not matter as much the 50m vertical climb. :)

Sunset from the view point

I left the next morning to catch my flight from Krabi back to Kuala Lumpur. I realised that this was first time I was flying with sun right on the top..It was a fun to watch the different layers of clouds...some resembling ultra light cotton balls floating in mid air & some resembling flat soft beds..

But what I saw next..summarized my whole trip in one go..conquering heights & depths to see the unexplored beauty of nature!!

Merging Layers: Sky, Land, Water & Sky!

Sex, Truths and Reality Takes

2008-12-31T22:08:00.000-08:00

That’s what Steve Soderberg will name his film if he makes one focusing on the life around the Bangla road area in Patong, Phuket.

The gate was a part of temporary decorations for the New Year but for me it certainly identified as an entry to a different world. A world where ‘Sex’ had a pervasive presence and a very loose semantic..not just in coital context but also in terms of gender. Because in most places, the center-stage was occupied by trans-sexuals...

...mostly people who thought they were women trapped in men’s bodies. I am not sure whether they really felt that or it was just because of the money that they preferred to be women in one of the hottest places for sex tourism in the world!

The names of the bars in that area also belonged to a very special category, in which, I thought ‘Seduction’ seemed like a descent name...amongst the group of ‘Blow Job’,‘69’, ‘G-spot’ or ‘Wet Dreams’!

When you see men, negotiating with women...you know that there is something wrong going on there...but it was funny because most of the men would not be sure if it was really a woman they are talking to!

It was very amusing to watch there reactions...when they realised it!

When you see pole dancing, you presume that it is an adult entertainment spot..but the most shocking experience for me was when I saw families enjoying the artifacts on display as if it was a family hangout spot!
There were people with kids in prams..and even elder. And they did not have a shock on their face..as one would expect for someone who has taken a round turn..the kind of expression when people visiting Dagdusheth Ganpati in Budhwarpeth, Pune do when they take a wrong turn!

Some one made an interesting comment on the above video.."Was your camera drunk?" I think the later half of the video is an amazing example for visualising how most of the people on Bangla Road will be seeing things around there after midnight. :)

They all enjoyed the view..and even posed with the ‘Ladyboys’ to take pictures of there MEMORABLE visit to this place.

Since people used to pose for pictures..some people thought of another business idea around that. They brought these scary Iguanas and would charge 10 Bahts per picture.

It was another metaphor, I thought, for people losing all their inhibitions!
I was appalled by whatever I was getting to see..was it real? was it REALLY real? I wondered as I made my way through all that chaos towards the end of the street.

The other end of the street was very silent. There were many shops there..but no one was interested in what was being sold there..compared to the other end of the street.

The Tatoo shop was open all night..and most people would come all drunk late at night..enthusiastic to retain the memories of an amazing trip...forever on their bodies!

I could not stop but laugh when I saw the Police at that end...behind the barricades..as if being prohibited from the area!

But just around the corner on the other street were many interesting shops...It did not shock me as much when I noticed that there were some amazing toys being sold there! And these were for kids, not for adults! I was amazed by the variety in both hand made and manufactured electronic toys.

Some very cute Wooden Toys..

A wooden frog which made sound exactly like the real one!

Dancing Dolls..

See the video to watch them dance..

Cars that flipped wheels to make a turn!

There were some interesting art works on sale too...

A Lantern shop..

These are carvings on a bath soap! Takes around 45 minutes for each of the delicate piece..

It was typical in art shops that you would see an artist working on some artwork...

I had a small chat with one of them who worked on buffalo hides to create intricate designs..but he did not allow me to take any pictures.

We walked around the place most of the days while we stayed there...but there were not any new surprises after the first day...and I wasn’t expecting any either.
When truth lies naked in front of you I don’t think there is any scope for more revelations.

Adventures in Thailand

2008-12-30T23:10:00.000-08:00

For the first time, since I started working in Malaysia, I was getting long vacations. So we were planning to travel to places far off in Malaysia. We had 5 days off [25-29 December] but none of the spots was worth more than a couple of days. All the interesting locations on east coast were out of question due to monsoons and the remaining ones on west coast were not as far and could be easily covered over a weekend each. So procrastinating the decision till the end..it came to the 24th evening and we still had not decided where to go. Extensive search started over the internet, and some phone calls to local friends...but in vain. While browsing the web, Harish, whom I was panning my trip with found out that over the next 5 days..no place is Malaysia is rain free. That was it...my anticipations seemed completely submerged. But that's when I happened to talk to Garth who suggested Phuket in Thailand. The political turmoil had died down and it would be a nice season there he said. As per my plans I wanted to cover Malaysia completely before going out..but we checked the tickets and they were available [hail Air Asia for its cheap rates] !! What the heck we said..let's not let the vacations go waste..two of my ex-flatmates Anupam & Yogesh also agreed and Harish booked tickets online for all four of us using his credit card.
The flight was on 25th evening, so we tried to find whatever info we can..but were not able to firm up on anything..just that there was some facility for bungee jumping that we all were eager to attempt, a sunset point that Anupam wanted to see and snorkeling near Phi Phi island was in my wishlist. Meanwhile Harish had made a special comment that we will help the world by saving paper and not printing out tickets and just take the online booking reference number to get our boarding passes. Though I had a not so good feeling about it, I did not resist considering the greater good. :P
While we were trying to gobble up as much as info as possible time was running up. We left for the airport and managed to reach on time only to find out that the flight is delayed by an hour. Usually an hour doesn’t matter much in International journeys but it meant that we will be reaching the town just before midnight and while everyone will be celebrating Christmas we will be carrying our bags in search of accommodations.

If only I could have used this hour to search for more info I thought. I tried it on my phone but gave up when others coaxed me to chill and let everything take its course. I agreed and wished I could get a little of their carefree attitude...
Finally we caught the flight and in less than 24 hours after deciding, we were in a foreign land..with no accommodation bookings or much info about what to do over the next few days. I was already feeling my pulse rising in anticipation of the adventures to come...but I was not expecting that they were going to start from the airport itself! We went to the counter to get the 'On Arrival' visa for the tourists and the officer asked for our return tickets. We did not have any copy of that since we had decided to save paper! Well there you go..saviours of the world! You were thinking about the problems of the world..you are in a big problem now!
'Its OK'...the eternal optimistic voice in my head said..'the worst thing that can happen to you now is that you will have to stay on the airport for four more days till your flight back to Malaysia..and maybe you will be in shoes of Tom Hanks from ‘The Terminal’!'
I am always amazed how this part of my brain always finds amusement in the most hopeless situations!! Anyways the issue did not grow in reality as much it did in my head..though he asked us the address of the place we were going to stay at...we bluffed our way out of it thanks to some notes I had taken down while browsing internet. The officer asked an office boy to get a print of our ticket from the Air Asia counter on the other side of the immigration. He got the print promptly and though the wait added up on top of our original delay we were glad that we got to enter Thailand.

We booked a taxi for a random address I had in my notes & we had bluffed about and went to the taxi stand. There was a long queue of passengers waiting there. While we were booking the taxi, we had realised that we are paying a little higher than expected but they said it was a premium service so I thought maybe we will reach sooner than if we try to find something outside. But apparently, there was more queue for premium taxis and the general taxis which costed lesser were queued up waiting for passengers! This was going to be a fun trip I said to myself!

Finally after waiting for nth time that day we got into a taxi and around 45 minutes later we were into the town..crowded everywhere for Christmas celebrations. We inquired at 15 places at least, but the accommodations were either not available or too expensive. It was getting late and our stomachs & the taxi driver had started to crib now. So much for the premium service! So we decided to get down and hunt for the rooms on our legs. We moved to Karon, an area which was a little further from Patong [the hottest area for night life in Phuket]. And finally after a few inquiries found some rooms that we could afford at the Karon Guesthouse.

It was almost midnight, but we did not have time to rest if we had to have a healthy dinner after tiring last few hours. No one was willing to experiment with Thai food that night as most of us were vegetarians. So we found an Indian restaurant and ordered food. We ate to content of the heart and to the discontent of our pockets. That meal cost us almost 400 INR per head! And it wasn’t even authentic Indian..the dishes were Indian but the taste was Thai! Just as a Chinese would complain in India that the Chinese food in India sucks..we had similar sentiments for Indian food in Thailand. It also gave us an idea that whatever cash we had brought along with us for the trip was not going to be sufficient. No arguments against critics who would call us a bunch of suckers to have Indian food instead of trying the exotic Thai cuisine on a vacation in Thailand. We were just not ready for any uncharted territories that night..not at least after the setbacks earlier.

After a brief walk around the area, me and Yogesh decided to catch some sleep. Harish & Anupam were still up for some explorations and enjoyment. It was almost 2 am when I fell asleep.

26/12/08
I woke up early morning in anticipation of a better day than the last. A friend had suggested to rent out bikes to travel around the island. So I decided to go out for the inquiries for bikes & places to visit till others woke up. Just outside this guest house I saw this stall for what my mom calls ‘Appe’ or ‘Gundupagulu’..

Oh great!! They are my favorite! That was a wonderful start for the day! Though they were unexpectedly sweet..I gleefully finished them up.
By the time I returned, everyone was up and ready to go. After a lot of debate for renting the bikes, as the stores were asking for our passports as collateral, we agreed as we understood that stores cannot tie us with anything else. That is the only way they can have tourists returning the bikes. So we rented to bikes and started our trip around the island.

The first thing on everyone’s wishlist was bungee jumping. So we searched for the place and it was already 12:30 pm by the time we reached there. We were the only customers when we reached and no one amongst us was willing without seeing someone else jump. So we hung around for some time till some tourists showed up. Seeing other jump gave us a lot of confidence..and we signed up. Though Yogesh chickened out and played the photographer. Thanks to him that I have some of these amazing pictures!

For those who are not satisfied with the pictures...here is the complete video of the jump from the top. It surely was one of the most thrilling experiences of my life..never before I had to gather so much courage in one moment!!

After the jumps we decided to wander around town, have lunch and reach the sunset spot by evening.
On our way we came to know about a famous Buddhist temple, ‘Wat Chalong’, so we decided to give it a visit.

The ostentatious exteriors of the architecture were quite contrast to the serene places that they enclosed.

Calming ourselves in the temple premises after the adrenalin rush from the jump, we moved ahead towards the Promthep cape for the sunset. On our way we witnessed some picturesque panoramas in Rawai.

We reached the Cape just in time for the sunset..and it was one of the most beautiful ones I have ever seen.

That was an amazing day of outing! Made us forget all that we had been through...we started looking forward to a nice trip as we headed back to the room to get fresh for the night out.

We still had a couple of things to sort out..we had to make bookings for the boat tours for the next two days and find a accommodation in Patong so the hot spots of the town will be easily accessible. We managed those and enjoyed a conservative dinner..that mostly included fried rice same as the lunch that day.

The Patong nightlife is covered separately.

27/12/09
We had to shift the accommodation to Patong that we had booked for the remaining two nights, return the bikes to get our passports back and catch the bus to the pier by 7:45 am! That was going to be an early start so I got up early to see the sunrise at Karon beach. Technically it was not on the East so it was not as beautiful as the sunset last evening but it still infused a freshness.

After returning Yogesh & I shifted our stuff and returned the bike and reached the guesthouse where the bus was going to pick us from, only to know that it had already came for us..twice! I hurriedly called them up and they said that they will return once again. Phew!!
But Harish & Anupam were still not there. They had left just after us. The bus came.. and the driver was infuriated but we still had to make him wait for the other two. We managed somehow and these guys showed up after a while..and they had another adventure to share! Their bike had ran out of petrol on the way back! They managed to find someone selling petrol [not a petrol pump] who filled the tank completely because of some misunderstanding and these guys made him empty most of it again as they were anyway going to return the bike immediately! A stunning start to the day!! Though this time I was glad that I did not have their carefree attitude.

The agenda for the day was island hopping on the speed boat but I was more eager for snorkeling.

I don’t know how this swiss guy managed to read on the bumpy boat ride..but it was an interesting view!

The view outside was also stunning! It looked like the islands were just waiting for us...

And looking out towards the sea..never realized how time passed by and we reached near the islands.

First destination amongst them was Maya Bay on Phi Phi island.

This was the place where the movie ‘The Beach’ was shot. It looked so beautiful in the movie that I had always wanted to visit..but like me thousands of others too wished the same. As a result the huge crowds made the visit a big turn off!

