Polish travels...

Ok.. finally i have written about my travel to Warsaw and Krakow... Mostly known for cheap travel, cheap food and drinks... what i find is that it is not so much cheaper than any other place... and prices may soon be on a upward trend just as any other place... I really enjoyed the city of Krakow with all the old castle and history preserved as opposed to Warsaw which was completely flattened in WW2 and rebuilt from ashes... Warsaw in my opinion is not that great compared to Krakow... Guess for each his own... I also got a taste of Polish food ... yum..yum... loved those pierogis (dumplings)... anyhoo.. check it out... on my travel blog.
My photos from trip: Warsaw , Krakow

Rabbit food...:-o)

Being a vegetarian in a country like Norway is sometimes difficult if you expect to go out and find plenty of veggie options on the menu, although sometims chef's can always make something for you... During my travels I ve always found that there are some nice vegetarian places to go and eat authentic food (or fake authentic) if you look for it and know how to find it... Like when I was in Paris, I googled for a good veggie place and ended up in "Le Grenier de Notre Dame". I really enjoyed the vareity of food for a reasonable price on the menu.. food from different cuisines, but very much veggie friendly... Sometimes it can be hard in Paris to find a place to eat veggie version of French cuisine... This place was very good for that purpose and I highly recommend it...
When I was in Krakow (Poland), little did I expect that they would have a fully veggie/vegan place in Poland.. Eastern Europe known for its meat'ful' cuisine had something to offer for veggies too... Apparently vegetarianism and healthy organic food is gaining momentum here... I visited a Vegetarian placed called "Bar Vega". Food was so cheap here that I almost had all my meals here during my stay. They served some tasty Polish and Russian dumplings with cheese, sour onion, potato etc. Compare that to the steamed Kozhukattai.. :)... These dumplings a.k.a Pierogi were very tasty... I also tried out the Soy version of Hungarian Goulash (usually has beef) and traditional Polish soups.

In prague, there are plenty of options to choose from for a vegetarian.. There are lots of ISKCON places that offer Vegan/Indian food. I found a place called Country Life that offered organic and fresh vegetarian/vegan food option. prices were a bit high compared to other restaurants in Prague, but it was worth the money.. Very tasty and healthy...

I ve learn one thing to do before my travel.. check out the such veggie places in Happy cow :).. They always come in handy... Its always more fun to eat traditional food in a new country.. and such veggie places offer great options... Bon Apetit !!

Lazy...Lazy...

This blog has been very dormant for a while.. Please check back when it is updated... :) ... So many trips to write about... just not enough time to sit down and write about all of them... hopefully i find time soon enough...

3 cups of tea !

"The first time you share tea with a Balti, you are a stranger. The second time, you are an honored guest. The third time you become family" -- Balti proverb

It's such a wonderful book to read. Its about an American, Greg Mortensen, and his failed mission to climb K2 that led him to a remote village in Pakistan and his fight to build a school for the entire region with one school at a time. It is such an inspiration effort to promote peace by educating the children of small villages in the backward regions of Pakistan and Taliban occupied Afganisthan, who otherwise have no opportunity whatsoever to be educated. His efforts are remarkable especially in the times of war when this whole region in Pakistan and Afganisthan is considered a haven for terrorists and jehadis. If you are looking for inspiration to something worthwhile, start by reading this book.

There is a website that gives more information. www.threecupsoftea.com

If you order the book through this website, 7% of the money goes to the trust building schools to educate the children in central asia. It is the least one can do help out the children in these areas who otherwise have no hope.

Merci Zizou, El Maestro!!!

2 years gone by.... and the world of football and French football still misses Zidane.. the one who played football like it was art... he played football like it was some sort of orchestra.. grace at large, simple and soft touches like it shouldnt hurt the football, control the pace well and fooled all the defenders like it was some treasure hunt... God... we bow to theee... we miss thee... Any possibility that you might come out of retirement?? miss watching El Maestro in action... the genius who can never be replaced... Been watching Euro2008 and its just not the same as watching Zidane in 2006 WC or Euro 2000 or WC98... I guess it will take another decade to get another genius like that...

Those who win by penalties, die by it...

Distinctively remember this caption on Hindu newspaper when Argentina lost to W.Germany in 1990 WC...

Finally justice is done.. Italy lose in penalties... again... I am not sad for them..
They beat France( w/o Zizou) in the WC, but now they are knocked out in penaties...
A test of 2 world class keepers to prove who is the best in the tournament.. Van der saar is already out.. and now Buffon bows out too... so Casillas seems to be the winner so far.. unless Lehmann comes out in the top... interesting to see how it plays out... Germany seem to have an edge.. solid defense, good attack and motivating captain in Ballack... Spain, if they play like today, dont even stand a chance against Russia... Russian attack will expose them...

Malta... Yalta...

