A visit to the Great Wall

Well, after a couple of days. Office was routine. Lots of knowledge sharing sessions, some training to the new guys, early supper, post-suffer coffee at Jackie Chan's Tea & Coffe cafe in the Mall next door (with the cute girl at the counter who could speak a smattering of English). Stuff.
However, I did have free weekend and decided to make full use of it. Then I heard that Ricky (who was visiting from the UK) was planning to go for a trip to the Great Wall. So, I decided to tag along. Kevin Jin, a colleague, offered to come along and help us get around. So off we went early in the Saturday morning to see the Great Wall at Badaling, around 70 Km from Beijing.
We hired a taxi for the whole day for around 500 RMB and drove down to the Great Wall. The journey itself was uneventful except for the fact that we had to finish our breakfast at KFC as that seemed to be the only place open so early in the morning. Never had fried chicken earlier than this and the coffee sucked (as expected).
At Badaling, it was freezing cold. The plants around dried in the autumn and covered with frost. We hopped on to the cable car that took us up there.

The Cable car ride to the Wall
Many say that the walk up to the Wall is really exciting and I was all for it except for the fact that we had a few more things planned for the day and would have liked to finish that as well. Walking it up would have meant that we would have to spend the whole day at the Wall.
Anyway, the car ride was not bad though not very exciting. Once at the Wall, we quickly realised that we were not the only ones there :). In fact, it seemed as if half of China was there at the Wall that Saturday!

A stretch of the Wall - full of people!

Anyway, we hanged around and took a few snaps and walked for a distance along the wall till we found an exit. Then we took the slide train down to the other side of the mountain. It was a good experience, almost like a roller-coaster ride. More snaps here on Picasa.

The Great Wall

After the great Wall, we headed towards the Ming Tombs, a mausoleum of the great Ming emperors. However, we saw that this again was far too crowded for our comfort and too expensive as well so we headed back to town.

In Beijing we went shopping to see what does the city offer. I wanted to pick up some Chinese movies and we were guided by other guys in office to this place called Tom's. Tom's was a shady little place in a basement of a building located in a posh locality in Beijing. Once inside, I was surprised to see thousands of DVDs staring back at us from 2 floors of shelves! I need not mention, each one of them was pirated. What's more there were some Hindi movies too! However, I was surprised that I would recognise only Krrish among the movies there. The others were some low budget flicks I have never heard about! Bollywood needs to market itself more fervently. Even the pirates don't know what films to pick up!!!

After Tom's, we went to the Sunny Market next door which is frequented by foreigners. It is like one of those Burma Bazaars we have here in India. Cheap, slick-looking stuff on sale - from Toys to clothes to electronic goods. It is just a 3-4 storey building with small shops. Most of the shopkeepers speak English and if you like to bargain - it is paradise! I picked up some toys - Dash and Violet from the Incredibles, a small BB gun, a helicopter, etc. - and got it all dirt-cheap. My most prized find however, was a small Hasbro Darth Maul figurine. Currently it graces my cubicle and keeps bluetooth viruses and managers away.

Darth Maul in my Cubicle

We split soon after and Kevin was kind enough to drop me back at my hotel. So here's thanking Kevin for spending his entire day guiding us and keeping us from getting lost! You have been very kind Kevin. Thanks for everything.

Mr. Kevin Jin

Beijing Diary - Day 1 and 2

Well, Day 1 was pretty routine and went by before I knew it. It was Matt and Viv's late day in office before they left for London and spent most of the time catching up. Luckily Douglas (Lord Hetherington III, as he prefers to be called) is in the same hotel as I am. So walked it up to the office with him.
The office is amazingly well done. And the coffee maker is excellent as well. I had a hard time to walk an the new resinated pathway though as my new shoes squeak like hell. Then I noticed Matt has the same problem :). Met up with the Chinese team and they seem to be a friendly lot. During lunch, went to the nearby 7-storied electronics store which had every electronic gadget one could imagine of. It was amazing! One could easily get lost there.

