The Road So Far....
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USA, landed at JFK around 2pm (later heard stories about tony(To NY)), traveled in a Greyhound to Hartford, reached 88, Victoria st, Windsor at 7pm, had dinner at china sea at 8pm, partied till 4am in Springfield and Hartford, slept at 5am, woke up at 5pm, that's was how i bet my jet lag and all this happened on 29Sep2001. After that, life so far has been one hell of a clichéd roller coaster ride.
Be it the road trip(i loved the Volvo S80) from Boston to Miami with Prakash,Rajiv,Yesh or the cliff hanging moments in Grand Teton with Bethu and Gadi or the extremely challenging Half Dome or the nightmarish cold i couldn't handle on Longs peak or the madness of driving non-stop 7hrs just to make it to a party, the skydiving, endless partying, enjoying music at various concerts including the unique Merlefest, the list has kept on growing.
There is so much to say, but sometimes only little should be said:). I continue to live in US and i continue to travel. I keep meeting very interesting people, have made some great friends. Life has so much to offer and i continue living, partying, dreaming...... "Dream on" it's a beautiful life to live.
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Canada, my friendly neighbor to the north. My second experience of entering a country driving, Canada again. The drive from Portland,OR to Vancouver was fun except for the painful 1.5hr wait at the border.
Our vacation got off to a nice firework start, the 30minute display was spectacular on the 29Jul evening. The long walks on Denman street, shopping on Robson street, restaurants on the beach, food court, coffee on the Canada place, the Aquarium, the Totem poles at Stanley Park, the Gondola ride, small hike at Grouse mountain, Capilano bridge, city tour on a 4 seater plane, the beautiful Whistler city and the equally beautiful drive that included Shannon Falls, BrandyWine falls... memorable vacation. It truly is Beautiful British Columbia.
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Brussels,Amsterdam,Paris revisited and more...my revisit to Brussels was pretty much the same as before i.e i fly to/from Brussels, see the atomic structure from a distance while on train. But this time i managed to visit Grand Place in the rain and forgot to see Mannekan and Jannekan piss.
In Leuven, i saw the cathedral again from outside, drank beer with Murali again. Only difference he was with Shalini and i was with Anu.
Next stop, Amsterdam, fun city, great time, be it the never ending long queue at the tourist information to book our hotel on an Easter weekend (apparently the busiest weekend) or enjoying a walk near Dam square or the beautiful Kukenhoff flower fields or walking through the famous red light district it was fun till the end.
Next stop, Paris, this time as promised during my previous visit, i came with a hotel reservation :). Anytime, any day a great and lively city, the walks, the museums, the never ending stories about something or the other from tour guides,
the day and night bicycle tour, the fun filled evenings in the Latin quarters, the royal Versailles, the food (we found a good Indian place where we ate most of our lunch and dinners), the boatride, the walk up the Eiffel Tower and the ...... Beautiful city, ready to visit again.
Next stop, Cannes, the playground of rich, famous, infamous et al, world capital of cinema. Also the icing on our vacation, the clear blue water, beautiful beach, beautiful women on the beach, the never ending walk on the long boardwalk, a memorable end to our vacation.
A visit to the neighboring city Nice, on an warm day made it all the more enjoyable and buffered our back to reality.
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Singapore, my farthest visit to the east side of the world as of now. Ummm!!! It's supposed to be Singapore, i mean the cleanest on the planet right and the shopper's paradise for most people and i guess it is. So far, i can claim(i guess) to have visited two of the cleanest cities/country, Muscat,Oman being the other.
My short 4 day visit was yes, really short. In Singapore, you may end up needing 4 days for shopping itself, especially when you are with your lady love :). Yet, we were able to do the usual visitor stuff like visiting Bird park, China town, Little India, Sentosa... I enjoyed the night life and i definitely suggest enjoying Clarke Quay in the evening including the bungee jump, boat ride on Singapore River and so is my recommendation to enjoy the good Indian Cuisine at the uniquely Annalakshmi.
I definitely will make it a point to visit them at other cities if i ever get there. I am not sure if there is any other restaurant chain in the world with this concept and that too serving such delicious food.
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London, at last i saw Thames river and the most talked about Tower Bridge (London Bridge), spent considerable time on the river on an enjoyable boat ride along the long, muddy and winding waters of Thames up till Greenwich.
Even though i stayed for 4 days in London, did not (rather couldn't) see Buckingham Palace. But had enough time to spend life at Leicester Square, Piccadilly Circus after 6pm everyday and end the night with a sumptuous icecream at the Häagen-Dazs Café.
