Tag Archives: Travel
Its not just Maple that makes Fall pretty!
The morning started cloudy outside, and very sleepy inside!!! Waking up around 8 and still being in bed when its almost 12 is an amazing experience! To be specific, I have not been sleeping on the bed at all… Have been camping on the floor after the terrible muscle pull last Friday, and now I do not feel like going back to sleeping on the bed!!!
Anyway, had seen a few leaves yesterday while walking back from the office and was determined to go back and take pictures of them irrespective of how the weather was going to behave! but to my luck, it behaved very very well! and what you see below is the result of a short walk around the neighborhood!
Its not just the maple leaves, but almost every single tree starts turning into beautiful bold pastel red, yellow and browns… A sight to see and remember! the Camera, if catches half of it, is doing just the introduction!!!
Enjoy the photographs below and do not forget to click the link at the end for a small slideshow of the Fall-Winter Collection from flickr!
And like I said before… here is the link. I would recommend press F11(Full Screen) as soon as you click the link for a better view.
Went to be a newton, came back with apples!
So I did the next best thing, picked apples!
It was fun to walk around trees trying to find apples… there were 1000s of them lying all around the farm as well…
The apples varieties that we finally managed in our bag were
1. Golden Delicious
2. Red Delicious
3. Cortland, and
4. Ida Red
Once we had a bagfull of apples, we went to the sales shop inside the barn!
And I got a pumpkin for myself too! I am going to carve it for Halloween!!! Told Rachel and Stephenie the story of how Ganesha got his elephant head and what Diwali is all about!!!
All in all a excellent Diwali weekend!!! Thank you Uncle God!!!
Jungle mein mangal!
Our challenges were divided into jungle challenges and maha jungle challenges with a different point system… my team started with 3 points less than the other team because we had answered some quiz questions incorrectly…
Some of the games that we participated in were
1. Jungle Fashion show…
oh… my team’s name was Mattar Paneer with Miller Lite and our slogan was
Khao Piyo Mast Jiyo
Dhoom Machao Jeet ke Jao
and back to the games now..
2. Getting water from the wild
3. Collecting 3 live animals
4. Karela Eating
5. Mushrooms eating
6. Banana eating (with the peel)
7. Shrimps eating
8. Raw Eggs (breaking and having them)
And then a maha jungle challenge… my team was supposed to make a Ravan, and the other team was to put up a 10 seater tent! What you see below is the Ravan that we made!
There were loads of ball games as well which we enjoyed thoroughly… I also managed to sneak out for a small walk and some photography during a break!
And we also had a huge bonfire! The sky was absolutely clear that night and it was full of stars! The only time I have seen a better sky was when we had camped at Pangong Tso in Ladakh!
We slept around 2 am and got up early too! I had Gaurav’s phone with me, and I set an alarm for 8 am and woke up when the phone rang as well! I did wake some of the other guys up in my room asking them to come for a walk outside!
About hour an hour later I realized that I had woken up because of the 6 am alarm on Gaurav’s phone and not the 8 am one that I had set! 😛
The next day was a light one in terms of games, but we did play a few… including one where we had finish 30 golgappas! I participated in that one, and WON 😀
The breakfast was some lovely Poha and Chai …
Overall, this was one of the very few trips with such a large group that I have been in, and needless to say, I enjoyed it thoroughly!!!! One of the important things being, that team won, even though we started with 3 points less 🙂 It was the last game which turned out to be a deciding game as well! thrilling competition!
And all of us heading back to our homes happily 🙂
Will write about the other two trips soon…
1. The 3 day weekend in Canada
2. The 1600 mile roadtrip
(KA) Road Pati !
How does the thought of driving from New Delhi to Kanya Kumari sound like?
nice?
I was on a road trip just about that distance long this weekend!
A total of close to 1600 miles driven in 3 days across 4 states in the US!
Thank you Uncle God for getting me back to Milwaukee safe and sound!
I am back Eh!
Lets put in simple words!
3000+ miles of air travel
900+ kms of road travel
Short and not so Short Hikes
Lakes with color I had never imagined in my life
Mountains
Valleys
Plains
Gondolas
an over-speeding ticket :/ !
and did I mention
walking on a glacier?
oh and Greek food and Italian food
and…. will write in the next post… or maybe next to the next… for now… some photographs!
First of the amazing weekends – Minneapolis this time!
Black Yellow Pink and Blue… oh and some green too!
This weekend was fun!!! Saw some really good movies..
Transformers (must be the 5th time I saw it)
Pineapple Express, and
Groundhog Day (loved it)
and spent a lot of time watching clips from old Hindi comedies and Amir’s Coke Ads kyonki kurta to shareer ke upraard ki lajjanivaran ke liye hota hai na sir !!!
Also finally gave two B/W rolls for developing and scanning… they should be back in a week’s time… really looking forward to the results!
Got two more rolls…
A french festival and the Great Circus Parade in Milwaukee
Bastille Days is a 4 day festival which was held at the Cathedral Square in Easttown Area of Downtown Milwaukee… This was essentially a festival focusing on three things, Good food, Good music, and take a guess, well! good Wine!
