At Pench National Park, Madhya Pradesh

We visited national parks in Madhya Pradesh during last winter. We started our trip on 19th Dec with some planning done before hand. Having enough time for this trip, we decided to travel by train both up & down.

It takes about 24hrs by train to reach Nagpur from Bangalore. But, our train Bagmati Super Fast Express took about 30hrs, stopping at many stations at will letting all passenger trains, local trains pass by. Shockingly, this long journey train doesn't even have a pantry car. They supply food only from few destined stations and only mineral water & jumpins fruit drink is available on train. So, any utterance of food items at any station immediately arouse our interest. At one time, there was a vendor selling Samosas at a station. The moment the train stopped, all of us in the boogie bought Samosas instantly. When another samosa vendor entered the train and saw us all munching samosas, he was surprised and said "Arey, train abhi roka tha, magar sabke hath me samosa hai!!" :)

From Nagpur, we took a local bus to reach Khawasa. We took our seats next to the driver to have a better look of Nagpur city. The city seemed to be pretty clean. Ofcourse, it is only based on the streets the bus took us through. From Khawasa, by Jeep we reached Heaven's Garden Resort, ~5Kms from Pench National Park gate.

Pench National Park (21st Dec)

In the shivering morning cold, we eagerly reached the park gate by 5:30, an hour ahead of the park opening timing. Early at the gate means you would be one of the first few vehicles to enter the park. Most often, the animals would get disturbed by the vehicle sound and slowly move away from the trail. So, it is always better to be one of the first few vehicles in any trail.

At 6:30 sharp, the gate opened and the vehicle started moving. With the moving wind, it became even colder and I started shivering. Sweater, Muffler, Jacket didn't protect me completely from cold. After few minutes, once we entered the thick jungle, I forgot the coldness and completely got indulged in the forest. Due to winter, the park had very many dry areas. The pench river which flows in the park, didn't have much water too. These changes didn't matter to me. I was ardent about meandering in the park. Of course, only by staying in the jeep. We are not allowed to step down from the jeep inside the forest perrmises.

While maundering in the jeep, I sighted some of the commonly seen animals like Chitals, Sambar, Wild boar & Bison. Though Chitals & Sambar are common, I can never become weary of watching them in the wild. At times, watching them being very casual & careless, eating the fallen leaves from the tree, sometimes observing them to be alert and noticing them taking every step ahead with great caution, excitedly listening to their alert calls which they call out loud when some danger or threat nears them, it can never be dreary. I forget the passing of time in their presence.


I had an exhilarating moment, when I saw a herd of deers suddenly fleeing into the forest and finding that a Jackal was the reason. The Jackal was approaching towards us. For every few steps it took, it looked at us and ensured that we are of no danger to it. It hurriedly crossed the trial and quickly vanished into the forest on the other side. Another really interesting moment was when we sighted the fresh kill of a deer by a predator. It was very close to the trail and I could clearly see that the spotted deer's intestine was torn apart and was missing. The guide mentioned that the deer is killed by Leopard - Leopard first eats the intestine of the prey. Our guide was repeatedly saying that the Leopard should be within 100-200 metres of its prey and this shy animal should have been disturbed by some vehicle sound. We quietly and patiently waited at this spot for sometime, but the adamant Leopard vehemently refused to come closer to its prey. It has all the day to guard its prey and eat it in the night. But, I have only 4 hrs of safari in the morning and 3 hrs in the evening :(

Moving on from Pench (Pench - Kanha)

Early in the morning, around 7:30 a.m, we left Pench. It took us about 6hrs by bus to reach Khatia gate, Kanha National Park. When choosing to take bus in Madhya Pradesh, it is a must to be aware that the road conditions could be terrible, as worse as not finding laid roads on some stretch of the travel. Also, the buses could lack suspension. The duo could do magic to your backs! So better be aware of this before taking up this mode of transportation. I was aware of these facts and the experience didn't come out as a surprise to me.

After a hard day travel, we had a relaxing evening in Kanha. I will post my Kanha experience in the next post.

For those who want to go to Pench, I have added details at How to reach & where to stay at Pench

Filmie Freaky

In the past few months, I came to know what a film freak I am. I always loved movies but never knew that I could watch any genre & any number. I have strong inclination towards english movies and have recently lost track of tamil movies. I started being a film maniac not because I didn't have anything to do, but more because I didn't want to do anything at times. I picked it from there and that is when I discovered that I can watch movies continuously without any hesitation.