Among the most famous must see i missed includes Madame Tussad, Tower Hill, Big Ben, Hyde Park. Among the ones i could have missed and instead seen the missed ones include the Oxford trip, what a waste, sat on the bus, got off, had coffee, got on the bus and back again to hit Leicester Square at night.
Life in London was great, eat, drink, be merry, become a fan of Wagamama.
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Canada, my friendly neighbour to the north. My first experience of entering a country driving, unique indeed. Drive all the way north on I-87, talk to some super friendly immigration officers, continue to drive on Autoroute 15, notice that the speed signs has changed from mph to kmph and by the time you start to feel that this is a different country, you are in Montreal.
This is exactly what happened to me and Prakash. Atlast our plan of visiting Montreal of about 2 years came true. Thanks to Amit for making Montreal happen, sad he had to choose a meeting in Atlanta over Montreal and loose out on the fun, priority i suppose! If not for Amit's planning, me and Prakash would have ended up in Vancouver.
Our days and nights in Montreal were spent in the numerous cafes, bars, nightclubs on St Catherine, St Dennis, St Laurent streets. On one of those days post lunch, we decided suddenly to drive to Quebec city and off we went. If not for the minor irritations like a super duper snow storm on the way or the ticket from the super friendly cop, the journey was uneventful. The cop who started the sentence with "my English little" and ended the conversation with "pay ticket", handed us a $225 ticket. BTW, he converted it to US dollars before leaving, said it was about $169 with a smile.
We found Quebec city too touristy for us to enjoy, the knee deep snow did not help us either, so post dinner we started driving back to Montreal, landed at 11pm and off we found ourselves on St.Laurent.
Overall a good break at a great place. One of the things i will definitely remember about this road trip is that we did not click even a single photograph.
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Belgium, though i flew to/from Brussels, i did not see Brussels, all i saw was the atomic structure from a distance from the train. During my stay i managed to see Antwerp, Brugge, Leuven. Couldn't afford to buy the much talked about diamonds in Antwerp, well i had no need of them anyway. I was impressed with the clean streets in Antwerp!!! and was later told by my friend that Belgium is sometimes referred to as the dirty kid in Europe.
Walking down the cobbled streets in Brugge was more fun. The place has a lot of history. I did not see much in Leuven, but was impressed with the cathedral near the bus/train station. All i managed to do was to drink beer with Murali and take a walk around his university.
Thanks to KK, most of what i did in Leuven was walk between the train station and Murali's apartment.
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Holland, land of bicycles, rain, beautiful windmills, i experienced it all. I went cycling in and around Amsterdam,
managed to see the windmill, bought some wooden clogs, had to stand beneath a bridge to avoid getting wet from the pretty heavy showers. All this happened in one day during the 4 hr cycling tour, thanks to Mike's Bike Tour, it was fun. Amsterdam was fun, be it the walking around the smoke filled coffee shops, or in the streets which are much talked about. Seeing those rooms lit with red reminded me of Roxanne, some were lit with blue as well!!! This city has much more than those very interesting
streets, the dam square, the magnificent Rijksmuseum, Museumplein park, Stedlijk and Van Gogh Museum, the streets around Leidseplein. This city rocks but it rains a lot!!!
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Spain, my travel in this beautiful country was just great. It was a joy walking down La'Rambla, when driving down the country side in Almora,Granada, when i saw the beautiful girl in the village restaurant, when i walked in the streets of Madrid.
Is it the food, is it the beautiful countryside or the beaches that made me so happy or it because of the super friendly people, i still do not know. Spain was full of surprises, be it the bull fights in Malaga or the amazing structures of Gaudi in Barcelona or the ancient palace at Alhambra.
I would assume that it is the only country in Western Europe where a Euro has more value. It offered me, the tourist a great satisfaction for the money i spent. After returning from Spain all i had to say was, i have to visit this beautiful country again.
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France, or should i say my Paris trip only, was a relaxed one, except for finding the hotel. Since i had no advance reservation, i had a tough time waiting in line to get a not so good place for a fairly heavy price at the tourist office near Arc de Triomphe. But they were helpful. Next time my visit to Paris will be with a hotel reservation. My days and sleepless nights were spent in roaming around Paris, visiting the places on metro+foot, bicycle again and again and at all hours, like say enjoying on the streets around pigalle metro in the wee hours!!!
Many pages have already been filled on all the monuments, cafe`s, roads and practically about everything in Paris. I have nothing to add about the place. All i can say is i had a great time seeing this lively city, eating good food, seeing a parisian and saying bonjour and most memorable of all seeing Eiffel tower on a full moon day. It was fantastic.
