Travelogue – Sydney, Australia – Part 1 here

Weekend 2:

This was the weekend of Mardi Gras, a carnival that happens during March 1st week every year in Sydney. As this Wiki link details,

The Sydney Gay & Lesbian Mardi Gras is an annual gay pride parade and festival for the LGBT community in Sydney, Australia, and is the largest such event in the world. The parade features individual entrants in colourful costumes, gatherings of local and inter-state community group members, and elaborate floats representating a topical theme or political message.

Putting aside the politically oriented theme for a moment, I observed that the Mardi Gras day this year was celebrated as a festival by the the whole of Sydney, irrespective of their orientation. Thousands of people lined up on either side of Oxford street, jostling for space and view of the main event. The main event started at about 1930, but you could see crowds building up from 1500 hrs. At the start of the parade, each side of the street was lined with people about 10 person deep. It was nuts.

The event by itself was majestic. Different Gay and Lesbian people dressed up in some of the most outrageous attires that I’ve ever seen paraded along the street in gay abandon (ha!). This is one event which should be experienced, rather than communicated through a newspaper article or a video. The music, the dances, the attires, pesky security agents, meddling media, jostling photographers and the happiest atmosphere in general made for a great time, inspite of standing for long hours. It was a field day for photographers – budding, amateur or professional.

You can peruse some of my Mardi Gras photographs in this link -https://picasaweb.google.com/105375483626318518949/SydneyAustralia?authkey=Gv1sRgCL-g5u-_spTeywE#

Important tip: If you are planning to travel to Sydney on a holiday, do so during February-March period. The summer would have ended, the evenings are very pleasant and Mardi Gras event during first week of March is not to be missed for anything. Easily one of the highlights of Sydney and unfortunately, its only once a year.

This was the same weekend that I traveled to Mrs. Macquarie’s Chair. From St. Mary’s Cathedral (as explained in Part 1), another road goes towards Royal Botanical Gardens. Royal Botanical Gardens almost feels like an extension of the Hyde Park, but is much more extensive in flora and fauna. It is as big as Hyde Park and offering many jogging trails that Sydneysiders use frequently. Walking along Royal Botanical Gardens for a good 1.5 mile, you’d arrive at Mrs. Macquarie’s Chair. The first thing you notice about Mrs. Macquarie’s Chair is that there is no chair. Sydneysiders are funny that way, I think. What is so special about Mrs. Macquarie’s Chair? Well, to me, its one of the best spots in Sydney. Standing at this point, you can see the entire skyline of Sydney, along with the Opera House and the Sydney Harbor Bridge. The pic below should give you a good view what I mean -

I walked down to this point a couple of times after this weekend. Every sunset during a clear day (or even a slightly cloudy day, to add color) at this point is a sight worth dying for. Outstanding, Stellar, Magnificient would all be inferior adjectives to describe the scene. A must visit, and do it only during Sunset. During the day, the view is ok and you’d probably be better off spending time somewhere else.

Weekend 3:

This weekend was a weekend of beaches. Sydney being right on the edge of the ocean has a lot of beaches. However, two of the prominent beaches are Bondi beach and Manly beach.

Bondi beach is one of the most famous beaches (and probably one of the most beautiful) in the world. It owes its popularity to three things – topless (not nude!), easy surfing, lovely view of the Pacific ocean to the distance where you can actually see the curve of the earth. No wonder that it’s the most crowded beach in the whole of Australia. I went to Bondi beach on the day after the Japanese earthquake (and tsunami) assuming that the media scare would allow me to have a peaceful time on the beach. I was grossly mistaken. There was a huge crowd. Absolutely unbelievable, even after discounting for the fact that some people would have been actually scared to go anywhere near the ocean after the tsunami in Japan.

You can reach Bondi beach by taking the train from Town Hall station to Bondi junction. From Bondi junction, there are multiple buses to Bondi beach.

This was my first visit to any topless beach, much less one of the best topless beaches in the world. I had made an outrageous assumption that almost everybody would be topless, which proved hopelessly wrong. Later, I read that due to some Australian govt. regulations, a large percentage of people would not be topless. Moving on, there were tons of people surfing on the beach. I saw kids, who were not even 6 years old surfing like they have surfed all their life. I saw 70 year olds surf like..well…they have surfed all their life. I think its an Australian way of living (and more Sydneysider way of living). Surfing is a basic necessity and not a niche sport that we Indians perceive it to be. Bondi beach is probably the only beach I’ve been to where a part of it is a Sand beach where surfers thrive and a part of it is a rocky beach where people stand on a rock, stare into infinity and try to look intelligent and poignant. Last but not the least, ‘Pacific’ ocean is a misnomer. Nothing about the ocean pacifies you nor is it calm. It is probably more violent than the Atlantic. A couple of pics below would give you an idea of the Bondi beach and the violent Pacific ocean.

