My picture and one of my quote on pedestrian safety in Bangalore, published in 27th November 2009 print version of Bangalore Mirror news paper.
Saturday 28 November 2009
Thursday 26 November 2009
Pause.... Rewind !!
Time goes in a flash! Life moves on faster. Loads of things happen around. Yet at times, we should pause and rewind our memories. Yeh! The date 26/11 itself should remind what I am taking about here.
A black day in Indian history where terror shook the hearts of billions of people India and around the world. The terror strike in Mumbai, exactly a year ago killing so many innocent lives will remain etched in memories for really long. It is time to remember and pray for the innocent souls to rest in peace. Hope we don't get to see ny more such terror attacks in future.
Monday 9 November 2009
Loving the North Indian food
So many varities of Paranthas, Tandoori items, Tangdi kebab, Hara bara kebab, varities of chaat items, Paneer adraki, Paneer Peshawari, lassi, rabadi, .. yumm yumm..n the list simply just grows big..Slurp! slurp!I am totally relishing the North Indian food items and am giving my taste buds a treat. I am still looking for a chance to visit Parantha wala galli and Dilli haat in Delhi which are highly recommended by my friends here in Gurgaon and Delhi. Btw, Thanks to Rupal and Debasish for taking me to a good place in Gurgaon for amazing chaat items.
Wish I recovered faster from my ankle injury which I picked up here in Gurgaon, so that I could have gone to Jaipur over the last weekend and visited Choki dhani and other attractions in Jaipur.
Alright! Enough said about the food items. I will better stop now. Time to go and grab something to eat ;)
Thursday 5 November 2009
My trip to Taj Mahal and Aksardham
Prior to my trip to Gurgaon, I was thinking about visiting Tajmahal and Aksardham sometime during this trip itself. Yippie! I did manage to visit Tajmahal, Agra fort, Mathura (Birth place of Lord Krishna) and Aksardham in Delhi during the last weekend with Karuna. From Gurgaon, after calling lots of radio taxi cabs, I managed to get one and went to Noida on the Friday evening to Karunakaran’s place. Huh! Gurgaon has absolutely zero public transport and people rely on their own cars and cabs for everything. Taxi guys charge like hell and you need to wait for 45 minutes to 1 hour atleast when you call and book a cab. Uff!! .. Karuna is my schoolmate and it felt good to meet him after almost 9years. After catching up with Trapty (x-colleauge in Infy) and her hubby Vishal for dinner in Noida, I crashed at Karuna’s place that night.
We started at 5 am from Noida to our day tour bus pick up point in Delhi. While we were waiting for our tour bus in the cold, we made ourselves warm with the fire lit with wood outside the tea stall there and sipped hot chai. After almost 4.5 hours of journey in the heavy traffic roads, we reached Agra Fort at 12.15pm. Agra Fort isn’t that great but it has great view point to view Tajmahal which is just couple of kms away from there on the banks of Yamuna river. I bought myself a marble Taj souvenir and small marble statues for my home at a cottage industry stop. I also got a glimpse of first Taj mahal model made before actual Taj was built, in that cottage industry. This model was supposed to be designed by four architects at a cost of 7 lakhs and it took 4 years for them to show the model to Shah Jahan. Then we reached Taj Mahal around 3.45pm and after long wait in the ticket counter and entry queue, I was finally in front of Tajmahal..
My very first expression on seeing Taj was ‘OMG! Taj is just so beautiful’. I just could not take my eyes off of Taj mahal as it is so stunning. The efforts of 20000 odd workers for 22 years to build Tajmahal truly shows. No wonder, it was listed as one of the 7 wonders of the world’. After we clicked some pics and captured few video clips there, we started to Mathura. At 8pm we entered the Mathura temple which is the birth place of Lord Krishna and this is where the main Janmastami celebrations are done and telecasted from, every year. The temple has tight military security all around and stern security check in the entry. Mathura is famous for 3 things. The Krishna temple, Tulsi malas and Mathura Petha (Sweet). It was almost 2.45 am when we reached our room in Noida after the tiring trip.