Sunset at 5 (view from the office)

Viv had his customary team dinner at this really nice place called The Middle 8 next to the office. Lucian and Ricky (himself a visitor from London) joined the group. Ate very good Hunyan food cooked and served traditionally. I tried my luck with chopsticks again and managed to scrape by a bit. Also tasted the famous Qingdao (Tsingtao) Beer and loved it. It is a bit like Indian lager but less bitter. After an early dinner, bade sad goodbyes to Matt and Viv and moved on with the team to more informal watering hole.


The team Dinner



The other side

Kevin, our local boy, took us around to this place called Lush. It was a tiny little noisy bar full of foreigners. But the prices were great! What's more - the happy hours were from 8PM-10PM! So we sat down for a couple of good noisy rounds of beer along with a few drags of Sisha. I guess I must have had a bottle of beer too many (I remember downing four). It was good to experience a regular Beijing pub - a refreshing change from the formal eatouts we usually tend to go. We had a ice bucket with 7 chilled beers for just 65 RMB (each bottle would cost 12-15 RMB usually). And I noticed that the prices for a Tequila shot was just 5 RMB (this I found unbelievable - that's less than 30 rupees!). Plus we had a very pretty and equally shy waitress serving us. Add some old(ish) English tracks by Oasis and Deep Purple, low lighting and a group of new found friends to this milieu and you can easily see we had a ball of a time.

Beer @ Lush
We took a taxi on the way back to the hotel and I noticed that the prices are really reasonable. The rates were 10 RMB for the first 3 KMs and then 2 RMB per KM. But make sure you have the address of your destination in Chinese. VERY difficult to find your way otherwise. So my advice is to keep a piece of paper with the address of your hotel/office written in Chinese in your wallet. Tattoo it on your chest if you need to, but don't ever make the mistake of straying too far without a homing address in Chinese.


Day 2 started very late. I woke to Doug's call to realise it is office o'clock already. So skipped breakfast and reached office at around 10:15. Day was mostly uneventful, went to a Korean joint for lunch. Got some very good sauted corn rice and pork for 25 RMB. Very quick and easy on the taste buds. Later in the day spent a few hours doing what I was supposed to do here: introducing the Chinese team to our architecture.
Among the highlights of the day was I and Doug getting our Chinese names - I am Ge-Lu Wan.
After office, I went walking around for a few KMs around the hotel looking for some clothes. I forgot to bring an extra pair of jeans so I desparately needed to buy. The Levis store here seems to be quite expensive. The average price here seemed to be in the neighbourhood of 600 RMB (> Rs. 3000, for which one can buy 2 Levis jeans in Bangalore). Quite a shock that. Finally, after roaming around for more then 4 KMs I stumbled across Wu-Mart, a HUGE underground supermarket. After hunting a bit I found a store where the lady could speak passable English and I picked up a pair of cordouroy trousers for just 128 RMB (not branded, of course). Then also purchased a fairly good belt for 40 RMB. And now I am good to go. Ended the day by picking up a bucket-sized cappucino from Jackie Chan's Tea & Coffee store nearby and watching a couple of movies.
More tomorrow.
Word of the day: xiè xie (謝謝) == THANK YOU. Pronunciation: SHY-AY SHYAH - the first SHYAH should start high (sssshhya-h) and the second one should come out quickly, almost abruptly.

Beijing Diary - Day 0

Had to come over to Beijing for a couple of weeks to help the new Beijing office team ramp up. Flew down from Bangalore on Thai (via Bangkok). Pretty uneventful flight, I must say. Good to see that my international roaming is finally activated (and, at the same time, find it utterly useless as the roaming charges are far too high for me to actively use it :P).


It's freezing out here in Beijing! I had a window seat from Bangkok to Beijing and could see the entire approach to Beijing. Man, was that treacherous! Lined by high, rugged moutains and completely enclosed in thick clouds, it reminded me of Mordor. The sun was hardly to be seen (and it was just 4 o' clock in evening!). By the time I landed and collected my luggage, it was as dark as night. Luckily I had asked for a pickup from the airport and this turned out to be a really good thing as the drive was very long.


Checked into Hotel Beijing Sariz International in Haidian. This is indeed a very cool location - right in the centre of the city's Silicon valley, walking distance from my office and in the same building as a mega mall (The Gate). This is a new hotel and, for a change, my room was exactly as one on the website :-

a href="http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/guru.kini/Wanderlust/photo?authkey=Zl4S8icP7c8#5134347113615351650">



So it has been going pretty good (except for the annoying incident of the bell boy who insisted that he wants to give me a massage - an offer I totally refused!).


