Our Beautiful Journey Through Life

Trip to Muir Woods and Point Reyes

2011-07-17T13:08:00.013+05:30

Aparna flew up to the Bay area where I was an intern and staying with Mani in Daly City. Aparna and I decided to get on the road and go on a long drive. I had heard of Point Reyes from Abhimanyu, who was all praises for the place, so I decided to drive there. Along the way was the Muir woods park so that would be a good place to spend some time. We started off early in the morning and drove up to Muir woods. The drive to Muir woods was very scenic.

There was nice trail inside Muir woods among the giant redwood trees, which was a very pleasurable walk. There was a nice stream through the trail. The canopy of tall trees with the sunlight filtering through.

There was a thick fallen trunk over the stream and we walked over it. Some trees had burrows larger than people so we could fit in.

After Muir woods we continued our drive towards point Reyes. The drive to point was very scenic. The most characteristic thing about point Reyes was the wind. It feels as if there is a perpetual cyclone here. Even the trees grow tilted in the direction of the wind. Standing at the edge on point Reyes felt as if we were at the edge of the Earth itself.

The Long Beach Marathon

2011-07-17T11:56:00.007+05:30

I took on running this year and trained with the LA leggers for the Marathon. In the middle of the training when I had run 10 miles in the last training run was the Long beach marathon. A very nice scenic run by the beach. I decided to do the half marathon - it would be my first long distance run in an event. The path is shown in the map. Purushottam had finished his training by now and was doing the entire marathon.

We drove to long beach early in the morning. The run started from the convention center near the beach. We got a small RFID tag to our shoes, which would be used to time our run. It was an amazing experience with people cheering as we ran and the nice breeze by the beach though it got a little hotter later in the day. I finished the run in 2:34:05. While, the time was much higher than what I wanted to achieve, this did nothing in making me feel happy that I had run my first race!

They gave me a medal for running. It was amazing achievement for me.

Hike to Calabasas Peak with Laxmi Manchu

2011-07-17T09:59:00.018+05:30

I bought a book on Hikes around Los Angeles and we decided that we will go an on a new hike every weekend. This is one of those hikes. Laxmi was studying in the film school at USC and I came to know of her as I started a telugu students group called Yugadhi at USC and she became a member.

Nara, a friend of his, Laxmi and I started off early morning to the calabasas peak hiking trail. I got up early and cooked some kobbari annam (coconut rice) and packed it all up. The trail was a moderate trail and a couples of miles of climb. The views were quite breathtaking as we climbed up.

To add to the fun we decided to do some free hand climbing by he cliffs. It was great fun and we saw views of the valley while we climbed into a small cave in the wall of the cliff.

After the free hand climbing, we continued further up the hiking trail. It was quite hot and carrying water really helped. On the way we would stop to enjoy the vistas and the views and take some photos. When we reached the calabasas peak the views absolutely thrilling. There was a precarious cliff at the summit that I had to crawl up to prove my machoness which I did and got a picture.

After our trip it was time to have lunch. We settled by the cliff and started having the kobbari annam.
I love peanuts in my kobbari annam and in fact there were more peanuts in my annam than annam. Laxmi coiuld not stand the high density of peanuts and graciously gave all her peanuts to me which I happily ate.

We had a great trip, lots of fun and chat and burnt some calories while we were at it. A very memorable trip indeed.

Trip to Big Sur with Arun

2011-07-17T08:59:00.020+05:30

Arun bought a great SLR camera and a couple of hefty lenses recently and obviously photography was his new passion. I was in the Bay Area in an internship and Arun was keen on taking some shots so we decided to drive down to Big Sur along the PCH. We took 17S down to 1 S and drove past monterey and carmel, stopping occasionally to enjoy the vistas.

There the standard evening misty fog along the beach and it looked straight out of a fairy tale. We even saw some nice sea caves on the way with the mist surrounding them - ideal for a mystery movie. As we drove down, the drive became more and more scenic with absolutely amazing seascapes and cliffs.

We crossed Big Sur and stopped at a nice location by 1 to catch the sunset. Since I did not have a filter, I came up a novel idea to catch the sun without overwhelming my camera - putting my sun glasses on the camera lens. It worked quite well and I got some interesting shots.

Later ofcourse as the sun went down, I shot some without the sun glasses filter. After the sunset we decided to drive back. On the way stopping whenever we saw a photo opportunity.

Overall it was a great evening spent and we had lots of fun and I got some photographs with my modest point and shoot camera.

Aparna's First Birthday in Los Angeles

2011-07-16T17:58:00.005+05:30

We decided to celebrate Aparna's birthday on the Santamonica beach. Amit Jain was with us in Vista Magnolia. So Ramya, Karthik, Amit, Aparna and I went to the 3rd street promenade.

We remained in the promenade until close to mid-night. we decided to the beach.

By midnight, all of us were sleepy and drained after a filling dinner at CPK. Then we proceeded to the beach where Sunset boulevard intersects Hwy 1 - one of our favorite hangouts in LA. We laid down the carrot cake and lit the candles. Aparna was absolutely delighted having this birthday party on the beach.

Aparna did not know that these candles were in fact magic candles that would light up again the moment they were blown off. We asked her to wish and blow all out the candles in one breath. She tried and did a good job too but the candles came back on immediately! She could not help laughing. After this we had the standard cake application ritual where the cake is applied on the birthday person's face.

Then we sat at the beach watching the moon's reflection on the ocean and chatting away until late in the night and then drove back.

Transit in Singapore

2011-07-16T17:39:00.006+05:30

On my way to India for my upanayanam, I had a transit in Singapore. I had heard a lot about the airport from everyone and indeed the airport very beautiful. The highlight was the orchid garden in the airport with beautiful orchids.

The airport itself organizes sightseeing trips into singapore and I took one of them. The bus took me around showing the various tourist places in singapore. The highlight of the trip was the Santosa Island.

Trip to Ramoji Film Studio

2011-07-16T16:33:00.027+05:30

Ramoji film city is about 25 Km east of Hyderabad and is touted as the universal studios of India. I had been to Universal studios several times and was very curious to see Ramoji city.
I had a few days before my trip back to the US, so we decided to go to Ramoji film city.

The entrance of Ramoji film city was absolutely fabulous, modeled on an ancient Indian fortress with huge doors. I absolutely loved it.

Once we entered, I realized just how large the place is! It would definitely take a whole day and more. The place has an absolutely amazing collection of sets and it was wonderful to see Indian sets. Palaces, gardens, sculptures, history on the one side and on the other side modern sets used in modern day movies.

Entire mughal palace sets were present. It was surreal to see so many different times from history in the same place.

There is nannagaru giving mummy a rose in the mughal gardens. There is me on the fort walls. Then there were the Vrindavan gardens -- absolutely important in most hindi movies of the 80s and the 90s where heros and heroines sang several songs.

There were the Ajanta caves with sculptors engraved looking quite real. They had a very mediocre light and sound show, but the caves looked wonderful.

There are false airports where heroes run to stop their heroines from leaving. There are false airplanes where all in flight scenes are shot. There,s mummy and I leaving at the airport and then later in the flight.

There are a lot of walking to do. There were wide roads with sculptures. It was a pleasure to walk despite the hyderabad sun.

The sculpture garden was absolutely amazing. I especially loved the Japaneese garden.

In the evening there were some shows as in universal studios but, they were quite mediocre.

There were also some 4 -D shows like in universal studio - back to the future - but it was quite original and I loved it. Over all the entire day was very nice though a bit tiring from all the walking.

Trip to Tirupati after Upanayanam

2010-10-18T21:14:00.023+05:30

After my upanayanam we (mom, dad and I) went on the customary trip to Tirupati. We took a train and then a bus that took us up the hill to the tirupati devasthanam. We hadn't bought any tickets ahead of time at tirupati, and the lines were quite long. Ramki's parents knew someone in Tirupati who suggested that we could get VIP darashanam tickets, this would not only dramatically reduce the waiting time but also help see the idol from close proximity. The first thing we did was to manage getting a lodging for ourselves in Tirupati. Then we went to get tickets for the darshanam. There was a long line for getting VIP darshanam tickets for suprabhatam. We got in the line early and barely managed to get them for the next day early morning. Now we had the entire day to ourselves in tirupati. It was almost lunch time and we found a nice south Indian meals place where where they served food in coconut leaves. It was very nice food. After this we walked around the tirupati devasthanam. We had to get up very early in the morning in order to make it to the suprabhatam early in the morning so we decided to have dinner early and sleep it off.

I was woken up at about 2:00 A.M in the morning. We took bath one after the other and I was clad in dhoti and we headed off to the VIP darshanam line. Even the VIP darshanam line was quite formidable and it took a few hours to make to the darshanam. After the darshanam we got the prasadam, which the famous immensely large tirupati laddoo (about the size of a canon ball). It was 5:00 A.M by now. We went back to our lodge and changed into pants and shirts. Dad wanted to find a rental car so we could drive to various places around. Meanwhile me and mom walked about near the tirupati devasthanam area.

We rented a car and drove to nearby holy places. Our first stop was papavinashanam which is not too far. They have built a dam here. Dad told me how in this childhood there was not time and people who take bath in the falls directly. To uphold the tradition they have built an area where people can still take bath in the holy water. Kids were having pure joy bathing in the papavinashanam falls!

Later we also went to akasaganga, which was quite a scenic little hike. The crowd was not overwhelming. After papavinashanam we drove down the tirupati hill. We had come up in the bus two days ago but from the car I could enjoy the scenic beauty much better.

My Upanayanam in Hyderabad

2010-09-26T14:10:00.021+05:30

My dad called and told me that the stars were aligning on March 23 and that they would not align this nicely for the next three years. The time was right for my Upanayanam. So I reached hyderabad in March. Several of my cousins and nephews had already arrived and the house was a hustle bustle. There I am with Sushma, Sai and Pawan in my lap. Pawan was fascinated by my sitar and played it like a xylopphone.

At about 3:00 A.M all the preparations for the vodugu started. Padma akka started by putting turmeric and kumkum to my feet. Pawan was deemed my todi vodgu koduku. Theres the two of us sitting side by side.

Soon the baja bajantris started. I wasn't too impressed by them, they were making a lot of mistakes, probably because of the sleep. Then it was time for the mangala arati and my akkas and all the married women there did the arati singing songs. Then they pounded the turmeric into a paste and applied it to my feet. The vodugu procedures started.

With my dad and mom by my side and our family purohitudu suryanarayana sashtri garu the homam started. Initially it was namakaranam again. I am supposed to born a second time in the vodugu.
Mummy gave gifts to everyone. Thats satyam peddanannagaru and pedamma with Girija pinni behind. After the namakaranam ceremony Babji mavayya cut a piece of hair from my head. I think this is to represent what they do in tirupati after the namakaranam. There he is doing it. I took everbody's blessings after the namakaranam. That's Babaigaru giving me the blessings with akshantalu and satyam peddananannagaru behind me.

Now started the actual upananyam ceremony. My dad is putting on the upanayanam while I am repeating the matrams that Suryanarayana sashtrigaru is telling me. After this I did my first homam as a brahmin under the tutelage of Suryanarayana Shastri garu and dad. After the homam, I was taught the Gayatri mantram, which I am to recite everyday while meditating. Now I was a full fldged brahmin and I did my first bhiksha yachana and took everyone's blessings.

Finally, I had lunch with all my akkas sat by me and tried to stop me from eating while I was trying to eat as a traditional fun game.

My first Trip to Las Vegas

2010-08-11T06:50:00.028+05:30

The fettuchini gang decided to travel to Las Vegas. I had never before been to Vegas and was eager to do so. Seven of us packed up in the evening and drove towards Vegas. We started rather late in the night after dinner and I was quite sleepy and slept of in the car. So most of the events leading up to our reaching vegas are a blur. The only thing I remember is that it was snowing along the way and traffic got backed up in the middle. The next thing I remember is someone waking me up saying, "Hey we are here, photo time" and me groggily getting out of the car into a parking lot. Well I took the photo and so you can tell my state.

We started with Luxor - clearly a disctict landmark with the light coming out of the pyramid. I was really dumbfounded, the grandeur of the place was built like nothing I had ever imagined. Thousands of people trying like luck. We had to take a photo with the topless lady. All of us tried our respective lucks and quickly gave up.

Next we visited Venetian. The moment we entered and I saw the grand canal I was absolutely floored. I couldn't have imagined someone could construct venice indoors! After the Venetian it was quite late and we were all very tired. We went back to our hotel and slept it off to rejuvinate for next day's exploration.

