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".