Monkey beach was another place we visited and they provided bananas on the boat to feed the monkeys!

The next stop was for snorkeling..the HIGHLIGHT of the day..another memorable experience...

[Thanks to Cathy for the underwater photos]

Watching the fish is their natural habitat was a very different thing compared to seeing them in an aquarium..I made up my mind then and there to take up scuba diving and explore deeper...

After having lunch on Phi Phi island..we went for another round of snorkeling nearby..

..before returning to Phuket early evening. This time we saw the sunset on Karon beach..

This was surely the most beautiful I have seen in my life...a lot better than the last couple of days..and will remain so for a while I think..

After another walk in the night nearby Patong before and after dinner, we were ready for the final day of the trip.

28/12/09
It was the most easy morning of the trip, got up and got ready for the bus. That day it was visit to the James Bond island & canoeing in the low rise caves.

The huge rock behind me is famed after James Bond...after one of his films was shot here. Interestingly, I had never seen a natural place named after a fictional character.

But the real highlight of the day was canoeing.

A small boat with maximum 3 people could go into very small places. So must of the time we were lying on our backs looking up at a very unusual natural structures...

Thanks Yogesh for this next video.

Afterwards, we got to use the canoe by ourselves...

It was another wonderful experience...

All three days of the trip had been wonderful...every time I thought nothing can beat this..another one would come along the way prove me wrong..

Just two days left for the year..and I went into a ruminative mood. It had been the best year of my life..my biggest dream of traveling around the world had begun..2008 had started in a distant land and was going to ended in another...[keeping my fingers crossed.:P]

The next day we had an early morning flight to catch so we booked the taxi in the night and relaxed. Little did we know that the climax of the adventure trip was not yet over. When we reached the airport next morning, while checking in, the lady at the counter asked us to show the credit card with which the tickets were booked. And my dear friend Harish was not carrying it! We tried to explain her that it was his credit card, showed all other identity proofs but she won’t listen..she said I cannot issue the boarding pass without seeing the credit card!!
Now what? I felt my heart beat skip for the first time..there had been many adventurous moments, adrenalin rushes in the trip..but I had enjoyed every one of them. But this was a clincher...we were completely drenched out of money...not even in a position to cancel the current ones and buy new ones. What were we supposed to do? So we all took deep breaths and calmed ourselves down..and decided to make another attempt. We patiently tried to explain her that we booked the onward tickets in the same transaction & showed her the tickets. She typed the reference number into her computer and after what felt like an eternity raised her head to say ‘OK.’......Phew!! Our synchronized sigh of relief was so heavy that it was heard all over the interior of the small Phuket airport...and as everyone looked at us...we merrily walked towards the immigration and then to the flight!

Countdown to 27

2008-11-07T23:35:00.000-08:00

I was staring at the stars in the sky and wondering..what makes numbers like 25, 50 or 100 so special compared to others? Why are they comparable to Silver or Gold? Well, I haven't reached to any conclusions as yet..but for me my 27th birthday would be more memorable than my 25th. Its not about that very day but all the transpiration that led up to it and the sneak peek that it has given of the times that lie ahead..it has certainly been special compared to all the previous ones..Especially on my 25th I was entering a safe & secure phase for around two years at the IITB campus. Now two years later I was out of it stepping into the real life...completely open to any and all possibilities.

Around a month before the day..I started feeling the heat of things to come as the time had come to leave Hyderabad for a destination long long away. Staying in a new & culturally mixed place like Hyderabad had helped a lot in shaping up my expectations about Malaysia..where I was headed for my first job after post graduate studies and the first step towards my big journey around the world. The earlier journeys had cleared one thing in my mind..its not that fun traveling around as a tourist as much as staying at a place for a while to discern the multi-layered aesthetics of the culture there.

I moved back from Hyderabad to Nagpur, managed whatever meetings I can with friends and family, packed all my stuff and was good to go. I had a connecting flight from Nagpur to Mumbai before flying from Mumbai to Kuala Lumpur and a 3 hours stop in Mumbai. So I had made plans to meet up with my sister, Maitreyee, who was in Mumbai. I was carrying some stuff that I had to pass on to her and she had exchanged Malaysian currency for me which was going to be my main source of funds for the first month till I get my first salary. So the meeting was technically a must...apart from the emotional "Bhaiyya!!" - "Behana!!" stuff. :).
I reached Mumbai on time..but every bit of cribbing that I had heard from travelers about services at Chatrapati Shivaji International Airport turned out to be true. Because it took me more than an hour to move from domestic to international section! Though there was a free shuttle service available, its frequency was around 20-25 minutes. And when I reached, the last shuttle had left just a minute ago. So I waited for the next one..but 20 minutes later when the next one arrived they did not allow me in saying that I was carrying heavy luggage and heavy luggage can be carried only on alternate shuttles..so they advised me to catch the next one!
Ah come on!! Couldn't you have provided this information earlier? I would have taken a taxi which takes around 45 minutes to reach, but I would have reached even before the next shuttle arrives. Now it is too late to even take the taxi! I had no option left but to wait for the next shuttle...and Maitreyee was already waiting on the other side. We couldn't even communicate properly as her cell phone was giving connectivity problems and I did not keep much balance in mine as I was planning to leave the country. It was one of the MOST frustrating hours I had spent in my life.
Finally I caught the next shuttle which took another 20 minutes to reach the domestic side instead of 10-15 as I was told earlier. Anyway, I had a hurried meeting with my sister, exchanged the stuff, bid her good bye and went for the check in. I saw there was no one in queue for checking in Malaysian Airlines when I started my airport security check. I knew I was late.

By the time I had finished the security check, the Malaysian Airlines checkin counters were already closed!! I requested them to do the last check in & they obliged. But my baggage weighed almost 40 KG..so they said they cannot allow me and there was not much time for other formalities because immigration was going to take time since I was going out on a work permit. So SORRY! We cannot help you! WHAT?? That was the first time in my life when I felt that my heart had stopped beating! I cannot miss that plane!! My future hangs on that job!..at least near future. I tried to convince them but the guy just walked away from the counter. I couldn't do anything so I just followed him till he reported to his senior...and I then requested his senior. He clarified to me that even if I pay for the extra luggage it cannot weigh more than 30 KG..and they could not wait till I sort that stuff out. The way he spoke..I saw a ray of hope..and requested him for just 5 minutes to sort everything out. He agreed. That's when my heart started beating again! I immediately paid for the extra luggage with my credit card [that was the quickest ever decision taken by me to spend 8000 Rs on something!], took out another bag from inside and shifted around 10 KG of weight into it. By that time, the senior officer had prepared my boarding pass. He came to me and asked me to calm down. He told me that he had given me a pass for business class even though I had a economy class ticket just to make the immigration process faster. He also gave an office boy with me to carry out all the remaining formalities as quickly as possible. That was THE MOMENT of my life! I realized that the concept of Angels is not a myth.

I finished of the all the security checks and immigration formalities..all the while running to save time. The Angel again met me just before I boarded the plane..His name was Arnold Florindo and he worked as Traffic Officer for Malaysian Airlines. I thanked him with all my heart...and made a resolution to help someone in distress ,who comes to me, as a repayment of the debt. When I boarded the flight I thought of what would have happened if I had missed the flight..I could not think anything dramatic..but I had a feeling that the moment was surely going to change my life forever. Time will tell...as it always does..I said to myself. I don't know when I dozed off after that..

The first two weeks in Malaysia were splendid. My workplace was awesome..and work was even better! The kind of exposure, responsibility, opportunity for learning & future growth I felt there, would not have matched in any of the other offers I
had for sure. I kept on thanking the Angel every time I felt that I had been lucky to be here.

I started going out once I settled down... and started realizing it more and more..what the missed flight would have cost me! And as 4th of November inched near, the whole world was also eagerly involved in the countdown. It was more for the American Presidential Elections and Barack Obama but I strongly felt the synchronicity.

"If you want something really badly...all the universe will conspire for you to achieve it.". Paulo Coehlo has famously said in 'The Alchemist'.
I was realizing the truth in that statement as I celebrated my 27th birthday on the roof top of my [coincidentally?] 27 floored condominium in Kuala Lumpur staring at the stars in the sky!

Charminar & Golconda Fort

2008-09-14T23:29:00.000-07:00

It usually happens that we take things around us for granted. That was precisely the reason why an outgoer like me had not managed to see the iconic edifices in more than two months of stay in the city. And nothing but an external trigger helps us wake up from this kind of slumber. For me it came in the form of a friend’s visit. Shashi himself is from Hyderabad and my junior at IDC. He was going to be in town for weekend and obliged to take me around. And for me the exciting thing was that I was going to get hands on with his new Nikon D200!

We started early and on our way to Golconda fort dropped in to see the Charminar.

Old part of the city contrasted a lot with the modern area where I stay and work. But the differences also highlighted the common thing between them...the auto rickshaws. If it’s the subway for New York and the locals for Mumbai then for Hyderabad its is the auto-rickshaws.

And they enjoy the monopoly owing to dismal state of other modes of public transport by charging whatever they want with a complete disregard for the meters. If you got to travel here you got to own your own vehicle. Anyways... after spending some time at the Charminar we headed towards the Golconda fort which is around 15 kilometers from there.

It was slightly overcast but otherwise a beautiful weather to be out in the open and of course for my first outing for photography with an DLSR!

Obviously I won’t be writing much in this post.

The 230 KG iron block was used in the recruitment process for the soldiers by the Nawab. Anyone who lifts it with one hand qualifies!

Door to the Past

The sky began to open up as we climbed a little higher..

Ramdas Jail

I also experimented with some panography which I was dying to try out since I reading about it recently.

Also tried this photo montage from pictures of tourists on the fort.

Special THANKS to Sashi for taking me out, letting me use his DSLR and also allowing me to use some of his images for the montage. :)

ISEA Conference 2008

2008-08-19T23:26:00.000-07:00

During the Malaysia trip I came to know about this conference on Electronic Arts and this year it was being hosted in Singapore. My visa was still valid and so I decided to drop in. The conference was scheduled from 25-30 July but I could manage to reach only on 27th just in time to attend the last Keynote of the conference by Prof. Lawrence Lessig, the father of the Creative Commons project.

He talked about creativity, culture, technology & law and the complex probabilities of their interactions. Apart from the concepts he had to share I was astounded by his style of presentation where his slides (with just one word on each!) just flow with his speech and emphasize what he is talking about. The way he captivated the audience was really worth an experience!

I found a couple of his talks hosted on the web. He talks about the same topics in his fascinating style which is sighted in best examples of presenting.

The conference was distributed across a bunch of venues. The best I thought was ADM, NTU. I really liked its ambience.

All throughout the week there were a LOT of researchers, artists & designers who shard there work in 30 minute talks. But at a time there were at least 5-7 talks happening and the toughest thing to do all throughout the conference was to opt one of them to attend.

There were a lot of interesting talks but I cannot go in details of those. But unlike other conferences, there were a lot of exhibitions apart from the talks. I was able to check out the ISEA juried exhibition apart from the partner exhibitions: Experimenta Play ++, Lucid Fields, Cloudland & Relocations.

The ISEA juried exhibition was curated at the National Museum of Singapore. A stupefying white structure that basked in sunlight...

..but in night it changed colour every 30 seconds! And each looked equally beautiful!

So coming back to exhibitions..some of the exhibits really amused me. There were a bunch of interesting exhibits at ADM based on touch interactions.

There was one which generated music from the positions of your feet. Infact the music you hear in above videos is actually coming from this artwork which was exhibited just nearby.

Some of the partner exhibitions also had some appealing exhibits.

The Shy Picture by Narinda Reeders & David MacLeod.

A playful installation disguised as a photoframe...it amused everybody so much that they repeatedly played with it for a while before moving on..

Another interesting one at Experimenta Play++ was Immersion by Angela Barnett, Andrew Buchanan, Darren Ballingall, Chris MacKellar & Christian Rubino.

Projection of an underwater scene on the floor which invited the onlookers to get immersed in the world down below the surface...

Charmed by Priscilla Bracks, Gavin Sade & Matt Dwyer.

I could not shoot the video but you can watch it here.

Where in the world am I? by Dominik Bastianello was the most interesting one I found at Lucid Fields. It was an interesting take on the Theory of Relativity..

Another one was Kubic's Cube by Pablo Ventura.