Manly beach was the one surfers thrived on. It was one of their favorite beaches, simply because of the size of their waves and velocity which made them great for surfing. I quickly learnt surfing here and nearly drowned, but that’s another blogpost.

Manly beach by itself was not as beautiful as Bondi beach. However, the route to Manly beach and back to the city in a ferry was spectacular. From Circular Quay (mentioned in Part 1), you take a ferry to Manly beach. While going past the Opera house and then Mrs. Macquarie’s chair, there’s a stunning view of entire Sydney and the ocean. While traveling back in the evening (Tip: Try to time your trip back during sunset time), the sun setting against the background of Sydney and the ocean is unbelievable. A natural painting, if there is one is right here – the skyline to the right of the sunset is dark already and it progressively gets brighter as the Opera house approaches; the harbor bridge is the brightest and it gets progressively darker from thereon. Picasso would have given an arm and a leg to paint that sight. Simply terrific. Here’s a pic to depict that -

Weekend 4:

My good friend Pavani flew down from Alice Springs to Sydney to meet me. Unfortunately, since it was my last weekend, I had a ton of work and some presentations to complete. And it was raining quite heavily. Our initial plan was to go to the Blue Mountains, a 2 hr train journey from Sydney. However, due to heavy rains, we dropped the plan and visited Darling Harbor (the only place in Sydney that I didn’t visit till this weekend) and also got to participate in an Indian event for Holi. We shopped for a while at The Rocks and in general whiled away time discussing everything under the sun..er..rain. It was a good, relaxing weekend to round off the trip.

P.S:

General tips to travel in Sydney:

1) If you are a single traveler, there are a ton of youth accomodations in the center of the city. If you want to rent a hotel room, it would cost you anywhere upwards of $100 a night. If you want to rent a hotel room near Bondi beach, it would cost you upwards of $230 a night.

2) Take a ticket called My Multi 2 or My Multi 3 (if you are planning to travel to Manly). This is a weekly pass that gives you access to trains, buses and ferries. Incredible value if you are traveling throughout the week.

3) Vegetarians – you are screwed. I couldn’t help myself and hence I can’t help you. However, if you do want to have good Indian vegetarian food, you can have it at Jaipur Maharaja hotel. There are, I think, 3 branches in Sydney itself.

4) Shopping freaks – Visit ‘The Rocks’ during Saturday and Sunday for decent stuff at a reasonable price. Else, visit ‘Paddy’s market’ for some cheap Chinese goods at throwaway prices.

5) Incredible Opals are available in various shops. Opals are stones, much like rubies, emeralds and diamonds. But Opals are Australian specialty. Do buy one for your girlfriend/wife/significant other. Aboriginal art and music is also not a bad idea. Some of the prints and music are difficult to replicate and really good.

It’s probably one of the most beautiful cities I have been to till date. And without a doubt, one of the most expensive and for good reason.

Before I start on some sort of travelogue on Sydney, I should mention an interesting work culture aspect in Australia. Australians were protesting against their Government with a slogan ‘We want our life back’ for their ‘long’ 9-5 job (5 day workweek). True story. A Japanese or a Singaporean would probably die hearing that.

Back to the travelogue. I had about 4 weekends to explore Sydney and the surrounding areas (as mentioned earlier, weekdays were work-packed!). Here is my story of the 4 weekends I spent in Sydney. As part of the journey through these weekends, you might want to pick up tidbits about what to do and not to do in Sydney.

Weekend 1:

I landed on Saturday afternoon and by the time I enquired a few things and made a few phone calls, it was dusk. I didn’t venture out that night. However, I did pick up various pamphlets of various Sydney attractions.

I probably had a 15-20 pamphlet stack to start with and whittled them down to 5. However, I realized that I need to tour Sydney first, before doing specific things like scaling the Harbor Bridge, exploring Sydney Aquarium and some such. I looked up Sydney Walk on Wikitravel, wrote down some important pointers and started on my journey. I was put up at Artarmon, a 15 min train journey from the center of the city. As soon as I got down in Town hall station (a station in the center of the city), I realized I had lost the ‘important pointers’ list somewhere in the journey. I frantically tried to recollect various locations that I had written down and started exploring the map in the station. An old man (he was 75, as he told me later) walked up to me and asked me where I wanted to go. Given the prejudice that Indian media had subjected me to, I declined I was going anywhere. However, the samaritan persisted and I gave in, telling him that I wanted to walk around Sydney and see various points of interest. He said, ‘walk with me’. Typical Indian mentality kicked in, and I began thinking ‘Should I pay him money? Is he a tourist guide? I don’t want to pay him money, given my measly allowance’. However, I walked along with him and the thought persisted in the back of my mind till he said good-bye without asking for anything. I subsequently requested him that I’d buy him lunch, but he declined it and only wished me an enjoyable journey in Sydney. I was humbled. A more appropriate word would be ‘guilty’.