I used to watch over 5 to 6 movies over the weekends & a movie on every week day. Of course, it varies at times, based on other things that I have to do in my life. Definitely, I have been on this routine for few weeks. With the membership in seventymm (online movie rental), I could easily get access to quality DVDs of many good films released over years.

I have written quick review of most of the movies that I have watched in the past few months. Of course, I have missed some and do not recollect them now.

Shawshank redemption
A movie set in the one of the toughest prison, Shawshank in America. It is about the HOPE of a prisoner (Tim Robbins) who is sentenced for life term and also how he turns his destiny in prison to a somewhat meaningful life. Morgan Freeman plays the role of a fixer in the prison. They both become very close friends and the dialogues between them are good. Freeman's performance is excellent.

Taxi Driver
Movie is about the life of a young lonely, depressed taxi driver Travis (Robert De Niro) settled in Manhattan. Great acting by Robert De Niro - I could really sense his depression and feel for it. Movie goes along the complex/weird thoughts of Travis and you end up following him. An interesting climax and a very good direction by Martin Scorsese

Se7en
Brilliant movie with superb climax. An intelligent plot with excellent performances by Kevin Spacey & Morgan Freeman - Boy, I can still exactly visualize some of the scenes acted by these brilliant performers.

Million Dollar baby
A simple movie depicting the hard life of three people - A boxing trainer, ex-boxer and the one who want to make career as a boxer. The relationship among these is very genuine and pure. Humor is well blended in the dialogues and are enjoyable. Very fine performances by Clint Eastwood, Morgan Freeman & Hillary Swank and very good direction from Eastwood. Knockout punches by Hillary Swank is just awesome to watch.

There will be blood
At the end of watching this movie, I was stunned and astonished at the subject of this movie. It is about a man Daniel Plainview played by Daniel Dey-Lewis who becomes a oil tycoon with his unsympathetic behaviors & ruthlessness. The impact of the character was very powerful on me and I got engulfed by it. The intensity of the character delivered by Daniel Dey-Lewis is simply superb and was totally touched by it. It is a 'bloody' brilliant movie.

Memento
A brilliant thriller which demands the audience to think at every scene to solve the puzzle Chirstopher Nolan throws. Highly unconventional and a very bold movie. I tag this as one of my favorite and have watched multiple times and became a big time fan of Christopher Nolan since then.

Ghajini (Hindi)
Inspired by Memento - Other than this, there is no brilliance of memento. I always wonder if general public can appreciate if the original movie is fully copied -I believe not. In that case, it is an intelligent masala mix of the original. Not much change from tamil movie Ghajini. Aamir Khan's acting is superb and Asin's performance deserves an applause.

Slumdog Millionarie
My thoughts on this at
http://rshanthi.blogspot.com/2009/02/slumdog-millionarie-at-oscars.html

Death proof
Chose to watch this movie for 2 reasons - One, it is from my favorite director Tarantino and two, the rating on IMDB is good. I needed to patiently watch the movie for 1.5 hrs to get Tarantino's great touch for 20mins. If you don't mind watching people generally yapping (of course with some good Tarantino style dialogues in between) without the story going anywhere, then you can watch this movie.

Dasvidaniya (Hindi)
Do svidaniya (duh svee-dah-nee-ye) in Russian means Good Bye and the movie is about a dying person (Vinay Pathak) saying good bye to the world and his friends. Once the character understands that the exit date from the world is only few days, he lists out 10 things he would like to do before his death and ends up doing them. Story line is fine, but the dialogues aren't great to hold you on. A decent movie, different from the main stream bollywood masala movies.

Before Sunrise
A lovely romantic storyline showing the connection between a very beautiful couple who meet on the train. I loved Celine's (Julie Delpy) performance but surely not Jesse (Ethan Hawke). I think he could have definetely made the intense passionate moments better. Her mention of "I like to feel his eyes on me, when I look away" and the series of dialogues then are really really romantic :)

Before Sunset
The lovely couple in Before Sunrise meet after 9 years and spend a day together in Paris. Fine performances by Julie Delpy & Ethan Hawke. Julie Delpy is still adorable after 9 years. Definetely, I loved her more in Before Sunrise. Some of their conversations, especially the one in the car and she singing a song for Jesse are quite romantic.

