Trip to Kuching

Kuching, in east Malaysia is around 2 hr by flight from KL airport. We took a late evening Malaysian Airlines flight from KL. The flight was uneventful except that there was only one Asian vegetarian food even though I and friend had ordered for the same. The key part on landing is that you again have to get the passport stamped again. This i heard is true for even Malaysian citizen.So in case you are travelling carry the passport with a valid Malaysian Visa.

We stayed at four points by Sheraton which is a decent hotel though my expectation from Sheraton was quite higher than what we got in their premium rooms. This is cheaper than many hotels in the city center. As city center is not very far off it makes sense to stay here. They also provide airport drop at specified time.

I was there for a day and got only few hours after the meeting and spent time on trying out local food items. We tried 3 layer tea which was really good at a shop right opposite the hotel. Strangely the name of the store was "Bombay store".

We also relished on another food common to this area known as the layer cake. It come in many flavor including the Horlicks flavor. The original one seems to be some Indonesian flavor but we ended up trying some sweet-and-sour sort of flavor but named in their local language. Worth a try if you are there as there seems to be lot of cake stores around. This also was in the market in front of the hotel.

The Dhaka revisit

This time i want to exclusively spend time mentioning on the Hotel we stayed. As the only place we were there other than the Customer meeting was at Eastern Residence Hotel. If you are looking for a right decent hotel in Dhaka while on official travel, this may be an ideal choice. If you take rooms in a group say 2 or three then there is a drawing room sort of space which can be used used exclusively by your group. This drawing room has a couch, TV and a dining table. This gives you a feel of being at home than being at a hotel. Rooms are good and decent with a separate AC per room. It can get quite hot in Dhaka and is difficult to stay without an AC even for person like me who is from temperate region.

They have this unique fruit basket and a welcome drink which i have not seen in any other hotel. Their breakfast is included in their hotel package. The breakfast is decently spread with fruits, breads, roti/dals (If you are an Indian foodie please ask for red roti as common roti in Bangladesh is made of Maida), cereals etc. Better take coffee as somehow my tea taste does not find tea here attractive. They have room service and food quality is good, so we never bothered to go out of the hotel for food any other time as well. Another attraction if you are in company group is to have a group dinner among yourselves in the drawing room with no chatter of any typical public restaurant.

I am here after two years and it seems Dhaka has improved by leaps and bounds. They are getting ready to host the ICC T20 World cup in 2014 and expects to get a lot of infrastructure project completed by then. So till then you see some roadblock around and get a local taxi driver who can take you through inner gullies of Dhaka to the place of meeting else you may spend more time on road. The one thing you cannot miss in Dhaka is the sheer number of cycle rickshaw and it seems they can take you even beyond 5 Kms. We are seeing new public transport buses and a lot of beautification activity from airport to lakes and slowly it is feeling like any bustling developing city in India.

The revisit also was different as I used Biman Bangaldesh as most of the Indian aviation industry in out of Dhaka except for Jet Airways. There was a huge difference in the pricing and hence opted for Biman though i had not used it before based on feedback from my colleagues. The onward journey was uneventful and even i had made up my mind to use it henceforth. There was a delay of over an hour but thought it is ok for the difference in pricing. The return turned to be quite an eventful journey.

"Inshallah We will be in Kolkata in 40 mins"... I thought is like any other prayer but they literally meant it. We were on BG 091 flight from Dhaka to Kolkata on Friday June 16th 2012 which was delayed for take off from Dhaka. I had a connecting Indigo flight from Kolkata to Bangalore at 2PM a decent transit time. After announcing that the flight is about to land at Kolkata, there was a cryptic message telling that "Due to technical reason, we are going back to Dhaka". To Dhaka!!  As one passenger was questioning the decision as like me he also had a connecting flight, the airhostess summed up the seriousness of the scenario by saying "First let us land safely before deciding about future course of action". There were hectic activity in the cockpit with two biman personal who was also in the flight.