Sydney View - A collage

Anyway, this good samaritan took me to almost every corner of the city in a matter of 4.5 hours. He kept pace with me and walked continously. I, for one, could not believe he was 75. But then again, he couldn’t be below 60. And here I was, 28, already feeling tired by the end of 4.5 hours of walking.

We got out of Town Hall station, and emerged outside the majestic Queen Victoria building. We cut across George street, Pitt street and Bathurst street to emerge on Elizabeth street and walked towards Hyde park. Hyde park is one of the largest parks I’ve been to, with wide open spaces, lots of greenery and housing multiple monuments like the ANZAC memorial, St. Mary’s Cathedral (catholic church) and various other Government buildings. After visiting all these monuments, we proceeded to walk along Elizabeth street to visit the Hyde Park Barracks (where they housed criminals in the past), Reserve Bank of Australia, the State Parliament house (Sydney is the New South Wales state of Australia), Martin Place (where one of the scenes of ‘The Matrix’ was shot) and the Royal Mint house (where they minted coins back in the 1950s. Now, its just for tourists). We walked for a long time, cris-crossing multiple streets (he claimed to know all the shortcuts. I, on the other hand, couldn’t keep up with the names of the streets that we were traversing. Appropriate to say, we were traveling one street every couple of minutes for about half an hour). We finally made way to Circular Quay, a point in Sydney where different ferries take people to various beaches, and also a point where you could see Sydney Harbor Bridge and the Opera house in a single frame. We spent quite some time whiling around Sydney Opera house (which by the way, is a magnificent piece of architecture from the outside and pretty ordinary from the inside). We then proceeded to the Sydney Harbor bridge which was on the opposite side of the harbor. At this point, the samaritan wished me luck and that was the last I saw him.

St. Mary's Cathedral

An important tip here. Just adjacent to the Circular Quay, there is a Customs house, which houses a 3-D view of entire Sydney. It is placed one level below the ground, covered in glass (to be morbid, it like a coffin placed in a graveyard, but a transparent one). It gave me an excellent perspective of where I started (Town hall) and how I traveled to Circular Quay. It gives a mental picture so clear, I’d probably never forget it. No map is striking in such clarity. Highly recommended.

I whiled around Circular Quay, hunting for food (by and large, Sydney forbids Vegetarians I guess. Extremely difficult to find vegetarian food. Even if you do find vegetarian food, like water in a desert, options are limited to one. If the restaurant owner is generous, he might throw in 2). I satisfied myself with some pathetic Starbucks veg roll and their wonderful Frappucino before walking along the historic ‘The Rocks’ (the oldest settlement in Sydney, where eventually people were segregated and housed during ‘the Plague that swept Sydney back in the early 1900s) and window shopping for a while. From ‘The Rocks’, I walked along and below the Sydney Harbor bridge and walked towards the Sydney Observatory. At this point, I was extremely tired and decided to head back home.

I walked along a road. I didn’t know its name, but I walked. I walked and walked till my legs started to hurt. I knew, in general that the direction was right toward the station (Town hall), but I severely underestimated the distance. And the distance probably doubles mentally for a food-starved, physically tired person. I finally reached Town hall and then to Artarmon. That day was probably the longest I slept in a long time. Stone-dead-sleep is probably an appropriate phrase.

P.S: Select photos here – https://picasaweb.google.com/105375483626318518949/SydneyAustralia?authkey=Gv1sRgCL-g5u-_spTeywE#

Yes, it was bloody awesome, thrilling and exhilarating.

Yes, the money ($239+$99(video)) was totally worth it.

Yes, it was the best adventure I’ve had till date. I have not done Bungee yet. Even then, I don’t think Bungee will beat this.

And yes, I am still as excited as a little kid with his favorite toy, even after 24 hrs of the skydive.

Enough said.

July 4^th weekend is one of the more eagerly awaited long weekends in North America. While the citizens bask in the summer sun and the glory of their Independence, the desis proudly go about their trips to Niagara Falls, New York and Las Vegas. The bright skies and warm weather brings out the best in people. It surely brought about the craziness in me. I decided to skydive.