The next day we started off early and walked about the Las Vegas boulevard looking around at all the casinos - some of them like MGM that we had seen in movies and others not so famous but spectacular nevertheless.

There was the statue of liberty looking as real as the one in Newyork and a mimic of the Newyork Skyline, with the Empire State Building towering high.

As we walked past the Monte carlo and Paris Paris, we were transported into exquisite Europe. There was the arc de triumph and the fointanes de la concorde. The Eiffel tower dominated the skyline, trying to touch the skies.

We were famished with all the walking and walked into Bellagio for the buffet. After the lunch it was time to catch the fabulous musical fountain in front of Bellagio. It had water dancing gracefully to a celine deon number. The water faithfully follwed her beautiful voice, it was as if the water had a life of its own. As a grand finale, the water burst out almost as high as the Bellagio itslef with a thunderous roar. It was abolsutely wondeful.

We once again walked back towards the European section passing the arc de triumph and all the famous fountains of Paris. Thats me and MV posing in front of the Arc de Triumph.

We finished our trip with Aladin, where Dantu went a bit berserk with the gambling beleiving that he had figured it all out and had to be held back against his will to be stopped from losing any more money.

We had now to get back to face our respective Mondays. It had been one of the most amazing of my trips so far. Las Vegas has turned out to be such a wonderful place and I wanted more. Surely enough we visited las vegas many more times after this and some it still feels theres more to see.

Hike to Sturtuvent Falls

2010-08-09T19:48:00.011+05:30

Angles crest national forest has several very nice hiking trails. I had a book of hiking trails and we picked up a trail with a waterfall in it - Sturtuvent water falls. It was a very flat hike, intended to be more fun than exersize. By the time we reached the trailhead it was about 10:00 in the morning and it wasn't too hot. The hike turned out to be very pleasant.

After about an hour and half worth of fun hiking we reached the water falls. It was not the season for the falls and the falls had almost dried up. The water was nice and cool and seemed quite irresistable after the hike. Naturally we got into the water.

Amol and I went all the way to water and got eventually ourselves entirely wet. I had cooked some lunch early in the morning before the hike and so we had a nice delicious lunch.

Sidhu perched himslef up on a tree and had his lunch in peace.

After spending some time here we hiked back singing songs along the way.

Trip to Key West, with Madhav

2010-08-09T19:21:00.007+05:30

After everglades it was time to go to Key West. We started very early in the morning. Driving on 1 South over the ocean is an absolutely amazing experience and I hope to repeat it again. Everything seemed to pass by too fat. We reached the end of 1S and sttod at the southern most point. The beaches here are absolutely amazing, with perfectly picturusque water and white sands.

After spending time at the beaches, we went scuba diving in the ocean. This was my first experience diving in and all I can say about it is that you need to experience it yourself. Its like going into another world. Unfortunately I could not get any underwater photos from this trip.

We spent rest of time lazing around in the beaches and finally drove back to Miami after dinner.

Trip to Everglades, with Madhav

2010-08-09T18:51:00.014+05:30

Madhav had been to the everglades and highly recommended going there. We set out early in the morning from Madhav's house. The drive to everglades was quite picturusque with some nice scenic views.

Everglades national parks is about 50 miles south of Miami and it took little over an hour to reach the area along 90W. There were several safaris in the area and we decided on one of them.

There were two kinds of rides - a boat ride in the swamps and a safari. We first boarded the boat ride. The waters were full of several crocodiles in the waters. Many came so close that you could actually touch them if you dared to! There were also several turtles in the water, often popping up.

Next we took a swamp buggy ride and it was a unique experience that I had never had. The buggy had tires that were almost 10-15 feet high and we were seated atop. The buggy rocked quite a lot as it moved through the swamps. As the buggy went deeper and deeper into the swamps, the forest grew thicker and thicker. It was an amazing experience wading through the swamps in the buggy. We saw a lot of animals in the forest. We saw deers, gaurs, several different kinds of birds and several different kinds of antelopes.

The last thing I expected here were Orstritch and they came quite close to our buggys.

In Miami, Florida with Madhav

2010-08-09T12:32:00.006+05:30

I had always wanted to visit Madhav in Miami for sometime. During the labor day weekend, I flew to Miami and met Madhav. He had just finished studying at Florida International University at that time and had started working. We first went to the shiva vishnu temple there. Good to start all trips with a trip to the temple. The we went around seeing the fabulous Miami downtown skyline.

We then visited a couple of beaches in Miami and walked around in the sand. In the evening, Madhav drove me to Florida Atlantic university to show his Alma Mater's campus and places he used to hung out.

Maimi downtown was even more spectacular by the night and we enjoyed the drive back.

Hike in Griffith Park

2010-08-09T11:35:00.011+05:30

One saturday morning Seema, Sameera, I and decided to go on a hike to Griffith park and two other friends joined along. We drove to the Griffith park and decided on the arbitrary goal of getting as close to hollywood sign as possible from here. From the point onwards we simply kept walking along trails to get a closer and closer view of the Hollywood sign.

Griffith park observatory was under construction these days and they were rennovating it. So it was closed during these days. The view of Los angeles downtown from the hike was amazing. While I had been to griffith park several times when it was open but I had never see Griffith observatory from a distance like this.

We kept climbing higher and higher wherever we could manage and finally reached a point that was sort of the highest in the surrounding area.

The hollywood sign was quite close and large from here.

It was very hot by now and by this time we were quite tired. We took the normal roads to climb down to our car.

We had quite some fun in the hike and I have never had a view of the Hollywood sign than this.

ENL Hike to SandStone Peak

2010-08-09T10:47:00.016+05:30

Embedded Networks Laboratory (ENL) at USC where I did my PhD with Prof. Ramesh Govindan. ENL has a tradition of an annual outing each summer. This was the year it started. Om - an enthusiastic hiker who has under his belt several very inspiring and difficult climbs listed out a bunch of possible hikes for this outing. Ofcourse top of his list were hikes from which some of us could not hope to make it back safely. After quite some negotiations we decided on a hike to Sandstone Peak. We started in the morning from ENL. The hike starts off of the Pacific Coast Highway on the Yerba Buena Road in Malibu.

The hike was planned to be about 6hrs long, however, the entire hike turned out to be much longer that expected as Om led us on ot newer places. We first hiked to Exchange peak and had lunch there. The views from Exchange peak were fantastic. We spent about an hour there walking around and looking at the amazing sights.

From exchange peak we hiked towards the Sandstone peak. The hike to sandstone peak were quite spectacular. Exchange peak was not too far from Sandstone peak and it did not take us too long to climb up there. We refreshed ourselves with some snacks and water to take a break before the next piece of hike.

There were some rock climbers along the way that we caught sight of and watched them as they climbed up the steep rocks.

Ofcourse Om was not entirely satisfied yet, though most of us were. He suggested we hike to some other peak and we agreed. This was quite a strenous piece of hike and I think we got lost, though Om will never agree and keep insisting that he knew all along where we were going. By the time we got out of wilderness we were off from our parking spot by over a mile or two. Some of us even got cramps during this later part of the hike.

It was great first outing for ENL and the tradition continued in the following years to come.

Neighbors and Friends in Vista Magnolia

2010-08-09T10:02:00.008+05:30

My stay at Vista magnolia will always remain as one of the most cherished memories. Mhindra, Nara, Debo, Das, Girish and I were staying here at one time or the other. We had two amazing cooks namely Mahindra and Debo. My own skill set limited to making coconut chutnet, sambar and aloo fry. The let giften individuals like us often compensated by washing dishes and cleaning up. Besides awsome roomates I had some awesome neighbors. Deepa, Meghana, Pranjali, Shweta Aarti, Shreemoyee and Manisha. They were all great cooks and also a whole lot of fun. Potlucks happened almost every day among our houses since the houses would cook and pool. All of us had dinners together.

Nothing like having great neighbors and friends. They can make even a harrowing experience such as a PhD a lot of fun!

Ugadhi group Potluks

2010-08-09T09:37:00.009+05:30

My friends and I started an Ugadhi group at USC. There was sizable number of telugus and we decided to meet together and celebrate telugu festivals like Ugadhi, Sankranthi etc and watch telugu movies toigether. Once each month or so we would all assemble with andhra food cooked at each of our places and pool it in. These Potluks were pure fun. After dinner we would play games such as sumb charades until midnight.

Each Yugadhi someone would make the Yugadhi pacchadi and there would garelu, pravannam, and a complete vindu bhojanam. The cooking talent here was amazing. We had quite a few parties this year and each of them was full of fun.

My First Trip on Pacific Coast Highway

2010-08-09T08:59:00.016+05:30

Pacific Coast Highway (PCH) was my favourite and most frequently visited drive while in the US. Later Aparna and I used to go on the PCH to San Simeon almost once every month and spend the night there. I had always heard how beautiful PCH was but had never been on it so far. So one friday I decided to drive up the PCH to the bay area and meet my friends from undergrad, Mani, Pankaj, Manish, Vinay etc. I started a bit late in the evening on Friday on 10 and then to 1N. I crossed SantaBarbara, sometime lateg in the evening. I had decided to cool my tires at San Louis Obispo for the night. While on 1 on my way to San Loius Obispo, I experienced the most eerie sensation, a completely black rear view mirror. The road behind me was pitch dark and my car was the only car on the road. Anyway it was around 10:00 P.M when I reached San Loius Obispo. I had some italian food here and slept at a motel.

In retrospect staying at San Loius Obispo was a great idea, since the rest of the drive on PCH through San Simon and Cambria is absolutely fantastic. I woke up and started off at 6:00 in the morning. The greenery, the mountains and long stretching road in front of me was amazing. Soon enough I was driving by the ocean crashing on the rocks and thousands of seagulls trying to catch a breakfast.

I stopped at various Vista points and caught some some self photographs. The seagulls are absilutely fearless and some actually approach you as if they want a photograph. I stopped at various locations watching the Sea Gulls and taking photographs whenever possible.

I also caught a rainbow while driving that landed straight in the ocean. Clearly the pot of gold had sunk deep. The drive alng San Simeon and Cambris was beautiful and this was nothing like I had ever seen before.

I stopped at several beaches along the way and spent some time getting into the water and watching the birds.

Upon reaching the Bay area I was heartily greeted by all my friends. I made my first Fulkas with Arun.

Trip to Lake Tahoe with Ugadhi Group

2010-08-08T18:57:00.022+05:30

On Labor day weekend some of us in the Yugadhi group decided to go to lake Tahoe. We were nine of us and so booked a large cabin at Lake Tahoe for two nights. We rented two cars and had two drivers including me, one for each car. We started very early in the morning took 5N and 50E to lake Tahoe. We reached our lodge by the evening.

We were all hungry. All of got together and cooked food for the evening. Within an hour we had quite a large spread on the table and had a sumptuos meal.

After having food we decided to drive to Reno and try our luck. Reno was not busy at this time of the year. We walked around a few casinos. Some of us tried a bit of gambling without an spectacular success. At several places we stopped to look at the reflection of the moon in Lake Tahoe. By the time we returned it was quite late in the night. We had a fire place which we lit and after some gossiping around the fire we slept like logs.

Next day we woke up late in the morning and set of to see lake tahoe. We had a lot of fun with the water sports, including Kayaking, water scooting etc. We then spent a lot of time at the beaches.

We tried several beaches out and were beach hopping until sunset. The sunsets at the beach were quite spectacular with the snow capped mountains in the background.

The next day morning we started back to Los Angeles. On the way we stopped at several places and took photographs. There was a place with a stream passing by and so we all got down and started to build a bridge with stones in it. The water was very cold, but we were nuts enough to get into it and build a bridge. Overall we had a funfilled and quite memorable trip to Lake Tahoe.

