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.

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??

Weekend outings near Bangalore

This is a list of places you can go out depending on the time you have on the weekend (Assumes car/bike ride) based on my experience:

Half a day

• Visweshwaraya museum (in city center)
  
• Banyan tree (off Yeshwantpur through Magadi Road) and Manchinbele Dam
  
• ISKON temple (near Yeshwantpur)
• Lalbagh (Make sense during flower show around independence and republic day)
• Cubbon Park
  

One full day

• Nandi hills
• Lepakshi (Near Bangalore Andhra border)
  
• Mekadathu
• Mysore
• Sivaganga (For the trekkers)
  
• Sivanasamudram->Thalacaud
• Hogennakal
• Rengantutta Bird Santuary (off mysore)
• Pearl valley -> Banargetta Zoo

Two days

• Towards South
• Kabini->Sulthan Battery->edakkal caves->soojipara water falls ->vytiri boating
• Kabini->irupu water falls->Madikeri (abhay falls, Raja's seat)->Nisargadam (skip thalacauvery in madikeri else you will not make it back)
  
• Yellagiri (enjoy the ride rather than the end place)
  
• Ooty->Kodaikannal
• Mysore->bird santuary->srirangapatnam->nisargadam (golden temple and bamboo forest)
• Mangalore->Udupi->St Mary's Island
• Yercaud
• Towards North
  
• Belur->Hallebedu (one still pending in my trip list as i missed two-three trips due to some other engagements.)
• Hampi (Yet to go)