Skydiving has been one of my long cherised goals – well, around 2 years is quite long enough I think. As a good desi, I also had plans to trip up to NY and explore the Modern Art Museum for 2 full days. However, due to unforeseen circumstances, I couldn’t make it and ended up disappointed for most of Thursday and better part of Friday. And then, the idea struck and it didn’t take much effort to convince a couple of my friends that the best way to spend such a weekend was to skydive.

We arrived at SkyDive Westpoint at around 3 in the afternoon. As was the case in most of the tourist hotspots in the US on this weekend, we encountered a long queue of people who wanted to skydive too, and I ended up being slotted in the 6′o clock skydive. I killed 3 hrs, don’t ask how.

Skydiving has two streams, so to say. Tandem skydiving, wherein an experienced skydiver straps the novice (me) and skydives. The second stream, is the Accerelated Free Fall (AFF) where the diver jumps all by himself. As you would have guessed, I chose tandem skydiving.

We finally boarded the flight at 6′o clock. My tandem instructor, Mario from Argentina was a crazily funny guy. Before we boarded the flight, he came up to me and said (in a baritone voice) ‘hey, why do you want to skydive on this wonderful Saturday? Guess you didn’t have anything much to do, eh? Ha ha ha ha ha’. I was lost for words. Anyways, the flight started its ascent. 1000 ft, 2000 ft….(an altimeter is part of the gear for any skydiver), my nervousness increased in exponential proportion to the increase in height. Beyond 8000 ft, everything looked very tiny and at this point, I frankly didn’t care if it was 10000 ft or 12000 ft as they had advertised. They decided to exceed customer’s expectations like a good company and the other skydivers started jumping off the plane not until the plane reached 14000 ft. So there. I was incredibly happy and delighted as a customer, only short of hitting the manager of the company. I was shit nervous.

Mario, for his part, strapped me on well and checked the gear thrice. Then he says, ‘Anything goes amiss, don’t blame me. I did my due diligence’ and winks. I suddenly remembered the Fed for some strange reason and by the time I realized we were the last one to get out, right near the exit. Our cameraman was Bret, a young chap who was absolutely crazy about skydiving. And then Mario went, ‘One (move in the front), Two (arch back like a spring) and Three (jump)’ and…we were off the plane.

Thrilled? Excited? Scared?

The first thing I realized once I got off the plane was the cold air that hit my face. It was very cold up there at 14000 ft. The second thing I realized was the speed at which I was falling, more like hurtling down at 120 miles per hr (that by the way is the actual speed at which you fall). I looked down and went ‘Oh shit, Oh shit, Oh shit…aaaaaaaaaa (to infinity)’. I never realized Virginia was so beautiful till I was looking around, seeing the huge lake directly below me, the greenery all around and of course, death in near vicinity and only 10000 ft away. Bret for his part managed to come near us, shoot the video while making various antics along with Mario while I didn’t know whether to laugh, scream or just faint. The view, the speed, the thrill – it was breathtaking.

Off We Go

The freefall continued for about 60 seconds. In those 60 seconds, I screamed like never before, moved like never before and enjoyed like never before. I then understood the slogan for skydivers ‘The Ultimate Thrill’ in its truest sense.

After hurtling about 8000 ft in 60 seconds, as instructed before, I was supposed to open the parachute at 6000 ft. I was lost in the entire thrill and Mario prodded me to open the parachute and I did. If you have never experienced a perfect spring ball action, this is it. The moment I opened the parachute, I was pulled up, probably 300-700 ft, like someone up there pulled me from dropping on the earth. Mario, very gracefully, handed over the parachute reins to me for some time while he cracked wild jokes. After about 5-7 mins of gliding through the air, we were about to land when he took over the reins of the parachute again and landed safely.

The entire experience was totally surreal and exhilarating. It was an experience of a lifetime. Will I ever do it again? Well, it’s anybody’s guess.

Here’s the link to my skydiving video (for some copyright background music reason, am not able to upload it onto youtube).

http://www.motionbox.com/videos/7a9dd8b31e1de2c1f5

]]> http://kirandhanwada.com/2009/07/06/skydiving-experience-the-ultimate/feed/ 0 http://kirandhanwada.com/2009/04/20/travelogue-malaysia-and-singapore/ http://kirandhanwada.com/2009/04/20/travelogue-malaysia-and-singapore/#comments Mon, 20 Apr 2009 05:10:42 +0000 Kiran http://kirandhanwada.com/?p=202 Finally, the travelogue is here!

As I had written earlier in this post, I had been on a vacation to India recently, which also comprised of a trip to Malaysia and Singapore. To quote my IT friends, it was a meta-vacation (vacation within a vacation). One of the most satisfying vacation I ever had! Here is a travelogue of how wonderful those two places were – absolutely loved both of them.