Independence Day celebrations at USC

2010-08-08T17:23:00.010+05:30

There is a sizable Indian student population at University of Southern California - over a thousand in number. Independence day had been coming up and I thought it would good to organize an Independence day celebration event at USC. One thing necessary for the independece day celebrations is flag hoisting outdoors and as far as I knew there was only one location in USC with a flag post in the outdoors - an open air auditorium behind the annenburgh school of communication. Also this place was free, in other words we would not have to raise funds to reserve the place. I went ahead and reserved it for saturday, Aug 18th, morning 9:00 A.M. I sent out a mail that week to an Indian Students Forum that we were celebrating the Indian . We needed some people who would sing some patriotic songs etc. to make it a bonafide celebration. I contacted some of my friends Bhuvana and Vidhya - a trained karnatic classical singer and Vaibhav an untrained but talented singer. I planned to play the Sitar. So we would atleast have a few songs and performances. I also went ahead and bought sweets for about 50 people. Buhavana also decided to write up a small speech and recite. So things were looking up. Then I sent out an email on the Indian Students Forum saying that Independence day celebrations were on Saturday, Aug 18th at the venue and anyone who wanted to sing or say something etc was welcome. I had an Indian flag with me, so we could do the hoisting. I also got some flowers for the flag, so that when the flag was hoisted, flowers would fall. I had seen this being done each time in my school as I was growing up. I had never done a flag hoisiting before and didn't know how to tie up the flag so that the flowers fell. I hoped that I would figure it out on the day. That was it!
After the email, some other people responded. For example, a tabla player and some other people interested in singing. We met once and decided on a few patriotic songs

My friends and I reached the venue at 8:30 and cleaned up the place of leaves to make it more presentable. One of the people had served as a scout and knew how to tie up the flag with flowers in it so that they would fall upon reacing the top. He did that. At 9:30 we started the celebrations with the national anthem. There were 15 singers on stage and about 50 others who had joined us. I did the flag hoisting. A group of singers sand Vandemataram and Aiye mere vatan je logon. Vaibhav also sang a couple of partiotic songs. I played raga kafi, Alap and Dhruth followed by a Dhun accompanied by the tabla player. Bhuvana sang a Karnatic Classical piece. Then there was sweets distribution and everything went very well.

Over all I felt very happy that even while in US, I could celebrate the Indian Independence day.

Trip to Bangkok, Thailand

2010-08-07T17:59:00.014+05:30

On my way to India, I had a brief stopover of a day in Bangkok. I arrived in bangkok airport late in the night and my connecting flight was the next day evening. So I had enough time to see a few of the "wats" (temples) in Bangkok. I went over to the informatino desk, got a bunch of hotel names, called them up and decided on a hotel name. Most people here did not know English, but using keywords and signs it was not very hard to communicate. I found a cab and told him the hotel name. He kept talking to me throughout the trip though I understood only 10 percent of the conversation. He asked me if I had a wife. When I said No, he kept asking me if I wanted a "Hamia". After sometime I realized he was telling me that he could help me get a prostitute. He took me to some other hotel, not what I had asked him to. Anyway I checked in and soon after I got into my room, the manager called me up and proposed that he could arrange for a prostitute. I politely declined.

Next day I looked at the map and a tourist book and figured out some places I would have time to see before my flight time. I rented a "tuk tuk" (autorikshaw in India) to get around bangkok. The traffic in Bangkok was not too different from that in Banaras or Bangalore in India. The streets had a large picture of the King everywhere.

I first went to Wat Phra Kaew - the temple of the Emerald Buddha. It is a an absolutely beautiful temple. The decorations in the temple are exquisite and made of gold. The detailed carvings are something you can keep admiring for hours. I spent around 2 hours here and it was wonderful. There was a ritual of lighting insense, which I did.

There was large dome entirely made of gold which was absolutely amazing. After this I went to Wat Arun. It is also called the temple of dawn and lies across the river Chao Phraya. I had to cross the river to reach the temple in a boat. The carvings in the temple are fantastic. The steps to this temple are extremely steep and not easy to climb. It was already afternoon by now and I was feeling very hungry. So I had some coconut water and then the person split open the coconut and gave me the coconut inside to eat. It was so soft it melted in my mouth and very sweet and delicious.

After Wat Arun, I went to visit the Kings palace. The Kings palace was exquisite like the wat Phra Kaew. There were carvings out of gold everywhere. There was an English guided tour that I took and the guide took us through various parts of the palace and explaining various interesting facts. That is apparently the window where the King stands for a public appearances sometimes.

Fortunately, that afternoon there was a cultural show as well, where several dancers demonstrated the traditional dance art-forms of Thailand. The classical dances were extremely graceful and elegant, some of them reminded me of Manipuri dance in India. The dancers were dressed in very elaborately decorated dresses embelished with gold.

Besides the classical art forms there were also some very nice lighthearted folks dances with couples and finally some traditional martial art form from Thailand were also demonstrated.

After the Kings grand palace, I visited the temple of the reclining buddha also called Wat Pho. This temple had an enormous buddha entirely gold plated. The buddha lies reclining and the icon is about 50mts long and 15 mts high! This was by far that most exquisite buddha icon I had ever seen. The temple is definitely awe-inspiring. I wish I had taken photos here but I could not. By the time I finished Wat Pho, I was already running late for my flight and wanted to buy a shirt for Nannagaru. On the way back the tuk tuk took me to a shopping center and I bought my dad a nice Thai shirt. I had to rush back to the hotel packed up my stuff. I must have handsomely paid the tuk tuk huy since he was quite happy with the number of bhats I paid him. I took a taxi and it was a close call at the airport. Nevertheless all is well that ends well and I reached Hyderabad successfully. It had been a great trip to Thailand.

Trip to Golconda Fort

2010-08-07T10:15:00.008+05:30

I had never been to Golconda fort before, so all three of us decided to go to Golconda fort after the grihapravesham. We woke up early in the morning. I helped mummy make Kobbarikaya pacchadi by grating the coconut. and Nannagaru drove us to Golconda fort. Thats sunrise from our house window (now there is a tall building blocking the view) The fort is west of hyderabad and not too far.

The fort was built in the 13th century by Mohammed Quali Qutub Shah and immense.

We spent about two hours walking through the ruins of the fort and aboslutely loved it. keep wondering how things must have been then in the fort, the hustle bustle and the grandeur.

There were quite a few steps to climb to reach the top of the fort but the view was amazing and totally worth it. We could see for miles around and there was a wall surrounding the fort all around to watch out for enemies and intruders.

Mummy made some sketches here are attracted quite a few onlookers. Over all it was a fun trip and in the evening there was a light and sounds show. After the show we returned home late in the night.

Train Journey from Calcutta to Hyderabad

2010-08-07T08:42:00.013+05:30

I came to our BE-136 house in saltlake, calcutta from US and then we took East Coast to hyderabad. East Coast starts in the evening and reaches Hyderabad next day. I have always loved train journeys, wathching the beautiful scenery around. The lush green fields strethcing until the horizon and mountains in the background, villages and temples.

One of my favourite activities while travelling from Calcutta to Andhra Pradesh was while passing over the Godavari Bridge. Godavari is a really wide river, must be about two-three kilometeres wide. As the train passes over it, Nannagaru and I threw coins into the river. Godavari usually comes early in the morning. In the summers it can be quite dry and in the rainy season, it floods and the water raises all the way close to the bridge.

Another thing about train journeys is co-passengers and other families travelling with us. In the short period of the 20 hrs journey we make friends and conversations and have fun. Travelling with us was a family with two children of ages 7 and 4. The little one was exceptionally talkative and extremely logical. It was fun chatting with her. The views of children often make you question so many things about what we take so much for granted. I had a flute and the older one decided to try it for sometime until she got no sounds out of it and left it from boredom.

The scenery becomes very dry and rocky as we approach closer to Hyderabad and yellows rather than greens dominate.

It is perhaps the last journey from calcutta to andhrapredesh that all three of us ever did by train and I will always remember it.

Grihapraveshm in Hyderabad

2010-08-07T08:12:00.018+05:30

We had our grihapravesham for the Hyderabad house. That's nannagaru starting the Grihapravesham with a pumpkin. Those are mango leaves. I love tying mango leaves in the entrance, they look beautiful. Next my mummy is breaking the coconut at the entrance of our new house.Gayatri is standing behind holding lord Ganesha's icon. Now mummy and nannagaru are in the kitchen to put the god there.

Girija Pinni is boiling milk until it boils over and spills. Ramam Bava is behind watching with Atthayya.
The poojari is setting up all the necessary pooja samagri. All three of us are ready for the pooja. Pooja starts.

This is our offering to god with 108 beetle leaves. After the pooja every one takes the magal arati. Babaigaru is taking the arati. Chitti anna stands behind praying.

The Grihapravesham is over. Nannagaru, babaigaru, Attaigaru and styam peddanannagaru all sitting in the new empty house. Thats me an Swapna also posing for a photograph. Mummy, girija pinni and Attaigaru posing for the photo in front of our balcony.

Satyam Peddanannagaru, Attaiah and Nannagaru enjoying the cool morning breeze in front of the balcony with breakfast and chat.

Thats me and Attaiah posing for a photo and that is my Bammaigaru who came all the way from Vishakhapattanam for the grihapravesh inspite of her age. Nannagaru is standing behind her.

Mugu Point Beach

2010-08-02T08:39:00.009+05:30

One of my favourite spots while in LA was the Mugu Point Beach. The first time I went there was with Dantu. This is a pebble beach and each time the waves wash back, the pebbles roll and make an amazing rubling noise. There are quite a lot of campers here all round the year in their RVs. The waves here are not too high.

The sunsets here are absolutely spectacular with a riot of colors. The mountain behind take up the crimson hue of the sun and look absolutely spectacular. Even just before sunset the ocean takes up a nice silvery texture that is pleasure to sit and watch.

Camping in Butany State Park

2010-08-02T07:56:00.011+05:30

Butany state park is about 15 miles south of Half Moon Bay along the pacific coast highway. I was visiting the Bay area and Pankaj being a camping and trekking enthusiast found a nice place to camp in the Butany state park. Pankaj, Mani, Manish and I drove north and picked up Gola and then drove down to the PCH towards half moon bay. Thats me driving.

Unlike other campsites this was site was in absolute wilderness, deep inside a forest. So there would be no restrooms not water and no facilities whatsoever. We had to hike deep into the forest to reach this site. Pankaj knew the way and we basically followed him. We did not really have a camera but Manish had brought his video cam which we used to tape and also take photos.

The hike to the campsite was fantastic. On the way we saw a lot of leeches. These leeches were jumbo leeches alomst 6 inches in length and obese. Theres a leech that I photographed. There were also some very nice formations along the way, which we never figured out what they were.

Our hike path took us around a mountain with deep valley beside us. It was a great experience. We set up tents at our campsite. There were several mosquitoes here and we had brought some mosquito reprellents with us. The mosquitoes however did not enter the tents so our sleep was quite peaceful.

The next day we packed up and drove down the PCH and stopped at several beaches and played games at the beaches. The drive on PCH was absolutely wonderful.

Camping at Lake Castaic

2010-08-02T07:19:00.017+05:30

It was the Thanksgiving weekend and no plans for going anywhere had been made with friends. I could not sit home. I had a tent and all the required camping material so I decided to get out camping all by myself. I did not want to drive too far from LA and after some googling around found a campsite near Lake Castaic. The site would be right beside the lake, that would be wonderful. So I booked the site for Saturday night and started off saturday afternoon after lunch.

Lake Castaic is located North along 5N, a few miles after Six Flags. By the time I reached Lake Castaic it was about 3:00 P.M and that when I had reserved the campsite from. I was thrilled the moment I reached the campsite. The lake was absolutely beautiful and right beside my campsite. This meant that I could see the lake from my tent opening. Thats my car saujanya parked at the campsite. There were a few other campers around but not too many. This was probably not the best season to visit Lake Castiac since it was a bit cold.

I had a few hours before sunset. So I went down to the lake and spent some time by the waters and before begginning to set up the tent. The lake was absolutely gorgeous and waters pristine blue. It was very peaceful and felt quite refrenshing to be there. I walked around the beach for sometime.

One of my tent poles had broken so I had fix it and string it myself. I did this sitting by the lake. After fixing the pole I began setting up my tent.

The sunsets over the lake were absolutely gorgeous and took quite a few photo graphs of the lavender skies. There were a lot of birds flying about.

Soon it was dark and my tent had been set up. There were no mosquitoes here so that was nice. The headlights of my car was my only source of light. So I kept my car running and the lights on for cooking. I had brought all my cooking stuff, gas stove, oil, potatoes, onions, maggi, bread, spices, etc and set about coooking.
Thats me eating my delicious food.

There was quite a lot of wind and sometimes during the night I did feel as if the tent would blow away, but it was fine. I slept peacefully. The morning was fresh and invigorating and misty. After walking about the lake for sometime, I packed up and set off into the Angeles national forest along the Angeles Crest highway. Thats me on Saujanya on my drive along the Angeles Crest highway. There was a beautiful church on the way that I visited. There was a lot of fog and it gave an aura of mystry to the drive. It seemed mistyrious!
The drive turned out to be fantastic. There were fall colors in the trees and I never knew that there would be fall colors anywhere in california. The rain had cleansed up the entire environment and trees and colors looked fresh and pristine. Several times I passed through a canopy of trees with fall colors. It was absolutely amazing.