Beijing comes across to me as a cross between Bangalore and Bangkok. I could spot a lot of vehicles (Maruti Swift and Alto and something that looked like a Baleno). The bus service is reminiscent of the new Volvo BMTC buses back in Bangalore.


The people are friendly for most part but unfortunately there are very few English speaking people. Luckily most restaurants have images of the dishes on offer with a small caption in English so you can see what you are ordering and point to it(no guarantees that you can pronounce the name of the dish, though).


That's all for now. Time to go to office with my bag of chocolates. 再见 for now

London in pics

Some snaps from the trip:-

We went to a Indian restaurant (it was run by Bangladeshis actually).
L to R (around the table): Matt, Richard, Doug, Vinatha, Gleb, Rajeev and Adbulaziz


This glow over the London Eye is due to the last few rays of the Sun. It was around 9:30 PM in the evening and I was enjoying a pint with my colleagues, when we saw this awesome scene


L to R: Rich, Matt, Doug, Doug's sis and her BF..
We were chilling out on a ship-coverted-into-a-pub by the Thames. The London eye in the background

London...

Hmmm...after a very uninteresting turn of events, I have landed in London, in transit on my way to Belfast to attend a technical fest of vendors from all over. Pfftt... Have got just a SLR along and haven't yet started using it hence no snaps to keep you interested.
For some weird reason, British Airways decides to start its Bangalore-London direct flight at 6:30 AM Bangalore time. The part of my brain that sometimes reasons out things tried to shed some light on “why”, but couldn’t get too far. One possible explanation was that this flight timing made sense for people who will be catching another flight out of Heathrow. But logically speaking, even if this is a fact, I guess there will be a fat majority of people who will be travelling to London and not beyond. So such travellers will be inconvenienced by the timing. Or maybe there are forces beyond my powers of reasons that are at work here. Who knows? The net result of catching a plane in the wee hours of the morning was I wouldn’t quite sleep the night before and hence couldn’t quite wake up the following day.
The 10 hour flight was as uneventful as it could have been. Rajeev Tewari, colleague and companion extraordinaire, was seated right in front of me. Apparently our travel class was something BA prefers to call “World Traveller Plus”, “World Traveller” being a minor variation to the seating theme. By far, this was the most inconvenient international flight I have boarded (oh forget the IA/AI ones, they should not count). Good that I was too tired to complain. I must have slept 8 out of the 10 hours that I was airborne. Lousy choice of in-flight movies didn’t give me any extra reason to stay awake either. The crew was OK, nothing to add in favour or against them. My new found friend, Lawrence Simpson, dropped by to chat a couple of times and that kind of broke the monotony while I was awake.
The emigration check was not too much of a problem and the official seemed to be quite keen on the “Shantaram” novel that I was carrying. But I must advice that if are travelling to the UK, you better make sure that you have your papers in place. Something there gave me the idea that they won’t exactly roll out a red carpet if you fail to produce any document that they ask for.
A kind looking Spanish taxi driver was waiting for me outside with a Toyota. I jumped onto the front seat to get max view of London as we drove down. Finding Mercure, the hotel where I was put up in, was not a big problem. The driver seemed to Southwark Street and spotting Mercure doesn’t require too much of an effort.
I checked into the room, dumped my luggage and decided to trace the way to our office, lest I have to grope my way through next morning. On the way I thought I will pick up a bite to eat. Unfortunately, I came to know that the people here in Central London take their Sabbaths a bit too seriously as I could not spot a single joint where I could have something to eat. Sure, I was not exactly look at the right place. Maybe I should have gone down the road connecting Waterloo station to Southwark Station. But hey, I am in the middle of a business district with lots and lots of restaurants and pubs flanking the street – but NONE of them were open.
Anyway, I spotted the office easily and made a few phone calls to friends and decided to loaf around till I find some pub. And that I did soon. A neat place called The Stage Door, which derives its name, I guess, from an actual door of a nearby theatre (Old Vic by name). It was a smart little English pub and I decided to try some cider. To be on the safer side, I decided to settle for a half-pint for starters but I kind of liked the taste of cider and gulped down another half pint pretty soon. All this as I was watching a match between Australia and Brazil. Good match that one. But the pub was getting a bit loud and boisterous and I was feeling a little out of place alone, so I decided to retire back to my room.
After a pint of cider and some good live football action, you would expect any man with blood in his veins to be charged up in life about things. Well, I must be a lesser mortal as I came back to the room, saw some of the match that remained and slept again!!!! I think I woke up sometime at 8 o clock in the evening, but I saw it was quite bright and went off the sleep again. Next day, I was told by a friend that I didn’t even wake to receive calls!!!