A performative Installation with Kubic acting as a dance-machine, a cubist kinetic sculpture and an instrument of rhythmic movement. It was huge and while interacting with it to an extent felt like I am standing near a Transformer.

There were some other research projects also exhibited at ADM.

This one was for children to learn name of objects, how they are spelt and how they look...it was like a virtual interactive encyclopedia to play with!!

In the ISEA juried exhibition the most amazing I thought was Quartet. One has to just stand and move his hands like a conductor of an orchestra..the motions were detected and the instrument were played by machines..pretty neat execution I must say.

It was quit an inspiring experience to see for real and interact with some amazing artworks...and meeting so many interesting people...especially after finishing master's of Interaction Design and knowing that there are a many stimulating things to look forward to.

Kuala Lumpur

2008-08-18T22:12:00.000-07:00

Jugaad at the Petronas Towers
It was not a typical saturday morning. First of all I do not usually get up at 6.30 am in the morning after sleeping at 4 am. Second of all I was not in a place where I normally am and last but not least the plan for the day was not to lazy around as I usually do.

It was my last day of the three day visit to Malaysia and the earlier two had been really busy with work. Though there had been some good times in past two days, I had not actually done what people do when they visit Malaysia..tourism. So that was precisely my plan for the day. I had read online about the passes for Petronas Towers being distributed only in the morning. So I had made an effort to make an early start in spite of a late friday night out.

I could see the twin towers approaching. I had left the KL tower out of my plans for the day as I had recently been up the Seoul tower. Though I could see them approaching, they were still a long way off. The clock read 8:30 am. Since there was some time I started ruminating over the proceedings of the trip..it had been a nice trip but nothing really exciting to blog about.

Of course my going to be workplace was awesome!

The chubby mascot of Digi Telecommunications welcomes everyone to the mise-en-scène

A beautiful Waterfall in the premises with overlooking Canteen on third floor

Fresh [& Real!!] flowers adorned most of the ambiance

Every wall has at least one interesting piece of art on it

It was good in every way it can be...

And apart from work I also had made a new friend! The joy of meeting a compatriot in an alien land is indescribable..but Akshay was not only from India but also from my home town Nagpur and a typical 'Nagpuri Tapori'...just like me! And it turned out that we went to same school and college in Nagpur..a year apart. It makes me wonder how life keeps the timing of its revelations..we had not met each other for 10-15 years and now we were meeting thousands of miles away from our hometown. He had been in Kuala Lumpur for last two years and obliged to take me around the town. Nightlife in KL was a little bit of surprise for me considering the conservative Muslim society I presumed it to be.

The Petronas Towers looked stunning in the dark.

But still I had a feeling that nothing special had happened. Amongst the thoughts I didn't realize when I arrived at the bottom of the 85+ storied edifice. The pass distribution counter was somewhere in the basement I had read. I hurried inside as I saw the clock reading 8:45 am. The counters opened at 9 am and everyone had cautioned about being in the queue around half an hour before that for surety of getting a pass. I asked another person who seemed to be in hurry as me, for the whereabouts of the basement. And he said even he was looking for it. We found the stairs down and introduced ourselves while heading towards them. His name was Angel, a Spanish young fellow who was in Singapore for a month and was taking his time out on weekends to travel around in this part of the world. But as we descended, a big surprise awaited us. There was no room left for any more people.

And as we hit the floor we were welcomed by a board that disdainfully read "SORRY. No more tickets available for the day."

Life stunned with another timing of it's revelations!

Ah come on! I was surely not that late! And I saw a lot of people disappointed like me. Some of us might not get another chance in life to be here again! Angel echoed the same sentiments. Even he had a flight to catch in the evening like me. Dejected, we stood there sharing the grief with other latecomers. The excitement I was rooting for, on the trip, seemed to be evading me. Wait a minute! My eternal optimism kicked in."I cannot give up so easily!" I thought to myself. And I started looking for alternatives with determination.

A tape separated the ones in the queue from the latecomers. The volunteers on the other side of it at least had a regard in their speech in contrast to the scorn hinted by the separator. They clarified that the passes are being distributed since 8:30 am and people have been in queue since 7 am! They give away 1500 passes for the day and each person in the queue can get maximum upto 6. When one stands in queue one is handed over a chit stating number of tickets one wants. When the sum of all the numbers on the chits add upto 1500 they stop people from standing in the queue. The passes are for different slots starting 9:15 am, then 9:30 and so on till 6:30 pm. I was hearing intently to all the information to find a loophole in the system and make my way in. But so far no good.

I made an attempt to get permission to be at the end of the queue..just to try my luck. What if some group takes a pass less than it had told before, what if someone doesn't turn up as expected, what if someone changes one's plan. I tried to persuade her with lots of what ifs but arguments based on improbability are apparently not convincing. She said she cannot allow me to be in queue...not even at a distance after it ended!

But still I decided to wait for a while and lookout for some ray of hope. By this time, it was also clear that I had got something to write about. My instincts to find a work around were slowly awakening..what my friends refer to as my 'Jugaadu' skills. It was the time to put them to test. So I decided I won't let it go easily without managing to go up the Petronas Towers that day. And the hunt began...

I stood there astutely observing happenings around me. Angel was astonished at my optimism in the hopeless situation. But I convinced him to stick around if he really wanted to get the passes. [I refer to them as passes instead of tickets because they are given away free!]

Just then I saw a couple of Europeans leaving the queue. Oooh!..something seemed to be coming up. I followed them and inquired. They told that they were getting passes for 4 o'clock and they had to catch a flight at the same time. They had to be out of there at the most by 2. So they were leaving..sad for them but I was happy! One of my what if's was coming out to be true!!

Excited, I went back to the volunteer and told her what just happened. She smiled..and said "Sorry Sir, but I cannot help you till the queue is over." And just as I was about to argue more I realised that it is no use standing at the end of the queue. Because then I would get a pass for the last slot at 6:30 pm. It was no use for me as I had to catch a flight at 7 pm. I felt for a while what the Europeans might have left feeling. But I was not going to give up easily. So I changed the tone and asked the volunteer what could be done as clearly the number was going to be less than 1500 as some had left..and maybe some others will too for some or the other reason. She answered patiently that the only way of getting a pass for an earlier slot was some friend of mine in the queue would get one for me. Ding Ding Ding! I had hit the jackpot.

Now the only thing left was to make friendship with complete strangers and convince them to get extra passes. I discussed with Angel what I had just found out and we decided to pool our talents. He knew four languages: Spanish, Portuguese, English & French. And I was pretty good at three: English, Hindi & Marathi [I knew I was not going to go anywhere with my skills ;)]. So we started to look for probable targets. As we discussed strategies it came out that we should be talking to people who have margin to take more passes. So even though its easy to make friends with a group but they would already be taking 5-6 passes. So we had to look for people who were going to take 2-3 passes only. Now the only difficulty was the distance created by the tape between those in the queue and all others.

Meanwhile I also noticed people going at the other end of the tape..not to be in queue but to a souvenir shop whose entrance was pretty much behind the queue. That was a good reason to get upclose with people in the queue. And so we crossed the tape sighting the reason to go to the souvenir store. I usually don't believe in boundaries but it felt awesome to be at the other side of the rope! We just made a quick entrance and exit to the store, just not to raise any suspicions. Then we started our search for potential friends. Angel talked to a group of French students as I tried to start up a conversation with a British couple. All we had to do was to convince them to get extra passes as if it was not much for them. We told them to ask far more passes than they had told before while getting the chit for the queue siting the reason that we were their friends and were not reachable in the morning. Both of us were successful in convincing the people we talked to. We could not believe it. The British couple I talked to, Len & Jane, agreed so easily that I was pretty sure they were just trying to cut me out. So I waited outside the rope till they got to the counter and made sure I was there at the counter when they asked for more passes just to be sure that they actually did ask and if they did, to avoid any suspicion/queries from the authorities. And when they said there are passes available for 3:30 I felt vainglorious.

Got it!!
I now came to know why it is called ticket and not a pass. It was surely not for free!!
But I still could not believe that I had managed to get myself one!

I felt a boost in my confidence levels as my 'Jugaad' seemed to work in unfamiliar places and conditions as well. We offered Len & Jane to buy them the breakfast, it was 9:40 now and they had been in queue since early morning but they refused. So Angel and I went ahead for a bite and decide for the plans till 3:30.
We hung around the shopping mall on the bottom four floors of the tower...

...and then decided to go around to Petaling street for some culture shopping.
There was a sense of surrealism to everything for a while...

The graphics on buses responded to vehicles on the road..

Randomly walking pedestrians seemed to be equally distant..

But nothing beat the feeling of rubbing the 'ticket'...in face of the haughty board!

Angel had something else to finish so we parted from Petaling street and decided to meet directly at the towers around 3:15. I reached on time but he did not. So he came in the next slot. Len & Jane were there so we had a little chat. They have been traveling for almost 10 months around the world and there year long itinerary was going to end with the last 6 weeks in India. I promised them to return the favor in someway when they are in India.

There was a brief presentation about Petronas and the making of the towers and then the lift took us to 45th floor in about 45 seconds. Some of the views from the bridge...

On the Petronas Bridge

Jane, Me & Len

When we were about to leave the bunch of people from next slot came in. Angel was there too. So we could take the picture of all four of us.

Angel, Len, Jane & Me
Four wandering souls..not sure if they will get another chance in life to meet up again.

The amazing experience left me feeling as high as the bridge on the Petronas Towers!

3 Mistakes of my Train Travels

2008-06-25T22:12:00.000-07:00

I was headed from Pune to Mumbai after a weekend visit to meet my friends in Pune (many of whom cribbed that this blog has not been updated since long). Anyways I was glad I met them as I was not sure when I would be able to meet up with them again. I am done with my master's and will be shifting from the heavenly IIT Bombay campus somewhere else in a less than a week's time. Sadly, like all bad times all good times come to an end too. The last two years for sure would be the most memorable ones of my life...and it's going to be a very interesting ride ahead now..oh! the one with cream top is really CUTE!.. with all these and a dozen other thoughts in mind I boarded the Intercity Express and was looking for my reserved seat. I cross checked as I saw an elderly looking person already occupying S2-54 and busy with his evening snacks. He asked me. "What's your number?"
I said "54".
"54 is mine." He said without even a least amount of bother that there would be any issue. I took out the print out of the ticket which I had booked on the renewed but still pathetic IRCTC website.[ I only resort to using it because the other options of getting a ticket for Indian Railways are more pathetic.] (Read Other Experiences.)
I held the ticket such that my two fingers were pointing out my seat number 'S2-54' & the word 'Confirmed' on it. He stopped eating and took out his ticket from his pocket. It had S2-54 written with hand with a blue ball pen! I looked at him and he said the TC gave him that. WTF? My first hunch was that the railways had a highly mismanaged way of keeping track of tickets booked on the internet. But it could have been that the poor old man was cheated by whom he called the TC. I looked skeptically at the old man, could have been in late 60s or early 70s , not well dressed but seemed educated for he spoke in fluent English. His clothes were the only give away but he could have opted those because of the monsoons or..as I was noticing he had resumed his eating without any botherations. It stuck me with the third probability that the old man himself had written the number and was going to take the advantage of the fact that the TCs hardly come to check tickets on Mumbai-Pune trains. He surely had the benefit of age should there be a scene. Man he was smart!
I thought of calling the TC but it was not going to be much helpful unless I catch the same one who had written S2-54 on the old man's ticket..if at all he existed. Other options ran through my mind..the best was to share the 3 seats amongst 4 of us or if I am lucky S2-52 or 53 might not turn up or miss the train! In spite of all my thoughts it could have been that someone had thugged the old man..so I was not intending him to trouble him much. Later I realised that my earlier experience narrated ahead was responsible for my biased thought process..

So I sat next to the old man on S2-53 and took out from my bag "3 mistakes of my life" which had hit the stands recently. Earlier,in Pune at Crossword bookstore, waiting for my friend, I had read the prologue of this Chetan Bhagat's third book and it intrigued me enough that I bought it. I had read his 'Five Point Someone' when I had got admit into the IIT and it is amongst one of my favorites. I didn't get time for 'One night at call center' and after the reviews I decided to pass for the time being. So there was I, sitting on the next seat for which I had reservations and planning to finish '3 mistakes' as much as possible during the journey which was about to start in 10 minutes. The railway compartment was not even half full yet. A couple of middle aged ladies came to sit just opposite to us. After settling down, one of them noticed the book in my hand and murmured something in the other's ear. I couldn't resist but ask. She said she saw it with many people lately and asked me what is it? So I told her all that I knew about it. This I think is the most fascinating part of traveling in India..you can start talking to strangers as if you know them from long.