The drive lasted over an hour long after which I turned back to Los Angeles after a very well spent weekend.

Santamonica Beach

2010-08-01T21:59:00.007+05:30

Santamonica beach was my favourite spot in Los Angeles. I would go there almost every three days and sit by the rocks watching the sunset listening to the waves crashing.

I would take any friend who came to visit me to the beach. I simply loved the beach. There is me with kishore, Arivumani and Arvind.

Friends in Los Angeles

2010-08-01T21:39:00.010+05:30

USC has a large Indian student population and it felt exactly like home. We had frequent potluks almost every week and it was a lot of fun. This photo is a Potluk in Meeta's house.

Arvind, Debo, Sameer and Santosh all of us were in the same Lab and Ashish used to work in a room close to ours. We had frequent movie outings, poluks and late night gossip sessions. Thats me attempting to make dosas from a ready made dosa mix. Thats all of sleeping after the dosa dinner.

This is the first car I rented in LA and drove to the temple with Meeta. Thats me and Shanti my Nachos project partner in front of the Tommy Trojan.

This photo is all my neighbors and I having a potluk.

Camping Trip to Inyo

2010-08-01T19:59:00.024+05:30

It was the Labor day weekend. Arvind, Sameer, Nara and I were sharing an apartment these days. I had recently bought a large tent in a sale and was craving to use it. Two days before the weekend, I started looking for campsites where we could go on this weekend, but almost every popular campsite was completely booked. After going through a lot of national parks within 500Km radius of Los Angeles, I found some campsites free in Inyo National park. These were at an altitude of 8000 feet and temperatures would fall sub-zero in the night. I guess this was the reason why these campsites were free. Nevertheless, spirits were high and there was no stopping. In addition to Arvind and Nara, Abhimanyu and Arun also were enthusiastic about the trip. So we rented a car and decided to drive up North.

We equipped ourselves with a gas stove and cylinders for cooking, torches, water bags, tent, sleeping pads, sleeping bags, vegetables and spices for cooking, miracle logs for setting up a campfire and all the other necessary campgear and rented a car. In those days only Arvind and I had a driving lisence so we would be the main drivers and would take turns. We started off early in the morning and took 110N to 5 N to 14N to 395N towards Inyo. It was a beautiful drive up north. Throughout the road, Abhimanyu put the songs of Thiruda Thiruda, by A.R. Rehman.

By the time we reached Inyo it was evening aout 4ish. Thats Arun and me sitting in front of the recently unloaded camping material. We then unpacked the tent and set it up. There were no mosquitoes at this site.

Since there would be no light within an hour or so, we decided to finish cutting up all the vegetables and finish cooking before sun set. So it was spicy potato fries and bread for dinner. We realized that we were out of water, so Arvind and Arun and Nara drove down to a newarby town to buy some water.

Meanwhile, Abhimanyu and I decided to climb up a mountain. There was no trail laid out and we were just free hand limbing. It was a very steep climb. We must have climbed for over an hour but we could not reach the summit. Soon we realized that it was getting dark and we better start our way back otherwise we would be lost.

We were too late in our decision. The climb down proved extremely difficult. We could not traceback our path and got lost. Several times we reached deadends and had traceback our path up. In fact, at some point it felt quite frustrating and I felt we would probably get stuck. It was pitch dark and we had to use our cell phone light to guide us.

By the time we made it to the base of the mountain, we were almost a mile away from the place we had started climbing and had no clue of where we were. We had hit a paved road so we hoped that following it would lead us to someone who could help us. After walking for a ten minutes on blind faith we found a campfire and walked towards them. They had a map and we used it get our bearings right. By the time we reached our campsite we had been off for almost three hours and everyone at the camp had been worried.

It had gotten extremely cold by now. It must be close to zero degrees. We were at 8000 feet high and it was expected that night temperature would fall below zero. We set up a campfire and sat around it. We had a great time.

When we woke up in the morning there was a thick layer of ice on our car and all our water had frozen. We then decided to drive to Mono Lake. We packed up, descended from Inyo and drove north on 395 towards Mono Lake.

On the way we found a beautiful lake (Convict lake) with canoes and decided to take canoe. We rented canoes for an hour. Canoeing in the blue lake among the mountains absolutely blissful. There is my canoe beside the lake. After Canoeing I wanted to take a photo of myself in the water and I put the camera on the shore on a 10 sec timer and started to walk backwards. Suddenly the lake bottom became deep and I slipped and fell in. The timer caught the moment nicely.

After canoeing, we continued our drive towards Mono lake. Mono lake was not quite like any other lake we had ever seen. Its a hyper saline lake with large white salt crystals all around the lake. Even the soil around the lake is a bit swampy with all the salt water in it. At many places you can get stuck in the swampy soil. There I am trying to get out of it.

After spending some time at Mono lake we drove to Mammoth. It is quaint town and has skiing resorts. However, we were getting late to drive back to LA and we had to return the rental car early next morning. So we decided to turn back. By the time we reahed LA it was quite late in the night. To this day this remains a very memorable trip.

Trip to Longwood Gardens, Philadelphia

2010-08-01T18:30:00.007+05:30

I was visiting Philadelphia to meet my friends while at Maryland for the summer internship. We decided to go to Longwood gardens, not too far from Drexel University. The gardens are beautiful and almost make you feel as if you are in some sort of a paradise. are copius lakes and flowers gardens and an abundance of birds.

This is graden with the trees cut into various shapes of animals including dogs and elephants. Thats Neeraj putting his arm into the dog's mouth.

Visit to Philadelphia, Gladwyne Park

2010-08-01T18:12:00.008+05:30

I visited Philadephia during my internsip to meet my friends in Philli. This is the dinner photo. Madhu, Neeraj and Ramkumar came along for the dinner.

That day we went to Galdwyne park and had some fun. Thats Amit Jain and I having a competition on who can lift the heavy rock.

Thats Madhu about to fall off the balancing trail. Well both Amit and I made it without falling off.

Amit and I decided to have a farewell dance in the stream. Please ... I am happily married to Aparna.

It was a fun day and partly sad since I was going all the way across the continent to the west coast.

Trip to Luray Caverns, Maryland with Dadu

2010-08-01T17:57:00.001+05:30

I was in Maryland on a summer internship for three months and was Satying with Saurabh Dadu when he was at UMCP, during this time. I had never visited any caverns before and Dadu had heard of Luray caverns, not too far from our place. We decided to drive up to the Caverns.

The caverns are beautiful with some very unique formations of stalactites and stalacmites. My father in law has a nice mnemonic for stalactites and stalacmites. Stalacmites hold on to the ceiling tightly least they fall, so they are the ones hanging from the top. Stalacmites ofcourse then are the once they grow from the bottom.

There was a guide who took us through the underground caves and described the various formations to us. The first picture is of a formation looks like an ugly set of teeth. The next looks like the rear side of a lion.

That's Dadu taking the photo of a huge stalactite formation that looks like a waterfall. As you go deepers that are large columns twenty to thirty feet high.

Here is the photo of a stalactite and a stalacmite about to meet. If undisturbed they are probably going to meet in the next ten thousand or so years!

This next formation looks like an omellette being cooked. As you descend deep inside there is something called the great hall. Its a large wide open space about one hundered feet beneath the earth's surface. Using the stalactites an innovative musical instrument has been made that sounds amazing. It gives you the interface of an organ that you can play. Its called the stalacpipe organ. Several couples get married in Luray caverns in the grat hall!
Unique to Luray caverns is a crystal formation called Anthrite that is found only in this one place on earth. In fact, the only other place where Anthrite can be grown is in space. This is because it need close to vaccuum environment to grow. It so happened that, a small low pressure cavity was sealed off for several tens of thousands of years in this area helping create Anthrite in Luray caverns. When an explorer broke it open, he was sucked in and these formations were discovered.

The entire trip took us an hour or so, but I absolutely loved every second of it.

Trip to Lake Tahoe with Dantu and Rama

2009-05-18T07:42:00.031+05:30

Dec 24,25,26, 2004

Dantu, Rama Soma and I decided to hit the road for Christmas eve and drive North to Lake Tahoe. Ramya wanted to meet a friend of hers in San Jose, so she would come with us until San Jose. We had driven on the 5 several times and decided to take a more adventurous route. We took 10W, 1N and after driving beside the ocean until Oxnard. After Oxnard we took 33N via Ojai. This is a particularly scenic and little used route passing through and through the Los Padres National drive. The sun set and the forest look absolutely amazing in the full moon light.

After passing through Los Padres National forest we continued on 33N. After driving for an hour and half along 33 we stopped at a quaint restaurant to have dinner. The restaurant had a very well decorated christmas tree and every inch of of it was decorated with all the christmas toys. It looked beautiful.

When we reached the lost hills area, there were long stretches of the road that were extremely foggy with visibility of just a two or three meters. We could not drive beyond 5-10 mph in these stretches.

None of us had been to a church on christmas eve (I had never been to a church before) and so we decided that we should experience that. If we stayed on on 33N it seemed that it would be impossible to see a church and midnight was approaching. We took 198 W and drove towards 101 and reached king city by midnight. We did manage to attend a mid-night ceremony just in time. It was a novel experience for all of us.

I was too sleepy for the rest of the drive slept off in the car. We dropped Ramya off in San Jose at her friend's house and slept the rest of the night at her friend's house. After the late night drive we woke up late, had lunch.

We hadn't made any concrete plans and given that two of us hadn't been to lake Tahoe and it seemed like a reachable destination, we decided to drive to lake Tahoe. We took 101N, 84E, 880N,680N,580E,99N and 88N to Tahoe. There were a lot of vineyards on the way. There's Dantu and Ramu posing in front of a vineyard. It was full moon and it looked absolutely gorgeous in the evening sky.

As we drove north along 88, and climbed higher in altitude the scenery turned white with snow. Driving by snow with snow-capped mountains bathed in moonlight was indeed a dreamy sight. It started to snow and we had a really hard time finding a motel to stay overnight in the snow. After quite some searching finally found a place in South Lake Tahoe. After reserving a room we started to hunt for a decent place to eat. We were quite cold and famished and were very relieved on finding a nice place to eat.

We woke up early and went in search of a place to have breakfast. It had snowed overnight As we stepped out, there was snow everywhere. We had our breakfast at Ernies coffee shop.

Refreshed we started to drive up in an anticlockwise direction around Lake Tahoe along 50N. We had started our trip around lake Tahoe in Nevada and the border between Nevada and California was clearly marked by the presence of casinos on one side and the lack on the other.

All the roads on either side were completely covered in snow. It had snowed quite heavily last night. The roads however were drivable since they had been cleared by snow ploughing vehicles. Tahoe beaches were covered in snow and ice too. We spent some time walking in LakeRidge - a really quaint little town. It was very well decorated for Christmas. After spending sometime in Lakeridge, we drove further up north along 28N. We stopped wherever we could take a good picture and explore the area a bit. It was quite cold. We got some really nice pictures of lake Tahoe. At some places we tried to hike down to the beach but it proved quite inaccessible due to all the slippery ice. There was one beach however, where there was sand and it was quite accessible. I had to obviously try and get into the freezing cold water and so I rolled up my pants and bravely walked in. The feeling was quite intense, it felt like thousands of needles pricking in my legs. My legs were absolutely numb by the time I came out of the water. After spending sometime at the beach we continued north.

There were some absolutely spectacular view along the way. We circumnavigated Lake Tahoe along 28 and then 89 through Nevada stopping at various scenic points. By the time we finished circumnavigating it was late in the afternoon and we were quite hungry and back in the south end of the lake in Nevada. We found an Indian restaurant here and had lunch to our fill.

We were done with Tahoe and had two more days. We decided to drive down to Death valley. The idea was to tkae 395 S all the way down. The snow became quite intense along the way. We stopped at any scenic site we felt like taking pictures or exploring. It started to snow very heavily along the way. We had no reservations and had never been to death valley before. My hope was that no one but us would be nuts to go to death valley for christmas and so accomodation would be easy.

Trip to Death valley with Dantu and Rama

2009-05-18T07:28:00.041+05:30

Dec 26,27 - 2004

I had heard of Death Valley several times but never been there. Its the hottest place in the world and also houses the lowest point in America. The name itself is intriguing. We decided to drive down from Lake Tahoe to Death valley and check it out!

We drove south along 395 and it was snowing miserably - the distance was about 240miles.
We had made no prior plans and consequently had no motel reservations. The hope was that its death valley - who goes to death valley for christmas? Our goal was to park ourselves as close to Death Valley as possible, hopefully inside death valley for the night so that we could maximize our stay there.