First day at work
Next day, I woke up at 5. And I knew there is no way on Earth I would go back to sleep, not even if I drugged myself. I had enough sleep to go without any more for a week. Anyway, toying with what needs to be done, I finally managed to find my way to the bathroom. After a 15 min struggle with the stubborn shower, I finally managed to tune it to the temperature I wanted.
Next, I dressed up and headed for breakfast. They were charging me around £14 for it, so obviously I expected a full-scale English Breakfast. However, I was quite disappointed to see that there is only cereal and toast available. Surely, there would be bacon and eggs and stuff but there wasn’t anyone to prepare it for me. The waitress waltzed by my table once and filled my cup with some coffee, but that was the last I saw of her. Maybe tomorrow I would catch her and demand a proper breakfast. Watch this space.
So, after some toast and butter and cereals with cold milk, I dashed to the office and soon realised that it could be quite difficult to get into the office without an access card. All my well wishers had forgotten to mention that one needs to pay a visit to the Boundary Row office to get an access card done. Anyway, I had reached there by 8:30, so I suppose I didn’t have too many choices this early. Luckily, I bumped in Alison, who works for Project Office and had been to Bangalore a few weeks back. So that could have given the security guard some assurance that I am not exactly here to steal Symbian property. After some difficulty, I managed to reach the 5th floor but the local security guard was missing. So I decided to hang around till someone came by and a lady sure did come by pretty soon and helped me.
As I was wondering where on Earth does my team sit, I came across a familiar face, that of Laurie – my Mentor-Friend with whom I have had a few good discussion on life, universe and defect status in general. So we did finally meet and he showed me around. Vinatha was also at her desk (which was next to Viv’s).
For the better part of the morning, I was jostling with the Lotus Notes account on my (borrowed) laptop and meeting people as they walked in. The day, by itself was uneventful, though I was to fill in for Graeme as the Defect Co-ordinator for the day. Doug took me and Rajeev over to Relax@Symbian, the cosy (if tiny) restaurant on Boundary Row. I had some chicken curry and rice, which was quite filling, IMHO. Post-lunch we walked down to the riverside, as Doug showed us a few landmarks around.
On return, I was dragged into surprise meeting (since Graeme wasn’t in) and I had to quickly run through dozens of numbers (all of which I forgot by the time the actual meeting started). I don’t think I have been so ill-prepared for any meeting. Anyway, no violence ensued and I moved on to another meeting (the OMA Test Fest meeting). We spend an hour discussing what needs to be done and what went wrong last time, etc.. Not that we got too far with it. But at least it broke some ice, especially with David with whom neither I or Rajeev had interacted much.
Did nothing much through the day, just routine DC work. Left by 6 and went to the riverside with Rajeev and his friend Sanjeev who had shifted to the UK office recently. Tried some Guinness but it wasn’t as big a hit as last day’s cider with me. Anyway, I played along and after spending a couple of hours at the pub, headed back home.
At the Waterloo station, I picked up a HUGE cup of latte which was too much coffee for me to handle. Felt like throwing up all of it by the time I reached my hotel room. Not being very hungry, I thought I will pick up a couple of chicken wings to munch on. I entered some dingy joint off Southwark Station where I found this gang of Indian waiters from God’s own country (Kerala). The main guy was clearly quite excited to see a fellow Indian and before I knew it – he supersized my take away with a couple of extra pieces. Thanks, bro.
Walk back to the hotel was not very exciting either, nor have been the last 2 hours that I have spent in the room. Wondering what to do. That should explain this overlong account of my day. Till later (with hopefully more exciting stuff to report). Cheers…

Goa reprise!