Anyways by now all the seats were filled and a young guy in mid 20s came to sit just in front of me and the middle aged ladies shifted. He too took out the same book! The ladies chuckled and looked at me.

I could not share the amusement with them because with 2 minutes left for the departure my mind was set on who was going to come for S2-52 & S2-53. Just then a Gujju [an Indian slang for the natives of the state of Gujrat] family arrived. A middle aged son with his mother and her equally old sister and their middle aged servant. Since they had entered just in time they were in a rush. The son was helping make the seating arrangements. He looked at me and I said pointing towards me and the old man in my seat "We both have 54". He looked perplexed and a little irritated. I showed him my ticket. The train had started. The old Gujju ladies were sitting comfortably but not very happy that their son and servant were still standing. One of them gave me an eye and said something of the order of why enter when you don't have ticket and trouble others. I neglected her as she was not aware of the situation. Her son asked the old man in my seat to show his ticket..and the old man replied "Why should I show you my ticket? Are you TC?" The Gujju lost his cool. I immediately stood up and allowed him and the servant to sit. I tried to explain him the case and that I was just being considerate about the old man's age and being silent. We will sort it out when the TC comes. He said in an irritated tone that TC won't be coming, no one had showed up during there journey from Mumbai to Pune same morning and also stressed that he had a hard day and it would be difficult for him to adjust on the seat. He also said that he doubted the old man as no TC writes on any ticket like that. During our conversation, I don't know what happened to his mother. She started shouting at me for being irresponsible and blah blah...Her son tried to explain that it was not my mistake but she was not ready to listen..she was old but more importantly she was a WOMAN..she continued and I stood there, holding '3 mistakes' in my hand wondering if I had made one myself. It sure was a mistake and I had learnt my lesson "Don't be a jerk and give away your seat to a doubtful stranger."

I was just hoping that the situation should not trigger more dramatic and drastic events. After a while the old lady started to cool down as I was not reacting and no one else was supporting her (something very unusual for Indian crowds)..phew! I was lucky..but still standing despite having a reserved sit...analysing how big a mistake was this..and it instantly clicked that it was not by first/biggest mistake..

It had happened almost around two years ago..I was traveling from Mumbai to Pune then..I was working in Pune and had gone to Mumbai for an interview for my master's application. Intercity Express is the earliest and the fastest train of the day for Mumbai-Pune Journey. So it was a preferred choice and I had to reach Pune by office start so I reached the station quite early...5:20 am I guess. I remember I was the first to board the compartment. I found my seat and decided to catch up on my remaining sleep. Monsoons had recently begun and it started pouring. I noticed that just in the opposite section of seats, one of the windows was open and the rain water was making the seat wet. I looked around..there were not many people around and no one nearby. I thought I should close the window so that the person who will be sitting there will not face trouble. But I was feeling lazy. Meanwhile I also noticed that the window panel was tilted. I made an excuse to myself that probably it is broken and my effort will anyways go in vain or worse I might hurt my hand. I shamelessly dozed off amongst those mean thoughts. The bogie filled in the next few minutes..I was awakened by sound of many people around..the first thing I noticed that the seat was still vacant though all the other 5 seats in that section of 6 were now occupied. 4 seats in my section were still unoccupied..there was a old gentle man opposite to me. He smiled as he noticed that I was awake. I smiled back. Just 3-4 minutes for the departure and a family boarded. Middle aged couple with two daughters and a son. The eldest daughter would be 20ish, good looking and most active amongst the lot. She saw there seating arrangements, glanced at the old gentleman opposite to me and then towards me. She had an amazing twinkle in her eye..we looked at each other for a fleeting moment and it felt as if she made a decision in that split second. She smiled at me and asked "Are you alone?"
"YES!" was my instantaneous reply...wtf..what was that?..I was taken aback..a charming, young, totally strange girl saying that in front of all her family! Its not a common experience...at least not for me. But I was more ashamed about excitement in my response. What was I thinking? Duh! Obviously I was not thinking..who thinks when a pretty lady asks you something? You can never say no...whatever the question be. But there are so many people around! Why did she ask that? to me? and why was that her first question without even a formal introduction? My brain was generating crap questions faster than ever before..She continued...explaining in her sweet voice.."Actually we have five reservations, four here, in this section and one somewhere else..but we would like to sit together..if you don't mind would you exchange your sit with our other one?"
"YES! No problem." Even after so much of churning in the head..I could not resist the excitement in my voice..the can't-say- no-to-pretty-ladies rule had been proved true again. Anyways I had mixed feelings about getting a chance to help her but not being
able to sit near her. I thought of asking the old man in front of me but I had already said yes to shifting...so I asked "Where is the other seat?"
She looked into the ticket, glanced around and pointed at the seat near the window which I had chose not to close! The seat by now was nicely soaked in water..I hesitated and decided to complain that the seat is wet..maybe sight it as a reason not to shift..and turned towards her. Damn! that twinkle in her eye..I forgot what I was going to say..she noticed me looking awkwardly at her but smiled beautifully and said "Thank you!". I couldn't help but smile back and say "No mention."
You might think it is stupid but on some level I was glad that I had uttered a "No".
I cleaned up the seat and sulked in it. I realised that actions are not always the triggers...sometimes not doing something also act as triggers. Why didn't I close the window? If I had, I could have asked the old gentleman to shift..atleast I had a chance..I couldn't have asked him to shift in a wet seat..No one knew but it was wet because of me! I don't know when I dozed off during all the thoughts that followed..I woke up at Pune but the family had already got down on some station before..Talegaon or something..I didn't even get to ask her name. Another lesson learnt "Don't be a jerk and lazy to close a window". No wait...or would it be "Don't be a jerk and miss a chance to ask a pretty girl her name & contact especially when she cannot refuse.."

That memory brought a brief smile on my face and I realised that the Gujju man in S2-53 noticed that. He also noticed the book in my hand and pointed at an empty seat in the next section. He said "Sit there till someone claims that..if you are lucky maybe no one will. And if somebody does...don't worry we will adjust."

I went and sat and continued reading where I had left but couldn't help remembering my another mistake on a train. It was in Korea earlier this year. Though I was there since January I couldn't travel much because it was winter there. And by the time spring arrived I was left with very less time. Seoul cannot easily be covered in a couple of days if you want to do a lot of sight seeing, also do culture shopping and shopping for mementos before returning from Korea. I had planned to do all these in less than 36 hours! Shopping in Seoul was open till as late as 4 am..but still I was on a very very very tight schedule. The cheapest way to travel in Seoul is the subway which not only runs on 8 different lines compared to 3 in Mumbai but also these lines cross each other a lot and you need to change lines often especially during long travels. So you always have to be on your toes whether you are new to the system or not. And if you are not accustomed to the system then you need to be very alert. And I was taking all the care that I should be taking. I was planning to do a cruise on the Han river in the evening. The cruise had fixed timings and fixed routes. I had chosen a very specific timing [6:15pm-7:30pm] so that I can enjoy both in light and dark and a very specific route so that it is easier for me to plan my other activities before and after the cruise. So I was finishing shopping in Yongsan Electronics market by 5:30 and had exactly 45 mins to reach the starting point of cruise near Sincheon Station on Green Line which usually takes around 40-45 mins if everything goes fine. As shown I had to change lines two times during the journey at Ichon and Sadang Stations.

Click on the image to view my route details marked with Red. Starts with Yongsan Station on Line 1 [Navy Blue].

Everything was fine till I reached Sadang. There I got down and as I approached the other line on the station I heard a train coming on the line. I hurried as I realized I won't get another for 5-10 mins if I miss this one. I ran though I was not sure if it was in the same direction that I wanted to go on the line. I noticed on the signage board that in the direction it was headed there was a station named Seoul National University. And I remembered it was also in my route so I ran faster and managed to catch the train. I was heaving a sigh of relief when there was an announcement for the next station. I was alarmed to hear Nakseongdae which was not on my route. I took out my reference map. and I noticed that the next station was Seoul National University. But it was in opposite direction from Sadang station? I traced the route I was intending to follow and was amazed to find a station called Seoul National University of Education! oh crap! what kind of nomenclature is this? In all the confusion I could not get down at Nakseongdae and had to get down at Seoul National University to catch a train in opposite direction..towards Seoul National University of Education. I don't know if I ever get to be in Seoul in my life again..and that too this period of the year to get a cruise on Han river. Will I reach in time? Why are Koreans so strict about their timings? Can't they idealize us Indians for some things? I hope the cruise starts 15 mins late...again my brain was generating crap at an alarming rate as I waited on the Seoul National University station. I lost around 10-15 mins in this which was more than what I would have wasted on Sadang station had I not hurried. I ran my way of around half a kilometer after getting down at Sincheon...and thank God...I was lucky to reach for the cruise in time..It was an amazing weather for a cruise..evening zephyrs invited you to enjoy the spring...I had nearly missed a once in a lifetime experience because of a stupid nomenclature..But anyways I had learnt my lesson "Don't be a jerk and make mistake in station names however dumbly named they are."

No one arrived later to claim the seat I was sitting in and I could read peacefully till we reached Mumbai..but surely I could not finish even half of what I had intended to. My mistakes were not as imposing as Govind's [the protagonist of the book] and none of them triggered into avalanches that will push me towards a suicide but I sure had suffered and learnt my lessons the hard way.

A Night on the Mountain

2008-04-21T02:32:00.000-07:00

Again during one of my socialisations with expat friends I happen to know about a exciting plan...to trek up a mountain and spend the night on top! I was game since the moment I overheard about it.

So as planned I reached at 9 near World Cup Stadium in Daejon, from where we going to start. It turned out that many people had dropped out and only three of us were remaining. A total random group! Kayla whom I had met the same day, Susan whom I had met a couple of times before and me. It was actually Susan's idea as she had been there before but during the day she felt it would be awesome to be there at night. So the journey began..it was not going to be a long hike..just around 15-20 mins of climb..but we took a small detour to see a temple which was also on the same mountain. But it was too late and it was closed. So we headed towards our destination..a flat rock face where we were going to camp out on the night.

Susan, Kayla & Me

23,26,23

It was a amazing view from the top...
[the blue lights are luminaries on the world cup stadium]

We just sat there..enjoying the gentle breeze and the moonlight. We all felt that it was a lot better way of having a good time than spending the night at a bar. :)

Though it was a short journey, there were some titillating moments...like the change in my pajama's pocket getting stuck in the bottom of my pajama and making clinking sound all the way till we reached up, and Kayla's bedding rolling off the slope, we getting to fetch it and finding her cell phone inside which again after reaching on top slipped on the slope! But after that we pretty much got to talking..everything from professional lives..to personal opinions to cultural differences! And also seeing a couple of Russell Peters' talk shows to laugh our asses off. It was really a marvelous experience with the Wine being the cherry on top!

We slept off after a while..but my place had a real steep slope and I kept on slipping down the slope. It was really difficult to find a better place in the dark but I managed to create obstructions so that I won't slip. But I was so ahead of myself that in my dreams I was already narrating the experiences to my friends only to be awaken from the sleep by my slip and realise that I am still on the mountain!

But the sight of the rising sun made all the trouble worthwhile. It was really an indescribable experience to wake up on a Sunday morning along with the sun..

We packed up and headed back feeling really fresh! I don't remember the last time I felt like that after a incomplete sleep.. :P

After a refreshing night we felt that it was not just a beginning of a great day..but for me it was an amazing beginning to my last week in Korea! Thanks Susan & Kayla for a wonderful experience!

The day I flew a plane!!

2008-03-16T06:39:00.000-07:00

Well, again from hearsays in my socializations I came to know about a flying club in Daejon. And every year the club opens with an open day where they allow the newbies at one third the usual prices as promotional offers. So was anticipating another exciting experience and you bet it was a good thing amidst the lull for the past few weeks. [Got a lot of queries about new updates on the blog...but nothing was really happening worth writing about]. So here it is now..