Silence of the lambs
I feel the movie is over rated - May be it deserved its high rating in 1990's for its bone-chilling story line and for bagging 5 oscars. The movie is about a young FBI student trying to take help from a psychopathic serial killer Hannibal (Anthony Hopkins) to catch another serial killer. To me, the best part of the movie is the brilliant performance of Mr.Hopkins.

Glory Road
The movie is based on a true story where a coach named Don Haskins (played by Josh Lucas) led a all-black men based basket ball team to NCAA championship and creates history. The music & background score is good and a movie definitely worth watching. Josh Lucas, playing a tough coach was interesting to watch after his cute & sweet performance in "Sweet Home Alabama".

The Dark Knight
The best ever batman movie. The action is thrilling and the joker's (Heath Ledger) performance was terrific. A well deserved oscar for his performance. A must watch movie for action lovers and Christopher Nolan fans.

The Prestige
A Christopher Nolan movie - This should be sufficient to say that it is a well directed movie. The plot of the story is about two rival stage magicians (Hugh Jackman & Christian Bale) competing against each other in creating best illusion on stage. Also, it is about how far they push themselves in trying to achieve this. The movie has good twists & turns which makes it really interesting. According to me, this is another must watch from Christopher Nolan.

Die Hard 4.0
Live free or Die hard after 12 years from Bruce Willis. May be he is too old for the action(?), but the action in the movie is good. The story is not stitched well & has lot of loose ends - If you are looking only for action & the attitude of John Mcclane (only some though), then it is a fine watch.

Ratatouille (Animation)
The main character of this movie is a rat (Remy) who wants to became a chef and the movie is rightly named after a French dish Ratatouille which has "Rat" in its name :) One of the finest animation movie, with a simple story of Remy wanting to become a chef & how he does it. The composition of colors and the art sense is incredibly stunning. A pleasure to watch.

Sin City
A very inventive & artistic movie adapted from the comic graphic novel named Sin City written by Frank Miller. The coloring scheme is very unique, using black & white for most of the movie and highlighting specific objects with color. Superb, it is and the action is done with utmost grace & elegance.

Reservoir dogs
This is Quentin Tarantino's first direction and is one of the highly rated movies. The movie is about seven strangers planning to commit a robbery together. All they know about each other is their code named after a color. A set of dialogue where none of the macho guys want to take pink & arguing over their choice of color is funny. Tarantino embarked his style in his first movie and kept improvising and experimenting with it as he went along in his later movies. Note that the movie has brutal scenes and if you do not like that, then this movie may not be for you.

No country for old men
The story is about a cowboy who finds lot of money on a barren hunting land in Texas. Obviously, in reality no money comes for free and needs to be hard earned. So, to keep all the money for himself, he need to out smart a drug dealer gang. The action kicks off then, and the movie becomes fast paced and pushes you to the edge of the seat many times. However, I couldn't comprehend the end and it didn't matter to me.

Schindler's list
It is a true story based on a German man named Oskar Schindler who protected thousands of Jews during the Holocaust. It is a very fine movie directed by Steven Spielberg and received 7 Oscars. Schindler saves his Jewish employees with his money/jewelery and other material wealth. A significant number of Jews were saved by Schindler and with all respect to this great man, these Jews go by the name of Schindler's Jews. This story reminded me of how one man's good act can make a great difference in the society.

To Kill a Mockingbird
This all time classic movie is adaption of a novel of the same name. There are lots of lessons for us to learn from this movie and is thought provoking. From the movie - "Mockingbirds don’t eat up people’s gardens, don’t nest in corncribs, they don’t do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That’s why it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird". The story is based on this and is one of a fine drama.

12 Angry Men
A gripping, clever classic b&w film. The story is about a jury of 12 who needs to decide if a boy, charged for murder of his father, is guilty or innocent. But, the decision is not based on the majority, but on a unanimous yes or no from all the 12. At the beginning, all the jury members except for one believe that the boy is guilty and is ready to charge him for murder. The story is about whether the one person can change all their minds & how their argument goes on while trying to convince each other. A must watch classic.

The Great Escape
The story is about Prisoners Of War at Nazi camps during world war II, trying to escape. These fearless brave soldiers keep trying to escape from the prison and get caught many times. This movie is about the grand plan on their great escape and how they do it, and what happens then. The movie is long but interesting to watch.