Day 1: We boarded our flight from Chennai to Kuala Lumpur via Air India and landed in Kuala Lumpur early in the morning. It was blazingly hot – akin to burning coal on our skin.

PutraJaya was our first stop in Kuala Lumpur. PutraJaya is a single large area where all Govt. offices of Malaysia are put up. Former PM of Malaysia, Mahathir Mohammed, who governed Malaysia for over 25 years planned and built Kuala Lumpur in a very structured manner and his idea of having all Govt. offices at one place for increased efficiency was commendable. Subsequentlly, we proceeded to Pearl International Hotel for lunch and some rest. We went around Kuala Lumpur enjoying the lovely evening, along with shopping some of the stuff unique to Malaysia. Kuala Lumpur at night is one of the most beautiful, happening and spectacular cities at night. After a hearty dinner at an Indian restaurant, Olive Tree, we crashed on our beds and slept in no time.

Day 2: We toured around Kuala Lumpur – 88 storage Petronas Twin tower, Lake Garden, National Monument, King’s Palace, National Mosque & Merdeka Square – were but some of the many other places we visited in KL. To be honest, nothing blew me away like the Petronas Twin Tower. The  architecture and magniloquence of the two towers connected via Skybridge was overwhelming. Our tour operator had gracefully  procured tickets to the Skybridge. Skybridge is a walkway connecting the two towers at the 41st floor and the view from it was stunning.  All other places were good to see, but nothing very special. One thing about KL that impressed me thoroughly though was its road infrastructure. It is brilliant. Spic-and-span, multiple lanes, structured traffic – lot many lessons to be learnt from such a small country.

Day 3: We proceeded to Genting Highland. Genting Highland is

about 2 hrs from KL and probably one of the most beautiful places on Earth. The tour bus took us to a point which was about 1500 ft above sea level. From there, we took a cable car to  the top of Genting Highland, which was at 8000 ft above sea level. I will, but only make a very feeble attempt to describe the view from the cable car as it proceeded towards its destination. We traversed through clouds, admiring the extremely thick rain forests directly below us,  with a lot more clouds above us, multiple hills around the cable car infrastructure. It was just all very surreal. We eventually reached our destination (initially, we couldn’t even recognize where our hotel was – it was covered with clouds ). Genting is actually famous for its casinos (it’s the place of Asia’s largest casino center) and derives most of its revenues from gambling. I never expected so many Chinese folks out there in Genting, but learnt a new fact that  the Chinese are addicted to gambling and hence the large number. The kind of money they blew in those casinos blew my mind.

Day 4: Genting is also famous for its Outdoor theme park. With multiple rides, for very

young people to the quite old, the infrastructure is massive.

Go-karting was something which I loved to do, one part of the race track actually overlooking the hills. There were some archery dugouts where I tried my hand at archery too. It was the first time I ever held a bow (tried to imagine Doordarshan’s Ramayan ), and it felt very exciting. We proceeded to return, again via the cable car to our base camp, which was 1500 ft above sea level. We returned to KL, via the Battu Cave temple (a huge temple comprising of a Murugan temple, Balaji temple, Hanuman temple, Ganesha temple, Sani temple and Siva temple). We went to the railway station and boarded a train to Singapore.

Day 5: Singapore was a city I always wanted to visit. But once I went around the place, I didn’t come away that impressed. Let’s say, I was not as impressed with Singapore as I was with KL. Probably, living in Singapore is drastically different from just visiting it. Otherwise, there is no reason why everyone should go ooh-aah about it. We visited all places, including City Hall, Parliament house, Raffle hotel, Little India, China Town, Mount Faber etc. We travelled back to our hotel, was bang opposite Mustafa, a huge shopping center. So, there, yes, we shopped that evening and night inspite of all the travel

Day 6: We proceeded to the Jurong Bird park, South East Asia’s largest bird park with over 8000 birds. The variety of birds, the feats they could perform and the entire tropical setting of the park was splendid and remarkable! We didn’t get to see everything in the park

other than the main shows and a train ride. It was already afternoon and we had to proceed to Sentosa Island. Sentosa Island is one of the 4 main islands (Singapore comprises of 60 islands, big and small) and we had to board a cable car again to get to the island. The ride  was for 15 minutes and again, was awesome, most of it over the sea. On the island, I did get a chance to visit the tropical oceanarium, 4-D show, sky ride, Luge (very exciting, more like go-kart, but without the engine and it’s a downhill race) and some of the dolphin shows. Very exciting and entertaining stuff. The highlight of Sentosa, without a doubt was definitely ‘Songs of the Sea’ – a scintillating laser show. I had never ever seen a laser show on such a scale – extremely grandiloquent. The audience were just stunned when the show ended and it took them about 2 min to realize the show was done before the infinite clapping started. Awesomely awesome!