I am not a wine fan, but I did enjoy some brilliant performances, and some Egyptian and Greek food during the festival…
Over to visuals now…
Some images from the South Stage in the festival…
So this was all about Friday… The next morning I decided to walk over to the Lakefront where the Great Circus Parade was camping… Walked around the place looking at various wagons, watching people enjoying with family, this was a place to come to with kids… They really enjoying watching the horses, elephants, Jokers, Camels etc etc
After spending a few hours at the Circus Parade grounds I headed back home…
And decided to go to Bastille Days again in the evening ! Just the right time to enjoy some amazing live music….
What I really like about US is that people enjoy and dance irrespective of their age… Mostly people in their 40s and 50s were dancing around the south stage this time around… Teenagers and Youth apparently were not interested in this festival, as I did not see many !
I have developed a strong liking for country music here, and I was happy to hear it live too… The base guitarist was amazing!!!
And the next morning which was Sunday, I went to see the parade… People had reserved/blocked spaces on the street sides for days in advance, some kept their chairs, some had marked the spots with duct-tape, some had even pitched their tents and were staying there for a few days… The number of people I see in Milwaukee every weekend is probably equal to the number I see in 4-5 winter months together!
Ok, back to the Parade, enjoy!
Like I said, these were family events 🙂 Even the horses were not behind… Baby horses were a part of the parade with Mommy Horses…
Hope you enjoyed the parade and the festival… Will have more from other events from Milwaukee… Stay tuned!!!
I have purposefully not written the details about the festival or the parade assuming that if you are interested, you would google and read about it!
East Coast Tour – Day 1
I had an amazing musical, festive weekend with a second dose of Transformers 2. Needless to say, I have a few pictures from the weekend but I need to post about the East Coast tour as well… So here we go… there was not much happening wrt to writing so this is going to be post with photographs and some relevant text around those… Enjoy !
I was initially thinking of driving to Niagara and back, but a friend at work recommended a tour that he knew was decent… I checked out the site, discussed with mom dad, took a few days off, got the flight tickets, booked the 3 days tour and was all set! The last thing I booked was the hotel, because I was in double minds about staying close to the airport and saving time in traveling to the pick up point, or staying a bit away from the hotel and saving some money! Chose the latter, and it turned out to be a nice idea as our flight out of Milwaukee was more than a few hours late and that meant that would get just about 4 hours to sleep before we were to leave for the 3 day tour.
Gotobus is a travel firm owned and managed by the Chinese and operates with some local travel shops attaching their buses with the central operator. Our pickup point was in Flushing, a small china town in NY suburb. From there a shuttle bus took us to China Town, Manhattan from where we were to board our tour bus.
Early morning experience on the otherwise very busy streets was interesting… It was like a city trying to wake up… about half an hour on that road was good enough to see how the number of people and speed of movement changes…
1. No using of the bathroom in the bus (I wonder why did they have one in it anyway, if the clear instructions were not to use it)
2. Don’t be late at any visiting place, as the bus is not going to wait for anyone who is late
3. Keep Mr. King’s phone number handy so that in case you are lost, you call him and he finds you.
4. Keep the bus clean
5. Absolutely no open drinks in the bus, not even coffee in lid cups! Strange rule though! It was told that this irritates Mr. You !
Our first stop was the Liberty Bell memorial in Philadelphia. For someone really interested in history of the cracked bell and its relevance to America, there is much available on Google, so let me stay from the details here. This is where I first felt like a tourist 🙂 in a controlled group lead by a tour guide with a red umbrella! Was not sure at all if this is the kind of traveling that I like, but I was sure that this was probably the best way to get a taste of America and be at places, which I would not visit otherwise… so here is how the enjoying part of this trip started!
The first stop was the National Air and Space Museum! We got just about 30 minutes at the place which needs atleast 1 day to absorb! We did enjoy those quick 30 minutes though, quickly walking around two floors of the huge huge huge museum and then rushing back to the bus!
This is the place where Sam meets one of the decepticons!
This was another amazing collection of artifacts! One place where you should spend atleast 2 days!
Next was a dinner stop and then we moved for a 2 hour night tour. It was getting very tiring now, and thankfully the sights made for most of it. The first stop, Washington Memorial, was worth sitting around for a while. The breeze was nice and the weather comforting… we just sat around the place for a while before we drove to the World War II memorial.
Mr. King had a typical line he used to say everytime we boarded the bus, worth mentioning here 🙂 He used to say “welcome be back to the bus!” and for a photo opportunity he would say “chak chak chak chak” and for a nice place or expression his standard dialogue was ” OOOO la la”! fun guy !
The next day was easy… We were to go to Hershey’s Chocolate Factory and Corning Glass Museum! Will write about that day later!
Route Maps of the weekend trip in East Coast, USA!
These are not completely accurate because of the non-inclusion of the service stops, meal breaks etc, however still have a fair amount of accuracy as far as our route is concerned…
Day 1 – Part 1 : New York to Philadelphia