We crossed Lone Pine at around 8:30 P.M but deicded to look for Motel further down along 136 if we could find one in Keleer. However, true to its name Death Valley had absolutely nothing but pitch darkness and by 9:30 P.M we decided to turn around and park ourselves in Lone Pine. There was a all you can eat Pizza corner in Lone Pine and we helped ourselves generously after the long tiresome drive.

Lone Pine is a quaint town and the fact that it had rained the previous night made inhaling the air quite refreshing. Unsure of what to expect in death valley we decided to have a heavy breakfast comprising burgers.

We headed off south and then along 136 to catch 190. 136 is an amazing lonely road that passes by the Dry Lake Owens into the hills. There is only dried shurbs all around and it indeed starts to feel like you are about to enter death valley. There were also several burrows, probably made by some Rodents.

As we drove into 190 over the mountains, the scenery became mystical with low clouds floating over the mountains.

It was an absolutely gorgeous scenery. We stopped on the way to get some intersting pictures.

On 190 there was a nice spread of Joshua trees. Absolutely amazing tall cactus trees. Even taller that Ram on Dantu's shoulders.

After having some fun photos - theres Dantu lifting the car, and Ram the mountain, in the area we proceeded towards Stovepipe wells, located at the heart of Death valley.

By the time we reached the entrance of the Death Valley, there was quite a lot of snow. There are Ram and Dantu having a snow fight. The white snow around with sprinled dried shrubs was simply amazing.

The most amazing part of visiting death valley was that by the time we descended into the valley crossed Stovepipe wells and reached Furnace Creek, all the snow had dissapeared and a deseart had appeared. Nowhere else have I drived from snow capped mountains into a deseart within a span of 80 miles!

There are high dunes on which you can slide. We spent almost two whole hours in the dunes climbing over them and sliding.

It was 1:00 P.M by the time we reached Furnace creek and we are absolutely famished. There was a nice place to have lunch here and we have some veggie burgers. After lunch we proceeded to drive up north along the Scotty's Castle road towards the Ubehebe Crater.

Along the way we saw a stray Coyote. This was the first time I ever saw a Coyote. The Coyote was not only fearless of us but also seemed to be soliciting food.

By 3:00 P.M we reached the Ubehebe crater which means "a great baskek in the rock". The crater was formed when a stream of water suddenly came in touch with hot magma, leading to a explosion of steam in the ground. The wind here is extremely strong and can potentially blow you away. We wanted to descend into the carater but had no time since we had more to see.

We started back towards the Badwater basin which is lowest point in mainland USA.
Visiting badwater basin is perhaps the most out of the earth experience you can have on earth. The place looks a different planet.

The entire place is made of salt crystals formed by evaporated water. These salt crystals form curious hexagonal patterns in the ground. There is Dantu trying to pluck a heaxgon out of the ground.

The entire place looked like large ocean of Salt. The sunsets from this place are quite surreal. By the time we left Badwater, it was dark and we had spent the entire funfilled day at Death Valley. The long weekend had ended and it was time to get back to work.

My second trip to Alaska - Day 3,4

2009-05-17T07:04:00.028+05:30

May 14,15 - 2003

We decided to drive to Denali National Park and spend the rest of our time in Alaska here. Denali National Park is about is only about 250 miles from Anchorage and would take about 5-6 hours to reach including lunch and all the scenic stopovers. Our plan was to stay overnight at Healy - a small sleepy town on the Northern end of Denali. We had however, made no reservations in any motel here.

After Breakfast and checking out of the hotel in Anchorage, we started along AK1 North. On the outskirts of Anchorage, along the way, there was hiking trail to a waterfalls (I forget the name now, will update as soon as I remember) which we decided to take since there was enough time to reach Denali.

We parked our car at the trail head and started on the trail. There was a small lake with some beautiful ducks in the lake. The hike was a very flat hike with a lot of greenery on both sides and some beautiful plants along the way. It took us about 15 minutes to reach the waterfalls. It was a small, nice falls nothing spectacular but the ambience was worth it.

We stopped briefly for a gas fill up and when I went to use the restrooms the sign boards were quite interesting. Instead of "Men" and "Women" they have "Chums" and "Dollys" here.

From AK-1 we took AK-3 N towards Denali national park. The route was amazing. The snow capped mountains frame the highway and make the drive absolutely breathtaking.

We stopped at several places for the views and at others for filling gas.

There was particularly interesting gas station and restaurant shaped like an Igloo along the way! We stopped here to use the restrooms and fill gas up. There was quite a lot of snow here and reaching the restrooms through the snow itself was quite a challenge.

AK-3 runs past Mount McKinley which is 20,000 feet high. While mount Everest is the highest peak when measured from sea level, Mount Mckinley is the highest in terms fo raise from its surrouding region. One can stop on the road and catch some amazing view of Mount McKinley.

While stopping too see Mount McKinley I caught sight of a particularly beautiful bird - probably a species of sparrow but it was red and color.

By the time we reached Healy it was evening. It wasn't too hard finding a hotel since the season hadn't yet begun. In retrospect this was probably the best time to go to Alaska - the crowds haven't started to pour in and the parks had all just opened a few days ago. We gathered all the required information about the park. We decided to wake up early and drive in our SUV inside the park rather than take a bus since this would give is more independence in terms of where to stop.

We woke up early and drove into Denali national park. I was particularly looking forward to seeing a Moose and a Grizzly bear. Besides these two, there are wolves, rabbits, caribou, rabbits and a variety of other animals. We kept driving slowly, not to scare away the elusive Moose if it happened to stroll by, since Moose are particularly shy.

I think luck was really with us on this day, since we did catch sight of a Moose. Just as I tried to take a photo, the batteries in the camera died. I scuttled to find batteries and replace them, but alas by the time I managed to get the camera ready, the Moose had gone. Nevertheless, all of us caught a very good view of the Moose, it came to within a few meters of our SUV.

There were some beautiful birds along the way and we stopped to take some pictures.

There was a lot of Caribou in park. There were herds of caribou and we drove slowly so as to not scare them away. At some places we simply dead stopped our vehicle and some Caribou actually crossed from right in front of our SUV. It was an amazing feeling to see Caribou so close to us.

On the way we saw a completely frozen river. We stopped our SUV and walked on it. This was the first time any of us had walked on a frozen river before.

Then all of a sudden it happened, we spotted a Grizzly bear. It was quite far away but with Jerry's telescopic lens we could catch a clear picture of the bear. It was peacefully strolling about near a water source.

After this I was completely satisfied, I had seen a Grizzly bear and a Moose in their natural habitat.

In Denali there was also a Huskie center where we would get to see and learn about Huskies. Das was particuarly thrilled seeing huskies. The rangers gave us a demo of Huskies pulling a sledge. Its amazing to see them in action. The initial acceleration when the Huskies start off is fantastic - I would think you definitely need some training to hold on to the sledge. These dogs want to pull, and were barking with anticipation. They are really quite fierce dogs - no I would call them magnificient.

It was already afternoon by the time we were finished with Denali. We had lunch and drove back to Anchorage, since we had a flight to catch next day.

My Second Trip to Alaska - Day 2

2009-05-16T06:35:00.025+05:30

May 13, 2003 - Alaska Day 2

The next day we decided to drive down south to Seward where there are ocean cruises. I had been on one in my last trip but there was also a snow storm during this time in the area and I could not see much. Seward is about 3 hours drive from Anchorage. We took AK-1 all the way down to Seward.

On the onward journey we had quite an interesting experience. Our cruise would start at 10:30 A.M and we were already running late. We were running under half tank when we passed gas station. We decided not to turn back hoping that w would find another one. One thing we learned about about Alaska in retrospect is, "do not take chances with gas, gas stations may not come by that easily."

After traveling for about half an hour we realized that we were quite low on gas with still not gas in sight. We seemed to be in the middle of nowhere. Then the critical decision to make was whether to go back all the way the gas station we had seen and fill our tank up or to continue in hope of a gas station. One thing was clear, if we turned back we would miss the cruise. I argued very strongly for continuing saying, "We have already traveled about 40 miles I am sure we will find something within the next 20 miles. We have enough gas for that and besides if we turn back we miss the cruise!" People agreed and we continued.

Much to our dismay, even when our gas had hit the last gallon we found no civilization nor any sign of gas and by now it was clear that we would not be able to make it back to our previous gas station even if we tried. We continued. Soon the low gas indicator turned on, this meant that we had enough gas for about 10-15 miles now (I have has quite some experience with low gas situations in the past). It was now clear that if we did not find a gas station soon, we would be stranded in the middle of nowhere and also miss our cruise. We continued hopefully.

After traveling about 10 miles down the road all of us let out a sigh of relief when we saw a small alley to our right by the road leading into a thick jungle - it has a sign saying "gas", but nothing was mentioned regarding how far in this gas station was. I turned the SUV into the alley and continued driving, but even after driving for 5 minutes there was no sign of any gas station, only thick jungle on both sides! Abhimanyu noticed that his cell phone did not have any signal in this area. We realised that none of had any cell phone signal either. Then came the second decision point.

Abhimanyu said "we'd better turn back, we have been traveling for quite sometime since the low gas light has turned on, clearly our SUV could run out of gas any time now. If we are stranded here we do not even have a cell phone signal. If we turn back we will atleast be straneded on the highway where we have signal and more chance that some passerby will spot us. Here, there is more chances that a bear will spot us that a human."

Abhimanyu's logic as usual was sound, but I was unwilling to give up. "We saw the sign when we entered, the gas station must be here around somewhere. Perhaps its just a few mts ahead and we will not only miss the cruise but also really get stranded. We are not stranded yet."

"Who knows how old the sign is, maybe there was a gas station many years ago and there is now now. Being stranded on the main road where there is a cell hone signal is better than gettin stranded here."

It was hard to argue with Abhimanyu's logic, but I was not willing to give up. I somehow still refused to believe that we would not find a gas station if we drove a little further. Besides somehow I was thinking its only 10 A.M in the morning now. Even if we get stranded here, I thought, two of us could walk back to AK -1 which would be about 30 minutes walk and ask for help from passerby or use the cell phone to call someone. In essense this was not like our lives would end if we got stranded here. However, I thought it unwise to spell out my thoughts.

"I really think there is a gas station just a little ahead. If we turn back we will definitely miss the cruise. I think we should drive on."

Both of us seemed convinced about our views and we decided to use the democratic method to resolve this impasse. Nara and Jerry were asked to vote. Nara being diplomatic as he usually is said, "I am fine with whatever you guys decide and refused to take sides." So everything was now left in the hands of Jerry. Both me and Abhimnayu campaigned for our causes and kept giving arguments to convince him our way.

"Come on Jerry, whats life without a bit of adventure. " I would say, appealing to his male ego.

"I dont think getting stranded in the middle of nowhere is an adventure, its stupidity," Abhimanyu would say.

"By turning back we will get stranded and we will miss the cruise. By not turning back there is some hope that we will find a gas station and that we will make it to the cruise on time. If we turn back we will always keep wondering if there was ever a gas station that we would have found if we continued. I am sure in retrospect we will find out that there was a gas station just a few mts ahead."

I kept the engine on all this time, cos I have learnt from my past experiences never to shut of the engine when you are very low on gas - it will not start.

Jerry finally voted - "lets continue and find a gas station, I think I agree with KK, there was a sign back there after all." I won and we moved on in search of the gas station.

After a few minutes we saw another sign for a gas station pointing in the opposite direction! This meant that we had missed our gas station somwhere on our way. We made a U-turn. Everyone was tense including me. I was always thinking, I would be held responsible for this if we got stranded.

The SUV started to get hiccupps beyond 10mph. I knew we were close to the end, our car would run out of gas in a minute or two. Then we saw the gas station to our right. A dilapidated shed in the middle nowhere and very easy to miss. Our hearts jumped. We had made it!

After filling gas we raced back to AK-1 and down south to seward. We made it to Seward just 2 minutes before the Cruise! This was quite an adventure and we will probably never forget it.

The day was quite sunny and very well poised for some great sightings. The boat was mostly empty and so we did not have too much trouble finding ourselves some good seats on the boat.

The sea was relatively smooth and it was easy to stand on the deck and take photos unlike the last time I had been to Alaska. Jerry had a telescopic lens with his camera and this made it much more fun! The mountain goat seen in the picture was impossible to see with the naked eye - it looked like a small white dot.

On the way we passed by a beautiful glacier near Resurrection Bay. We had never before seen such a gorgeous glacier - it was a feast for our eyes.