OK, picture this. You just back from a 9-day road trip, covering half of India’s west coast from Mangalore to Goa and up to Mumbai…you have hardly come out of your holiday mood and have just started paying attention to work…you have already spent a major chunk of your salary on the last trip and have hardly anything left to keep you going through the month…suddenly, a gang of over-enthusiastic and unpredictable friends plan another hurried Goa trip – what would you do? No way – right? You have work piled up to your nose; no need for another holiday and (most importantly) no money. No one would blame you if you call it off. That’s common sense.
However, I was never blessed with common sense. I decided to toss a coin and decide. As fate could have it, the toss decided that I should go and there I was – packing my bags again with my traveler’s cap on.
The chief culprits who lured me into this were Girish Shettigar and Pushkar, who countered all my objections and tried to associate this new trip with all that should ever matter to the Brahman and the world in general. Bhatti was also one of the chief collaborators in this scam and I guess it was difficult to fight such a formidable set of instigators. Anyway, the toss further settled the issues and we all started early from office on Friday, the 10th of March 2006 to catch the bus to Goa. Apart from the 4 of us, there was Roshen Cariappa, Bhatti’s ex-colleague who had joined us once in a Goa expedition long back (in 2002).
We took the Paulo travels bus from Bangalore and trust me, it is the worst possible ride in the world. I mean, I have done the Mangalore-Panjim stretch on a no-frills, non-luxury Govt. bus (which is actually a tin can with wheels and red paint smeared on it), but this one beats it hands down. The bus was packed with an unbelievable number of tourists – both foreign and Indian. You move your limbs and they invariably crash into some stowed away luggage or some random body part of a tourist. Man, it was CRAMPED! And this ordeal lasted for a full 15 hours! I will take the train or the flight next time.

Anyway, we hit Madgaon finally and we planning to go to Calangute, which is our favorite place in Goa. However, on the way, Bhatti had a brain wave and suggested that we strike camp at Kolva this time. Avoiding further discussions, we decided to toss and leave such complex decisions to fate. Bhatti was overjoyed when the toss favoured him. This is how we headed towards Kolva.

Kolva!
Among the more popular beaches in Goa, I think Kolva has the best stretch and very fine white sand. However, it is pretty laid back compared to the effervescent Calangute which seems to bustle with life and activity. A side-effect of this is that finding accommodation of your choice is a tad difficult in Kolva than in Calangute. We spent a good 2 hours trying to find a reasonable piece of lodging and finally had to settle for a hotel about 300 metres from the beach. After dumping our luggage we started off to the beach (the fastidious ones actually took a shower before starting. A shower while holidaying?- Well, I ask you).

Lazing on the beach


Me - almost asleep!

Pushkar used his knowledge of demography quickly announced that we should move as far away as possible to find a fairly deserted beach shack that will charge us reasonably. Well, you didn’t have to be Einstein to agree with him and so we headed south and walked on and on till we finally found a fairly decent shack that we all liked. This, folks, was the “Papillon” (spelling as is); and this was going to be our roost for the entire trip.

Me: climbing down the Papillon steps

At the Papillon, an enthusiastic Bengali import by the name Pradeep attended to us. The whole day we did little but drink, dive into the sea and eat sea-food exotica (Kingfish masala, Prawns and Mayonnaise cocktail, fried prawns). And trust me when I say this: there are very few better ways to spend time. Our sun-lounging sessions came to an end with the sunset and we decided to move on for dinner and we wandered off to the northern part of the beach. This was a big mistake as we bumped into this flashy joint called Silver Spoon or something and one of us ordered crab. It turned out the dish was just a couple of tablespoons of crab-meat in an empty crabshell and it cost us 650 bucks! Most irritating part was that they were closing the place down (it was just 9:30 PM!) and we had to hurry with our bar orders. Stay away from this place.
At the end of the day we realized that we didn’t have a proper meal through the day. And Roshen, having slept most part of the day, declared that he felt a real vacuum in his stomach. Anyway, there was little we could do so we suppressed our hunger pangs and vowed to make it up the next day. The sunset was awesome, as always...


Boat


The sun goes down on Pushkar and Bhatti






Pushk: Walking into the sunset


Moon rising over Kolva: I took all the sunset snaps, turned around and saw the moon rising! Cool, eh?

