White Christmas!

Thanks to a lot of snow in the past few days, I'm getting to witness my first white Christmas!

I was very excited about my first Christmas in Europe, but to be honest, being abroad and away from family is quite boring. The university bears a deserted look as everyone has gone home for holidays. Of course, the Christmas market cheers you up a bit. Travelling somewhere does a better job :)

The three poor foreigners who were left alone got together and headed to Liège. I was fascinated by just two things: snow and .. snow! Hailing from a tropical area, wading through so much snow for the first time was a wonderful experience for me! 

  

Dinant

We had hoped for a last little trip before the cold set in. Turned out that it had already set in! In temperatures below freezing, we paid a visit to Dinant, a cosy town in French-speaking Belgium.

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The river Meuse runs North-South through the town. The eastern half presents a beautiful facade which includes a Gothic-style church and a fortified citadel on the hill above. The visit to the Citadel is quite interesting due to various reasons. From the top, the view of the town below is simply beautiful!

One also gets to hear interesting stories about the French and the Dutch crouching on either side of the river and hurling cannon balls at each other! It so happened that one of these canon balls landed into a part of the citadel and literally shook it up. And this presents the most interesting part of the visit (at least for me). There is a room which is entirely tilted at an angle. As I walked into the room, I found it quite hard to keep my balance as gravity and geometry were playing tug-of-war inside my brain. Then, I was asked to look at a pool of water which was placed at a corner of the room. Miraculously, as soon as I caught glimpse of the water, I was able to stand perfectly erect! Apparently, all our brain needs is a little reference plane!

My co-traveller, Krishnan, suggested that we visit the cave 'La Merveilleuse' up next. I didn't have my hopes high, for I imagined a cave to be just a hole in the rocks beneath the Earth's surface. But I was blown out of my mind once I stepped in! This was my first visit to a limestone cave! I had read about stalactites and stalagmites ten years ago in school. To actually see these beautiful structures which have grown gradually and gracefully over centuries was very humbling!

Every little town in the world has so much to say!

More photos from the trips : 

Dinant

Biking across countries

Ghent is a beautiful little university town in Belgium. Having settled down here to start the next phase of my life (a Masters in Photonics, incidentally from the interview that happened during this post), all I could think of was how close Ghent was to the border between Belgium and Netherlands. "Can we really bike to another country?!" was the reaction from each of my newly made friends Imad, Esrom and Tanbir. "Yes! We're just 20 kms from the border!" was enough to get them excited for the trip.

Saturday was the day of choice for the ride as Sunday would be a convenient rest-day after the ride. Unfortunately, our Saturday turned out to be a wet one. Since it rains pretty much everyday in Belgium, we chose to go ahead nevertheless! We wanted to make sure our tyres had enough pressure before embarking on our journey. Ghent is very cycle-friendly and the corporation has placed bicycle pumps at different places in the town. Our bad luck continued as the pump closest to us was out of order. And being the weekend, pretty much every other option was closed. As we were randomly biking around looking for any clues, we came across an old gentleman working away in his workshop. Very eager to practise my Dutch, I went and asked him if he knew any bicycle pumps in the neighbourhood. Strangely enough the man spoke French, not Dutch. We resorted to the universal language of signs and it apparently worked. He had a pump in his own workshop and he generously filled up all our tyres. We thanked him with a Merci! and wide smiles and we set off!

We quickly got out of the city and we were racing down the John Kennedy laan towards Netherlands. After about 7 kms, Tanbir's cycle had a flat tyre. We had a quick meeting and decided it was best to  turn back. I must admit we were glad to return since the weather wasn't at all enjoyable. Our trip ended as quickly as it began. But the story doesn't end here!

Two Saturdays later we started off once again! But this time we were only three in number since Esrom had other things to do. This time we made sure that we were better planned. We had our bikes ready the day before and we also had a new destination - Terneuzen, because we wanted to get more out of our trip than just a visit to the border! Ternuezen is a town on the shore of the estuary of the river Schelde where it flows into the North Sea. The temperature was a perfect 17 degrees Celsius and the sun was up and shining brightly.

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Cycling out from the medieval streets in Ghent into the industrial surroundings around the port of Ghent with smoke billowing from factories and busy trains shuttling goods, was a delightful little time travel! After around 10 kms though, we were bored by the monotonous surroundings and we decide to turn into the border village of Zelzate. The village bore a sleepy Saturday-morning look and everything was closed except a family-run Frituur (fries shop). After a delicious snack of Belgian fries, we raced off to the border.