We were on the way back to Dhaka. I could see the face of a Airplane personal and it showed the confusion in his mind and i hope all were think "Inshallah we will land in Dhaka". After landing in Dhaka, we were told about the technical issue. The issue was landing gear did not open at Kolkata and hence they returned the flight back to Dhaka. Not sure how it opened in Dhaka and not in Kolkata. Happy to have landed uneventfully. I had a chat with air personal and he told me they had similar issue with this flight in 3 days back. 3 days back and still they are flying it!! I do not know if they have anything like aircraft regulator like DGCA, FAA etc. May be their fear of DGCA might have made them fly back or the cost involved in repair in India as one passenger put it. But the statement also made me slightly happy as this is not the first time Biman air team was handling a similar situation.

Then back in Dhaka by the time i made the call the Indigo flight could not be cancelled and i have lost 9K and then any alternate direct flight was 22K. Am I going to pay more than what i saved? Luckily there was a connecting flight by Jet airways through vizag from Kolkata to Bangalore which was 12.5K. So atleast it is still cheaper than the Jet option had i booked it. Having no surety on Biman will land in Kolkata and even was afraid if they do not fly the same flight which had issue again. Finally they announced that by 1.30PM there will be a new flight from Dhaka to Kolkata and it did fly exactly on time for a change and with the same crew. This new flight took us to Kolkata without any issue. We heard some sound from the engine side but the crew said it is a small issue and the sound will go away after it flies. We had to trust the crew. Kudos to the team which is keeping the airline flying even with such bad machines.

Earlier at biman counter to get my boarding pass even though i had no check-in luggage took me 30-45 mins as there complete mess on who handles what. failure of computer reservation. A queue where i have waited for 15mins just closed itself saying there is some software glitch. We had to go to other queue which were already very big, Some words in Bengali and angry passengers made them to start a new counter. Then i was in a immigration queue where i found that i was in a bangladesh passport queue though it was written foreign passport. They took me to the right queue but then i find that the immigration person telling me that my flight is missing in his system. Missing .. when the flight is just 40mins from now.. Finally he found it and my passport was stamped.

But to all the passenger thinking of flying in Biman bangaldesh and its saftey record, think 100 times before flying it as it may never land!!

Trip to Chattarpur Temple, New Delhi

We had a sales conference at Tivoli Gardens, New Delhi. The property which is very near Chattarpur Temple made few of us making plan to visit the temple which had some beautiful architecture and some of the most imposing structures in that area.

Trivoli Gardens Hotel

The Trivoli property itself was a good one with some rooms being set up inside a train. Seems to be a favorite location for Marriage as we saw a lot of them written down in the entrance.  

 The Chattarpur temple was built by  Baba Sant Nagpal ji which i read after i came back from the visit. In case you need a detailed information on this temple pl read this blog. We went there on a taxi on the way back to Delhi Airport. But it seems there is a Chattarpur metro station near by and from there you would need to take an autorickshaw. Built over a huge swath of land with different temples dedicated to different god including the colossal statue of Hanuman shown below. 

I also find for the first time in a North temple a painting showing Shiva with three son- Ganesha, Murugan and Ayyappa.

The Hanuman statue is on the other side of the road and you feel the size of the statue only when you are near by. I got a Hanuman chalsya and some prasad from a pundit near the statue. 

My First Trip

This was my first tour from school. Sadly there was no blogger at that time neither i had a comp. Except for this photo, i do not remember anything :)

Concrete jungle vying for mindshare with greenery

This was my first visit to Malaysia though i had transited it before. So the airport was not new though the country was :) . The only thing i knew was of the Petronas twin tower and a large Tamil community which stays there and had not done any google search to see what all to visit as i had only few days and may be just an evening to roam around. Hence thought i will do a "Off-the-beaten" Track visit based on the feedback of the people i meet out there in Malaysia.

Malaysia visa was obtained without much fuss as all they needed was a completed aplication form with bare minimum details and few photographs along with an invitation letter. As our company had an office, we applied for a one year visa and i got it within a week. It was a multiple entry visa with 30 days maximum per visit.