Finding Nemo (Animation)
A very cute animation movie featuring father-son relationship of clown fish. The father fish Marlin is always protective of his son Nemo. The story is about the adventure Marlin goes through when he looses his son. On this adventure, Marlin meets a blue fish named Dory who suffers from short term memory loss. Dory's character is simply superb and she cracks too many good jokes. The movie is a delight to watch.

Fashion (Hindi)
A Madhur Bhandarkhar film. It does not come up to the mark of his other films Page-3 and Corporate. It is like Bhandarkhar has not done enough home work about Fashion Industry and has shown only about models being exploited by the influential and the models being drug addicts. Priyanka Chopra is the lead of the movie and it gives her a good opportunity to perform and she does it decently well. The movie is longer by 30 minutes and that makes it dragging and boring at times. Watch it only if you are serious about checking out Bhandarkhar's work & Priyanka's performance.

Big Fish
Big Fish is a movie adapted from a novel of the same name. The story is about a complicated father-son relationship. The father is a person who has his head in the cloud - His communication to people is through story telling and is a 'larger than life' kind of a man. The son is more fact oriented and realistic person. The son just can not accept his father's life as described by him, since they all were too unrealistic for him. When his father is dying, he thinks that he hardly knows the man and blames him for it. Finally, the son puts himself in his father's shoes and realizes what a man his father is. An extraordinarily imaginative story.

The Usual Suspects
The usual 5 suspects are arrested by police for questioning when a crime happens in New York, for which they are not responsible. So, they plan to take revenge for this and they all get involved in a crime. Only later, they realize that they were all exploited by a master mind and the story goes on to find who it is. The movie is an amazing crime thriller and the performance of Kevin Spacey is close to perfection.

Blood Diamond
Movie is based on a very serious subject. It is about smuggling of conflict diamonds from Africa to rest of the world. The diamonds are conflict 'coz they are the reason for the terrible wars within Africa. The movie tries to create awareness of buying authorized diamonds and also the situation in Africa. The subject is great, but not really well taken. The reality is not told well (exaggerated at some points). The journalist role played by Jennifer Connelly is irritating at times. Di Caprio's performance is brilliant.

21
The movie is based on a real-life story of 6 MIT nerds becoming expert in card counting and winning millions in Las Vegas casinos. The movie is a roller coaster ride of who beats whom. A general time pass.

The Edge
An outdoor adventure movie where a billionaire played by Anthony Hopkins (as Charles) and couple of his friends gets stranded in middle of nowhere when their plane crashes. The middle of nowhere is a very beautiful place and great to watch. Charles is a avid reader and has gathered tremendous theoretical knowledge. His knowledge comes very handy in their situation. A time pass action thriller.

Batman Begins
Chirstopher Nolan believes in story telling by establishing his characters first. The same is true here where Bruce Wayne, the batman played by Christian Bale is first introduced as a eight year old rich kid and what he goes through before he becomes a bat man to save Gotham. The thrill is slowly mounted and not right from the beginning, like lot other action movies. Building it up as every scene progresses, Nolan gives meaning to his character and the intensity of it.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
It is a fantasy movie with a curious case of reverse aging. As years progress, the child Benjamin grows younger. Somehow, I found that very many times, the movie was not focussed on the curious case, but on too many other stuff around. It is a very slow paced movie and I couldn't keep my attention at many points. The movie becomes interesting when the character Daisy played by Kate Blanchett is introduced and when a complicated love story develops between Daisy and Benjamin (Brat Pitt). The make up of the artists are really good - At some early part of the film, I couldn't recognize Brad Pitt. Watch it for its uniqueness.

Wall-E (Animation)
A creative concept of Robots falling in love. The mere thought of it itself is amazing. The film is about a simple love story of robots named Wall-E and Eve. Wall-E is an industrious robot working in an abandoned city with sky scrappers, but has no trace of people - A city believed not to support any form of life. Initial 30-40 mins of the movie goes on without any dialogue till Eve enters this world. At times, I got bored of the movie, without any dialogues. But, it is a unique movie and worth a watch for that.