Day 7: We travelled back to Chennai and subsequently travelled to Tirupati and from thereon to our hometown, Hyderabad on Day 10.

All in all, a very memorable and an extremely gratifying vacation trip for me. Months of planning came to fruition to a perfect T. It was just great!!

PS: I realize that I have not blogged regularly for the past one-and-half months. Regular blogging will continue from hereon, most probably twice a week (I have a ton of topics in my head that I need to put on the laptop). Watch this space!

]]> http://kirandhanwada.com/2009/04/20/travelogue-malaysia-and-singapore/feed/ 1 http://kirandhanwada.com/2009/04/03/family-vacation-malaysia-and-singapore/ http://kirandhanwada.com/2009/04/03/family-vacation-malaysia-and-singapore/#comments Fri, 03 Apr 2009 16:55:38 +0000 Kiran http://kirandhanwada.com/?p=196 Note: An immensely self-congratulatory post to sustain my ego at stratospheric levels follows.

 There were some things I wanted to do and there were some things I really really wanted to do.

I wanted to own a house before I turned 25. I did.

I really really wanted to take my family out on vacation to an exotic place this year. I did that over the past ten days. Malaysia and Singapore were the destinations.

(That explains my absence over the past many days. Am currently on vacation – regular blogging will resume in another week or so).

The idea of a family vacation was niggling for quite some time. Family vacations in the past were restricted to local places in and around India, mostly religious or family members’ places. ‘Exotic family vacation’ was the key phrase this time.  However, given the constraints of time and place, the idea kept getting postponed till last November. And then, out of the blue, it went bang – Malaysia and Singapore was narrowed down very quickly. And the rest, as they say is history.

The past 10 days was immensely enjoyable and satisfying.

My professional work is quite interesting for most of the time. Part selling, Part consulting, Part business analysis – the work is a combination of things I am really passionate about and I enjoy it very thoroughly. However, there are certain times when you feel bored and the work is pretty monotonous.

The trip made all that monotonous work seem very miniscule in comparison.

Money for me, is only a means to an end. I have no intentions to hoard huge amounts of money and die rich. Neither do I have any intentions of being extremely rich, having n private flights, x number of mansions etc. What I do want to do is travel around the world, talk to different people and atleast have little conversations with the localites in most parts of the world, if not knowing their cultures or ways of living in depth.

 I have been to the UK, US and now Malaysia and Singapore. Yeah, so ‘One small step for…’ kinds. Let’s see how far this goal gets fulfilled.

I will have a short travel post in the next couple of days. Assorting through the photographs currently.

There are some things in life which are extremely satisfying. When I do look back after 20, 30 or 40 years, this event of a first exotic family vacation will definitely remain high on the list.

If the last trip was ‘heights of planning’ where we planned almost every half day, this trip was one of spontaneity and uncertainty. I had booked tickets to Boston probably a month before the long weekend, while S and Sre dropped out of the long weekend plans due to unavoidable circumstances. The long weekend was vague at the start of every day, not knowing what to do in the next 6 hrs but slowly and surely gaining momentum as the day progressed – it was ‘living in the present’ taken to the extreme. It was fantastic fun – did many things that I never thought I would do, talked about so many topics that I lost count and spent time talking (actually, talking and talking and talking) to one of my best friends for the best part of 4 days.

I landed in Boston on Friday at P’s place. Work-from-home was the order of the day. Little work done and lot of time spent sleeping; it was work-from-home at its best. P and I have been going through quite a busy schedule on the professional front and we decided to explicitly not make this trip strenuous. We decided to put up at Boston itself and roam around to see what we could do best. I met one of P’s friends, T – a very interesting chap and became a very good friend of mine in a short period of time. Friday passed without a whimper but loads of discussion, points and counter-points on infinite topics ranging from physics to engineering to religion and politics (and the discussions continued pretty much for the next 4 days).

As I said, the unspoken theme of the trip was ‘living in the present’. Saturday, we suddenly out-of-the-blue decided, we had to do rafting and if possible, sky-diving. And for this, we had to drive down to Maine since the places near Boston to do such activities were booked for the long weekend. Maine, they say is a very beautiful state in the US, but it was a 5 hr drive from Boston. We decided to ditch Maine. Instead, T played a movie at his place ‘Dan in real life’, which probably would go down as one of the most illogical and insane romantic stories I have ever watched till date. T and P were intensely grossed in the movie, seemingly taken in by the emotions and feelings of the different characters. For me, it was a movie whose only goal was to attain unsurpassed stupidity. We subsequently embarked on our tour of Boston downtown where we took long walks on different bridges and had dinner at the Quincy center (if you are by any chance at the Quincy center, do not have Japanese veg food – ‘pathetic’ is probably a praise for the food. It was rice and tomato ketchup that we had, along with some fried cabbage!) Boston downtown is beautiful at night, especially with the reflection of its skyline on the Charles River. Traffic and noise level were down to a minimum and it was time well spent in the midst of all the chatter and banter.