I took the Malaysian Airlines as the popular Air Asia was fully booked for the day i had to travel. Malaysia Air with a airline code MH, which they proudly mentioned as "Malaysian Hospitality", the airline flight was uneventful. I slept for the entire trip as the flight starts at 12.45. There was though a slight delay in boarding due to late arrival of flight. I remember airhostess coming with the food and drinks but i just slept through and they were not rude to wake me up.

I arrived in KL in the morning and had a huge bag of gift to carry for the office. I had to pay tax as it seems only gift goods are allowed for diplomats and i was a normal visa holder. They do not take card and hence had to exchange all the $ into Malaysian Ringget at airport even though i knew it will be low rate. Even the Airport taxi needs credit card with a built in chip else it had to be paid in cash. All my currency was exchanged in airport itself at MYR 2.89 per $1. The rate at a midvalley exchange was MYR 3.03 for $1. It costed me MYR 74 to reach the city. There is a cheaper option to use KLIA train to KL Sentral which is a shorter trip and costs only MYR 35 (though you may need to take a cab from there to your hotel).

View from Cititel Hotel

Cititel Midvalley where i was put up was a decent hotel though rooms were small (By Asian standard not european studio one though). As i was alone it was not such an issue. It was MYR 580 for two days. This hotel has two malls along the sides and you could enter the mall through the hotel. This is a clear attraction for the hotel as you could walk out of the hotel to the mall in AC comfort and try different food. 

The first food i had in the mall was at Secret Recipe a huge chain in malaysia which seems give uniform tasting food across all its chain location. I tired some vegetarian dish wit'h some soya nuggets and peanut sauce along with a rice which i think had maggi noddles taste maker :). Food was good and a nice option for Vegetarians in Malaysia.

Louis Vuitton way of selling a bag!!!

Had few meeting that day and then came and slept after having some pineapple rice + omlette and walking inside the midvalley mall. If you enjoy shopping a nice mall to roam around and buy. I checked a samsung google note which was MYR 2000 which is same as the price in India. Prices were more or less same as in India.

Petronas lit at night

Without lights before sunset

On the second day evening after the days meeting, went to see the Twin tower the must see place if you are in KL. It takes a different looks with and without the lights. So spend the evening there when the building does a chameleon.  I took the LRT to KLCC from where when you exist you see the colossal tower. They have a visit to the top but by the time i reached tickets were all over. I was told they provide 960 tickets per day and it starts selling from 8.30 AM. If you want to get ticket you have to be in the queue by 7 AM. I walked around the small patch of greenery surrounded by the concrete jungle but it is worth seeing esp when the twin tower puts on the light.

I reached back KL sentral and i was told there is a metro to midvalley and wrongly i took it as a monorail. I walked down to monorail through some narrow alley as the linking of KL sentral to monorail is still ongoing. The metro system in KL is messed up as there is no linking of the various modes of metro inside the city. There is a KLIA ekspres, Transit, Kompart (semi-government run and is the cheapest with tickets still being collected in print), RapidKL etc. The search for monorail ended me in an Indian street and i went in to a North Indian Hotel , Gem. The food was ok and the "Sambaram" was no where near the one we have in India. The hotel was neat and service courteous. Finally found out that Kompart is the only train from KL Sentral to Midvalley. Met a person while waiting for the train when he mention that Indians are doing good in  Malaysia with Petronas, Esso and Maxis being owned by Indian descender and that plantation are run jointly by Indian and Malaysian driven mostly by saving in taxes. 

The return day as like in most of my trips earlier met a Keralite from Ottapalam. He had not gone there after his father passed away and was a malaysian citizen driving me to work. He had all of his son working in business and has not many people in contact in India. He was saying that 3 generations since they moved from India they have just jelled with the country marrying into the locals.

Evening spent some time in brookstreet Little India and had a good dosa at saravanna bhavan near to KL Sentral.