Luck by chance (Hindi)
The movie is about wannabe actors (Farhan Akhtar & Konkana Sen) looking for a chance in the glamorous film industry. Out of these two, one gets lucky and becomes a star. The movie shows the dark side of the film industry, like how people exploit others, throw them once the need is over. It is not a heavy movie with only dark sides of the film industry. Director Zoya has taken care to mix some comedy at right places. A decent hindi movie released in the recent past.

Dostana (Hindi)
The movie is all about fun, glamour, more fun & more glamour. Abhishek Bachchan and John Abraham pretend to be gay to get rooms for rent in Priyanka Chopra's apartment. As expected, all three becomes really close friends and what follows is a love story, with Priyanka falling in love with her boss, played by Bobby Deol. Humour saves the movie and do not expect you to think in any way. A general time pass.

Slumdog Millionarie at Oscars

A.R Rehman, one of the most deserving musical composer wins Academy Awards in the 81st award ceremony. He grabs oscar statuette in his both hands, one for his best original score and the other for best original song (Jai Ho) sharing with Guzar for the film Slumdog Millionarie. Resul Pookutty wins Oscar for best sound mixing for the same film. It is a great recognition for these achievers and a historic moment for India at Oscars.

Slumdog Millionarie also bagged another 5 awards in the category of Best Film, Best Direction, Best Film Editing, Best Cinematography and Best Adapted Screenplay making a total count of 8 wins out of 10 nominations.

I am truly not impressed with this film, but sincerely appreciate The Music Maestro and Resul Pookutty for winning their awards. According to me, "Jai Ho" is not one of A.R's masterpiece. Some of the greatest works of him include, starting from his first film Roja and others like Taal, Dil Se, Thiruda Thiruda, Vande Mataram to name a few. A.R stands out from many other Indian music directors with his original music composition, unlike many others who have many times borrowed (stolen?) music of other countries. I think it finally worked out right for A.R, by being at the right place (Hollywood) at right time with the right director Danny Boyle. To me, this award to A.R is a recognition for his musical work since 1992.

About the movie, Danny Boyle says that it is an optimistic movie and he brings out the hope of a slum boy who suffers through out his life. I wonder how many got inspired with this movie! I at least, didn't take away any of these when I finished watching the movie. Though the depiction of slums and the people living there were realistic, the story was not. The story is piled up with imagination, which makes it good, but can't be claimed realistic. When the story is not realistic, it becomes hard to relate to it and it is difficult to take away what Boyle is trying to say, the hope. In the movie, to me, the truly interesting part was how the director has interleaved incidents happening across three time frames.

Among all these celebration of Slumdog Millionarie, Indian film industry is celebrating it as its own victory. What bothers me is that, they truly fail to understand that in more than 50 years of movie making, with about 1000 movies releasing a year, we fail to make one such movie and take it to Oscars. Surely, Slumdog involved very many Indian artists & technicians and also story based in Mumbai slums, but shouldn't there be a limit to Indian film fraternity taking credit in Slumdog's jai ho?!

The five people you meet in heaven

This book by Mitch Albom starts of with the story of a man who is dying. It begins with words like "All endings are also beginnings. We just don't know it at the time..." The start is distinct and interesting. The story is about a man named Eddie, meeting five people in heaven. These are people who altered his life forever or whose lives were changed by him. These people reason out some of the happenings in Eddie's life and helps in finding the peace he is searching for.

I am strong believer of "everything that happens in life is for good and we just can't comprehend it when it happens..." When looked back at my life, I can now explain the reason for some of the events and some still remains unanswered. The author comforted me with the thought that they would be answered someday...

The writing of Albom is simple, but the content was definitely interesting and solaced me. His way of story telling is sentimental, but has some deep meaning in his thinking. This book is a short read and it cheered me.

One night @ the call centre, a mindless masala

I picked up one of the best selling novel by Chetan Bhagat for two reasons - One, the title sounded interesting and two, it is from an Indian author. The bollywood movie "HELLO..." definitely wasn't my inspiration.

With the intent of not revealing the plot of the story, I would try not to be superfluous, but be concise in giving my take on it.

As the title suggests, the story is based on one night's events in a call center. It revolves around 6 people working in the same group at a call center, who assist customers on home appliances. As any common person can predict, many events happen that night. With this kind of a storyline, it becomes difficult to narrate many convincing events happening over a night. So the author smartly tries to break the chronological order of events on that night and narrates the love story of a couple in the group as a flashback. But, very many pages of his writing goes in this story telling.