On Sunday, I started with Karuna around 1pm on bike to Aksardham. I was actually excited to click some pictures and videos inside Aksardham but was taken by surprise once I entered Aksardham as I had to keep my bag, mobile phones, camera and digicam in locker. After tight security check we entered Aksardham. Aksardham is so big and is absolutely awesome. The architecture is truly stunning and I could not believe that most of the statues and sculptures inside were hand carved. If anyone is going to Aksardham in future, please don’t miss the Exhibition and musical fountain inside. Exhibition will take around 2 hours including an hour waiting time but it is worth every bit of it. It includes 50 minutes of Animatronics show of Swami Laxmi Narayan life, 45 minutes movie on giant IMAX screen and 15 minutes of boat ride inside, where you will get to see the amazingly realistic statue settings done to visually show the achievements made by famous historians of India. Unfortunately the Main Aksardham mandir was closed as some maintenance was going on. There is also a visually entertaining musical fountain show of around 20 minutes around 6.30pm inside. With satisfaction of visiting amazing places, I started back to Gurgaon on that Sunday late evening. I am gonna cherish these moments for really long time.
We started at 5 am from Noida to our day tour bus pick up point in Delhi. While we were waiting for our tour bus in the cold, we made ourselves warm with the fire lit with wood outside the tea stall there and sipped hot chai. After almost 4.5 hours of journey in the heavy traffic roads, we reached Agra Fort at 12.15pm. Agra Fort isn’t that great but it has great view point to view Tajmahal which is just couple of kms away from there on the banks of Yamuna river. I bought myself a marble Taj souvenir and small marble statues for my home at a cottage industry stop. I also got a glimpse of first Taj mahal model made before actual Taj was built, in that cottage industry. This model was supposed to be designed by four architects at a cost of 7 lakhs and it took 4 years for them to show the model to Shah Jahan. Then we reached Taj Mahal around 3.45pm and after long wait in the ticket counter and entry queue, I was finally in front of Tajmahal..
My very first expression on seeing Taj was ‘OMG! Taj is just so beautiful’. I just could not take my eyes off of Taj mahal as it is so stunning. The efforts of 20000 odd workers for 22 years to build Tajmahal truly shows. No wonder, it was listed as one of the 7 wonders of the world’. After we clicked some pics and captured few video clips there, we started to Mathura. At 8pm we entered the Mathura temple which is the birth place of Lord Krishna and this is where the main Janmastami celebrations are done and telecasted from, every year. The temple has tight military security all around and stern security check in the entry. Mathura is famous for 3 things. The Krishna temple, Tulsi malas and Mathura Petha (Sweet). It was almost 2.45 am when we reached our room in Noida after the tiring trip.
On Sunday, I started with Karuna around 1pm on bike to Aksardham. I was actually excited to click some pictures and videos inside Aksardham but was taken by surprise once I entered Aksardham as I had to keep my bag, mobile phones, camera and digicam in locker. After tight security check we entered Aksardham. Aksardham is so big and is absolutely awesome. The architecture is truly stunning and I could not believe that most of the statues and sculptures inside were hand carved. If anyone is going to Aksardham in future, please don’t miss the Exhibition and musical fountain inside. Exhibition will take around 2 hours including an hour waiting time but it is worth every bit of it. It includes 50 minutes of Animatronics show of Swami Laxmi Narayan life, 45 minutes movie on giant IMAX screen and 15 minutes of boat ride inside, where you will get to see the amazingly realistic statue settings done to visually show the achievements made by famous historians of India. Unfortunately the Main Aksardham mandir was closed as some maintenance was going on. There is also a visually entertaining musical fountain show of around 20 minutes around 6.30pm inside. With satisfaction of visiting amazing places, I started back to Gurgaon on that Sunday late evening. I am gonna cherish these moments for really long time.
Tuesday 3 November 2009
Awesome night drive to Nandi hills
Instant plans turn out to be great almost all the times when it comes to trips and outings. My drive to Nandi hills was one such instant and crazy plan which turned out to be awesome. For people who don't know about Nandi hills, it is a small hill around 50 odd kms outside Bangalore which includes 21 kms road stretch apart from the highway road stretch and is quite popular.