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Poland, my longest stay outside India and US was here in Warsaw, gave me a glimpse of the East European countries and it's culture. Even though most of my time was spent at Chaubinskiego ósma, Warszawa!!!,
i did see a lot around the country, the old town complexes, royal castles in Warsaw and Krakow, medieval underground salt mine in Wieliczka, Copernicus Biographical Museum.... I experienced my first snow fall in Krakow, well i also experienced what cold is for the first time and it was during the month of April.
I couldn't imagine what peak winter could be. Some of the best moments were those of watching the beautiful polish ladies on a bright summer day. The ones that left the most indelible mark are the heart wrenching images i saw at Auschwitz and Birkenau camps, history was really cruel on many innocent people.
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Iceland, i visited this beautiful little island during the best possible season, summer. But summer had it's own problem, it took me a couple of days to adjust my sleep in the land which had 18-20 hour of sunlight.
Reykjavik was really nice, i spent a lot of time walking through the streets, enjoying drinks in the cozy little bars. It was fun. I saw the world's oldest parliament,
the Atlantic fault line, the beautiful Strokkur geyser, Gullfoss waterfall.... I missed the horse riding in the volcanic wilderness and most importantly i missed the Blue lagoon, maybe i will make it one day. For now, i have the beautiful memories of the good times, including the wild drunken ones i had with Finnur and friends.
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Turkey, the birthplace of many great civilisations and a country with so much history. Well, all i happened to witness was the crowd's madness at the equally historical win of Galatasaray against Arsenal in UEFA 2000 final and it was in the country's financial capital, Istanbul. A city filled with historical monuments, known for it's huge population and the beautiful bridge overlooking the Bosphorus.
During my short stay i managed to see the gigantic blue mosque, the unique St.Sophie's church, the beautiful Bosphorus university, the boat ride on the bosphorous.... and even today i smile when i remember the tourists clicking the king's huge shitpot room in Topkapi palace. I had tried to call a friend in Cyprus from Turkey and noticed that calls did not go through. I was not testing the relationship between these countries, the call just happened and only later i realized. It brought me back the memories of people on other side of the fence.
I wish i could have stayed long and seen other places in Turkey. Maybe some other day.
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Sri Lanka, my first country to the east of India. It is half an hour ahead of IST. Yup you are right, it's the IST. Now, back to Ceylon, i should say my stay in this country is one of the memorable ones.
Be it shopping for long hours in Colombo or snorkeling in those golden sand beaches or watching the waterfalls, tea estate in Nuwara Eliya or climbing the amazing Sigiriya (i still wonder how people built those stuff, when i had problems reaching the top) or walking through the streets of Kandy, this little island had so much to offer.
I had a great time throughout, thanks to the lady with the brilliant smile, Nirmaline.
Sadly, the ethnic strife has taken a tremendous toll on these nice people. The recent developments towards peace is definitely a good sign and i sincerely hope that no more bloodshed happens in this great land of Buddha's followers. I am happy to have seen this beautiful country and experienced it's hospitality.
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Oman's, weather was merciful throughout my stay, rather i was lucky to visit Muscat during Nov-Jan when the temperatures were around late 20's.
It has some beautiful beaches, plains, deserts, wadis. I was surprised to hear that towards the south there are areas with lush green vegetation. I never saw anything green in Muscat except for some palm trees. I remember the long drives, partying along with my cousin, most important being the millennium new year's eve.
It was a short stay in this country but an interesting one.
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Cyprus, a small island situated just south of Turkey in the north-eastern part of the Mediterranean Sea,
was the first country i visited outside India. I fell in love with the weather, beach, mountains and the beautiful people. I saw snow for the first time on mount Olympus (highest mountain in Cyprus) and
i still remember the Stavrovouni Monastery with it's beautiful view. I remember the drives with Thomas and his great dog Thessa, the not so long stretch of the beautiful beach and the babes at Limassol, the beautiful Kakopetria village, the Mylos restaurant which served good trout dishes, the roman ruins at Paphos.
When i asked my friend Kypros (greek name of Cyprus), "why are the people on the other side of the fence looking at us", i learnt that Nicosia is the only divided capital on this earth and it happened when Turkey invaded and occupied the northern 37 per cent of the island in the year 1974.
Only then the huge writing TURKEY written on the mountain in red, made sense to me.
I am happy to hear that recently the two halves have been reconnected, so my statement (Nicosia is the only divided capital) now should be read "Nicosia was a divided capital".
Though i bought a bottle of Ziviech, i should say i still haven't opened it. I see it looking at me everytime i go near my bar. It was a long time ago, 9 years, yes long time i suppose.
After my visit the closest i ever got to Cyprus was when i saw it's full shape from air during my flight to Istanbul.
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