Reached airport by checking in at KL sentral itself after taking a KLIA Ekspres Ticket. This allows you to even check-in your luggage right at KL Sentral before boarding the train. This is there only for few flights and not for AIr Asia. Took the late friday flight MH 192 to be back in Bangalore by 11.30 PM. 

Travel by Delhi taxi and the Hope in Bihar

This is a travelogue with a difference. Though my travel is through Delhi but the view in the travelogue is of a village 1000 of miles away in Bihar through the voice of my driver while he takes me meticulously through the airport gurgaon road in Delhi. I am sure the person driving me will never wite this travelogue as he has much hard work pending to keep his house and family running.

I started the journey from T1 after getting down at Delhi after a uneventful spicejet flight from Bangalore. Had the food at "Foodies" right in front of T1 Arrival and then proceeded to the pre-paid taxi counter. There as usual he allocated me to a vehicle, which i did not have a choice waiting for me in Platform 7. I proceeded to board it and found it to be an Old Maruti 800 which i was thinking may be valuable for just its vintage. As soon as i boarded i asked the drivers name as i do usually and asked him where he was from. I heard he is from Bihar and then after the mandatory noting down of registration number by police we proceeded towards Gurgaon, Udyog Vihar. This is a short journey unless i end up in some traffic jam.

Bihar as usual has mixed feeling in my mind. I had never visited it but had read in report after report and through my good bihari friends as a world lost due to want of leadership. Recently i have read bihar in positive light after Nitish Kumar took over. As i am very circumspect of our media especially with the coverage on aam aadmi i really wanted to travel to the drivers village thorough him unadulterated with any bias.

He told me that he stayed in a village 50 kms away from Patna. He mentioned to me that it means 2.5 hrs journey from Patna due to pot-holed roads and rickety vehicle. Now he says the roads are as good as the road i was riding on and it takes just an hour. He was showing me that though his vehicle was of 1999 make it was still good because roads in Delhi are good. So it is not about rickety vehicles but the heavy toll due to maintenance which makes the vehicle bad. I also remember 20 years back there was just one rickety vehicle named "Simha" to my hometown from Palakkad and i also used to take an hour for a 10 Km ride.

Then i asked do they have job at his village. He told that a new power plant is coming up. May be my curiosity with the name made me ask what the name of the power plant and who are the owners. This questions were triggered by his mentioning that many people working there are from south. So i asked if it was GVK or GMR but he told me that they are in airport and that it was some company from Delhi. I asked if it was J P Power. Seeing in my curiosity he told he will find out by calling his cousin who work there. He took his mobile and tried calling him. May be cousin is busy he did not pick up and he was really sad at not being able to find the name. I told i will search it in net. I have googled it and may be it is being built "Muzaffarpur Thermal Power Station" by NTPC.

He was telling me he can see it from his house and may be he can get job there as new industry come in that area after the company is completed. He was telling me philosophically that it is too early before the company completes in another year and to predict what will happen after that. He was telling me that price of land there has gone up due to speculation and many people from outside has bought land in the area.

He was telling that he has a farm there and water is not a problem. If he digs 12ft he gets water. Issue was law and order which is now very good as all the top culprits are behind bar and the chottu are on the run or have found some jobs which are legal as peet and family pressure has made these people to change.

So what about laloo and Nitish. Who will win next time? Laloo he says is history and Nitish if he continues good work will get elected next time. So legacy will not win him and he need to continuously perform for staying in power. A word of advice from a voter. As i heard today in a TV program, May be Indian voters are smartest lot in the world democracies. He was happy for Akilesh winning the UP election and he hopes now the roads which are bad in UP will also get good and he can ride to Bihar without any potholes.

Sadly my journey ended and hence this travelogue. Hope to write a travelogue through my own eyes on Patna in near future.

Final

Dhaka Trip

I took a Kingfisher flight from Bangalore to Kolkata and a connecting flight to Dhaka. The flight from Kolkata being an ATR could not even take my hand luggage, and had to check in. The flight to Dhaka was less than 30 mins. Hope they had a high speed train between this place, so could have avoided the long wait in the airport.