On a casual meet up with friends on a saturday evening, 2 weeks back for dinner, we initially planned to go to a disco and let our hair down. But disco plan was dropped very soon. Then we came up with the idea of night drive to Nandi hills and decided to start at 1am pr 2 am, so that we can watch the sun rise as well. I was excited too to drive my new Swift in this night drive. With my favourite collection of new hip hop music, we hit the road and within sometime, one of my friend's friend joined us with his Yamaha Rx6 and few of his friends in 4 cars. It was 10 people including us in 5 cars and a sports bike. After a small stop in the coffee day on the way to airport, we went to the Bangalore airport and were loafing around in the empty parking lots out there. I got a chance to rev up the Yamaha Rx6 in the empty airport road stretch. Trust me its always more fun to ride a sports bike than to drive a car. Thanks Naveen! If not for the Airport patrol people, we would have drove the sports bike for somemore time.
As Naveen and his friends wanted to return back from Bangalore airport, I drove with just my friends to Nandi hills. Once you take diversion from NH road to Nandi hills roads, it is too spooky to drive in that darkness. But soon I could see so many bikes and cars coming to Nandi hills. Till that date, I never knew that people come to Nandi hills in the wee hours on fridays and saturdays just like that or at 5 or 5.30 am to view sun rise. We reached the the top of Nandi hills around 3.45am, we felt as though party was going on there coz of the loud music people were playing from each of their cars and all the dancing. There were atleast 12 cars and 10 bikes there and all of them were playing music and dancing.
People had lit fire with the woodsticks coz of the chillness and were dancing all around for the loud music. We were dancing for sometime and it was fun to see people drift their cars around to show their skills. After having a blast of time, we drove back to Bangalore and reached home 6.30 am. I was damn tired coz I had been on a night drive with my friend the previous night to Bidadi coffee day at 11 or 12 in the night just to have coffee. Call me crazy or outgoing or whatever you like! But its fun to be around with friends. Place, time and distance doesn't matter when you are with friends!
On a casual meet up with friends on a saturday evening, 2 weeks back for dinner, we initially planned to go to a disco and let our hair down. But disco plan was dropped very soon. Then we came up with the idea of night drive to Nandi hills and decided to start at 1am pr 2 am, so that we can watch the sun rise as well. I was excited too to drive my new Swift in this night drive. With my favourite collection of new hip hop music, we hit the road and within sometime, one of my friend's friend joined us with his Yamaha Rx6 and few of his friends in 4 cars. It was 10 people including us in 5 cars and a sports bike. After a small stop in the coffee day on the way to airport, we went to the Bangalore airport and were loafing around in the empty parking lots out there. I got a chance to rev up the Yamaha Rx6 in the empty airport road stretch. Trust me its always more fun to ride a sports bike than to drive a car. Thanks Naveen! If not for the Airport patrol people, we would have drove the sports bike for somemore time.
As Naveen and his friends wanted to return back from Bangalore airport, I drove with just my friends to Nandi hills. Once you take diversion from NH road to Nandi hills roads, it is too spooky to drive in that darkness. But soon I could see so many bikes and cars coming to Nandi hills. Till that date, I never knew that people come to Nandi hills in the wee hours on fridays and saturdays just like that or at 5 or 5.30 am to view sun rise. We reached the the top of Nandi hills around 3.45am, we felt as though party was going on there coz of the loud music people were playing from each of their cars and all the dancing. There were atleast 12 cars and 10 bikes there and all of them were playing music and dancing.
People had lit fire with the woodsticks coz of the chillness and were dancing all around for the loud music. We were dancing for sometime and it was fun to see people drift their cars around to show their skills. After having a blast of time, we drove back to Bangalore and reached home 6.30 am. I was damn tired coz I had been on a night drive with my friend the previous night to Bidadi coffee day at 11 or 12 in the night just to have coffee. Call me crazy or outgoing or whatever you like! But its fun to be around with friends. Place, time and distance doesn't matter when you are with friends!
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