The venue was shifted from Daechon Beach [which is around 2 hours drive from Daejon] to the outskirts of Daejon [just around 30 mins from our place], so we started at around 9 am and reached with the group [Carol, Henning, Adrienne, Bobby, Matthew, Anshuman & Me]to the location..a nice riverside place close to the site where a new city called 'Happy Town' is being constructed right from scratch...roads, buildings, subwaylines etc.. They say, since Seoul is getting overburdened, some of the government offices will be shifted to the new town. Though could not get a glimpse of it on our way there..got it when I was in the air around 2 hours later.
We were with Matthew, the owner of the club who has been a commercial pilot for 15 years before coming to Korea from England. So we had some introductory talks on our way.

I was so excited that even the car we drove in, with its doors open looked to me as if it would fly. :)

Matthew told us that since his new plane was not ready yet, he had hired some other plane for the day. And just after a quick round of coffees we got in the hanger to see the 'Angelfish' [its the name of the plane!]

Matthew briefed us about the basics of flying, the Angelfish and controlling during flight. Angelfish has a 65 HorsePower 2 stroke engine. In a short while we were ready to take off!

I was not the first one, but the excitement did not die down as I kept myself busy with the photography..and in fact I was using Carol's SLR with a 200 mm lens..so it was amazing! Here are some that I liked..

The take Off....

Up...UP..

..and Away....

There were some really nice scaled models kept on display in the office & premises of the club.

And finally it was my turn!!

The cockpit was really really small..but cozy. The controls were minimal and not complicated.

Matthew was my Flight Instructor. He told that it is so noisy up there that to talk with each other we have to use the head-phone mike systems.

We were ready to take off..The long runway gave me goosebumps but they were fleeting..

..and before we knew we were in the air.

[Video by: Anshuman (Shot during his flight)]

It was a little windy which is not good for light aircrafts, so Matthew was really concerned about handing me over all the controls. So I engaged in some aerial photography..

The bridges in the distance are being constructed as expressways to the new city.

There were ducks idling in the afternoon sun..

And as I was nearing the end of my round I could see my group..

[Video by: Anshuman (Shot during his flight)]

Phew!! That was amazing...another exciting outing came to an end. It was getting more windy, so Matthew requested Bobby and Anshuman, who had missed out, to come the next day.

We all took a group picture and went for a lunch in a nearby town, Jochiwon, in a chinese restaurant and returned but not before Anshuman & I made plans for the next day... :)

The Group [left to right : Henning, Adrienne, Carol, Bobby, Me, Matthew & Anshuman]

Busan Trip

2008-03-01T20:02:00.000-08:00

After the tiring trek, both me and Anshuman were having our doubts about walking more. The bus dropped us at a subway station nearby and we took a subway to Busan station and hired a room in a nearby hotel. Rested for a while and finally decided to go out as we would not get to see Busan at night again as we were planning to leave by evening next day. We had read that the Gwangalli beach is a night spot so we decided to go there. It was just 2 subway stations from Busan station so we reached there soon...and gaaawwdd it was amazing!

The Gwangan bridge made a fantastic view with its illumination! And there was an intersting projection on the sand...which moved..

The area was more or less like the Marine Drive in Mumbai, only scaled to one fourth.

There were interesting installations all along the road which were really a must see in the dark. Though the pain in our legs made us walk very awkwardly the beautiful sight kept us going.

There were vendors selling firecrackers on the beach and people would by them and light on the beach. But it could not beat any Diwali night in India...the crackers were to scarce and very occassional. We walked along the road for a while and Anshuman wanted to eat Pizza so we were hunting for a restaurant which would serve that and during the search even I started longing for one. But we could not find any. The whole road was full of seafood joints with fishtanks outside them displaying their menu! Finally Anshuman was so hungry that he decided to chuck pizza for a burger when we saw a placed which did not have sea food. During the hearty meal I just happened to mention that what if we go ahead and see a pizza place just around the corner and we just chuckled. But when we started going back there was a pizza place just around the corner..and we also had a discussion on Serendipity just sometime ago! We chuckled again and moved ahead to find another pizza place less than a block away! Anshuman said I am going in..you can come if you want. Who was I to go against destiny? :P Though the experience was marred when we were served some different pizza than we ordered we decided not make it an issue as we were getting late to catch the last subway. We hurried and just managed to catch the last one. Slept like hell after a very very tiring day hoping that the legs would be alright for another day of sightseeing.

Busan Station

The next day we took the Busan City tour bus which was an interesting offer. The buses would run all over the city with a frequency of 45 minutes. With a ticket for the day you can get down anywhere and board anywhere. We planned to see the most famous tourist attractions, get down at one, see and roam around for 45 minutes and catch the next bus to the next spot. It worked pretty well.

The first was the UN Cemetry Park. A very serene place....the board below describes it well..

The Busan Museum was nearby and we had some time left before the next bus arrived so we decided to walk there and catch the bus from there.

It was a brief 10 min walk inside the museum..it was interesting but we could not see much as we had things with higher priority to cover.

The next stop was Nurimaru APEC house which was built for a Economic Leaders' meet in 2005 and now used for hosting a lot of Internatioal Conferences. Busan is in fact the town of Asia which hosts more International Conferences than any other city. It was really an interesting architecture with a strategic location.

The Gwangan Bridge is visible in the far background..

Lamposts in the premises of the APEC house. A bunch of them at a spot with lighting in 3 directions. Interesting Design..

A Golden Building nearby..

The next stop was Haeundae Beach. It was almost past noon so we grabbed a quick lunch.

..and Anshuman decided to stay and photograph the seagulls whereas I decided to check out the Busan Aquarium. Pretty interesting exhibits..some of them which I had never seen before.

Penguins

Not sure if the crab had grown those things as camouflage or had sticky skin to stick the particles from the surface it was on to resemble like it.

Clownfish

An Artwork on a wall of a chamber that exhibited different kinds of jelly fish.

Upside-Down Jelly Fish

The Ultimate Predator.....

And the last section was a very interesting one...titled.... 'Sea life in Movies'.

Just managed to capture 'Nemo' in his home..

A little amusing to see so many 'Marlons' & 'Doris' :)

The next stop was the Museum of Moder Art..and the gate itself made clear what lies inside. My camera ran out of battery by this time..so all the pictures ahead are by courtesy : Anshuman.

We left from there to return to Busan station and took another route of the tour bus to go in other direction of the city. We also booked our return train tickets to Daejon so that we had an idea of the time of return.

The Busan Tower

An arbit building on the road..caught my eye because of its ostentatiousness.

We roamed around Gukje market..a busy market place.

See the tagline of the store..interesting to know what the world thinks about India.

Traditional Basket Decorations

In the end we reached Jagalchi market..a big seafood market famous for restaurants with amazing seafood...especially known for whale meat! By a small tour around we realised that the notion of Koreans for seafood is anything and everything that lives under the water!

Even Anshuman's camera ran out of battery by now so could not take more pictures. But mostly we hung around the market place, ate a lot of street food [surprisingly all of which was sweet without any exceptions!] and returned to Busan station in time to catch the train back to Deajon.

12 Kms :: 6 hours :: A hike via Mt. Geumjeongsan

2008-02-29T23:54:00.000-08:00

During a chat in Stammtisch, George Suzuki told us about his hiking club and that they would be traveling to Busan for a hike on saturday. George had mentioned that he did hiking but I did not know how serious he and the club was about it. I agreed to
come immediately and told Anshuman about it and we planned to stay back in Busan after the hike, see around on sunday. So we were supposed to meet the group at 7 am near parking of Expo park. The morning started with excitement when the taxi driver dropped us at the wrong place and we had to sprint for around a kilometer and half. We did that in 10 mins but were still late. George was really angry at us about it..and we got a heavy duty warning about not to repeat it next time.

Once inside the bus, it was kind off ok but the kick start we had got for the day we knew it is not going to be easy. The President of the club Ah-To-San, started the proceedings. There were round of introductions for new comers, detailed explanation of the agenda and repetition of general rules. Everything was in Korean so I had to take help of George [who is Japanese and has been teaching Japanese in Korea since 4-5 years] and had to take his help for the translation. The plan was to start the trek around 10:30 and end by 4:30..have a small party before leaving and head back to Daejon. But me and Anshu had planned to stay back and see Busan on Sunday.

President's Welcome

In the bus George told me it was his 125th hike since November 2004 and he had rarely missed any since he started. Apparently the group hiked on every saturday without fail and maximum of 45 members could register every time on first come basis. Everyone was with proper gear but George said it would be fine as the day is going to be clear [not much of wind, rain or snow] so it won't be a much of problem if we did not have any.

We reached the starting point around 10:15...

..and after a short warmup and a group photo later everyone just rushed into it.. We were around 35 of us and me and Anshu were youngest of the lot and on our first long hike. But George was with us all the time and took really good care of us despite the fact that we had made him very angry 3 hours ago.

We were in the premises of Beomeosa Temple, a very famous tourist attraction in Busan. But we were not no tourists clocks..

We just rushed through there taking pictures of interesting works around us...

I had never seen this avatar of the Buddha, called the 'Warrior Buddha', who protected the entrance. There was a strong sense of irony there but I had no time to think about it...we were already behind in the group.

But there were more unseen avatars of the Buddha down he road...

There was a big trail beyond the premises of the temple and after some distance the temples created an amazing view amidst the rocky mountains.

And then slowly we were getting into the hiking mode as we followed a strong trail uphill.

The trail was becoming rockier..

..and as we climbed up the unmelted ice from past week's fall could be seen..

And as we climbed higher there was more and more ice..

Before we could notice we were making our way in the ice itself..

The peak of Mt.Geumjeongsan was in sight now..it had been an hour since we started.

In around half an hour we were up the peak..though it was not as easy as it may sound..but could not take pictures while already finding the difficulty of climbing the steep rocks...but could not resist some of the beautiful views.

Conquest Geumjeongsan

After a quick round of clicks and celebrations we started the descent..
I was wondering it was in less that half the time the goal of the day was achieved..but conquering Mt.Geumjeongsan was apparently not the only goal of the day.

It was past noon and we took a quick lunch that we had brought with us packed.

After a 15-20 min break for the lunch we started again..

..and soon we were in the premises of Geumjeongsanseong, the fortress.

First was the North Gate of the fortress that we encountered on our way..

It was an amazing view of Busan downtown from the top..showed the expanse of the city and damn it was huge!

We had covered a long way in just an hour after lunch...

Short Term Goals & Long Term Goals

During the whole hike I came across many such points where I could clearly see where I am headed in a larger sense and the immediate next few steps explicitly. I wondered if we could visualise goals in our life in this way..it would be a lot easier sometimes.

One thing newbies constantly do on treks is to see where we were and where we are going..a look back showed us how far we had come from Mt. Geumjeongsan...

..but there was still a long way to go..and our legs were now showing the effects of the exertion in the excursion.

The Great Wall of Korea

Built to defend from the Japanese forces attacking from the sea, we were told the wall could not defend Korea even once.

Pitstops for taking photographs was a good excuse to give the legs a break which were now starting to pain a lot.

We came across the East gate and then we headed towards the south gate.

My ankles and knees were now in pangs and I had still around an hour to walk!

..and suddenly I saw the road..was relieved that it has finally ended..

..but to my suffering that was not to be..we just crossed the road and continued the hike!

..now the time was being very very slow...

We reached the South Gate finally..and during the quick break that we are a lot behind time and so would take the ropeway on our way down..phew! I was so relieved!

So after a brief walk to the tower, we bought tickets and awaited our turn..

The buildings that looked tiny from the top were now becoming huge skycrapers..

Finally we reached at the bottom..just 5 mins away from the bus! We had contemplated change of plans to return with the bus instead of staying back as we had planned in the morning.

But after relaxing for a while over a soup of kimchi, tofu & pork..we decided that we would stay as planned earlier..and deal with our legs after returning.

We bid the group good bye..with intention to join them again on some saturday!

The bus dropped us near a subway station from where we got down near Busan station and checked into a hotel for a break before exploring Busan.

A trip to Gungnamji Pond

2008-02-03T05:16:00.000-08:00

'Stammtisch' introduced me to a lot of interesting people. Carol, an English professor and a photography enthusiast invited me to an outing to a place called Buyeo, around 70 kms from Daejon where I live. It was on saturday and Anshuman had finished with his deadline at work, so he also opted to join us. Buyeo is a very small town and there was no direct bus..so we had to make a break journey from Gongju, each being half hour drive.

It all started with a very happening morning...we reached the bus station after a LOT of walk from our room, getting lost following a deficient map, getting late while finding our way back and just managing to reach the meeting place to catch the group. The group was a vary hybrid one, varying from 20-50 year olds..Carol [a New Zealander raised in USA and a passionate traveler], Ann [Carol's student who also works in KAIST], Adam [English teacher, an American staying in Korea for 4 years now] & Mr. Maeng [a planning and inspection officer], Anshuman & me. We left at around 10 am.