Though in prologue, the author's words emphasize on inspiring the youth, the book merely fails in doing it. It would have been better off, if it was not portrayed as a motivational message for the reader. May be the author is attempting to pass on the moral in a "contemporary" manner by stretching the fun (love) part & maintaining a very short narration (given by GOD) in enlightening the youth!!

The author gives a simple & powerful message of, we need to follow what we truly believe in life - Be in the life making or career decisions. But, he truly does not focus on that. The loosely stitched storyline and the less imaginative stereotype way of telling story makes the writing mediocre. At some points, the reasoning in the book becomes nonsensical - Like calling common Americans as dumb. May be I will accept it to some extent, but not to the extent that the author has depicted and uses them in trying to solve the big crisis of layoffs in the call center. At that point, the story really lacks sense and becomes unbearable to accept. No set of people in the world can be so dumb, according to me.

I think the author wants each reader to relate to one of the characters. But, the story becomes so unreal, he fails in that attempt too. Towards the end, in an effort to get some real sense, the author tries to play a trick of giving a quick alternate option - Like instead of GOD speaking, assume some real person spoke those words (may be for readers like me). But, it doesn't truly convince and at that point in the book, it really doesn't matter. However, this trick reminds me of what Yann Martel does in his book "Life of Pi", a must read book I would say. I guess Chetan got inspired by this!

Inspite of so many discontents I expressed, it remained gripping and I wanted to finish it in one go. I guess, to me the anxiety of how GOD is going to appear and how well the author can stitch that to the story kept me going. However, that part of the book really disappointed me.

One night @ the call centre, truly a masala book.

On my U.S.A travel - City life

From Washington D.C, we traveled by Chinese operated bus to New York. We reached the city of sky scrappers at 2a.m.

NEW YORK (9th July - 11th July)


The bus dropped us at Madison square garden. At that hour of night, there were very few people on the road. Walking few foot steps ahead, we reached the metro station. The station was huge and the network seems to connect all nooks & corners of the city. Initially, it took us a while to understand the right route to reach our hostel (Lafayette) in Brooklyn.

After a very good sleep on the clean sheets, we woke up all refreshed & set to roam in the city. We first went to New York tourism center to find out the interesting places to visit in New York. I was overwhelmed with the number of possible options and felt that I have too less time to spend in the city. We decided to go for some of the commonly visited places, instead of doing anything off-beat.

We started from Lower Mahanttan & visited Wall Street first. The buildings on the streets were sky tall & posed a challenge for Jomy to take a good photo of them. The streets were very busy, people walking up & down the street, no one acknowledging the presence of others. There were no false smiles, greetings between the passers by, which I found to be very normal (unlike other parts of U.S). There were street vendors, mostly Pakistanis selling Halal food, pretzels and sandwiches. I don't know of any other place in U.S where food is sold on streets. I was quite happy to see this and ordered halal food for myself & Jomy. We fed ourselves sitting in a park along the side of Wall Street. I felt absolutely relaxed, sitting there without any worry & watching people passing by.

From there, we moved on to other places like Statue of Liberty, China town, Cathedrals, Empire State building, Central park etc. Central park was huge (~800 acres) - We didn't bother to walk a lot there. We found a nice landscape & made ourselves comfortable there.

Late in the night, we went to top of the Rockefeller building to catch the view of the lighted city - The view of Mahanttan skyline from there was astounding. I have never seen a city to be so beautiful before. We spent our time here till midnight and then planned to check out the night life at Times Square. Oh my god, even at 2A.M in the morning, there were so many people on the streets. The square was very well lit with huge colourful ad boards and the place was lively.

On the next day, we went to Times Square again. The place was really crowded and we tried to walk on the other nearby streets. Around this area, we found lots & lots of arts & entertainment theatres. There were so many shows going on every day in the city and found it to be opulent in arts & entertainment. Later in the day, we had our dinner in Hard Rock Cafe at Times square which I always wanted to go. The place was wonderful, with very good ambiance & music. After treating our belly well, we decided to call off for the day & took the metro to the hostel.

I found this city to be very interesting and to have many aspects which was missing in most of the U.S cities. I tried to relate it to my experience in Mumbai and could find similarities in many ways. I loved this city and I wish that I had few more days to spend here, in New York. But, the time had come for me to say Ciao to U.S and be back in Bangalore.

Ciao U.S.A...