The next morning was nice and pleasant and we headed towards Papillon again (stopping at a mediocre shack for breakfast on the way). Pradeep and his crew welcomed us and we all settled down for another sunny day by the beach. We did absolutely nothing and boy! what a blissful day it was! We were not the only regulars on the shack. There was this English backpacker named William (Billy Bones being his “art-name”), a carpenter and designer by profession and a musician by inclination. He was actually lounging in the shack for a week then and had actually composed a song on the shack. He mentioned how he witnessed a movie shoot during a recent visit to Kerala and how the filmmakers lured him into acting for a scene in the movie. He was bloody impressed by the general reception he received in this part of the world. Well, “Athithi devo bhava” as we put it. You are most welcome to Indian hospitality, William.

Billy Bones

One for the record: The gang with Bill's guitar!


Lunch @ Papillon

We packed our bags well before sunset as we had a bus to catch from Madgaon at 7:30. While waiting for the bus, we picked up a few packs of Bebinca, a Goan sweetdish made out of eggs – a must try delicacy.
It was a tiring journey back by the same Paulo Travels bus. Next to me was this Indo-Swedish girl called Maya Verma, who was on her way to Pondicherry to meet her parents and relatives. She was an Economics student who had called off everything and decided to pursue art (paintings and sculpture). She was as appalled at bus as we were and seemed happier when I told her this is probably the worst she would get to see now.
We reached Bangalore late in the morning and shuffled off to our respective offices. In all the excitement, none of us realized that it was Girish’s birthday! Anyway, I guess we more than made up for it later on.
So that was it. 2nd Goa trip in 2 weeks. Some times the fun just goes on and on. Thanks guys for a good time.

The Great vacation - Goa

I and Vikram reached Dakshin Kannada (D.K or South Canara) early in the morning. DK was beautiful, as always in the dawn. The gentle first rays of the sun chasing away the layers of mists over the lush paddy fields, the first light illuminating rivers and canals by the highway.
Reached home to have a sumptous breakfast of boiled banana and ghee with the staple idli and thick coconut chutney. There are really some things money can't buy. :)
Mom was thrilled to see her do anmol ratans back home together and embarking on a hazardous journey together. After breakfast, I headed towards the town and booked my tickets to Goa - decided to leave the same day. Mom was not very happy, of course.
The TV channels were rife with the Jessica Lal murder case. NDTV is pursuing it now "24x7" like. Vikram lapped it up as fast as he can.
The stay, otherwise was quite uneventful. The evening was a pain as we soon realised that opting for the bus over the train journey was a big mistake. The bus was a certain Mahabaleshwara stable and horrible would be too mild a word to describe it. I guess the body of the bus would have been built somewhere during the reign of Tipu Sultan. For some reason, the area around our seat smelt as if the the Sultan's men were given the liberty to let their bladders go there and no one's bothered to clean it since.

Go...aaah!
After an harrowing journey to Panjim, one that left my olfactory senses permanently scarred, we ventured to see what is the best way we can reach Pune from Goa. However, over breakfast, we agreed to such logistics are not of acute interest, especially when the Sun, Sand and Soma are beckoning with their arms wide open.
Vikram, being the bushy-tailed-dreamy-eyed dude he is, had some grand plans for Goa. His idea was not far removed from hiring a grand villa overlooking a beautiful beach with some scantily clad women serving us food and drink. After a few reality checks over idli and coffee (both sucked!) I convinced him to settle for a rented room near the beach on Calangute.

"Decent enough place"

This time we managed to find a decent enough place overlooking the sea. Incidentally it was Carnival time in Goa and there were hordes of tourists. And trust me, there was nothing remotely reminiscent of Baywatch anywhere along the beach stretch. Hot bodies are groomed and reserved for television; in the real world one would just find overweight, confused-looking tourists absorbing in the warm weather. We had a 2nd breakfast at the beach and decided to spend the day on the sun-beds that. For company, I had picked up Srinivas Ramanujam’s biography by Robert Kanigel which was fast becoming a good read. I tried to introduce Vikram to the short stories by Roald Dahl but it didn’t quite impress him and he ended flicking my book from me.