After around an hour's travel we reached Buyeo and warming up in the morning sun headed towards Gungnamji through the town.

It took us some time to get in gears...idling our way taking pictures as if warming the cameras for a heavy exercise ahead!

A statue at crossroads..common sight in India but not in Korea

I was really impressed by the design of the street lights for such a small time place.

A Streetlight in Buyeo

And just as we were walking leisurely we saw this board and suddenly we all geared up.

But after traveling the said distance we came to this marshland with weeds growing all over it.

A closer look told that they were not weeds but Lotus plants..we just caught them at the wrong time. But this can't be it!

So we continued walking though the zigzag way we can find..

Through a inverted 'U' tube..

..and reached the place which made all the efforts since morning worth. It was a beautiful sight with trees surrounding a pond which had a small shelter at its center.

The ducks in the pond were having a nice swim in the sun but half the lake was frozen..

..so they just walked/stood over the ice after a nice swim in the water!

There were a couple of signages which told the stories about the pond..

After spending some time there we went of to see this structure which caught our eye but was not clearly visible from where we were..and it was amazing!

A memorial of an historic event..obviously a war looking at the sculpture! It was really peaceful there..really giving a special effect to the monument.

It was almost 1 pm and now our stomachs were making there presence felt...so we decided to have lunch somewhere in the town and then make the plan for the rest of the afternoon. Some pics on our way back..

A wheel to transfer water from one level to other

We walked down the streets of Buyeo looking for a nice restaurant. It was really interesting going through the small town..

A crowded Bus Stop

Street Vendors selling vegetables...

...and Fish

Finally in a small street we found a place to eat and had a nice meal, during which we decided to check out a five tiered Pagoda which was nearby and then walk down to the riverside and click more pictures at dusk. So after lunch we headed towards the Pagoda.

A Potato Barbecue..its just one potato winding each stick! I could not resist it despite a full stomach..

A traditional old Korean house

The Pagoda

Mr.Maeng & Adam had to return after this for other engagements..so we took a group picture together..and then parted our ways.

The remaining four of us started towards the river which was a long walk through plains and farms..

To the Geumgang River

Green House Farms

Sand & Ice..a strange but interesting combination

After spending some time there we started on our back journey..saw this aero-modeling hobbyist who was flying his planes on the plains..

A plastic plane with an engine!

An electronically powered plane made of thermocol!

I shot this video of it flying..

After a small walk we reached back to the bus station..and got a ticket straight back..no break journey needed this time!

I still haven't managed to find my way through the Korean names...

These are two different places!
And this is not all..there are variations in the spelling as well..Daejon is sometimes spelled as Taejon! God help me till I am here!

But finally after a drive of an hour or so during which we all slept off after a long fun tiring trip..we reached back..had dinner at a nice little place called Ali Baba's treasure..the place by the way has Indian Samosas on its menu!

Dinner at Ali Baba's

We bid each other good bye after that and returned to our homes...but wait this doesn't end here..there was something which I had not shared earlier but reserved till end because I thought it might disturb my Indian readers and they might not continue..

See the following pictures at your own risk..These were taken at a beef shop in Buyeo..

The big red thing is the liver which has special demand.

Sorry! but not all endings are pleasing..

Stammtisch!!

2008-01-31T09:17:00.000-08:00

'Stammtisch' is the name given by its patrons to the Thursday evening club at Pasta House which I wrote about earlier. The name is dedicated to the Germans who started it in 1999. The word Stammtisch is German which is not easily translated into English but it means something like 'regular's table' or 'regular get-together'. Literally speaking, the word Stammtisch is a table in a bar or restaurant which is reserved for the same guests at the same time every day or every week.

So this week also I was part of the group..again a big one this time with lot's of new people...

From Left round the table..Hee Sun [Owner of Pasta House,Korea], Colin & Phillippa [New Zealand], Jose [USA], Choi, Cleo, Lita, Eunhee, Mi [Korea], George Suzuki[Japan], Alan [USA], Jeung Sun [Korea], John Paul [Uganda], Adrienne, Molly [Australia], Parth [India] & Angel[Puerto Rico]..got all this time!

Well this time around I was a little late but not enough to miss the fun with some traditional Korean songs..

Jeung Sun sings professionally as well..she took the center stage for a while...

And while leaving she took me & Jose to the place where she sings usually on Thursday nights..and dedicated this Indian song to me..a must watch for all those in India!

I really loved this installation on the roof of the bar..

Installation on the roof

There I also met this guy Juntai who is a Japanese photographer..and a part time singer!

I dunno what impressed him while talking with me that he gifted me some of the pictures that he had clicked from the portfolio he was carrying!

The pictures appear grainy because the prints were taken on some very special glitter paper which I scanned to post them here...he said the model is one of his biggest inspirations..

Thanks a lot Juntai!

And thanks Korea for one more wonderful evening!

A Long Walk

2008-01-26T21:31:00.000-08:00

A lovely saturday afternoon was calling..and the trip to the Science Expo which is very nearby our campus was pending since long. This might be a surprise but there is a big group of Indians here [IAD, the Indians in Daejon Association] which was going to celebrate the republic day which was scheduled in the evening, so we decided to leave early and walk our way to the venue visiting places on the way.

Another KAIST entrance

Daejon Science High School entrance

It was a long walk and the absence of any people on it made it a lot longer..the only sound was of the cars whizzing past on the road.

But while talking both Anshuman & me did not realise when we covered the distance...finally we could see some people..though we were planning to see the expo [which is a site of a technology fair hosted in 1993/4 with some interesting architecture] we got distracted by some installations before that which were in the premises of National Science Museum and we decided to check it out.

Cute Alien Couple that Welcomes you to NSM

Another eye catching sculpture which probably is a fountain

But the most inviting were these transformers..which were so must to be taken a look at that we bought the tickets and decided to enter to see the whole exhibition, which according to person at ticket counter needed around an hour to be seen.

When we took a closer look, the sculptures reminded us of the Animal Abstraction assignments that the product design students did at IDC..

Horse

Ox

Sheep

Rat

Monkey

Rabbit

Rooster

Tiger

Pig

Dragon

Dog

Snake

These are the twelve animals of the Chinese Lunar Calendar.
We went inside and the museum was huge..and at a glance we knew we cannot see all of the three floors in an hour and that was just the smaller part of the building.

So we just took a quick tour, highlights of which I have tried to capture below..

A huge dummy snowflake

Installation inspired from snowflakes

Quartz Crystals

A rock from the Moon

Dinosaur Cladogram

A stuffed Eagle

An Ancient Bell

Hook of the Bell [with which it is hung]

There was a wide variety in the exhibits with some working prototypes as well..but we had to reach somewhere so we decided to move out and cover the remaining some time later..

A life size dinosaur in the outer premises

Another dinosaur

An Ancient Clock

It was almost evening and we had another long walk to the venue so we moved ahead..

But this street was lined with buildings..so some interesting views this time..

Board of a Furniture Shop
A tree made a very interesting shadow on it in the early evening...

A commercial cum residential complex

I could not help but notice the perfect arrangement of the ACs and the monopoly of LG! [Click on the image to see details.]

Guess what this Ultra Modern Building is?

Yes, its a Church!

Another Modern Concrete, Steel, Glass Building

We had to pass through a tunnel on our way..in that elongated arch the passing cars sounded more like aeroplanes taking off..

And finally after almost 5 kms of walk altogether we reached the venue..phew!

More about the program later..

Untold but still beautiful!!

2008-01-25T19:46:00.000-08:00

In last post I wrote about surprises that life throws and guess what... the next morning after the night I wrote the post..I saw the following on my desk!

A surprise cookie as a thanks for a small favour changes the whole magnitude of the word! Somethings cannot be told or talked about or showed in pictures to realize how beautiful they really are..

I remember one of my friends saying that our languages are not developed enough to express every emotion that humans feel...instances like these just make me realise how true it is!

The Old & the Beautiful!!

2008-01-24T06:27:00.001-08:00

The best thing about life is the surprises it keeps on throwing..some good some not so good..but it is still fun. After my last post I wasn't expecting to post a good experience for a long time..but you can never tell..how just a small decision of where to eat can end up in the most beautiful evening of the tour so far!

Well it so happened that instead of eating in cafeteria on campus as we usually do on weekdays..Anshuman & I decided to go out for a change..not so far but quite a walk..especially in the chilling cold! So there is this place called Pasta House in front of the KAIST campus gate where we decided to check out some Italian Cuisine..well the pasta was nothing special except for we were served the double of what we had ordered..we were planning to share one but they brought two separate for each of us!..so we sat for a long time trying to finish it..

Pasta House is a small and cozy place and except us there was just another family..a Canadian guy who has been in Korea for 8 years now, married a Korean and has two amazingly cute daughters! [talk about crossbreed haan..:P]..so as me and Anshuman were talking in Hindi the guy noticed and could not help but mention that it really sounded sweet apart from different..[sweet? my voice? aur anshuman's voice?..ah..I love this place!]..Sorry I could not take any photos of the cuties..but there was an interesting talk about how Koreans measure the age..because the smaller one was 3 but according to Koreans she was 5! Apparently it goes like this..the day you are born you are an year old..[something do to do with life starting in pregnancy..].then on change of year.you increment your age again! So a baby born on 30.12.2007 is 2 years old on 02.01.2008!..kinda weird because depending on the month you are born the difference between your actual age and Korean age varies a lot!

Anyways the family left when we were still trying to finish our twofold order...and the owner of the place happened to mention about this gathering that happens every Thursday 8:30 where some expats socialise for sometime. It was around 8 then..so we decided to stick around and see if there are any chicks than we can hunt..:P

Since there was still some time left we had a walk around the area..which we had not so far..some pics from the neighborhood..

A Church

Sparkle Harvest!

Anyways..it was a short walk..and Anshuman was not sure if it would be worthwhile but I decided to give it a try as the owner had mentioned that this tradition was started 10 years ago by some Germans but they left and people kept on changing but the tradition has carried on!

The count is usually 10-12 but today I guess was really different! There were almost 20 in the group and with just a couple of exceptions everyone was twice my age! But not for a single moment I felt that this was in any way less than a Friday night out at a pub..

The topics varied from origin of names to their modifications, from cultural differences to nuances of accents and languages, from good experiences to nightmares while traveling..well if you just take a look below you would understand how much more would have happened that I could not catch up with!..Let me see how many names I remember..

From Left round the table..Angel[Puerto Rico], Andrea, Colin & Phillippa [New Zealand], Adrienne [Australia], Lita, Mi [Korea], Olga & Dennis [Russia], Jean [France], Euhnee [Korea], Carol [New Zealand], Alan [USA], Jeung Sun [Korea], Hee Sun [Owner of Pasta House, Korea], George Suzuki[Japan] & Your's Truly [India]..phew!

Most of them were teachers and most of the teachers taught English but at different levels [from kindergarten to adults] in different kind of institutes..some had been there in Korea for long and some had just arrived..some had traveled a lot and some had in been Korea all there life..some were young and some were old..it was a complete potpourri! But there was something surely common about them..I dunno what to call that bond..some of them had came down from outside just for the gathering!..and they do it every week! Just amazing..

As I was sitting with the Kiwis..most of my talk was with them..and they lived in country side..Pep had brought some banana cake & walnut cookie [a typical kiwi dish which was called Afghan biscuit for God knows what reason!]

Anyways about 10 p.m. or so we all started dispersing as the people who had to travel had to catch their buses. With full stomachs and filled hearts...everyone bed goodbye for a week..

No bets about my plans of Thursday evenings till I am here!
Undoubtedly the best evening since I have been here..

Of Ducks & Chicken

2008-01-23T03:30:00.000-08:00

The Ori-yeonmot [Duck-pond] is one of the most beautiful places on the KAIST campus..

The One : with a coloured plumage amongst milk whites

Four Ducks and Two Pigeons

Believe me these are the only live animals which we have seen so far..all others have been served on platters..

Sorry to bring about the irony in the title in such a manner but truly speaking this is what the experience has been so far. I still haven't dared much though the extent that I have seen till now is oysters & octopuses being eaten..by my colleagues.
[Haven't dared even to click pictures..but would surely be daring sometime soon..]

