motorcycle diaries

Actually....

2010-12-04T03:14:00.004-07:00

...i like long flights. i haven't met anyone who feels the same way.
For me its a lot of personal lazy time. No phones, No emails. Cut off from the world. Just a good book with lots of wine and food. Or may be a few movies. A good nap. A time to listen to music and think about random stuff. A walk along the aisle. A couple of drinks with strangers. An occasional peek out of the window - into icy arctic sky , an out of the worldly sun in the horizon , a faraway jet blinking its way through or a glittering city. To top it all - the sudden acceleration and deceleration of take off and touch downs -it thrills me.

DCH recap

2010-10-24T15:06:00.003-07:00

Spotting dolphins off Long Island

2010-10-24T15:00:00.001-07:00

Lightning on Statue of Liberty

2010-10-24T14:54:00.002-07:00

US Open 2010 - Djokovic Vs Blake

2010-10-24T14:51:00.003-07:00

2010-07-25T00:57:00.001-07:00

one of these days i had a glimpse of heaven... just like that

i was 20,000 ft up in the air...looking out of the window i could see the mighty western ghats covered in a green carpet...the valley was submerged in a huge lake which glistened in the morning rays of sunlight.

Needless to say it was magical...

and i had breakfast in front me, served by a beautiful air hostess...i took a bite and sat back...i looked my beautiful wife ..she had already digged half-way through her breakfast and was working on the rest with religious enthusiasm.

Though, these aren't all the likely ingredients for nirvana, it was a moment of serentiy. i was at peace, with myself and the world. everything felt right or i didnt care about anything?
but i smiled to myself savoring that moment of bliss..

Finally !

2010-07-05T08:54:00.008-07:00

I have had a lot of people complaining that there is nothing related to a motorcycle in this blog and that the name of the blog is quite misguiding
So here is a tiny effort to win back some of the lost good will :)

That's my first motorcycle..

Its good to be lost !

2009-06-07T23:11:00.003-07:00

Every curve you take on this road, you expect to meet someone familiar, only to be frowned upon by a yellow frog or greeted by the curious stare of a hornbill.

Trust me, you will never meet anyone from your neighbourhood or your work place on this road. You will never have to stop to make small talk, unless you want to do that to a wild orchid or a hopping rabbit.

I scan the skyline on my horizon. There ! I see a majestic animal, grazing the vast grasslands.

Three days with no TV, no Internet, no mobiles, no newspaper,no..well the only luxury you have here is unbelievably tasty food, which the local chef churns out and the soothing greenery all around you.

Its good to be lost once in a while.

What is life?

2009-06-07T22:39:00.002-07:00

It is the flash of a firefly in the night.
It is the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime.
It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset.
~ A Native American Indian's words

yawnnnn....

2008-09-05T12:17:00.002-07:00

hmm...so its been more than a year since i blogged..shocking..i thot it was just yesterday that i posted last!
its ok, ive been busy doing other stuff...i tell myself...

food for thought

2007-07-14T17:19:00.000-07:00

credit for bad behaviour !!

2007-07-14T17:10:00.000-07:00

"There is a new service from Expedia, Travelocity and other travel websites: environmental expiation. If you wish, when you buy a plane ticket, they will figure out how much carbon your trip will be adding to the atmosphere and charge you for it. (For Boston to Los Angeles, about 3,000 miles, it comes to around $9.) The money goes to nonprofit groups that either plant trees to absorb the carbon or produce an equal amount of energy in an eco-friendly way (using windmills and such). You are still increasing the carbon in the air, but someone else, thanks to you, is reducing it by an equal amount.

The genius of carbon credits is that it opens up a whole new inventory of things that people can buy and sell. And there is no reason that the principle should be limited to environmentalism.

For example, how about a "bad-parenting surcharge."
Somewhere in the world there is a parent who is slugging his kid every night. For a price, he would refrain for a night, or even two. By paying that parent not to slug his kid twice, you gain the right to slug your kid just once.
It's a win-win-win. You get to slug your kid. This other father gets the money. The other guy's kid is happy--he gets a night off from being slugged."
Read more at http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1635840,00.html

An optimistic map of America :)

2007-06-22T12:05:00.000-07:00

An optimistic map of US, showing towns that actually exist!!

Click below for a full size map

http://www.holdthemustard.com/

An excerpt...

2007-06-17T14:52:00.000-07:00

An excerpt from Mr. N R Narayana Murthy's pre-commencement lecture at the New York University (Stern School of Business) on May 9

".....The next event that left an indelible mark on me occurred in 1974. The location: Nis, a border town between former Yugoslavia, now Serbia, and Bulgaria. I was hitchhiking from Paris back to Mysore, India, my home town.

By the time a kind driver dropped me at Nis railway station at 9 p.m. on a Saturday night, the restaurant was closed. So was the bank the next morning, and I could not eat because I had no local money. I slept on the railway platform until 8.30 pm in the night when the Sofia Express pulled in.
The only passengers in my compartment were a girl and a boy. I struck a conversation in French with the young girl. She talked about the travails of living in an iron curtain country, until we were roughly interrupted by some policemen who, I later gathered, were summoned by the young man who thought we were criticising the communist government of Bulgaria.
The girl was led away; my backpack and sleeping bag were confiscated. I was dragged along the platform into a small 8x8 foot room with a cold stone floor and a hole in one corner by way of toilet facilities. I was held in that bitterly cold room without food or water for over 72 hours.