With all three of us hailing from the Indian subcontinent, we weren't very happy calling this a border. The Schengen borders, or rather the non-existence of the borders was fascinating! All there was, was just a board saying 'Netherlands'. A quick photo shoot and then we crossed over to the other side of the border. The Dutch government thought bikers would not enjoy biking along a boring highway and made them meander through villages instead. And right they were! Through we were diverted away from our planned route, we quite enjoyed biking through the countryside. We biked through paved and unpaved roads, passing through pretty villages, greenhouses, green fields and of course windmills - lots of them, both traditional and modern. Since we didn't have a map of this new route, we carefully followed the road signs and reached Ternuezen safely around four o' clock in the afternoon. We grabbed some lunch and went to the sea front.

The sea front was beautiful with a cycling track right along the coastline. We had a happy picnic on green grass with a great view of the blue waters of the estuary and seagulls hovering around us. Taking advantage of the long hours of sunshine, we stayed back and enjoyed the sea breeze well past 6 pm.

On our way back, we were busy discussing our wonderful day and we didn't pay much attention to the road signs and got lost. With darkness approaching, we started to argue which was the shorter way to get back on track. Helpful locals guided us back to the border, and we had a feeling of being back home when we saw the board that said België. The lights on the highway switched on suddenly as if welcoming us back home. As we rode back to Ghent, I noticed the Big Dipper in the sky. For the first time in my life, owing to the northerly latitude, I was actually seeing it as a dipper and not an inverted dipper that one would see from India.

The terrain is fairly flat in Northern Belgium and Netherlands, which makes even long rides fairly easy and non-tiring! After having pedalled almost 80 kms, we reached the familiar streets of Ghent and hi5ed ourselves goodbye for having cycled to the Netherlands!

More photos from the trips : 

Unsuccessful Bike Trip

Biking Trip to Terneuzen

All the way to Kallabbe

You might have heard of the big fat Indian wedding. I've seen some fat and also some thin ones, but one aspect remains about the same in all weddings - the number of guests. It is a custom to invite everyone you know and everyone your guests know. (Most of the 'invitations', strictly speaking should be renamed to FYI - but that's another story) 

On 17th May, I received an invitation from my friend Vinay Hegde for his sister's wedding. I'm sure it was a sincere invitation, but I'm also sure Vinay would know, practically speaking, that, for most people on the mailing list, it was just an FYI. At first glance, it was for me too. But then, four things pushed me off my seat to actually set off on the journey - the venue of the wedding, my summer vacation, the idea of surprising Vinay, and of course, my wanderlust! 

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The wedding was to take place on the 21st in Kumta, a town in North-western Karnataka, 800 kms from home, a region of India where I've never been to. Long, unplanned, sudden, exciting and a whole bunch of other adjectives kept popping up in my mind when I thought about the trip. I asked two of my friends (who I thought would most probably join me) for company. Ramya, whose hometown, Sagara, happens to be right along the route to Kumta, was busy, but she insisted that I halt at Sagara and meet her family. Akarsh, the astronomer, was enthusiastic, and he saw the possibility of combining this trip with an observation session near Kodachadri, a peak in the Western Ghats, west of Shimoga. 

After a long chat session on Google, a well-rounded plan was hatched. Wasting no time, I hopped on to a bus from Chennai to Bangalore on the night of the 19th. Next morning, I found my way to Akarsh's home in RT Nagar. The plan was to start off early from Bangalore. But knowing Akarsh, I should have  realised that I would be his wake up call! Akarsh's home was in an enviably quiet locality. After her morning meditation, Akarsh's mother cooked some delicious breakfast for us. We gobbled it up quite ungratefully and rushed off to load the telescope into the car. Yes! We were taking along Akarsh's gigantic 18 inch telescope and we had a car with a chauffeur waiting for us!    

We took the NH 4 out from Bangalore, and branched out onto NH 206 at Tumkur. NH 206 felt very cosy, with very less traffic. We coasted along the highway which felt more like a calm avenue, occasionally stopping for the mighty Indian Railway (photo). As planned, we reached Sagara in the evening, and were welcomed at Ramya's home. Her absence only added to the awkwardness of meeting her family for the first time. But that was very short lived as conversations began to flow. We were served delicious havyaka dinner. And to the understandable astonishment of Ramya's mother, we set off towards Kumta without a place to stay for the night. We drove a little further and parked beside a large open field near Talaguppa. We fell asleep quite comfortably in the car, but we set our alarms to wake us up every hour to see if the skies were clear. Unfortunately, the skies never cleared up.

We raced off to Kumta early in the morning, a distance of around 100 kms through the Western Ghats in 3 hours. We arrived just in time for the wedding, sneaked into the wedding hall and quietly took our seats. Vinay, being the bride's brother, was quite busy. We blended into the crowd and waited for him to notice us, when he did, the reaction was priceless! "Why did you guys come here!?", he said, not being able to control his laughter and excitement.