Malta.. Beautiful island in the middle of mediterenean !! Fusion of different cultures and languages, steeped in history, clear blue and sandy beaches, heaven for tourists, good spot for scuba diving and water sports and a big harbour... Smack in the center of Mediterenean it has always been a strategic location for all the powers of Europe, Africa and Persia in olden times.
Since I had very litle time, I explored the historic places of Malta, old chappels, factories from the last century fully preserved, catacombs from the Roman times etc. I went and checked out the night life in St. John's bay and St. Julian's bay which are known for the trendy bars and night clubs. These places thrive with huge crowd of college crowd hitting the bars late at night. Wish I had more time to explore this beautiful island..

Check my travelog for my stop over at Malta...

Crossing the Suez

I was so excited when I got to know that we will be joining the boat at Port Suez and crossing the canal with the boat and not join the boat at Port Said(located after the canal) as originally planned. I just thought it would be such a cool idea to cross the Suez canal and I wasn't wrong at all....

It was such a narrow canal, that the captain and the officers have to be very careful navigating the boat through the canal along with an pilot from the Suez authorities. There was so much to crossing the canal that I was not aware of until that day. Apparently ships go in columns or what is called "convoys" when they cross the narrow canal. The canal itself is made of 2 parts, south part between the Red sea and Great bitter lake and North canal between the Great bitter lake and Mediterenean sea. Usually there is only one convoy at a time, meaning only one in a particular direction. There are also preferences in which convoy gets to go first. The oil and chemicals tankers almost always go through straight from the Red sea all the way to the Mediterenean sea. The others have to break their journey in the great lake and wait for their turn to do the second convoy. It was all fascinating for me to learn about it and to be on the Bridge to see how the officers and Pilot function to navigate the ship through the narrow channel.

http://www.ship-wrecks.co.uk/images/SuezCanalMap.jpg

I was chatting to a native Egyptian on-board and learnt a lot about the history of Suez canal which I was not aware of and how strategic Suez is to Egypt and how much money is made each day in the canal. I wikipedead and found tons of info on this. I invite you to look through it if you are interested.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suez_Canal

My date with Ancient Egypt :)

Egyptian civilization, as they say, is one of the most ancient civilizations in the history of human beings and is well recorded too through heiroglyphics and no trip to Egypt is complete without a trip the great pyramids and sphinx. I had a day in Cairo and I went to Giza to see the great pyramids and Sphinx and then to the National museum in Cairo to see the ancient Egyptian artifacts. It was truly an amazing adventure to visually experience the ancient Egyptian architecture and their glory... I was so thrilled just to be there and experience all of it... Maybe some day.. I will get more time to travel all around Egypt, travel along the Nile and visit all historic places...

Check out the complete travelog on my trip to Cairo and also the photo album.

TIA

TIA - This is Africa..
Finally I sat down and saw the movie BLOOD DIAMOND after hearing so much about it... I was so rivetted to the tv while watching this movie... making you think about the atrocities brought upon in many African countries by any kind of wealth, the corrupt governments, civil wars and lack of peace.... I couldn't help but shed a tear or two for all those people who die in such civil wars throughout the ages in Africa due to power struggle and civil wars and when you see those refugee camps and the children carrying guns, you really want to scream and shout.. somebody please help them... but what can you do.. send a cheque or cry for them... one can only hope that sanity prevails and these people find their peace.. and you realise that at the back of your mind that you are very lucky not to be there in their situations and you proably never want to go there and witness such a scene...

Makes you wonder... Are diamonds really worth so many people's lives and their freedom.. and so does oil or drugs or any other thing that makes people so greedy that gets them to kill their fellow beings ??

Quite a poignant movie.. If nothing atleast an eye opener... Do watch if you haven't watched it before...

Some quotes that stuck to my head:

Sometimes I wonder... will God ever forgive us for what we've done to each other? Then I look around and I realize... God left this place a long time ago

You come here with your laptop computers, your malaria medicine and you little bottles of hand sanitizer and think you can change the outcome, huh? ..

My new board...

With my new born craze for snow boarding antics, i started looking to buy a snow board pack and found it quite expensive 500-600 $ and more... so i started looking out for used boards on the internet and look what i found... A nice K2 snow board and bindings (almost my size) fully intact with my size of boots... all for 600 NOKs ~ 120$... Its a deal.. Its a steal.. Although the seller said hes used it few years, it still looks quite neat and needs just a little bit of touch-up... Guess i would take her out for a spin hopefully next weekend if theres more snow... expect a few falls, few bruises... I am ok with that as long as i can confidently go down the slope properly turning both ways... just waiting for more snow now.. :)

boarding on snow...