I had lost all hope of ever seeing the outside world again, when the door opened. I was again dragged out unceremoniously, locked up in the guard's compartment on a departing freight train and told that I would be released 20 hours later upon reaching Istanbul. The guard's final words still ring in my ears -- "You are from a friendly country called India and that is why we are letting you go!".

Deep in my heart, I always thank the Bulgarian guards for transforming me from a confused Leftist into a determined, compassionate capitalist!....."

Taste of india !

2007-05-26T10:42:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, i had lunch with a client at an indian restaurant.
naturally, one topic of discussion was the cultural differences between US and India.
In between Darrell spoke about 50 yrs of his life, how it was to grow up back in the 70s, how he struggled to make ends meet, how he met his wife, how he narrowly escaped from being drafted out to Vietnam and about his son who came back from Iraq a few weeks ago...
On our way back he said.."i think u and me have the same set of goals in life, we all want to have a family, we all want to provide a decent living to our family, we all want to enjoy our lives. i dont care about your nationality, where you come from and shit like that, but i think we all want the same things. If all of us get it, we are all happy campers"
and i said "Darrell, thats a very broadminded thought, but many people dont get it".
he chuckled "yeah, many people dont get it"

good to know someone who doesnt think "the world is US and US is the world"

fresh from the rain

2007-04-16T00:14:00.000-07:00

road to mesa verde

2007-04-16T00:12:00.001-07:00

mountain creek

2007-04-16T00:10:00.000-07:00

vallecito lake

2007-04-16T00:08:00.000-07:00

after the rain

2007-04-16T00:07:00.001-07:00

it was a rainy day @ durango, colorado

2007-04-16T00:01:00.000-07:00

mesa verde..

2007-04-15T23:59:00.000-07:00

cliff dwellings of anasazi indians@mesa verde UNESCO world heritage site

missing something..

2007-04-06T12:23:00.000-07:00

today, i realized what i have been missing in my life for so long..
that, my friends, is nothing but breakfast..
after many many days i had a proper breakfast, as sumptous as it could get in my office cafeteria.."the morning edition special" as they call it...toasted bread with scrambled egg and steak with lots of grated ...ok.i know no one'sinterested in the details, but i cant help adding that i had it all washed down with some good strong coffee(part of the "special" package)...
another important point - im blogging all this not because i dont have anything better to do at work, i have lots of work, but its friday and i am going out for a trip this afternoon...all good enough reasons not to do any work...ok, its time to head home and start packing..
hasta leugo..

my visual DNA

2007-03-16T11:58:00.001-07:00

Read my VisualDNA™ Get your own VisualDNA™

dead end - flagstaff - most confusing set of sign boards in arizona

2007-03-14T01:14:00.000-07:00

a little less confusing now

2007-03-14T01:11:00.000-07:00

sunset

2007-03-14T01:05:00.001-07:00

shadows playin hide n seek

2007-03-14T01:04:00.001-07:00

2007-03-14T01:00:00.000-07:00

2007-03-14T00:48:00.000-07:00

2007-03-14T00:46:00.001-07:00

2007-03-14T00:37:00.000-07:00

2007-03-14T00:34:00.001-07:00

2007-03-14T00:27:00.001-07:00

2007-03-14T00:25:00.000-07:00

2007-01-30T15:01:00.000-07:00

after a very very long time, i happend to talk to pitts, vani n madhu ...not to forget renewed ties with roy chettan and sanju unc and sudheer garu..
so no prizes for guessing the topic of this post....

thinking of kol, the first things that rush into my mind are the heat, the white dazzling sun , the torrential rains and hailstorms...in that order...
then i think about tat hotel(cant remembr the name or the place), bl 224 and fool's garden... the mausi's shop at koronomoyee market, egg chowmien and slice (ah !), the rum flavoured ice cream....the idli delivery guy and his kids, the bl 224 unc and family....park street, esplanade, mango lassi, countless movies and egg rolls....the metro..and its lambe haath when it finally caught up with us at dum dum !!! the share autos, the wooden buses , the antique trams , boat rides in ganges, the many visits to serene countrysides outside kol and trips to orissa, sikkim, jharkhand....
of course, its in kol, that blu n me realised the importance of having breakfast in life and its effects on decision making skills , sadly the hard way....

wen durga puja was over and rabi kishore left kol, the hustle and bustle of phool bagan(also known as fools garden due to our weird translation) came into our lives...the centrestage was definitely held firmly by poornima di, who used to make sure that we got used to her way of doing things...esp cooking food,....sparking duels in culinary skills with OD....and yes, she brought a radical shift in OD's *sense of dressing* too ...the shrimps she used to get from chingri ghata...hmm.aaha..
occasionally ashok debnath and characters like kingshuk bhattacharya hogged the lime light along with kalu-da ,balu-da n lambu-da..
the next-door neighbour - "bomb shell" mun mun and her hippopotamus dad..tats attributed to his liking for (splashing) water...
many visits to 'grain of salt , 'some place else' , 'malgudi days', college street, oxford, bd100, swabhumi,sanju unc's place, guitar classes...oh i think i ll never forget santa and defnitely not sushmita rani pal(im sure cp would share the same feelings abt sush )......

strangely, i had to put in some effort to recall names of many places and people...strange because i m not sure if i should be happy or sad about it

2007-01-02T13:54:00.000-07:00

new year is a time when a lot of people introspect...so did i

and heres a few memorable moments from the year that sped by...