So amidst all this, it was really comforting to have some middle/west asian style food at Ahmed Bhai's..

Chikad Chane, Tandoori Chicken & Tandoori Naan

Ahmed bhai has been in Korea for 13 years now after leaving Pakistan and apart for his business of exporting cars in the day does community service in the night for desolate souls like us by gratifying our tongues..

Thanks Ahmed Bhai!!

And to put in Ahmed Bhai's tongue.."yeh kutte khane wali kaum hain yaron..kya batayein...."

But, still the optimist that I am, will hope to see more of 'lively' & 'beautiful' 'ducks'..let's see how it goes..

Wilderness!!

2008-01-13T02:00:00.000-08:00

I sometimes wonder how the contrasts enhances everything..the spring had not been awaited had there been no winter..but the winter in itself brings a different scenic quality to the nature..here are some of the shots from the KAIST campus.

Entrance to the campus

Our Department [Industrial Design]

Stairs to Nowhere!

The Wait

Another Famous Entrance nearby

Post rain on a chilly winter evening

The Bridge to the Forest

S Korea!!

2008-01-08T04:02:00.000-08:00

Well we reached the Incheon International Airport, Seoul at around 3:30 pm as scheduled. After immigration clearance we came out to take bus to Daejon where we were going to work at KAIST [Korea Advanced Institute of Science & Technology]. The three things we were warned a lot before leaving was language,food & weather. But the weather was not so cold as we were expecting [around 7-8 °C was pleasant enough for Anshuman but not that great for me. I had wrapped myself well]. About language..as not more than 2% people speak english and while trying to learn my address [KAIST, Kusong Dong, Yusung Gu, Daejon]..I came to know what problems would lie ahead. But I had never imagined that it would be so excruciating. We could not make a call about arrival because we could not read the instructions about how to dial in Korean. But a lady obliged by lending her cellphone and reduced our problems.
Waiting at the bus stop..we were relieved that the sign boards read english but I guess it didn't matter much..the pronunciations were still gonna take their tall.

Phew! None of them was our destination!

But once in the bus it was not much of a problem..as we were supposed to get down at second out of three stops and were going to be received. But again we could not find a phone nearby..but the people around were really friendly & again were lent a cellphone this time by a young man who happened to be student at KAIST but was headed to meet his girlfriend an a cool Sunday evening..so we decided to wait for the Ph.D. candidate at ID KAIST [Design Department where we were joining as Lab Interns] who was supposed to pick us up.

Finally he arrived an what a relief it was! He is a really nice fellow and made us quite comfortable. We got our place in the dormrooms and he treated us to a nice dinner of a Korean Barbecue. I must say it has been an amazing time between my last dinner at India [Barbecue on IDC Terrace] and the first dinner in Korea. I hope the two dinners mark a great beginning to the New Year.

The lane lined with restaurants just outside KAIST Campus

Daeeop Kim : Our Host for the night..the Ph.D. Student

Me, Anshuman & Daeeop

Anshuman was too quick to learn to handle the chopsticks in one set of instructions..m still fiddling with my grip. [:(]..will pick up soon I know getting inspired from him.

Got a glimpse of the building of ID KAIST where we were going to work on our way back.

Installation in front of the department

Same installation in daylight

ID KAIST Building..yeah the Santa Claus is an installation which we missed in the dark :)

We were welcomed by the faculty members, met with our guides, got our spaces decided in the labs...and finally at the end of the day..an exclusive welcome dinner from Head of the Department.

Clockwise : Prof. Kun Pyo Lee [Head, ID KAIST], Prof. Tek Jin Nam [Head, CIDR lab, ID KAIST], Daeoop Kim [Ph.D. Student], Your's Truly & Anshuman

Side Dishes during the dinner

After two days, none of the problems seem so big..the weather is not dreadful, most of the people on campus speak english..and the food is ok if you are not an hardcore vegetarian and a little flexible!

Looking ahead to a good stay! Hoping to achieve something worth..

More to come..stay tuned..

Singapore!!

2008-01-07T06:16:00.000-08:00

Since on saturday [5/1/2008] no official work was scheduled most of it was spent roaming around the city area...visited Little India, Chinatown in the afternoon and Oxford Street [High Profile Zone ;)] and Clark Quay [Party Place].

The city has an amazing commuting system in place with prepaid cards which you use both in buses and local trains. You just tap it while entering your departure station and again when you move out at the arrival station [entry door & exit door in case of buses] and that's all. It automatically cuts the proper amount from your account. No hassles of queues or proper change!

Tapping the Card while exiting at the arrival station

Card Readers on a Bus

Well the whole system is running like a strictly managed machine and there are rare outlaws. I was objected by a policewoman on a train station drinking water from my ow bottle of water. Reason: "If while drinking, you get a push by someone and the water spills over the floor, someone might slip over it and it would be a big problem! "
No bigger surprise on the day I must say... :)

It was a nice walk in the strong cultural identity areas of Little India & Pagoda Street [Shopping Place] in Chinatown. Just could'nt help amusing: there is also a station named Dhobi Ghat!

Entrance of an Indian Restaurant

Miniature Transformers on sale in ChinaTown

Traditional Shrine on backdrop of Modern Skyline

Pre-dawn in front of my cousin's apartment

Nice Graphics of a backlit banner on Changi Airport

सिंहपुर!!!

2008-01-04T10:30:00.000-08:00

Well..though its a misnomer..the name of Singapore orginates from Sanskrit meaning 'The City of Lions'..but even when the name was given there were tigers here and not Lions..but I guess the Merlion wouldn't have looked as fascinating if it had been a Mertiger.. Anyways the city is a damn neat place..and though I was expecting some surprises the ones I got were surely not what I had expected..[perhaps that's why they were good surprises..]..The first was just outside the airport! The taxi in queue for my no. was a Merc! A Merc as a taxi! and that too at the same fares as the other ones..well I take this a sign of the things that lie ahead [touch wood :P]..

My first Mercedes ride

The next surprise was in the lift at my cousins building..the signage that read..

What the hell is that???

Not many surpises after that though..
Visited the Art Design & Media [ADM] department at NTU and Lasalle School of Design today..Enchanting Edifices!

The ADM building is built with the theme "A Furniture to the Landscape...An element in the context of Nature"..its just breathtaking..

Walk to the ADM entrance

I guess not being traditional is emphasized as a design philosophy with the structures in which the classes happen..as the construction of Lasalle Institute which hosts the School of Design, School of Media and School of Performing Arts was also very uncontemperory..

And after these professional visits chilled out in the evening near the Marina Bay area...

The Esplanade theatre

The Merlion

The Mermaids and the Lion
With Afina & Fabi [Thanks for the pic Victor..& I hope all the names are spelled right!]

The Elixir!

And finally at the Esplanade theatre with my sponsor/mentor - my cousin Shekhar Dada

Stay tuned for more updates...

From Up There II .....

2008-01-04T10:12:00.000-08:00

Well this time around I really got to see for myself what I had heard in the Sunita William's talk I briefed in my last post..though I was not in a space shuttle I was high enough aboard SQ421 on my way to Singapore from Mumbai..

Me in a pensive mood aboard the flight

Mumbai from 800m above sea-level

On cloud nine!

Well..lots of experiences to be shared in coming months..stay tuned!

From Up There...

2007-10-06T02:50:00.000-07:00

Being at IITB is not amazing just because of academics but also the extra curricular activities on the campus for which dignitaries keep coming and we get to hear from them their experiences. Here's my latest nice experience:

Sunita Williams (Commander, US Navy), NASA Astronaut
Keynote Speech at Zephyr '07 [On experiences of her recent space journey on Atlantis]

Excerpts from her speech which made a mark on my mind...

- When you look at the earth from space it looks amazingly cool! You can even see the mountains and creeks under the surface of water. BUT you do not see any boundaries. Boundaries are what we have created and exist only on pieces of paper and in our minds. They are not really there.

- These boundaries in your minds are the only things that can stop you from what you can and want to do. I challenge you to shed all the inhibitions of races & genders and chase your dreams.

- Another interesting thing that you see is a thin blue layer protecting the earth. This is what we call the atmosphere. And from up there you realize how thin and fragile it is. I challenge you to take good care of it as it is our responsibility towards coming generations to hand them over a habitable planet.

- I feel when we send people to the outer space they should be representing the earth and not as citizens of a particular country. Our space suits / spacecrafts should have pictures of the earth instead of flags of the nations.

The question answer session that followed was pretty interesting not because it was dominated by queries from the aspiring children. An IT professional made a request not to entertain any requests of the Indian political parties who are trying to take advantage of her Indian origin! A nine year old even dared to request her hug on stage and she dearly obliged. She deftly answered all the technical queries from the aero – space engineers, had motivational replies to children’s doubts about the future and articulate replies to the press. I liked her presence on the dias and the way she kept her calm and replied to a question ‘is space continually expanding?’ with ‘many people in the front rows would be able to answer that better than me…’ . Some other anecdotes that interested me during the q/a session were:

- While landing back the spacecraft made screeching sounds. The co pilot said after seeing her expressions of concern “Don’t worry; I have landed both Discovery & Atlantis. Atlantis makes these noises while landing. It is nothing to worry about. ”

- “My perspectives have changed. Whenever I enter a room I now also see the ceiling and the remote corners which I never did earlier and try to imagine how much fun it would be to float in this space.”

At the end she reiterated her points of the boundaries and mentioned that the only thing she feels bad about is that she could not talk personally to people, which she wanted to do and would be making an annual trip to India to fulfill that.

Please do so. We will be obliged!!

[PS: Thanks Reddy for the pic who is still so much excited about seeing her face to face in the lift and got a chance to take the pic!]

Third Wave, Second Life & First Person Prespective

2007-06-07T22:21:00.000-07:00

Disclaimer: I wander a lot....even while writing! So hang on till the end..I am sure you would find it interesting.

I was not even born when Alvin Toffler's famous book 'Third Wave' was published. It was a best seller back then and still sells like hot cake because people read it again & again and get amazed to see how many of his predictions are really becoming true. The most significant of the changes being the shift from mass manufacturing & standardisation to customisation & personalisation. A shift from economies based on industrialisation to the ones based on information technology happened far too sooner to his surprise though. The changes in social structure are happening and what he mentions as 'telelcommunities' are seen everywhere around us. One such high profile community I believe is about to revolutionise a lot of things around us. It's called 'Second Life'. [If you still don't know about this visit secondlife or to read more Second Life on Wiki].

Its a 3D environment in which you can login with a different identity than yours. You can make your three dimensional digtial self look the way you want, dress up the way you wish, build things inside the world and communicate with other fellow 'residents'. All the things that are seen inside are created by the residents. The Linden Labs, SL's creaters are trying to build a virtual world by selling lands and property rights and creating a economy of its own. And they have kept the world to evolve freely as an ecosystem and people are trying to put it to use according to their needs. Interestingly people are finding worthwhile usages like a professor from MIT has started her classes inside for foreign students. Leo Burnett has put up a office to hold its global meetings inside SL. Recently read something about IBM planning to put up a huge virtual facility inside it. And reuters has appointed a reporter to report happenings inside the world.
Sounds wonderful isn't it? But it is still in its primitive stages, the renderings are poor and the controls for user are not greatly usable. But all these things will surely improve with time.

Here are some of the pics from my recent tour to the fairyland. Many things are possible inside which we can only dream about [like me getting an offer for a dance from a young and pretty Croatian! And I just have to use an animation of my choice salsa/ramba/tango etc to do so!]. One can fly to go from one place to other and many more.

At 'Rose Garden' : A night club

But one thing I could not help noticing is the perspective that is offered. A typical first person perspective common to shooting games like Counter Strike, Quake etc. where the camera his behind your head showing you on screen what your virtual avtaar might be 'seeing'. A tried to change the settings but invain. To explain the
perspectives better here are some from one my favourite movies 'The Matrix'.

This is the first person perspective from the protagonist's point of view. Though he is not the narrator of the film the story unfolds before us from his perspective. We learn about the matrix as he gets lessons from Morpheus and so on.

The second person's perspective...how the person in front..here the Agent views Neo shooting at him.

And the third person perspective..as if somebody else is seeing them in combat.

The only thing I could do in SL was focus on something of interest and some more of it. But I could not change my perspective to look at what is behind my back. I had to turn and the controls were not really easy. Though some would debate that it makes it more realistic but my point is why not provide something that we do no get in real life...flying has been provided...so why not another perspective?