On my U.S.A travel - Niagara & Washington D.C

After taking an overnight flight from Salt Lake City, we reached Buffalo International Airport to see the world famous Niagara falls.

NIAGARA FALLS (7th Jun)

We reached Buffalo airport around 11:30 a.m, hour & a half later than the scheduled time. Our rental car booking got canceled due to late arrival! After enquiry at the information center, we came to know about NFTA - NFTA provides good bus transportation in Niagara county and it charges only $3 for 25 miles drive to the falls.

The bus stopped at a very short walking distance from HI hostel located in a really olden part of downtown. This area seemed to be once a wealthy place, now occupied by not the well to-do families. May be the houses were passed to them second or third hand without any thought of renovating them.

We reached the hostel earlier than the actual check-in time (4 p.m to 6 p.m). So, we had to leave our luggage in the common area. We refreshed ourselves in the common rest area and started walking towards the falls. As we approached near the falls, there was a drastic change in the surroundings. There were quite some Punjabi dhabas with plenty of Indians around. In the near by parks, we could see Indian families relishing their home packed foods. It felt like without any warning, we were flung out of U.S and suddenly ended up in India! Anyway, we walked further towards the falls.

When my first sight fell on the falls, I was not greatly excited looking at the world's second largest waterfall. Yeah, it was king-sized. But, it didn't immediately arouse any great interest. I was wondering if anything was wrong with me! Still wondering about that, we purchased tickets for the historical "Maid of the Mist" boat ride. As the boat took off, I felt that this trip would be a great experience (don't know why!). Once the boat moved for some short distance, we could vividly see the voluminous falls from its base. As we approached closer, the roar of the falls became louder and strong winds were gushing. The wind brought lots of water and it felt like I was touching the falls.



The Niagara falls has three sections - American Falls, Bridal Veil and the Canadian Horseshoe Falls. The Canadian falls was probably 3 times bigger than the American falls and was much more beautiful. The boat ride was a wonderful experience and I was soaked with water. Feeling the monstrous falls from below it felt like really awesome. That was the moment, I realized the beauty & greatness of this place and found what was wrong with me then! I can embrace nature by being part of it, feeling it and not by merely observing it from far :)

Late in the evening, we once again went to the falls to enjoy the night view. The route to the falls from our hostel is through the olden town area. We were quite unsure of the safety as there were many strange looking people in the streets. But, some families were spending their evening time in their balconies (so unusual of U.S) and that gave us a slight sense of relief. They looked amicable and kind of greeted us into their streets with a smile.

At the night, the falls is lit with different colors of light. Red, blue, green, white, yellow etc. and that makes the night view very special here.

In the morning, we started towards the airport to catch our flight to Baltimore near Washington D.C.

WASHINGTON D.C (8th Jun)

A whole day of visiting U.S monuments was right in front of us. We visited White house museum, Washington Monument, State Capitol and various Congress buildings. Also, we could see White house from the fence(!) Washington D.C was full of administrative buildings and our legs were damn tried walking from one place to other.

HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL MUSEUM

In the afternoon, we chose to visit Holocaust Museum. This is a living memorial of the past and it includes details about Nazi assault, Rise of Hitler to power, fate of Jews when Hitler was in power, final end to all of these misery. It had lots of articles like clothes, shoes and other quintessential which were used by people during that miserable time. There was also an actual rail car which was used for transporting Jews all over from Europe to Ghettos, concentration camps and killing centers. I sensed helplessness and deprivation of hope when I entered into it.

Along the hall way, there were photos of hundreds & hundreds of Jews who had been killed by Nazi tyranny. At several places, there were videos on genocide & antisemitism committed by Nazis. One of the videos on genocide deeply bothered me and still bothers when I think of it. It was the fact about German doctors using Jews for their research - It was like using Guinea Pigs for research in laboratory. Most of the Jews used in those research became mentally retarded, died miserably. The sight of it was dreadful.

I must say that very high quality of research must have gone through in bringing up this museum and also a very great care is taken in arranging the facts & evidences. Unbelievably all the evidences there stood with full of life (death?) when I was amongst it. I am not a first timer to all these Holocaust facts. But, the way the whole museum is set up took me to the miserable 1930/40's.

At the end of the exhibition, tears were rolling down from some people's eyes. At that moment, I felt strong and bold, weak & vulnerable at the same time...