2006 new year celebrations in painavu, the trekk and the camp fire in the middle of a jungle.... jumping out of a plane from 13,500 feet and falling through the clouds....
trip to Mexico ....
"on the fly" drive to Vegas....
staying in a houseboat .....
xmas in Los Angeles ....
tempe new years eve block party
i could think of a few more...however the most beautiful of them all, still seems to be the time i spent in pondy !

just finished watching "papillon"....i guess , in a way, it helped me with the long due introspection..... in putting a few things in the right perspective...and in questioning myself about my priorities(sad, guess i never got it right!)....

i have half a mind to jot down "Top 10 shocking moments of 2006"(title courtesy: VH1).....but then, i resist the temptation...

whoever had the patience to read through these ramblings, wishing you a great time ahead...
As Dega says : My thoughts are with you !

2006-11-26T11:46:00.000-07:00

pyaar ke side effects
sandy wore a perplexed look..and he was actually blinking...Jose, kb n me were
summoned to the hall...the centre of attraction was Jack....he was reading a book..well a novel...now whats the big deal about it....
having been jack's roomie for quite somtime, sandy could vouch that jack has never even looked at a magazine with interest, forget reading a novel....as for me i suspect if he has even touched textbooks....well, things were not gonna be the same again...somtime later in the day, jack looked at a bottle of whiskey , shook his head and said "holy water"...i ws not sure if he meant "holy grail"...and after finishing off "da vinci code", he took up "god father", i guess he has been bitten by the book bug(or worm)...well, now we've all got used to this change..and its good to see him read novels, though somtimes he refers to mario puzo's magnus opus as "grand father" :D

2006-11-10T22:14:00.000-07:00

Theres nothing more than driving which makes me feel happy these days....

...and driving early morning along an arid desert with the sun slowly rising over the formidable mountain range in the horizon...nothing beats it....

the mountains always loomed large in the horizon

and after the desert came som greenery..but not the ones we were used to...

The long road to mexio....

then we crossed the border into the town of sonoyta (pronounced sonoya)..

and again the now-familiar scenes came back...desert country...

and finally we hit rocky point, after squirming through some chaotic traffic, which gave us a feeling of 'apnapan', a feeling of being somwhere in india, that feeling getting stronger with the signboards showing 'Km' and 'Km/hr'...people park wherever they feel like...kids make a living out of begging and doing jobs like washing cars...things u dont get to see on the other side of the border...

Rocky point is a beach in the quaint little harbor town of puerto penasco (puerto means port in spanish) in the pacific ocean....
The sight of a bright blue ocean sandwiched between bright blue sky and an almost silvery desert was truly amazing....

After checking into a hotel, true to our mallu genes,we decided to treat ourselves with some sea food and found a place to eat which was literally over the ocean...a restaurant on stilts...

After the hefty lunch, fighting fatigue and sleep, we decided to get things into turbo mode and rented a jet ski for an hour....adventures included trying to "drift" a-la "tokyo drift"..and switching drivers mid-sea...

followed it up with som parasailing...

more excitement-the boat gave up on us mid-sea and had to wait for more than hour for another boat to pick us up, however this gave us an opportunity to see the sun go down...and quite a few dolphins swam by ...
tats jose enjoyin the solitude, a-la "Dil Chahta Hai"...

after a round of burritos, quesadillas and tortillas and some tequila, we slept off...

Nov 5, 06
"Breath taking view" of the ocean..from our hotel room...

soon after breakfast, we hit the road trying to find a place to do paragliding...

and that was the high point of our trip....the trainer showed off his skills with the glider and it was 20 minutes of pure thrill...

and for timepass we decided to lunch, and it turned out to be a long one...as they always do in the beaches, food was served after a good one hour...

and then we hired two All Terrain Vehicles(ATV) and drove around all around the desert and beaches, hills and through a crater...

by tosekhar

by tosekhar

cutting the stori short, we had a dip in the sea and headed back...
no surprises at the border, we were allowed get back into the US..they didnt even check our boot..we couldve easily smuggled in an illegal immigrant...comin to think of it, arizona state spends 10 million a year to check illegal immigration...

bankin on the pricey "full coverage" insurance,we bot for the weekend and of course prayers, jose decided to leave me alone to the task of driving and climbed into the backseat for a nap....

the rest of the trip was uneventful, except for the little goof-ups cos of my inexperienced driving...we were hom safe n sound..

considering the dacoity and carjacking, mexico is famous for,i guess every1 back hom was happy to see us alive and without much damage...