We got introduced to Vinay's family. Incidentally we came to know that one of our other friends, Prateek was related to Vinay and was also present at the wedding. We witnessed the wedding and had an amazing lunch. To get rid of that after-lunch yawn, we decided to explore the surroundings a bit. Though the temperature was not very hot, the laterite soil all around us gave us a feeling of standing in the middle of a red hot pan, and spotting dry carcasses of frogs didn't help either. The terrain was hilly with houses snuggled inside dense canopies of coconut trees.

Akarsh wasn't in a great mood, mainly because of the cloudy skies, and he wanted to head back home. But Vinay and Prateek persuaded me to stay back for the night. So, after waving goodbye to Akarsh and the car, I became a part of the wedding family and all of us went home! The ride along the Muroor Ghat road  to the home town, Kallabbe, was a little bumpy, but very scenic! When we reached Kallabbe, I was surprised by the compactness of the village. It seemed like the whole village was just a collection of around ten buildings, one of which was a school, another, a temple and another a small shop. All the others were houses and the people living in them were not just neighbours but also relatives in most of the cases! I was reminded of all the stories I had heard from my grandparents about their native villages!

Leaving the newly-wed and their family alone to do their rituals at home, Prateek's cousin Pramod offered to take Prateek and I on a guided tour around Kallabbe. We got some cola from the shop and started walking towards a hill. Prateek had brought along some heavenly delicious raw mango pieces sprinkled with salt and chilli powder! I gobbled up an unfair share of mangoes, which I tried to compensate by plucking berries for the other two along the way.  We quickly climbed onto the hill, though this was my first climb in more than two years! We sat on the black rocks on the other side of the hill taking in the view of the meanders of the river Aghanashini as it flowed west into the Arabian Sea. Also my mobile phone sprung into action taking help from the altitude (there was barely any network signal in Kallabbe). I used the opportunity to inform my parents I was safe and to update my facebook status :P It was getting dark, and we left for home with mixed feelings, not wanting to leave the hill but looking forward to good food! This was the first time I had dinner at someone else's family home and with so many family members together, but never during my stay did I feel like an outsider! And of course, my broken kannada which I used to bond with the elders of the family was of great help!

The highlight of the trip, surpassing the raw mangoes, was the next morning's breakfast! Jackfruit idly served with unprocessed liquid jaggery! I really didn't want to leave now, but I had to be home for a family function in Chennai the next day. I got a ride from Pramod's father on his M-80 to the nearest bus stop, Basavanakere, on State Highway 48. I boarded a bus to Sagara, and the trip was complete with another visit to Ramya's home, this time with her presence! On the buses back to Bangalore and finally back to Chennai, all I could dream about was the jackfruit idly with liquid jaggery!

More photos from the trips : 

Karnataka Trip, May 2010

Annular Solar Eclipse at Rameswaram

It all started off sometime in 2008, when we discovered that there will be an annular eclipse in Jan 2010 that doesn't require too much of travelling. We had initially planned to observe from Madurai. Later plans changed and the want of being closer to the central line of the eclipse, took us to Rameswaram.

We conveniently forgot about the eclipse until November 2009 when we realised that the train tickets were already running into waiting list! Immediately, we initiated the whole planning procedure, which started off with a Google Spreadsheet where interested persons signed up for the trip. Towards the end of November, Akarsh and me booked tickets for the 40 odd people who had signed up. Since we were sort of late, our seats were scattered all along the length of the train, with at least a few of us in every compartment.

Back to college after the December vacation, we had around 15 days to actually plan the trip. In order to do this, Akarsh suggested that we should visit Rameswaram once beforehand. This turned out to be a really useful idea. Vinay Hegde and me visited Rameswaram on  the weekend before the eclipse. We started from Chennai on Friday night, and after a 12 hour overnight bus journey, reached Ramnad the next morning. Our first item on the priority list was to get some accommodation for the huge group. We spent the whole morning on this, but in vain. Due to thai amavAsai, there was virtually no place to stay anywhere in Rameswaram. We informed Akarsh about this who was back home in IITM, and he decided to do something about this while we went on the next item - finding an observation site. We had ruled out any area near the Rameswaram temple or Dhanushkodi because of the scary stories we heard from the locals about huge crowds and stampedes. But we wanted to stay on the island, otherwise we would be losing out on precious annularity time. We took a bus to Pamban (west coast of the island) and started surveying the beaches there. We found them to be extremely dirty.