Sunday was the day of glorious uncertainties. As was the case, we woke up with nothing to do. We suddenly hit upon the idea of playing Golf on a hot Sunday afternoon. The idea sounded exciting, but there was one problem. We didn’t even know the G of Golf. I, for one have never watched nor tried to understood the seemingly boring game of Golf. As Mark Twain said, ‘Golf is a good walk spoiled’. I had agreed to that statement, before I stepped onto the Golf course. We called into one of the beginners Golf courses and learnt the terminology of Golf clubs, balls, tees and pars. The perception that Golf was a costly game was broken when we rented Golf clubs and played a 9-hole course for just $17. With a few important pointers from a good samaritan, we started on our Golf journey which was thoroughly refreshing and exciting although we were playing in 80F heat. I and P matched shot for shot and we got a score of 54, which on a 9-hole course is not bad at all by some standards for absolute beginners. We subsequently proceeded to a Chinese restaurant, had our lunch and decided to go karting. As was the case again, the plan was dropped in favor of another game of golf, this time at a more challenging course (yes, we are totally over-confident ) We played another 9-hole till it got dark, and in the process lost 10 balls and our stamina. It is a tiring game if you have to walk for around 5 miles in the hot sun, learn the game and shoot the ball into a hole (sounds too much of work, but believe me, its an experience to cherish). To round off another day, we watched ‘What Women Want’ and needless to say, Helen Hunt made my day (yes, better than the golf )

The final day of the trip was no different and this time we decided to proceed to the Hopkinton State Park to do kayaking. Hopkinton State Park was about 20 minutes from P’s place. It was a beautiful drive and the Park was slightly crowded. The lake in the Park was vast and there was a strong wind blowing. (I digress, but there were a group of Mexicans and Puerto Ricans who had come along to Kayak in their little-little dresses. My friend said ‘Oh boy! Aren’t they hot? I replied, ‘Not just hot, they are sluuuurrppp, sluuuurpppp hot’ ) Kayaking in the face of strong winds and quirky changing currents was a lot of fun and 3 miles of kayaking had drained us out totally. We went back home and just crashed for 2 hrs. We subsequently proceeded to the Harvard square where we visited the famed Harvard university (which included visiting the Harvard Arts and Science center and Harvard Business school, and touching the toe of John Harvard (which sounded silly to me, considering American traditions!)). P owed me a drink (not really owed, but yeah, I would take pride in calling it that!) and he took us to this place called ‘Top of the Hub’ in the evening. ‘Top of the Hub’ is a bar and restaurant, on the 52^nd floor in Prudential towers, essentially overlooking entire Boston. It was a breathtaking sight at night and a good Italian dinner of Sphagetti and Lasagna made our day.

I had to take leave very early the next day and P and I had little time to say goodbyes. I, for one, enjoyed the trip so thoroughly amidst all the chaos of ‘what to do’ every morning. It was relaxing yet exciting. P was, is and will be an enjoyable company always. The highlight however was meeting T, who was funny, talkative and great company. I do hope he would be a part of many more trips that I and P would be a part of. The long weekend of Memorial day was indeed very memorable.

One of the best things to happen in life is to see the one of the best places on earth with the best of your friends.

It all started with a chance conversation between P and me. How about Orlando during holidays? Oh, yes…sure! Why don’t we cover Miami too? Why not? Oh, by the way, Key West (southernmost point of USA) is not too far. Of course, we should cover that too. And so it began – a journey of 4 friends across 900 miles which included loads of fun, hearty back-slapping and leg-pulling pooled with lots of adventure.

After 10s of conversations about the plan (we had to squeeze the entire plan of visiting 3 cities comprehensively in 4 days), flight tickets, accommodation, places to visit, things to do – we were still not done with our iterations even after we met at Orlando International Airport on 21st night. P flew in from Boston, S from Detroit, Sre from NJ and yours truly from Richmond. It was a holiday we had all looked forward to very eagerly for the past one month – and the excitement was visible in each of our faces. Tired from our respective journeys, yet the curiosity and anticipation of the next 4 days was palpable.