There were a lot of whales in the waters and we caught sight of a lot of them. It had been my dream to catch the photo of a whale diving in with its tail popping out. It was really hard with the boat moving and the speed with which the whale did its diving. However, after a few tries I managed to take one of my awaited dream shots.

Some whales came quite close to our boat, perhaps about 10 mts or so and I managed to take quite a few photographs of them. It was one of the most amazing experiences I had ever had watching these enormous water beasts emerge and nose dive into the ocean. I also caught some very nice shots of the whale's dorsal fin when it was coming right at us!

Besides whales there were puffins, sea lions, sea otters and a large variety of other marine life here. The puffins can stay submerged underwater for a long time while they hunt for food and they are also very good fliers. They are truly creatures that can stay in air, on land and in water was long periods of time. The sea otters were lazily floating about on their back while eating their food.

There were thousands of various kinds of marine birds here going about their business. It was truly a fantastic miracle of nature that we miss so much in our urban lives.

There were sea lions by the hundreds basking under the sun. What amazed me was the heights to which they had actually climbed up over the rock.

One of the most amazing sights that we saw while on the boat were these dolphin like fish that were racing with our boat. They would playfully swim criss-cross in the font and sides of the boats and sometime briefly jump out of the water. They fish were really fast (my guess would be abour 15-20mph) and put together for us an amazing display of aquatics. It was really hard to take a picture since not only the boat was shaking a lot but these fish were extremely fast. Nevertheless after trying quite a few times I managed to get some photos.

I was in a rush to get here during our onward journey and had not taken any pictures on the way. I took some pictures of the scenic views on our return journey.

My second trip to Alaska - Day 1

2009-05-16T04:59:00.029+05:30

May 10,11,12 2003 - Day 1

Me, Nara, Das, Jerry had all got our papers accepted into SNPA (sensor networks protocols and applications conference) 2003 being held in Anchorage. Consequently all of us rented an SUV and had quite a lot of fun together. This was my second time to Alaska and some idea of the various places to see. We arrived in Anchorage on May 10th evening - the paper presentations were on the next day.

Anchorage is a quaint city surrounded by beautiful snow capped mountains and during this time of the year, sun sets pretty late here (between 10 ad 10:30 P.M). There was a sense of excitement in all of us and we were quite restless to explore one of the most beautiful lands on Earth.

The conference was being held at the Anchorage Convention center which is located in Anchorage downtown. Our hotel was located at about 10 to 15 minutes walk from the Convention Center.

On the 11th almost of the day was spent in the conference. On the 12th we decided to explore places close to Anchorage. We first went to Resolution Park, not too far from our hotel on Anchorage. The Resolution park has a statue of Captain Cook that commemorates the 200th anniversary of his explorations on this area on his third and final voyage. That's Jerry, Das and my standing in front of the Captain Cook Monument. We walked arund the park area for sometime enjoying the views and taking photos.

After spending sometime on the area we decided to drive to Portage Glacier which is about an hours drive south east of Anchorage. We took AK-1 and then turned on to the Portage Glacier road. The dirve to Portage Galcier was amazing with some fabulous views. A rail-road and a river and some picturusque snow-capped mountains accompanied our drive along the way.

When we reached the Portage Glacier, we were the only ones there. There is a small trail that leads one up to the trail entrance. We parked out SUV right beside the trail and started to walked along the trail to reach the Glacier. There was a beautiful stream passing by us along the trail and so I had to get my feet wet in it.

The view from the trail are simply breathtaking with the snow capped mountains and the stream flowing. It feels as though you have entered a paradise. You stand in awe realizing that the most beautiful paintings ever made have been made by god.

After walking for about 15 minites we reached the foot of the glacier where it meets the water. To describe the beauty of the the Portage glacier area in words would be a sacrilage. I had never seen a place so beautiful in my life before. Once you come here you do not want to leave.

The water was full of large floating ice pieces. had to get into the water. Thats me trying to lift an ice-piece. Yes the water was freeeeeeezing cold but if you know me long enough, you will know that I find water irresitable. Naturally, I had to get into the water and this is byfar the coldest water I have gotten into in my life. For the first few seconds it felt as thought a tousand needles were pricking my feet and then they went numb. Yet it was all worth it!

The ice here has a hauntingly beautiful greenish blue color to it and it looks like nothing I had seen before. The blue color comes because ice that is thick enough absorbs red wavelengths actually and only lets blue light out. In fact, experienced mountain climbers know that when the ice is pure, long hard it will have a greenish blue tint and is safe to step on.

We walked up to the glacier and spend a long time having fun in the snow in the glacier. The Glacier often moves too slowly to perceive. It was quite a lot of fun walking on the Glacier. We had a lot of fun making snowballs and hurling at each other - a moral imperative upon seeing so much snow.
We spent almost the entire day here and had a lot of fun.

On our travel back to anchorage the sun was getting ready to set and the evening colors in the red hues and their reflections on the water were giving a new meaning to the word pristine. After reaching Anchorage we found a Chineese restaurant and had our dinner there.

After its long day, the sun set between 10:30 and 11:00 P.M marking the end to our first day of exploring Alaska.

Trip to Salton Sea

2009-05-15T04:42:00.016+05:30

Sept 4, 2004

The Salton sea is about 150 miles from Los Angeles and is large enough so that you can see a horizon meeting the sky. Its a highly saline lake and its salinity is greater than that of sea water. Lots of different varieties of birds visit the lake annually. A movie was also made named on this location. If you want to do star gazing, this is probably one of the best places as it is probably the most desolate place you will find close to Los Angeles. If you camp on Bombay beach on the eastern coast of the lake, the closest signs of any civilization would be about 50 miles in any direction. On a moonless night, it can be absolutely pitch dark.

I had already been to slaton see about two years ago and found it a fantastic place to watch the night sky and wanted to show Aparna the same. Its a two and half hour drive from Los Angeles, but mind you, if you want to camp here overnight, there will no food services for 50 or more miles in any direction - so better carry you food supplies with you.

We started in the afternoon aiming to reach there much before sunset, as pitching a tent in that darkness would be quite an impossible task. We reached just a few minutes before sunset and had to hurry up pitching our tent.

We were the only ones in the entire area. The knowledge that you are probably the only two people for about 50 miles in any direction is quite thrilling!

We selected a nice open place with a great view in front of the beach to pitch our tent and started by clearing the place of all the stones and fallen branches. By managed to pitch our tent just in time.

It can quite hot and humid near Salton sea at this time of the year but towards the night things cool down with a nice breeze blowing. Even though we pitched the tent, we actually never used it, since sleeping out under the night sky and the breeze was much better than being inside the tent.

Sunsets over Salton Sea are quite amazing. The entire lake turns orange red due to the setting sun. We spent a long time sitting by the lake and the had our dinner in the car light.

The night was moonless and cloudless - a perfect night to watch the night sky. We saw the milky way here as clearly has I had never seen before. We identified a few constellations. We say several shooting stars over the night. One of them was extremely bright and shot right across the entire sky! We even saw a few man made satellites. It is the most amazing night sky watching experience we ever had.

The sky during sunrise was equally fabulous and looked like straight out of a painting, only real. A lot of fish die here and swept off to the shore due to the extremely salinity of the water. Several birds are attracted by this prospect of abundant food for breakfast.

There were thousands of birds here in the morning. I am sure would be a bird watcher's paradise. We spent a long time watching these birds and hearing their cries. It was bliss.

From Salton sea we drove to Calexico - as the name suggests this is a town at the border of Mexico and California. Other side of the border is Mexicali. We were quite fascianted by the names and that is primarily what led us to drive here. We walked to about 300 feet of the border and were a border security gaurd thought that we were crossing over into US from the Mexico and stopped us. He let us go after seeing the driver's license.

After having lunch at Calexico we drove back to LA after a great weekend.

Our first trip on the PCH

2009-05-14T19:53:00.022+05:30

Nov 25,56 2004

I had driven on the PCH (Hwy 1) twice before but Aparna had never done so. This thanksgiving I decided to take her on the what is in my opinion one of the most beautiful drives on Earth. I was staying in LA downtown in those days. Heres the view of LA downtown from my apartment building.

We started early in the morning from LA, took 10W on to Hwy 1. We drove past Malibu, Santa barbara and our first stop was at San Luis Obispo for Lunch. We asked around for an Italian place to eat and found a really nice one too near the Amtrak station in San Luis Obispo! The food was delicious.

The drive on Hwy 1 after San Luis Obispo is the most beautiful part of the drive with fabulous beaches and views. Throughout the rest of our trip we kept stopping at almost every spot with a nice view. It was a gorgeous day.

Near the Heart castle, there were a lot of elephant seals lazing around. Both of us had never seen Elephant seals before and it was quite fascinating. We have visited San Simeon more than 10 times by now, but the Elephant seals never fail to capture our attention. I am sure that we love watching them for hours.

The elephant seals lie in hoards basking under the sun on the sand. Scratching their backs occasionally and sneezing occassionally. They must be one of the most relaxed species in the world. However, these are only the females. The males are quite busy fighting among each other to claim their rights over the females all the time. The alpha male challenges by lifting his head up high and roaring at the other male. The other male either retreats or answers back the challenge. They hurt each other with their teeth and it can get quite bloody. There are usually several young elephant seals that are very nice to watch. The mothers are usually quite visibly irritated by their young ones climbing over them.

There was a very beautiful beach on the way (I forgot the name) but you have to drive down to it and its absolutely fabulous.

There were quite a lot of seagulls everywhere along the drive and most of them not afraid to pose for the camera.

In some beaches the waves crashing over the rocks made for an amazing water-works display. In many beaches a lot of water plants are washed off to the shore. Some of them have large bulbs of air to keep the plants afloat. These can be quite long, sometimes upto 10 feet or more long!

And you can also use them as microphones to give an amazing on stage performance!

The part of road by the Los Padres national forest is perhaps the best part of the drive.

We stayed over night near Big Sur which has offers some very nice views of the ocean. The next day we too 17 N from Santa Cruz and then 85 to 101N to reach the Bay area.

Our First Trip to Lassen Volcanic Park

2009-05-13T05:04:00.032+05:30

July 31, 2004

I was in the Bay area doing a summer internship. Aparna flew over from Los Angeles on the occasion of my Birthday on Friday evening. I had already reserved a rental car and used it to pick her up from the airport. However, no plans had been made as to where we should go. This internship was my first visit to the Bay area and the north bay was a completely unexplored region for me. As usual we opened the Rand McNally map and started to look for places to go that are not too far.

Then we found the Lassen volcanic national park, what attracted us was that we had never seen a Volcano before and it seemed fascinating. The park is about 250 miles from Daly City (I was staying with Mani these days), so it would probably take a little over 4 hours to reach there.

We started early next day, and took 280N, 101N,80E, 505N, 5N to reach red bluff. We had our lunch at Red Bluff and then took 36E and 89E to reach Lassen Volcanic National Park. There was a traffic Jam on 80E and it held us up for a long time.

We cuaght our first glimpse of the volcano even before entering the park. The Lassen Volcanic area is like entering a paradise, the scenery with three lush green coniferous trees, the valleys and the mountains is simply gorgeous - you have to be here to experience it.

As we drove through the entrance of the park there were steaming vents to greet us and we were fascinated immediately. There was a whizzing sound coming from some of the vents due to the steam rushing out!

As we drove further, our first stop was the Emerald lake - perhaps the most beautiful lake we had seen thus far (little did we know there was more to come). True to its name, the lake looks like liquified emerald due to all the reflections from the lush green coniferous trees. Aparna decided to pose like "Lassen Ki Kali" in front of the lake inspired from the old hindi film "Kasmir ki Kali".

Just a little ahead was yet another Gorgeous lake - Lake Helen. The Lassen volcano stands right behind the lake providing for the perhaps the most beautiful picture you can take in the park.

Close to Lake Helen is the first short hiking trail to Bumpass Hell - a large Geothermal area. Even in July there was still some snow here and the starting of the trail was snow covered. The views of the valley from the trail are absolutely breathtaking.

The trail itself is a moderate 1 mile hike and flat most of the way except for some minor climbs on the way. That's Aparna on the trail. The first view of Bumpass Hell is nothing like we had seen before. The view almost seems like an artist's painting with all those colors and the immaculate blue puddles of water. The water was boiling and bubbling in most of these puddles and there is a wodden trail that runs all around it. We could smell sulphur all the way up even before entering Bumpass Hell. The steam for the boiling puddles of watrer raises several tens of feet high and can be seen from far. Both of us obviously needed photos with Bumpass Hell in the background.