It is such a great feeling to be able to go down the hill on a snowboard... the rush you get when you go down the hill fast enough to feel the speed.. its just amazing.. ... It looks so cool when you see an expert do it on tv .. and it feels cooler when you actually try it yourself.. 2 years back when i tried for the first time, i fell down so many times and had a few horrible falls which made me think i will never try this again in my life... i took a lesson this year and it made so much difference that I got the courage to try it again and this time i managed to go down the hill 7 times in a day and i was so proud of myself.. just the feeling of acheiving something which you thought you were never going to succeed.. its just a great feeling... and the fact that if you continue doing this you can actually be good in something is also great... anyway... long story short... it just feels amazing. to be able to spray the snow all over and sometimes even get it all over your face when you fall down... i should thank my friend for letting me borrow his board... maybe thats my next target.. buy a good board and wait for more snow and give it a go again... better to try it on fresh snow which cushions your falls than hard compacted snow which is too fast when you have little control over the board... :)

Happeee new year

This blog has bcome a very dormant one in the last few months and needs lot of updating. Have lot of stuff to write about, my trip to Lisbon, my trip to India and other weekend activities in between... Until then... I wish you all a very happy new year...

Smiley Potatoes

I was in Lisbon for a long weekend and I went to Pizza Hut. This is what I found on their Menu. Fried Mushrooms, Garlic Bread and Smiley Potatoes. Look at them, they look so cute and perfect smiley. How can you eat them, when they smile at you like that..... :) Nevertheless, the beast that I am, I ate them with great pleasure...

Trip to Bessegen

Besseggen is a very popular destination for hikers in Norway. It is one of the mountians that belong to the Jothunheimen mountain range in central Norway. The hike takes approximately 6 hours w/o any stop and very steep in parts and more importantly very scenic and extremely beautiful. To read more about this trip, please click HERE to go to my travelog.
Photo album from besseggen trip

Preikestolen and Kjerag

Weekend trip to Preikestolen and Kjerag in August 2007. Read my travel blog.

Bharat ek Khoj

I dunno how many of you remember this by name. It was a popular Telly serial on Sunday afternoons during my middle school days. It was based on "Discovery of India" by Jawaharlal Nehru and directed by Shyam Benegal. I thought it had one of the best cast among the comtemporary telly serials. I used to love watching this series. I dunno if the theme song (Shristi se pehle ...) attacted me more to it or the historical story in each episode. Long time after during grad school days, a group of us friends were discussing about this serial and we all remembered the powerful opening and closing themes(hymns) from the Rig veda (Ancient Hindu scriptures) and how much of philosophical meaning was attached to it and how we desired to watch it again or atleast listen to the theme songs.
I don't know what prompted me to look for it today, but Google gave some search results with some videos and Mp3's of those themes and some explanations of the same. It really felt nice to listen to it and remember the old days, those lazy sundays in front of the telly with the whole family.

MP3 of Opening theme also on You tube and Mp3 of Closing theme : Courtesy of links and full test
Warning: Volume maybe a bit loud on the Mp3's.


I also found an interesting explanation to this hymn. It is really quite amazing reading through the whole of this suktha. some really deep philosophy about creation... It teaches how to question the unknowns. Quite interesting!

Weekend trip to Hemsedal

Another late blog... This is about the trip to hemsedal with some friends and colleagues. Hemsedal is a beautiful ski resort to the north of Oslo, roughly about 3-4 hours drive from Oslo. It has many ski slopes and some steep which makes it a very popular destination during winter. even in summer, this place is really beautiful and good for hiking, biking and kayaking. We did some hiking and also kayaking over the weekend and enjoyed the cabin experience with Sauna. All in all it was a nice trip to wind off from the busy week and the weeks before.
To read more about the trip, please go to my Travel blog

Photo Album

Funny prank

This very funny.. *LOL*

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7yaS28MHHZk

Trip to Brugge and Bruxelles

My 3 day trip to Brugge or Bruges and Brussels in Belgium. It started off with flight to Paris, Thalys fast train (cousin of TGV) to Brussels and a local train to Bruges. Bruges has this beautiful small city feeling to it and its canals and the lovely buildings and oh. not to mention the Beer, chocolates, Belgian Waffles, Fries with Mayo or many different vareities of sauce and yummy food. The famous Bruge dish is Mussels and Fries :). One of the artistic attraction was the sculpture 'Madonna and the child' by the genius Michael Angelo and artifact of religious interest was the vial carrying blood drops supposedly of Jesus Christ.
Brussels, the capital of EU, was also equally impressive. All its old buildings gave a sense of history amidst all the modern new buildings and constructions. Star attraction was Grand place, central market square which feauturs the city hall and also the statue of Manekin Pis just around the corner from here.

All in all it was a nice weekend to spend exploring new cities, drinking lots of belgian beer, eating belgian chocolates, waffles and frites. :)

To read more about the trip, please visit my Travel blog

Photo album