We had decided to drive from Orlando to Miami that night to beat the holiday traffic. It was one straight boring road and barring one incident (where we were almost hit by a vehicle speeding at 140mph) – the journey was rather uneventful, what with each of us catching up on stuff and general banter. But entering Miami overwhelmed us. A place of million dollar homes and billion dollar deals – it looked and felt exactly like that. We drove around the downtown which was beautiful and courtesy our GPS, instead of the hotel – we drove to the Airport gate. Thoroughly frustrated, we finally found our hotel only to find that the room had only 1 bed instead of two. We hardly had any sleep that day and early next morning, we started off for Key West.

The drive from Miami to Key West can only be described as awesome. For most part of the journey, the road is built on the ocean – which essentially meant that the ocean was on both sides of the road – which made for a breathtaking sight. Superlatives flowed from each one at this particular marvel – and many infinite photographs and banter later, we reached Key West only to find that accommodation was in a smoking room – and we were all non-smokers. Cursing our luck on accommodation was of no avail – so much for our thorough planning on accomodation .

Key West probably was the most interesting part of of journey. Key West is essentially the southernmost point of the US – only 90 miles from Cuba. The houses, electricity (wires hanging around), compound walls, décor reflected a heavy Mexican culture rather than the influence of the US. There were short winding roads, people hanging out on the streets, road signs not clearly visible, very warm and affectionate people – coupled with the above facts reminded us of India. The Sunset Cruise on the peaceful Atlantic was brilliant (I digress, but most of the sunset cruises I have been on have been awesome – Mumbai, London and this one – each one will be cherished for a long time to come). You are just so much at peace with yourself, people around you and nature – forgetting about time, work and other pressures in life seems all too natural.

The next day, we did a couple of very interesting things – Snorkeling and Parasailing. Snorkeling is akin to the little brother of Scuba diving. You get into the ocean, not very deep and without oxygen tanks around your back (which you do in scuba diving) but with a pipe in your mouth through which you breathe air. Key West is supposedly the third largest coral reef in the world after the Great Barrier Reef and the one at Bali, Thailand. After the initial struggle with breathing with our mouths, the experience of seeing corals and fish of different variety, colors, shapes and sizes was exhilarating. The shapeless jelly fish (of which P should have a wonderful memory of – it caused a burning rash all over his right shoulder), the long bluish purple coral, three types of fish co-existing under the same coral, creatures of variegated colors – it was one of the few sights that can only be experienced and not explained. When we were back aboard the ship – each one of us felt – ‘anything after this is just plain bonus’ (Unfortunately, our cameras were not water-proof and hence no pictures on this one ). We did Parasailing too in the afternoon. A parachute fastened to a speed boat via a rope in summary is parasailing. Two-at-a-time, we were sent very very high in the sky. The sight from high above the sky, over probably the most violent ocean that exists on earth was just thrilling. (I digress again – but I and Sre high above in the sky agreed upon the fact that this was probably a very good way of proposing to a girl – with a high percentage of ‘Yes’ chances Wanna try? )

We started off from Key West that afternoon to go to Orlando via Miami again. We reached Miami around evening time as each of us wanted to experience Miami downtown (whatever that meant anyways ). But all we could manage was being overawed by the Miami skyline and the skyline’s reflection on the Atlantic ocean. This was also probably the first time for us where we parked our car right next to the beach. Each one of us had an enlightening photography lesson from one, Mr. Gary Mercer, who was very kind enough to teach us about the nuances of photography at night. Slightly wiser than before on digital photography, we started off for Orlando – which was supposed to be our final destination before we broke off to our respective places again.

Orlando for two days went off in a flash – a very very tiring flash at that. Universal Studios, Islands of Adventure on the first day and Sea World on the second day was the scheduled routine. Each of the theme parks was very enjoyable to say the least. However, few of the things stand out in each of the theme parks. Terminator, MIB, Revenge of the Mummy in Universal Studios, Spiderman and Hulk ride in Islands of Adventure and Shamu the Whale show at Sea world are not to be missed. Food and Maps in each of these places are, let’s say – dismal on the optimistic side. Express pass is a must for Universal and Islands if anyone has to complete both of them in one day (and that probably was one of the wisest (or the only wise ) decisions taken during the trip). Again, a discovery – breakfast at Waffle house is brilliant (and no, waffle house is not paying me any advertising money for this – unfortunately )

At the end of the journey, as each of us parted ways – there was lot of silence rather than talk which was the order of the day for the past 4 days. Promises of meeting very soon were in plenty, plans were being made but I guess everyone (atleast me) perceived a sense of disappointment of the fun ending too soon. I am already looking forward for the next trip with you guys – and as they say, journey and destinations are in plenty – the only scarcity being great company like you people .