Map of konkan coastline

I recently came across a map of the konkan coastline. It is a scanned image with a lot of details on it. There is another map which I have used to good effect and that is attached below.


Bon Voyage.

The vacation down south

Its always a great feeling while you are planning to go on a holiday, especially if its after a considerable time. This time we chose Bangalore, Kodai and Munanr and went about meticulously planning the trip.

Air tickets... check.
Hotel Reservations... check
Money belt... check
Credit Cards... check
Wife... check.

Thats most of it what I needed. Jyoti did the rest of the checking. We eagerly packed and left for the Pune airport on 12th, 2008. The airport was a mess and the plane took off late. Our first stop was Bangalore. This is the place where I studied for my masters and a lot of fond memories are associated with this city. This was my first away from home city where I lived and studied for one and a half years of my life. I still have a lot of friends and the plan was to meet most of them and bask in nostalgia. We landed at Ritesh's place and he played the perfect host. I took Jyoti around Bangalore and specifically IISc where I studied. I caught up with some of my friends and it was sheer pleasure.

The next stop was Kodai Kanal. This hill station in Tamil Nadu is a nice place with ample greenery and scenic views. We stayed there for 2 days at Sterling Resorts and did some sight seeing. Unfortunately, the weather was a bit foggy which was fun for all other reasons except sight seeing. We were literally walking in the clouds.

SILVER OAKS WATERFALL IN KODAI

Although I would have to say that Kodai has become more crowded and dirtier than I saw it earlier. Nevertheless the fun part worth mentioning here is the lake and the bicycle track which goes around the lake. Cycling could be real fun here.

KODAI LAKE VIEW

We headed towards Munnar after spending 2 days in Kodai. From Kodai we got down the winding ghat roads and the weather again became hot. After swiftly crossing some towns we were up in the mountains again towards Munnar and the weather did a U-turn and it was cool and wonderful once again. As soon we entered the borders of Kerala we were greeted by unbounded greenery and fresh and soothing breeze.

THE WINDING ROADS TO MUNNAR

Munnar is a beautiful hill station and the promos in the television depicting Kerala as 'God's own country' seemed so true now. Greenery all around and every path from the foothills to the hilltops is covered by tea plantations which make it a treat to watch. Apart from amazing weather the sightseeing was also better. I finally got to visit an 'Echo point' where I could hear my echo. The boat ride in the Matupatty Dam reservoir was also fun. It also seemed apparant that the place was much cleaner than Kodai and I believe that the locals and administration had much to do in it.

MUNNAR TEA GARDENS:

The accommodation was again Sterling resorts and we had a great view from our room. The only thing we missed was an elephant ride and I tried to make it up by riding another type of elephant.

THE DUEL: HIMANSHU AND THE ELEPHANT

We had a great time in Munnar and finally it was time to return back. Hope we'll do this again sometime.

The trip: Pune to Bangalore(train or flight), Bangalore to Kodai Road via tuticorin express. Kodia road to Kodai Kanal by taxi. Roughly 100kms. Kodai to Munnar by taxi again roughly 150kms. Munnar to Coimbatore via Taxi 180kms. Coimbatore to Mumbai (flight) Munbai to Pune by taxi. You can also take the flight out of Cochin. Alternately you can take the train from Coimbatore/Cochin to Pune but the train timings are a little odd.

Mahabaleshwar once again

... and this time it was with Dr. Gaurav and Dr. Simpy. We chose Grand resort for our stay. The resort is scenic, lots of greenery, has good veg food but the rooms are OK. The doctors had a wonderful time and so did we.



We went around some of the places and did some boating. While the men did all the hard work(paddling), the ladies simply played Titanic-Titanic. Personally, I think chivalry sucks.




We also goofed around a bit and had loads of fun. All in all it was a memorable trip.




Panchgani had this spectacular sight where people were enjoying para-gliding. Essentially, one is tied along with a pilot who would be controlling the chute and all this fun for a whopping Rs 1500/-. Adventurous nonetheless.

Orlando + MountainView

Here are some more pics from the US trip.


Happy to be eaten


















A plane was kept in the lake in such a fashion that it looked like a crash.




















This is life. This is how my refrigerator looked like in the hotel.



















The adventurous ones. Entry to the theme park in Orlando. We had a blast there.



















Scooby-dooby-doo and me.


















At the Universal Studios theme park

Web 2.0 and 'The Big Fight'

My good friend Navin(http://smriti.com) has been constantly telling me and some of our other colleagues about Web 2.0 and how cool some of the technologies really are in the web world today. Slowly but surely some of the folks around are beginning to explore it, including me. For sometime now I have been exploring Facebook and it amazes me to see the number of applications being developed there. And these are developed by people like you and me in our own time.

I remember my professor Gopinath at IISc always used to say that "Whatever you do, you should become famous on the internet". I am sure he was talking more in terms of research papers and presentations in conferences and stuff, but Web 2.0 is brining in another avenue to become famous on the web. The mad scramble to write apps for Facebook is one such case in point.

Then one day Navin said 'Twitter" and I looked at it and thought "Gawd what a silly little thing" and then I came across this (http://wtips.blogspot.com/2007/04/twitter-tools.html). As the Gauls would probably say "These Earthlings are crazy!!". And lo behold I have started to use one such tool (http://rss2twitter.com/). What this will do is as soon as I publish this blog post, the rss feed for this post will be used by rss2twitter to post a small summary to my twitter account which will be also seen on my facebook profile and on my blogspot page (which means on the right hand side of this page) and to all the people who have volunteered to follow my twitter (using IM.,cellphone, email, etc). Now that is "cool". Just look at the dissemination of information and that too so quickly. There could be interesting business models built around it.

And moreover I am simply exploring the tip of the mountain. I have found an easy way to get to all the cool stuff (ping Navin). And moreover I am pulling more people into the web. If Anupam and Shridhar read this they will be vigorously nodding their heads. Kamlesh would be easily sucked into this.

And now for the Big Fight. It is coming and I can see it. My wife has carefully calculated the time I spent on Facebook and she drops in snide remarks about How I used to discourage her from Orkut. So I can see the inevitable. Probably I can avoid it. Time will tell.