The ground here can be extremely trecherous and unstable. The person who discovered Bumpass Hell lost his leg when the ground gave away and he fell into a hot water puddle. The wooden trail safely navigates you through the area around the boiling water puddles. The mud here hardens and cracks due to the heat and forms amazing patterns. The entire geography is extremely colorful and its hard to believe something so beautiful can be created from a volcano.

There are hot puddles that are entirely covered in steam land there are pits full of mud where the mud boils and splutters. You can hear the sound of the boiling water all the way on the trail.

We absolutely loved the entire trail and watched all this natural wonder around us with amazement.

After seeing Bumpass Hell we decided to hike up the Lassen Volcano. This is quite a strenous hike. Further, it was already evening and you need torches to climb up the trail and we did not have one. However, it was a full moon night so we decided to climb anyway. The hike is a relentless steep climb with no flat regions for taking any breaks and can be quite exhausting. However, the views from the top are breathtaking and completely worth the effort. From the top you can see all the lakes - Helen, Emerald and Summit and the valley aruond. The full moon reflected in each of the lakes and it felt as if there were several full moons down below. A sight that we can never forget. Thats Aparna feeling a bit tired after the climb so far.

By the time we decended from the mountain, both of us were dead tired and it was late in the night. We drove to redbluff and stayed at a Motel there overnight. The next morning we drove back to the Lassen Volcanic park to see Lake summit that we had missed the earlier day. Aparna was still feeling tired and slept all the way in the car.

Lake summit was beautiful with lush greenery surrounding it. Here is where I learnt that Aparna likes Daffodills a lot especially blowing on them.

It was a fabulous trip and I think a great way to celebrate my Birthday. Thanks Aparna for showing me such a wonderful time that I can never forget.

Trip to Crater Lake

2009-05-12T06:06:00.032+05:30

Feb 19, 2006

Aparna had come from Los Angeles for the weekend on Firday night and we wanted to go out somewhere but not sure where. We wanted to explore up north and had already been to the Lassen volcanic national park area. The first thing we did Saturday morning was to call up all the nearby rental locations for a car, but the only car we could find was a convertible. Ironic considering it would be freezing cold up in Northen California at this time of the year.

Once having picked up the car, we opened the Rand McNally to look for an interesting place to go up North. We found the crater lake on the Map and read about it on the internet. It is the deepest lake in the western hemi-sphere and the third deepest in the world. It looked beautiful! Crater lake is about 500 miles from San Jose (I was staying in San Jose with Bana then) and would take about 9 hours or so to reach. The concern however, was that it would be freezing cold and snow covered near Oregon at this time of the year and it was also not clear if the Crater lake would be accessible in our two wheel drive convertible with all the snow.

"Well no smart and forward planning person must have tried this, so perhaps we should try it out," I suggested. Aparna agreed and so it was decided that we will drive up north towards Crater lake and if we are unable to access Crater Lake because of the snow, we shall drive back. The drive should be fun in the least and we will know that it can't be done during this time of the year in a car like ours.

We started a bit early, since driving at night in snow would add to the challenge significantly. We took 101N, 680N, 80E, 505N to get to 5N. The stretch of drive on 5N is about 200 miles and is quite scenic in the Northen California as we pass close to the Shasta Lake area. At Weed we took 97N towards Klamath Lake.

We had made no reservations for our overnight stay and as we drove on 97, we realised that 97 passes through a pretty desolate area and it may be very hard to find even small town with people least we find a motel to stay overnight. Nevertheless I was optimistic and argued that, even if there is one or two motel we will find some accommodation, since no one will be planning to go to Crater lake at this time of the year and even if they do they will probably not find any of these motels on the internet.

Since it would be dark soon, the decision to make however, was whether to turn around and go back to 5 to find a motel or to continue hoping we would find something. We set ourselves a deadline since we knew roughly the time sun would set and drove on. Luckily for us we did find a single motel in a small town named and decided to stay there overnight.

When we woke up in the morning, the day was very sunny but it was white with snow everywhere. Our car was covered with thick layer of ice and we used our credit cards to scrape it off.

The drive to Crater lake was a very scenic drive. Along the way there was a beautiful stream that ran beside the road.

Soon the climb up the mountain began. The initial part of the drive was full of lush trees on both side and extremely green, however, about half an hour into the climb and snow started to appear on both sides of the road. However, it didn't seem to bad, since the road was still snow free. Things began to change pretty fast as we climbed and soon we were driving with a wall of snow on both sides that was about 8 feet high!.

Nevertheless since the road was still drivable we continued. Within a few minutes we were driving with a 15 feet wall of snow on both sides. We had never seen anything like this before and it was absolutely magical. The road was now not as snow free as it had been. I slowed down to about 15mph to avoid skidding and patiently kept driving.

The trees were completely covered in snow and looked as if straight out of a fairy story. When we parked our car, the view of the snow-capped mountains was breathtaking.

Aparna had never seen so much snow either and got hysterical with happiness and yes we did have a show fight.

The view of the immaculate blue crater lake surrounded by the white snow was simply beyond anything that words can describe. You have to see it to experience it. The snow was so high here that entire houses were completely covered in snow. We climbed up a snow-covered house and there's Aparna atop a house!

Here is another photo of me standing in front of the snow wall to provide a perpective of how high the snow was. All the neat stacking up of snow was being done by a snow machine.

Aparna also made her personal history by building her first snowman! Looks fair and handsome no?

After spending a few hours we started our return journy. We decided to experiment with a new return path, but it turned out to be bad idea, as there was too much snow along the road and our car skidded though we hit the soft snow wall on the side and no one was hurt. After this, we turned back and drove the same way we had come.

The drive by Klamath lake area was fantastic. There were immaculate white fileds of snow as far as the eye could see. The occasional houses were completely covered in snow.

The view of Klamath lake was fabulous. The Klamath lake itself was frozen in several places.

The views of the 14000 feet high mount Shasta were breathtaking as we drove by it. Obviously both of us needed some posing shots with the mountain in the background.

The trip was fantastic and one of our most memorable trips. We made it to Crater lake despite all odds and seen things that we had never seen before. There is Aparna driving with a smily face - the thing that makes me most happy!

Trip to Monetery Bay Aquarium

2009-05-11T08:33:00.024+05:30

Feb 5, 2006 :

Monterey Bay is about 90 miles from Sunnyvale, CA - a drive of about 1.5 hrs. We had been to Monterey several times but never to its famous aquarium. We decided to drive down to Monetery and see the aquarium. The aquarium opens at 9:30 A.M on weekends and wanting to arrive there as soon as it opens we started early in the morning. We reached there little after 9:00 A.M and it urned out to be a good thing since finding parking close to the Aquarium would have become a nightmare if we had arrived late.

There is a Beaver pond close to the entrance and luckily for us it was their feeding time when they are particuarly happy.
Its a lot of fun watching beaver, particularly when they are playful mood. They are rolling around and floating on their backs, in a ver lazy relaxed sort of way. Sometimes I wish I could be like a beaver.

The anchovies are on the other hand nothing like the Beavers, always on a rush to be somewhere. There was a tank of anchovies and they were simply swimming round and round restlessly in their limited world!

Perhaps the most interesting collection in then Aquarium is that of the Jelly fish. They are truly amazing creatures and it is hard to believe they do not have a brain or rather a brain similar to as we do. There are Jelly fish of all sorts of colors and sizes here. Looking at them is almost hypnotic as they move slowly, you can keep staring at them for hours.

Some of the Jelly fish are really large and their heads span almost a feet or more across. There are hundreds of small baby Jelly fish that keeps swimming (if you can call that swimming) together.

There a section on sea anemone and other sea plant life that is riot of colors. Some of them wait until a stray unaware prey comes along and then trap it as it enters the fronds. It makes you wonder, how much beauty we miss by living on land. There are also several different kinds of very colorful starfish. The variety of sea-life and the number of things you can discover in each tank is simply amazing.

"Finding Nemo" has really changed every kids and even adults perception of fish. Ofcourse today every aquarium must have a Dory (a Regal Blue Tang), a Marlin (an Ocellaris Clown Fish) , Gill (a Moorish Idol) , Jaques (a Pacific Cleaner Shrimp) and so on. All the children were extremely excited to see their favourite animated characters alive in front of them - why them even we were!

A large sleepy eel rested peacefully camouflaged among the rocks. A Bass saunters about lazily. There was also a giant octopus - this we (Aparna and I) had never seen before in real life. There is also a nice sea bird section.

After the aquarium we had luch in Moentery and then continued our drive on the PCH and drove down until Big Sur, enjoying the spectacular views of the ocean. We briefly stopped at a beach near Carmel by the Sea and got ourselves wet. In the evening the ocean became misty providing for some spectacular views. It was a great way to spend the day!

Trip to Petrified Forest

2009-05-10T15:46:00.002+05:30

Nov 25, 2006:

The Petrified forest in Arizona is about 300 miles From Arches National Park. After spending the night at Moab we drove along 191 S into Arizona and took 40W towards Petrified forest national park. Petrified wood is wood turned to stone over the years - you can only see it to believe it. After a tree falls, it gets covered in mud,water and sand with minerals. Gradually these minerals dissolve into the wood and when the water dries off, the log turns into rock. Petrified wood looks like wood except its rock!

Besides petrified wood the Petrified wood national park also has the painted desert. The drive through the painted desert is beautiful.

The petrified forest also houses the excavation site for the ancient civilization of Puerco Pueblo. These people lived about 500 A.D. Several tools have been excavated here. These people also were artists and made several pictures on the rock. Aparna and I had never seen an archeological excavation site before and this was a great experience.

Trip to Arches National Park

2009-05-10T12:13:00.003+05:30

Nov 24, 2006:

If you haven't been to the Arches national park yet, you should. There are simply no words to describe the awe that someone feels when they visit this place for the first time. Arches national park is in Utah about 1000 miles from Sunnyvale, CA. We started on Friday and drove on 101S, 152E, 5S, 46E, 99S, 58E,15N past Las Vegas and stayed overnight at Cedar City, UT - a distance of about 600 miles. This is an ideal place to stay the night, since the drive from this point to Arches National Park is 300 miles of absolutely breathtaking scenery.

We started off early in the morning from Cedar city and drove up along 15N and then on 70E. There are several very scenic stops on the way and look especially breathtaking during the early hours after sunrise.

We took 191S to Moab and had an early lunch here. Moab is the closest town and to Arches national park and the only place where you can get any food or place to stay since you won't find these at Arches. Arches national park can get extremely hot and quite un-condusive to strenous hikes in summer and gets quite a bit of snowfall in the winter making quite a of trekking trails untractable. This was the thanksgiving weekend and perhaps one of the best times to visit the park, consequently as expected, there was queue at the entrance.

By the time we reached the park entrance it was about little before noon and given that this was the thanksgiving day weekend. As soon as you enter the park, the scenery simply takes you by awe. The colossal red rock formations stand like immense statues carved by nature over millenia. If you have seen Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, you will probably immediately recognise that the valley of the crescent moon was shot at Arches National Park.

The first natural rock formation that you see after entering the park is the three gossipers - three immense rocks shaped like standing people. There are several formations to be seen as one drives through the park. The petrified dunes are formations that look like sand dunes. Perhaps the most famous formation is the Balanced rock - a large rock delicately balanced on the top of another rock about 130 feet high.

Perhaps the most interesting part of the arches national park are its hikes to the delicate arch and the double O arc. The trails are a bit strenous and require you to be in somewhat good health. The trail path is marked by small piles of stones (similar to pitthu in India) and one is supposed to follow this trail of piles.

The scenery of the valley on the path to the delicate arch is nothing like any other place on Earth and successfully keeps you from feeling the exhaustion of the hike. The first sight of the Delicate arch completely stuns you. Its impossible to believe that the 50 feet gigantic formation it is not man made. It is many times worth the strenuous hike.

The hike to the double O arch is more strenuous, more adventurous and many times more spectacular. On the way to the double O arch lies the worlds longest natural arch - the fabulous 300 feet long landscape arc. The path the the double O arch involves a bit of scaling on the rocks and walking by the edge of some precariously steep cliffs and some fantastic views. The Double O Arch is a natural formation with two arcs one on top of the other - a small one spanning 21 feet and a much larger one above it spanning over 70 feet. To show the scale here is a photo of the two of us sitting in the smaller arc. After crossing through the double O arch there is small climb to the top of the hill that can provide an amazing view of the double O arch. By the time we started on our return journey from the double O arch it was almost sunset. We hurried back on the hike since it is definitely not advisable to hike on this trail after dark. By the time we reached back to the foot of the trail it was quite dark and the sun had set.

