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.

Images from Bali, Indonesia

The image of God from Bali, Indonesia. In this ritual, the family god is taken to a central place where all the families in the village are brought together to do the prayers.











I am not a mirror but an exquisitely done work of photographer and the building designer.












The perfect couple Rama and Sita, carved in wood at a gallery

Bali- An Indian Perspective

I recently went to Bali, Indonesia for a 4 day packaged tour. The trip was through Kuala Lampur. I plan to write a detailed travelogue later but some tips for Indians:

• The currency is Indonesian Rupiah which is roughly $1=9000 Rupiah, Re 1 = 225 Rupiah.
• The charges on the bills will be like 15.000 and has to be read as 15,000 rupiah
• Though they have low denomination rupiah, practically no one use it in Bali. So a tip of 2000 rupiah may sound great from your perspective but is negligible there
• In no time you will spend million rupiah.
  
• It is a nice idea to spend some time with the local family to know how common Indian and Balinese culture are.
• There are Indian restaurants. The one i went was called Gateway and had decent Dosa (Do not try the chutney and take sambar) and Vegetable biriyani (Some Chinese influence though). Vegetarians better carry some cup noodles!!
• In order to enter temple you should wear white kurtha and white mundu/Dhoti. Plan to wear a trouser underneath the dhoti as the way they wear it is slightly different.
• "Shuk suma" means thank you. Use this liberally.
• Avoid wearing gold jewelery, though personally we didnt find any issue. We did not wear any gold ornaments.
  
• Be careful when dealing with roadside vendors for goods, as there are cases of cheating.

Travelogue

We started at 12.30 PM from the Bangalore Airport. It was a Malaysian Airline flight. We got a seat in the middle row which was not the most comfortable one. The flight was better than the Air France i had flown for my Paris trip but still not as great as Domestic flights in India. As it was already night we slept quickly and woke up when the sun started peeping out in the orange hue. A beautiful morning to wake into.

We go down at Kuala Lampur Airport. The scale of this airport was colossal. The airport looked almost empty thought there quite a large number of aircraft landing and taking off. We took our time seeing the airport. The time here was 2.30 hrs ahead of IST. So changed the watches accordingly. We boarded the Malaysian flight to Denpasar Bali (The capital city of Bali) and landed at around 3PM local time in Bali. The visa on arrival process was smooth and we had the Jan's tour operator waiting for us in the lobby. He drove us straight to our Hotel.

Bali Dynasty, the hotel where we were put up was quite big one and had a good security system. This got me bit jittery about the safety aspect of the place. The Hotel was undergoing some repair, so they have shifted the reception to a smaller room. After the check-in procedure we were inside the room. A nice room with a small balcony.

Wait for the remaining part...

Bangalore South Kerala Road Trip

If you are taking a car, make sure you start earlier than 6 AM. You need to clear the silk board junction well before 6, so that you do not get stuck in the Bangalore traffic and waste precious time. Drive down to hosur and then to Krishnagiri. The road is awesome and you can cover this in 1.5-2 hrs. Recently, the work has started to expand some stretch of the hair-pin curves and in case you get some heavy truck movement, it can slightly slow you down.

The one way drive to Palakkad is 400 Km, so fill up the tanks accordingly. As petrol is cheaper in Tamilnadu, one can wait till tamilnadu to fill it up. At Shoolagiri just before Krishnagiri there is good integrated petrol pump + food jaunts like A2B, McDonalds and you may plan to fill up petrol from there. From Krishnagiri take the salem route. So you may need to take regular detour. Lot of new hotels has come on the way with options at Shoolagiri as mentioned earlier, Sharavana Bhavan after Salem and L&T highway in coimbatore (need a small 50m detour along the trichy road). In case the aboe location are not the right time for food another cheaper option is the hotels opposite the Vinayaka campus below the flyover (you will need to take the service road).

Another shorter option is through Mettur. Before you reach salem near Thoopur you will see a route to mettur to the right. This road is not so good now a days. When you reach the mettur dam, take the route to Bhavani. There is a bypass at Mettur town which allows you to skip the city.

Once you reach Bhavani, proceed on the route to Coimbatore. The road work is progressing in Avinashi/Perundurai section and hence be careful while driving. It has vastly improved from the old days when it was a 2-lane and once work is completed it will be a pleasure riding from Bangalore. This stretch is the only section till Kerala which can slow you down. You take the coimbatore bypass built by L&T. Recently there is some flyoer being built along the NH, so pl ensure you do not miss the L&T road. We did it and lost close to 45 mins through the city roads. For a car you have to pay Rs31/- (as on Aug 2012). This you paste it on to the windscreen else you would have to stop at multiple place for re-checking your payment. This is an excellent road, and you can try your car skills here. Traffic also is less and roads are straight. I did 150Kmph in my Wagon R. You will have to cross 6-7 counters before you hit NH-47. Drive straight and in another 50 Km ride will take you to Palakkad and another 100 Km from palakkad will take you to Thrissur.

You will find that you have paid toll more than the train ticket from BLR-PKD!!! I reached Palakkad in flat 8.15 hrs with my Wagon R and even faster with i10 and Honda Brio.

All the best.

Why a family roast is big for me?

Chennai Railway Station at 00.39.52 (The watch says it all!!) Red everywhere??