We were put up in a Hotel named, The Hotel Eastern Residence (House No 14, Road 27, Block J, Banani Dhaka, 880-2-9890337). A very good hotel and if you are staying in a group they give you an apartment sort of complex with a common area and independent rooms. It also had a kitchen though it cannot be used. They have good restaurant as well. Good value for money at $50 per day with breakfast.

One thing which strikes you in bangladesh is the huge number of overhead optical fiber. May be astonishing for a Telecom engineer like me and the knowledge that there are more than 300 ISP (Not joking). Another thing which strikes you is the traffic. As one of my friend puts it if the roads are jammed means the economy and people are doing good. Saw lots of cycle rickshaw, which borders have not made to vanish on either side of Bengal. Public transport except the BRTC buses look shabby and are not well maintained. It seems people ram their vehicle against each other to go ahead. Driving needs to be very skillful if you need not ram into people or vehicles.

Hotel Sajna near the hotel had some excellent food and hospitality. One thing striking about their service was that when they delayed their chutney and my dosa got cold, they gave me a new dosa. Something which i have never seen anywhere i had gone. Most of our dinner was in this place.

Could not make to any place as had 12 meetings in 3 day!!

Shanghai Visit

Part 1: Reaching Shanghai

I started on Sat and took a connecting flight through Delhi. This was also my first trip to the International terminal at Delhi. The smiling bust of Buddha set the right welcome to the large terminal which was badly needed in Delhi. The problem which need attention by DIAL and same in Mumbai on return is the the pathetic state of transit from existing domestic terminal to the International terminal. In the onward transfer, we found the bus has broken down and was fixed after 30min of work but as the time i had was good enough did not face the problem i faced in Mumbai airport transit.

The rates at the airport was entertaining with the amount of stores and large space with enough electric plugs for laptop and good seats. One thing which was odd was the cost of everything including lays etc even on the vending machines. The flight was on time and had a nice trip to Shanghai on an Air India trip. The presence of experienced hands as air hostess was a big change from the young and bubbly sir hostess in all other private flights. Sometimes i do feel that in case of emergency all their experience may be handy compared to the young and energetic version in other flights.

Reached shanghai and had a easy transit. I was told to take metro or the maglev at the airport as it was the optimal way reach the hotel. The metro it seems stop at 9 PM and as i reached after that, i took the maglev. A 7 minute ride as smooth as the flight [ with no turbulence at all :) ] was worth the try. It touched 301 Kmph before decelerating. If you show the boarding pass on the shanghai maglev you get a small discount on the ticket. At the longyang station i took a cab. An European lady could clearly make out that i am new to city and guided me to the taxi and guided me on what i should check. Like in Indian auto and old taxi they have a lever to put down so that the meter work. Though meters were automatic somehow they have kept the lever aspect intact may be for the police to see it from outside itself.

Reached the hotel Westin Pudong in the outskirt of shanghai. The hotel was nice and clean but was not connected to the excellent metro network which the city can boast of. It was 2.5 Km away from the nearest metro station. Was well into night, so had a good sleep before which i noted that this was the only hotel with a wide window in the bathroom and bathroom looked bigger than the room itself :).

Travel to Shenzhen, China

I recently went to Shenzhen for a interim meeting. I had taken the dragon air from bangalore to Hongkong. I had two options from there, either take a ferry or take a bus from outside. I opted for the former as i need not take the hongkong immigration. The ferry ride was good but was not so exciting as one could hardly see the shore as it was misty. I got through the chinese immigration and took a taxi. I had been warned that i should ask for a bill. I opted for it as soon as the driver said he will provide one. Then i came to know that we are supposed to take a taxi which has red color. They have meters and charge as per government rate. So i ended up paying extra. So if anyone of you are opting for ferry ensure that u look for the red taxi. Also always carry the hotel name in chinese character as no one speaks english.