This stayed in my mind beacuse of an incident last week. I was travelling in the city transport bus in Ahamdabad which accidently hit a autorickshaw. Apparently nothing got damaged so the driver moved on. But the young rickshaw driver was not pleased. He followed the bus, meanwhile gathered his accomplices using his cellphone and withheld the bus on a corner by blocking the road from all sides of the bus... Bollywood issshtyle! Everyone in the bus wanted to see the view but everyone feared to lose their seat as it was pretty crowded and only God [& the autorickshaw wala ? :P ] knew how long it was going to take. Everyone was sure they are safe but could not get down because it was pretty remote part of the city and alternative transport wasn't around. So one had nothing to do but sit and could not even see the drama! Usually you go to see films but here the film itself had came to us and we could not see it! What happened later was insignificant from this column's point but I sure felt bad about us having only one perspective in real life.

Toffler talks about a lot of things in Third Wave ranging from business and economics to politics to learning systems to social lifestyles to media and technologies. And all the changes he predicted have been happening maybe at different rates but we can easily note the course of events. To put it in his words....

"A powerful tide is surging across much of the world today, creating a new, often bizarre, environment in which to work, play, marry, raise children, or retire. In this bewildering context, businessmen swim against highly erratic economic currents; politicians see their ratings bob wildly up and down; universities, hospitals, and other institutions battle desperately against inflation. Value systems splinter and crash, while the lifeboats of family, church, and state are hurled madly about. Looking at these violent changes, we can regard them as isolated evidences of instability, breakdown, and disaster. Yet, if we stand back for a longer view, several things become apparent that otherwise go unnoticed."

On a serious note I want to stress on this longer view that we are forgetting in our fast paced lives...to look at ourselves from a longer distance..to see where we came from and where are we headed...not in the sense of whole humanity but as an individual. We all have our opinions about things/people/happenings around us. But what if they are not like what we are thinking of them as? There is a cliche that
goes "put yourself in the other person's shoes...". But that's a second person perspective...it could be biased as well. I am talking about a distant view of you and all the things around you. Could it change anything for you? Surely worth a thought I guess...

LOST!!!

2007-06-01T05:35:00.000-07:00

I have been waiting to start a blog since long but wanted to start with something really worthwhile and interesting to share….n had such an experience very recently. One of the best ones in my life. A night trek where we got lost in the jungle and wandered all night!
So here goes the story...

One fine evening, as always, I was pondering in my hostel room about finishing some pending work and was making plans to do it that very night…when someone knocked on the door. It was a wingmate [a term I heard in the IIT campus where hostels are divided in so called ‘wings’ and each has a coded descriptor..mine is BGL..B wing Ground Floor Lake Side!] I think this would be the best place to put the Disclaimer: I wander a lot....even while narrating! So bear with me.
So the wingmate asked if I had a torch. Well I did not and so replied no but was wondering why did he want a torch at 5 o’ clock in the evening! He told that they were leaving for a night trek...from Lonavala to Rajmachi! Night Trek…that sounded interesting as I never had been on one before. I paused for a second…thought about the pending work and as usual kept it more pending…and left. Picked up a bottle of water and a towel and joined the already waiting gang. They did not get an extra torch but sure got an extra companion. But nothing mattered....everyone was way ahead of time excited to start the trek.

Or so we thought till the ultimate experience began…we arrived to Washi at around 7 after an hour of Bus drive to leave for Lonavala by whatever mode of transport we could find which is not a very difficult thing at the point we were. But being IITians we managed to screw up things ourselves and believed that it was more exciting than it would have been otherwise! Too many words till now...here is a pic of all eight of us who went on that unforgettable journey...

So waiting for something to take us to Lonavala we fell pray to a naïve Sumo driver who we thought can be fooled easily and got fooled ourselves….not by him but by circumstances and of course his naivety. Actually we were seven of us then and the only experienced fellow amongst us, Dixy, was going to join us in Lonavala, coming from his home in Pune. So this Sumo Driver whom we called Anna all the time afterwards was so skeptical about all the things that he did not want to go to Lonavala from Pune without any seats even when we tried to convince him [read try to fool him] that we are almost paying the cost and that he would get seats from Lonavala. But he requested to just take two more seats and we agreed. We all sat in the Sumo so that people would feel that we are about to leave and would join us in hurry. But that was not to happen. Only groups with more than two people would come and leave because we did not have enough space. Once in a while Anna would bring a person, and would go away to fetch another. Meanwhile the one he had already brought would get bugged up with our constant blabbering and ‘farting’ [another IITB term for pathetic jokes/statements/arguments]. So this continued for around 90 minutes...the time needed to reach Lonavala. We were still in Washi and waiting for Anna to bring two more co-travelers. We also made futile attempts to start the Sumo to give an impression that we are almost leaving but nobody would board…finally Anna managed an old lady and another old person [who helped us afterwards]..and we got going...Finally!

We started at around 9 and should have been in Lonavala by 10.30 – 11. But that was not to be. On the Mumbai – Pune Express Highway, Anna missed the exit to Lonavala and it was very late when we realized that. And on top of it was Anna’s reason: that he did not know about it! He expected us to tell him where to take the turn! That was the biggest ‘fart’ of the day! Anna who would not have been remembered had he did his job properly made a long lasting impression with a screwed up job! So the only options we had then were to hike around 7-8 kms back to Lonavala or go to next station and take a local train to Lonavala. Later appealed to all of us considering we had to walk the whole night anyways. So as guided by the old person who boarded last moment we managed to catch the last local to Lonavala had reached there by midnight. Dixy was waiting for us since 3 hours...but he did not throw much tantrums probably knowing what lies ahead. Amongst us only he had trekked that way before and did not remember much about it!

We got an idea about it when we came out of a Lonavala station and faced a fork on the road. Dixy paused for a moment and then confidently took the right road and we all followed. But that was the wrong one! He realized after going 100 meters and said we should have taken the left one! There we realized how exciting the night was going to be!!!

So as per his description straight ahead from that road a couple of kms ahead we would cross a village called Thakurli, past it a few kms after that we’ll find a dam, past the dam a wall on right, will follow the trail which will lead to a very small village. Going further the wall would suddenly shift to left of the road after the village and then subside. 10-15 kms from that point would be the Rajmachi village, at the foothills of Rajmachi. Rajmachi was a strategically found geographical point on a plateau and used shrewdly by Shivaji and other Marathas to keep a vigil around his fort in the Sahyadris. As planned we would be reaching on top of Rajmachi by sunrise, enjoy the view and trek down from other side to Karjat and by noon take a local to Mumbai from there.

Everything happened fine till few kms after the wall. The view was scenic and the weather was pleasant. Cloud cover and cool zephyrs took a lot of stress away from the heavy duty walking we were doing up the slope.

But because of the cloud cover no stars were visible. There was no light apart from the couple of torches that we had. So we had no sense of direction. Only that the moon had risen from a particular direction….somewhere around a 30 degree angle around it would be east and at right angles from that zone towards left would be north and we had to head in that direction.

There was a strong track that we were following sided by small hills on right. After a few kms walk we took a break. Dixy lighted the scented candle he had bought. I really felt I should have been able to fly to see the top view of a bunch of hikers sitting around a small candle in the middle of wilderness at 1 am in the night! Alas I could not and so here are some ground level shots.. :p.

Few more hours of walk on the hilly terrain and we came across a road being constructed on a mountain. Good to see people after a long time! Though it was pretty late some were still working....it reminded me of my pending work but to hell with it! I was having a rocking time! We heard some music from a truck…did not know till then that the radio transmission covered that wide a area! And it was on at 1.30 am. At least gave a feeling that we are not too away.

The truck driver guided us about the direction and we headed that way. Some time later we encountered another fork. In the dark we had no idea where we were going. There was huge stone with white paint splashed on it. One of the trail [which was still strong] was lined with a couple of smaller stones and we all had a gut feeling that we should head that way. But Dixy said that trail is going down and we had to go up…the other seemed like going up. So we followed that one. A few kms down that road we were trying to locate Rajmachi as was expected from Dixy’s description but was not to be found. We knew we were lost and by this time seemed to have moved in the jungle. Actually misunderstanding some arbitrary mountain for Rajmachi. And lo! What do we see?? Some lights twinkling in the jungle…that was surprising and scary at 2 am in the night! But we were running out of water so we took the so called risk and approached the lights in the middle of the jungle. And to our luck it turned out to be another small village. The dogs started barking as we approached and woke a few villagers who were sleeping outside the huts enjoying in the open. An old person offered us water and again gave us proper direction. We realized we were 4-5 kms ahead in the wrong direction taking the wrong path at the fork with the white painted stone. While drinking water we struck a conversation with him and came to know that they had lands nearby which they cultivated. The lands were taken by the Ambanis and provided them with electricity. The lights we saw were actually the street lights.... six of them for a 200 m main road lined with huts on both sides which served as homes for around 100 odd people. These people currently had nothing to do and in a phase of looking out for new opportunities. Life.. I wondered is a lot different than our '9 to 6' lifestyles in cities. This experience was far greater than my pending work I thought… as we headed towards the right direction.

But we had following a strong trail till now and still had landed in the wrong place. So Dixy and me both were in a mood to wander and take less treaded paths. We managed to convince others and left the strong trail and headed directly towards the direction of the mountains that the old man in the village told us was Rajmachi. Now this way was directly through the jungle and we could already feel our pulses increasing in excitement.

But avoiding the bushes and abutting the hillocks, we soon managed to lose the direction and get lost again…this time in dense jungle! But that was amazing....having no clue about our whereabouts we were wandering in dense forest trying to find our way with no sense of direction!

After meandering for around an hour, at around 3 – 3.15 am we managed to find a trail in the jungle. We decided to follow that.

Soon too many stones filled the path and we realized that it was a dried water stream. There are many of those around the Lonavala and Khandala ghats. We were sure we will be reaching a bigger water body if we follow that…and we continued. But it started descending…a lot! And we realized we are headed towards the valley. By this time we had lost all hopes of reaching Rajmachi and had started making plans to just find our way back if the trail doesn’t lead us to somewhere interesting soon. Descending down the stony stream in total darkness in deep jungle was an indescribable experience. Some of us felt of backing up but Dixy kept on motivating everyone with his crap that we will now reach Karjat if we follow that stream downwards. At around 4.30 we reached the climax point of the journey….a steap cliff edge. The stream we were following turned to a deep waterfall and we were on a dead end. We decided to rest there till sunrise and then backtrack. Then started the chats.

The point we stopped at was awesome. A huge boulder was held by a fallen tree just on the edge of the cliff. On both sides were mountains, on the back was stream that we had followed and far ahead was another mountain which Devang was pretty sure was Rajmachi because there was a photograph with same view in his Orkut album labelled so!

But then Dhakad cracked the best ever of the outing…saying it cannot be a fort because even F of Fort is not visible. Then started a S-E-R-I-E-S of F-A-R-T-S on letters which continued till sun rose at around 5.30 am. We started back soon.

Returning I thought would be a piece of cake and it went fine till the sun started glaring and our feet started aching from the 25-30kms walking that we had did in last 5-6 hours. But on the way back we saw all the nice places we had passed in the night, a few mountains that we misunderstood for our destination and found a well near the village we had reached in night, replenished our fluid resources and decided to head back to Lonavala.

By 10 am everyone was completely exausted....nobody could move any longer. A night without sleep, nothing much to eat overnight and a blazing sun overhead made all of us crash as we found a shade on our way back. There were lots of other little rests...like one when we again came back to the fork and wondered what if we had taken the other road! But this was the last...no one could walk anymore. So finally after an intense discussion we decided to walk till the mountain where the road was being constructed which we had seen last night. Rough estimations told that the point would be around 2-4 kms far. We would request the truck drivers to drop us till Lonavala whenever they go and eat and live with them till they do so. Fortunately they were leaving soon after we reached and requested them. I thought this is the end of the experience. But the cherry on the cake was the truck ride on the half constructed road on the mountain with hair pin bends and just wide enough to fit a truck. Moreover there were empty containers which would keep coming on us.

At a couple of bends the truck stopped and would not pick up...an instead moved back...I was the on the end corner and could actually see the valley down. The scariest sight ever!
But we finally managed to reach Lonavala without anymore hiccups....went straight to a hotel, ordered lots of food and.... fell asleep right on the tables!
An unforgettable adventure indeed!!!