The sunsets from the park across the skyline of the cliffs are amazing. Overall this was one of the most memorable trips we have been on.

Trip to Death Valley and Sequoia for Memorial Day

2008-05-27T23:19:00.002+05:30

Nov 25,26, 2008

For this Memorial Day weekend, Kalyan, my best friend from BHU, who now lives in Texas, visited us. We had originally planned to go to Lassen Volcanic National Park, but on Saturday evening e changed our plans since we found out that it was going to rain all weekend at Lassen. We decided to go to Death Valley National Park and then to Sequoia National Park. We found a motel in Ridgecrest, CA, not too far from Death Valley (about an hour) but remote enough to keep the costs low. We took 101S, 152W, 5S, 58W, 14N. By the time we reached Ridgecrest it was past midnight. We had lots of leftover food from a reunion party at our house and we took it with us and ate it for dinner, and then slept soundly.

We woke up early the next day and started off towards Death Valley on 395N, entering the valley via 190E. The day was sunny and fabulous. The scenery was spectacular. I have been here about five times and yet the place did not fail to amaze me. The giant cacti, joshua trees, dry lakes, desert vegetation and the mountains.

Death Valley is immense and ordinarily takes more than a day to cover in its entirety. We realized that we had time only for the Ubehebe crater and Badwater basin. It was noon by the time we reached Stovepipe Wells, which is a tiny town at the heart of Death Valley and the only place with any civilization for miles. We were low on gas and the price at Stovepipe Wells was $4.50, so we decided to fill 5 gallons, just enough to travel to the places of interest to us and leave. We were starving by this time, so we picnicked here with some delicious dondakaya kobbarikaya koora and perugu.

We reached Ubehebe crater at about 1:30 in the afternoon. The crater was created by an immense explosion when a stream of underground water came in contact with a stream of lava and instantaneously produced tremendous pressures due to the sudden creation of steam. The crater is 770 feet deep and over a mile wide and is quite awe inspiring. Apparently Ubehebe means "great basket in the rock" in Native American. We decided to hike down to the bottom of the crater.

We made it down to the bottom in about 15-20 minutes and it was an amazing feeling standing at the center of the crater surrounded by the immense walls, imagining the process that created it. The hike down seems quite precarious at first, especially since at some points it is quite steep. After spending some time inside the crater, we started to climb up. It is definitely a tough hike back, partly because of the height, but also because much of the path is made up of very loose gravel that makes it hard to get a good foothold. It was almost like climbing up a sand dune. It took us about half an hour, several pauses to catch breath and lots of huffing and puffing to reach the top. It was 3:00 pm by the time we reached the top and we immediately headed off towards Badwater Basin - the lowest point on land in the U.S. On our way there we saw a coyote. We had seen coyotes before - canines that bear a striking resemblance to wolves or foxes or Alsatian dogs - and while they are not generally very large, this one looked particularly emaciated.

Badwater Basin is 282 feet below sea level and an extremely outlandish place, at first looking like it's straight out of a science fiction novel. Rainstorms and flash floods accompanied by the formidable evaporation rate leaves behind immense plains of nothing but white, crumbly salt. In peak summer, the salt forms interesting hexagonal patterns on the plain, making it look even more surreal.

It was about 5:30 by the time we left Badwater. We decided to stay the night at Bakersfield, about an hour or so from the Sequoia area. We took 190W, 395S, 14S, 58W, 99N to Bakersfield. We called Mani who helped us find an Indian restaurant in Bakersfield (Taj Mahal Cuisine of India). We were racing to get to the city, and the restaurant closes at 10, so we called them up and placed our order over the phone. We reached the restaurant at 10:10 P.M - about 10 minutes after it closed. However, the owner was nice enough to keep the place open until we could get there. We checked into a Motel 6, exhausted, had a scrumptious meal and fell asleep instantly.

We started early again the next day, drove up 99N and took 180E towards Sequoia National Park. On the way, we stopped at Three Rivers point by the Kaweah lake. It is one of the most beautiful areas I have seen. Aparna and I have decided we need to come here again and spend more time.

Out first stop at Sequoia was Crystal Cave, a cavern with stalactite and stalagmite formations. There was a lot of fog and driving conditions in Sequoia were pretty bad with less than 10 m visibility. All of us had seen caverns before and were not significantly impressed. The hike to the caves however, was spectacular with some amazing waterfalls on the way. I took a lot of photos, and in some of them, managed to get us all wet, when I put my arm around Aparna and we slipped on the wet rock and fell into the stream!!

After Crystal Cave we went to see General Sherman - the largest tree in the world. No mater how many times I see this tree, it continues amazes me. It is over 2,200 years old, is about 3 miles wide, and stands at an impressive height of about 275 feet. In other words, it is older than the Buddha, wide enough to build a small apartment in, and so tall, that you can't see its top branches. We paid our reverences to the tree (see picture with the "General Sherman" sign) and then headed back home. We reached home at 12:02 a.m, exhausted, but very happy.

Another feather in our Fabulous Trip cap.

Trip to San Simeon

2008-01-02T01:41:00.003+05:30

Dec 31, 2007 - Jan 1, 2008

It had been a while since Aparna and I had been on a romantic outing. I reserved a motel right across the pacific ocean in San Simeon about 5 minutes from the Hearst Castle. We had driven on PCH en route to other places several times but never treated it as a destination in itself. We started late in the afternoon after lunch and made it to San Simeon by 8:00 after a lot of stopping and sightseeing along the way. We even caught the sunset after crossing BigSur.

On the way we stopped to see the night sky. We were in the middle of nowhere with no polluting lights around. The night sky was moonless and cloudless and absolutely wonderful. It looked like a black slate sprinkled with white powder. The Milkyway was clearly visible across the sky and we saw a lot of stars. It was an amazing sight. I wish I could have captured it in a photo but even with a 15 second exposure on 400 speed film didn't work - anyway I tried. One day we will probably go there with our telescope and spend the night stargazing.

We woke up early the next morning. The air was fresh and invigorating. I caught the beautiful lavender sunrise sky on the beach right across from our motel. The beach was full of colorful pebbles and Aparna brought some pebbles home. I picked one too, to impress her with my strength.

The water was a bit cold but not enough to discourage us from getting into it.

We then drove to Hearst Castle and got tickets for 1:00 P.M. We had an hour and were hungry. There were a couple of places to eat near our motel by the sea and we chose "El Chorlitos" - a mexican place. This Mexican place is perhaps one of the best non-Indian places we have eaten at so far. I ate Mushroom-Spinach Quesedilla - it was simply brilliant!

We visited Hearst Castle. I have seen quite a few castles in the past in Europe and in India and was a bit sceptical about a castle that was built in the 20th century. Hearst castle is definitely worth at least one visit just to see what people can do if they end up with a lot of money and do not know what to do with it. The man did a good job. He definitely had some taste.

I was a bit surprised to see the ceiling entirely made of gold and the exquisite bathrooms. The swimming pools were the absolutely fabulous. I would love to take a dip in it. The outdoor pool had Greek and Roman sculptures around it. Even the indoor pool was wonderful with gilded blue tiles.

There are 4 guided tours here and each of them lasts an hour and takes you to different parts of the castle and costs $20. We took tour 3.
After the castle tour we drove down to Cambrilla. It is a quaint little town worth a nice romantic walk. While Aparna had some coffee, I had some hot chocolate and we drove up PCH back to San Simeon to catch the setting sun. We found a beach with some benches at the edge and sat there watching the most beautiful painting in the world unfold before us.

We had dinner at an Italian restaurant called Puezzullos. It was nice restaurant - more so because of the chef who had a really nice sense of humor. The food was quite good.

The next morning we drove North to catch some elephant seals up close early in the morning when the seals start arriving and before the crowds pour in. The elephant seals were just starting to waddle onto the beach from the sea. We also caught some fighting elephant seals up close.

We had some breakfast at the Ragged Point Inn and spent the rest of the afternoon walking around the beaches. We drove back after lunch at the Ragged Point Inn and caught the last sunset of the year.

We reached home at around 8:00 P.M after a wonderful trip to remember.

Happy New Year!

Trip to LA with in-laws

2007-12-26T22:01:00.002+05:30

Dec 25,26, 2007

Aparna's grandpa, now 87, has been wanting to see Disneyland for over 50 years now and her mom had made three unsuccessful attempts to go there too. We decided to go to Disneyland this Christmas. We started on Saturday around 11:00 A.M (22nd) on southbound 101. 152 had one of the worst traffic jams I have seen in the last 4 years. The queue of cars extended all the way into 101!! After spending 1 hour in the crawling traffic and managing to go about 2-3 miles we decided on a new strategy. At We took a U turn at about 1:00, stopped at a gas station, had lunch and got back on 101 S by 2:00. From 101 at San Lucas and took 198E to connect to 5. We would travel about 10-15 miles longer and a bit windy but without the jam and worth the scenic beauty. I had taken this route before during jams on 152 . The decision turned out to be a good one cos we didn't see any traffic at all along this way and reached LA by 7:30. After meeting Animesh, Dantu, MV and others we headed to the hotel - Vagabond inn in Bell gardens and slept.
The next day we woke up early, cooked and headed towards Universal Studios Hollywood. We were one of the earliest to arrive at the theme park. The day was sunny and a welcome change from the cloudy days back in the bay area. After having a nice invigorating coffee in Universal City walk we proceeded to the park.

There was a large christmas tree both in the Universal city walk area as well as at the entrance of universal studios. We first proceeded to the studio tour. Theres tata with the Jaws Shark.

I have been to the Universal Studios 5 times in the last 5 years (as a tour guide to my friends and relatives while I was in LA) and each time the Studio tour always has something new to show me. Also this was the first time I went to Universal studios with Aparna. This time there was a new demo showing how the violent exploding car shots are done. Also they added some water squirting Raptors in the studio tour ( probably recycled from the Jurassic park ride). Everyone loved the studio tour - the mummy rotating tunnel, the king kong, the earthquake, the flash flood, dinosaurs, the jaws attack, the crumbling bridge and other stuff. Tata loved it and said, "this is what happens when great imagination meets great engineering."

After the studio tour we saw the Water world show at 1:00. The show had all new actors this time but the story was exactly the same as I have seen the last 4 times. I still enjoyed it. Everyone loved it. After the water world we had lunch - some delicious home cooked food. Me and tata went to the House of horrors, Aparna and Attagaru were too scared to enter. This was the first time I had been to the house of Horrors, I had been to the Mummy returns before though. I really liked the house of horrors, it is much much better than what it was two years ago. That is what I like about Universal studios, it keeps improving every year. Theres always something new to see. We saw terminator 3D and Shrek 4D. Tata being an ardent lover of action movies, absolutely loved terminator 3D.
All in all universal studio was a lot of fun.

The next day we went to Disneyland. We got tata a wheel chair. There was a huge crowd, this being the christmas eve, queues were almost 1.5-3 hrs of wait for anything we wished to see. However, since tata was on wheel chair the waits were reduced to almost nothing. Some people where taking advantage of this , we saw a group with 12 people accompanying one person on wheel chair.

I had never been to Finding Nemo submarine ride was very nice. Everyone really loved it. The ride took us in a submarine underwater and the effects where wonderful. We then went to see fantasyland and saw "Its a small small world". Once was not enough for both Aparna and Attagaru but we had no time to see it again. After having lunch there was the parade at 3:30. Fortunately we got a very good spot. I have been to disneyland 4 times before but never had a vantage point this nice.

After the parade, by popular demand we went to see the winne the pooh show. It was similar to "its a small small world." We then went to the haunted mansion and finally the Indiana Jones show. Everyone loved it.

The castle was wonderfully lit in the night. The fireworks were two hours off and it was getting cold. Also everyone was pretty tired so we decided to go back. Disneyland was wonderfully lit in the night, especially the christmas tree.

Disneyland trip left both attagaru and tatagaru very satisfied. The next day we decided to take the PCH back to LA. We started at 8:00 in the morning. We spent a little time at the SantaMonica beach wetting our feet.

On our way we stopped at the Avinal Beach for lunch. A herd of seals were happily basking at the beach. We had a little guest to accompany us at our lunch. He ate some home cooked artikaya koora and some bangaladumpala koora along with us.

At San Simeon we caught some elephant seals basking in the sun. The elephant seal males keep fighting for territory while the ladies and babies bask.

On the way the sun set and we caught the sun setting in the pacific ocean. The sunsets were brilliant
and one of the most wonderful sunsets I have seen.

We reached back home by 7:00 in the evening with wonderful memories.