In the return, as there was some Tsunami warning and i had no clue how safe was ferry i took the shared cab facility. I had some doubts about the visa and if i could go through hongkong by car. The hotel person did confimr that there is no issue. So i took the shared cab facility. The first incident happened at the chinese emigration as one guy had a visa which had expired few days back. He was taken out. Now we had another car coming to pick us up. We were three of us and then we enter Hong Kong immigration. There i had trouble. they asked that how can u enter hongkong without a stamp earlier. I was detained. I showed the ferry details and my flight details and they gave a temporary visa. Things were smooth but by now the earlier shared cab had left so i had to wait till the new car came. After an hour i boarded the cab which took me to hong kong. And as hongkong had people who talked good english i did not have much trouble. So in retrospect i was right to take the ferry.

Even though we read that now hongkong is part of china for all practical purpose they are two countries. :)

Kuruva Dweep

We went on a two day trip covering Nagarhole, Irupu falls, wayanad forest safari, and Kuruva dweep. We drove from Bangalore through Mysore, Hunsur, Nagarhole and Kutta. We stayed at Janey Moon (Mobile: 9448314055), home stay at Kutta. It was a nice accommodation which has three rooms and provide 4 course Veg meals at Rs 650/- and Non-veg at Rs 750/-. We reached this place by 1 am after starting at 7 am from Bangalore. My friend had got a new mapmyindia GPS which took us through real short routes!! It made us skip some good roads and took us through small routes through villages. This was due to setting the option as "optimal path". We had a small nap and then went to Irupu fall. It was a real good sight. (This is my second trip to this place and this time it looked better).

We had lunch and then next day morning we went for Wayanad safari in the tholpatty range. This starts at 7am and can take it till 11am. The road from Kutta to this place is terrible as now all the vehicle take this route at night due to the closure of Nagarhole route. It costs Rs 300/- for the jeep, Rs 100/- for the guide (mandatory), Rs 150/25 for video/still camera and Rs 20/- per person for entry fee. Total it came out to be Rs 700/- for four of us. We like in any safari did not find any wild animal!! We saw deer, peacock and elephant.

Then we went to Kuruva dweep which is 14 km from here. We had our breakfast at Kattikulam and proceeded to kuruva dweep. Here you can get a boat ride (for Rs 10/-) to the dweep which is surrounded by water. There is a further enterance charge and camera charge which you need to pay (came to Rs 100/-). If you trek a little long then one can have a nice place to bath and for some adventure sport.

We were back in kutta after a lunch in Kattikulam and then collected our luggage from home stay and then took the srimala route to hunsur. This road was ok. We reached back bangalore by 11pm. So a nice way to freak out a weekend.

Geneve further Unravelled

This is my third trip to the city but i still have not found place where i can get rice food preferably Indian at reasonable cost. Yesterday, i found a place called Manor which is a big supermarket near cornavin. Here at the entrance you can buy Indian , Chinese, Japanese food weighed in 100gms. A biriyani and raitha would cause you CHF10. There is a Bombay Indien restaurant where you can buy lot of Indian variety food but at a bit higher rates. Here biriyani would cost around CHF 20-30. The cheapest food is in Thai restaurant which is near the Cornavin railway station. Here you get Thai rice food with meat in the range of 8-16 CHF.

An afternoon at cannes

Left for cannes from Templiers, Biot at around 1.30 PM.. You need to take the ligne 1 get down at place de gaulle. At that place move to the adjoining stop and catch the TAM bus number 200 to Cannes. It costs you an euro and get down at the last stop. From there you can catch ligne 8 bus (2 euro for a round trip ticket) with an open second floor or go to place des festivals from where you can get a toy train which will take you to palm beach.. I would suggets you walk down till palm beach and catch the bus number 8 in case you are tired.. You could get icecreams along the route which costs around 2 euro.. Note all the big names of fashion all along the route from gucci to vedru..






The beach are not as big as the one in Goa and Kerala. Also the cruise ships all along the beach blocks the view of the azure.. Sea has that blue colour which we do not see in India.. Watch out for snaps here.. The big cruise ships cover most of the beach which hinders your view but then they are machines which tries to steal an eye from the viewer of the beautiful sea.