Vikram doing pushups :)

Vikram with his artwork

My attempts at art


Drinks and dips...


Lunch is served

...and in between drinks and dips, I spent some time talking to the lady managing the shack and the dude that served us. I wanted to know more about the Carnival but they could enlighten me only so much. It turns out that the Carnival thingie is a fairly new trend (20 years old) and is supported by the Goan Government to boost tourism. A no. of Goan towns participate; each with floats and shows that highlight the town’s specialty. Typically this fest lasts for 3-4 days and there is general gaiety everywhere. Good time to be in Goa (if you don’t mind the crowds)


The La Maria Shack @ Calangute

Kids playing in the sand

Fruit Seller

Being in Goa this time was not easy. Goa stands for all the good times we had when we were in college. Almost every place, especially in and around Calangute, has some memory associated with it. Association is just a painful thing to get over; wonder why do we “associate” it with intelligence.


Beautiful Goan sunset

A Red carpet to the sea

Couple watching the sunset

By dinnertime, both of us got mighty drunk and walked down to the Calangute market; Vikram was quite drunk and wanted to eat have some Goan Pork. Unfortunately, we had great difficulty finding a decent enough place for eating. So we settled for some sea-food platter and Vikram quite enjoyed it. After that, we went to check out the song-and-dance jamboree (keeping up with the Carnival spirit) at the Calangute football grounds. It all started fine, but then some local punk DJ came and spoilt it all by playing really cheap trance music. It totally put me off but Vikram seemed to swing to it naturally. On the way back, he tried to update me why I should shed away my inhibitions and give in to the music and dance. I was like, “Yeah, right bro.”

The carnival


Vikram (in black) dancing away

Heart to heart with little bro
After this we went back to drinking at our room and I had a heated discussion with Vikram on the concepts of civilisation. I was quite appalled when he said he thought we, as a race, are uncivilised. However, I couldn’t get a satisfactory answer when I asked him to define what “civilisation” is. Anyway, those were his thoughts and these are mine; and “never the twain shall meet”. J. It was very late when we decided to call it a day.

After a late breakfast, we packed our stuff and said goodbye to Mr. Fransisco D’souza and started off to Panajim to arrange for the Pune journey. The booking was done and we realised that we still had hours to kill before we start. So we headed towards the city and did some shopping – bought Coffee Liqueur, wines and some fenny. Seriously guys, shopping in Goa (or anywhere else) is such a bloody pain. Also we managed to get into Ritz, which is supposed to the best place for sea food in the city. Vikram asked for a sea-food “thali” while I feasted on rice and Shark Ambotik; we were not disappointed – do check out the place if you are around.
Finally, it was time to go and we took off to Pune in a Kadamba Volvo – it was decent enough journey except for the lousy “Maine pyaar kyun kiya” movie that was playing.
So that was the Goa trip and it ended with us reaching Pune (and finally Mumbai) for Meeta's (my bro-in-law's sis') engagement. The Pune-Mumbai episode should be covered later (hopefully) in a separate blog entry. Cheers till then...

The Great Vacation - Prologue

Looking back, it has been years since I took a vacation. As in a REAL vacation. I have been touring places to attend weddings, anniversaries and engagements of late. In fact, all the trips last year were dedicated to events like these. Finally, with the office stress getting on to me, I decided to call off everything and hit the road. Vikram, my younger bro, had just finished his MBA exams and wanted to chill out till he joins his job in April - so he too decided to join. My good friends, Mr. Pushkaraksh Shanbag and Mr. Nitin Tiwari sounded very enthusiatic about the trip and expressed their desire to join us, however as usual, they ditched at the last moments. With friends like these....
Incidentally, Meeta (my bro-in-law's sister or my sister's sis-in-law or...you get the idea) was all set to get engaged to Vinod Mallya of amchi Mumbai on the 3rd of March. So we planned our trip so that we can cover this event as well. I took a whole week off and booked my tickets. The itenerary was: Bangalore-Udupi-Goa-Pune-Mumbai-Bangalore. Vikram was to stay back in Pune for some more time.
So we started our odyssey on Sat, the 25th of Feb and headed to our parents' place in Udupi. The rest of the entries in this series cover what happened after this flag-off...