Travel to ETSI, Nice

It is 9.30PM and still sun has not fully set. I had gone to the beach and 8.30 PM looked like 5 PM in India. This is the first time that i am seeing the day extending for around 15-16 hrs. I am now three days into my stay at Soffie Antiapolis, Nice France. I thought may be i should pen down my experience till now in addition to these long days..

I am staying at Nemea Appart'Hotel at Les Templiers. To reach here from airport on a sunday is a pain.. Here in Nice public transport does not work on sunday. In India we could have ESMA invoked if something like this happen. I reached here by a Taxi. It took right in front of the hotel though this is a remote village sort of environ facing a golf course. This is near the Wipro development center (Did i get it right Wipro of India!! It seems YES :)). The first day i spend waiting to get my keys to the receptionist does not work from 12-4 PM!! And strangely i had company from few Indians who are working for some project here in Nice. They taught me the basics of this place and the transportation.

I took a taxi on day one but now i know i take bus number 1 also called as Ligne (line) in French and this takes you to most of the places in Nice. To reach ETSI from Templiers we need to get down at Albert Einstein stop or Laffitte stop (one before it).. The buses are quite infrequent and i didnt get a single bus from 8.15AM to 8.40PM. It roughly runs every 40 minutes. This is the only bus from Templiers to ETSI route. And bus rate is One euro for 3 hrs and you can get a weekly ticket if you go to the central stand.. you can ride as much as you can!! There is a ligne 100 express which is free of cost and runs every 20 minutes but stops at fewer places. On the return direction from Albert Einstein you have buses at 5.20, 6 etc.

The ligne 1 takes you to the beach as well as Carrefour supermarket in case you want to pick up something to cook at Nemea. Other stops would be Beethoven, in case you are searching for Rohm Haas laboratory, IUP in case you are looking for University of Nice.

Carrefour does not have a large number of Indian items but you can get basmathi rice. You can get some ready to cook pasta. In Nemea they provide a electric stove, coffee maker, microwave, and dish washer as well.. It is for Euro 90-100 per day and i think the more you use the lesser the price is..

Being in Beijing

This was my first trip to the capital of "economic miracle". And true to all its hype it was indeed a eye popping event. I had with me a Britan national who had visited this same place in early 70. He was awe stuck as i was at the development of Beijing. The building touching the azure sky dotted every part of Beijing and the architecture of this buildings were as bold as the ones in Dubai.





The visa procedure was quite simple with a very dynamic passport control queue. Here is another place in the world other than India where i felt the vibrancy of all the people around. The previous experience in other cities like Geneva and Paris was that of huge building partaking in historical significance to the dwindling admirers of those beauty. The rates were reasonable, but i saved a lot using public transport. I used the airport shuttle to my hotel Park Plaza, Wuhufujing got dropped at some point and took the waiting cab to hotel for just 26RMB comapared to 100 RMB for taxi.



There is an efficient metro system which can take you to the venerable Tienanmen square and the places around it. The forbidden city beyond the Tienanmen square was reminiscent of the extravagant lifestyle of the old kings as well the overarching fear of a ruler. The palace are made of wood with some good paining though like in Indian palaces variety was missing with either the lion or the dragon adorning all the places.



The newer creation of Olympic stadiums, the bird nest and water cube was as majestic. But the latter is better viewed in television. I went to the great wall of china yet another symbol of the fear which right now in time looks like a colossal waste of money. There was a cable car to take you up and a slide to take you down. (Though there is cable car to take you down i recommend you to take the slide).

Food: The beijing duck is the famous delicacy which at least for a "preferably vegeterian" was edible. I recommend you to try this at Beijing DaDong Roast duck restaurant. They have two outlets but go the newer one as it has a nice ambience and a real good service. But you cannot take this daily if you are in my category so pack some "ready to eat" food from India.

Shop: Silk market and Pearl market. Be prepared to get 60-90% discount on listed price. So bargain hard which comes naturally for Indians. I could not go to this market so did some side shopping but even in India we never get so much discount on list price, so i always felt sad even after a good bargain.

Few thing that needs improvement in Beijing is:

• Without knowing chinese it is difficult to move around in Beijing. take the help of hotel coneigre to write everything in Chinese.
• When we were going to great wall (there are two sections near to Beijing, but the one which has a cable car) we saw the buildings facing the road were plastered and painted to cover the not so good house behind it. May be like in India, there is no point in covering up truth.

Newspaper: I also got a chance to read some english chinese daily. What really caught my fancy was an editorial on "Slumdog Millionaire", which when i arrived was awarded multiple oscar. The editorial was again pointing to the oscar's penchant for awarding oscar to movie's like slumdog from India and croaching tiger from China which is very superficial way of depiciting the Indian and chinese culture. But what i liked about the editorial is its positive tone and on a concept which we were taught in our childhood days "It is always nice to have people around you who will find fault with you, rather than prostrating individuals, as it provide a rare opportunity for you to know and hence improve your deficiencies".

The Geneva Trip

Visa Issue to Geneva.

For all those who are traveling into Geneva through Paris please take a Schengen visa in addition to Switzerland visa. This is because Geneva is partly in France and travel between Paris and Geneva is a domestic travel!! If you do not have a Schengen visa then fly from paris to Zurich and then take the train from zurich to Geneva (a less than 3 hour by train).
This should hopefully finish once switzerland join schengen region by Dec 15th. Now you can fly directly from Paris to Geneve with a Schengen visa.

Indian food

The best place in Geneva to have Indian food is at Bombay cafe. This is very near Geneva railway station (Not Geneva Airport) and one street behind rue pradier. Take biriyani and it is worth the money (though it is 25 CHF).

Must see
Fountain, United Nation, Mahatma Gandhi statue. Also take the boat to see the fountain as good as the

ITU
How to reach by tram?
Ouside Geneva railway station take the tram number 13 or 15 towards nations and get down at sismondi one station before nations.

How to reach from airport?
Take the train from Geneva Airport to Geneve or Gere cornavin and then come out of the railcity and take the tram as mentioned above. You can get a free ticket from Airport to Geneve city through a ticket vending machine kept near the baggage handling system. Also all hotels give a free travel card for the time you are in Geneve which can take you to any place within the city and back to Airport.

How is it known in Geneva?
It is known as nations and is opposite to united nations and UNHCR.

Where to shop?
Buy things from coop and Migros which are the largest retail chain in switzerland and is cheaper. For souvenirs try the street towards the underground entrance of metro shopping area. Also yo have a decent shopping area within the nations building.

What to shop?
Chocolate at this places are reasonable and buy the long ones.

Where to get good lunch and dinner at reasonable price?
You can have decent Thai food for CHF12. This is opened also on Sunday.

Where to ski?
Go to martiney which is more than two hrs from Geneva. Take a SBB train. The timing are available here.

How do i know the climate?
Click Here.

What all food you need to try?
Churrus (spanish food), crepe (French food), Racelette (the swiss food ).

Masala Dosa

Masala & The Dosa

A flower- Three views

Appam

Appam- A kerala Delicacy

Shivaganga

Snapshots of the Sivaganga trek. The trip is for one full day and a spectacular climb for the mountaineering enthusiast . There are also direct bus service from BMTC. It has a Nandi temple at the top of the hill. For details of the route check this site.

Manchinbele Dam, Bangalore

This is around 40Kms from bangalore. If you are living towards the south of bangalore, take the Mysore road. After kengeri, take right through the road beside Sri Rajarajeshwari engineering college. The road intially is good but get pathetic later. Dont expect any speed greater than 20Kmph. You will reach great banyan tree and if you travel further you need to take a right at some circle. You can enter the dam through the front gate with permission (for this travel through the tar road section. Also road gets really good when you are about to reach this place) or take the side route (this is scenic) for which you would have to take a right turn through a muddy road section. During rainy season you have small stream flowing to the dam and it makes an ideal place to have bath and some scenic mountaineering.