   

We came across the local police station and decided to go in and ask for help. The inspector in the station suggested Vivekananda Mani Mandapam. We took an auto rickshaw to the place and immediately fell in love with it. The Mani Mandapam was away from all human habitation, very clean and extremely silent. And the beaches behind the Mandapam were simply beautiful. We talked to Mr. Radhakrishnan, the care taker of the place, who was very receptive to the idea of a group from Chennai coming down there to observe the eclipse.Observation site - Check.

It was around 3 pm and we hadn't had lunch. But we had absolutely no time to lose. Meanwhile, Akarsh had spoken to his dad, who with the help of his friend, directed us to Aruna Stores in Ramnad. We caught the next bus to Ramnad, and reached Aruna Stores by 4 pm. With their help, we booked accommodation for all the 40 of us in Jodhi Lodge. The owner took us to an "Iyengar" Hotel nearby and showed us around his book store.  He seemed to be very proud of the fact that Dr. Abdul Kalam used to buy books from this store. :) Accommodation - Check.

It was 6:30 pm. We still had some time to catch the train. We decided to look out for local travel options. We found a street with lots of vans. We approached one of the drivers. He agreed to arrange for two vans to pick us up from the Railway station and take us to the observation site. This completed our Things to do for the day. We had a satisfactory dinner and waited for the train to arrive. On - site planning - Check.

Back home, we had lots of things to get ready - telescope projection setup and get various letters signed by various people. With great help from Vinay, Akshay, Smruthi, Naveen (even though he was not coming to Ramseswaram) and a few others, we got all this done. The projection setup for the telescope was inspired by this. The raw materials used for this - A dustbin, a PVC pipe and some butter paper! It was really interesting to drill holes through the dustbin using focused sunlight through the telescope!

   

Two days before we left, we convened a meeting to decide on our itinerary and to brief everyone about various issues involved with the trip. On 14th Jan 2010, we were off !

   

We had an 'attendance sheet' with us and to make sure that everyone was on the train, Vinay and me did a quick run along the length of the train two minutes before the departure to make sure everyone was inside. I enjoyed this!

We reached Ramnad at around 8 AM on 15th Jan, and as promised, found two vans waiting for us outside the Railway station. The skies were totally cloudy, but Akarsh reassured us that it would clear up by noon. We went to the lodge, quickly freshened ourselves up and left for Pamban. We were stopped just before Pamban Bridge in order to allow the Tamil Nadu Governor to get into Rameswaram, who was apparently getting there to watch the eclipse himself. Fortunately, the wait ended in just around 20 mins and we continued towards Pamban.

   

All of us enjoyed clicking the amazing view from the Pamban bridge!

   

We reached the observation site around 11:15 am. I could never forget the chorus 'wow' as we approached the Vivekanandar Manimandapam. It was indeed a beautiful place.

  

By the time we arrived at the place, the partial phase of the eclipse had already started. We quickly set up all our instruments and started observing. Our dustbin - butter paper projection system was a great hit!

   

Photo Credit :  Rahul Poruri

We patiently observed the entire (almost) length of the eclipse. There were absolutely no clouds anywhere during the eclipse! Highlights of the show were Bailey's Beads and the eclipse tree. Again, I can't forget the collective Wow during the Bailey's Beads. We also had fun with pinhole projections and the eclipse tree under which we could see uncountable eclipsed suns!

   

Photo Credit :  Rahul Poruri

Here are my versions of the entire eclipse sequence.

 

 

 Lots of local people enjoyed watching the eclipse with us. I particularly liked this photo :)

   

Photo Credit : Akarsh Simha

 After the eclipse was over, a part of the crowd from IITM jumped into the water, unable to resist the temptation offered by very clean waters.

   

 Some of us were really hungry. We decided to leave the people in the water alone and go in search of food. It was too late (3 pm) for lunch. So we had to make do with cakes and tea at a bakery. The tea was exceptionally good. We came back to our Manimandapam to pick up the ones in the water and head to Ramnad to fill our stomachs. There were plans of overnight observation from the Manimandapam. Moreover, I had to attend a telephonic interview. So I chose to stay back with the telescope and attend the interview while others went off to Ramnad. I was really pleased when Sivaraman, Smruthi, Sathish and Rahul volunteered to stay back with me :) . I was very happy after my interview and already began to feel really satisfied with the trip. Till the others returned, we decided to have fun with some photos to forget our hunger. This particular photo generated a lot of LOLs (@ Sathish) :D

   

 As it turned dark, we sat on the beach with mouths wide open looking at the sky. The sky was simply amazing! Unwilling to stay put, we started taking fixed tripod photos until others arrived.

   

Around 8:30 PM, Akarsh and Akshay arrived. More importantly, they got us food! While we gorged, Akarsh and Akshay set up the telescope on the beach. We observed the Orion Nebula, some open and globular clusters. But the highlight of the night was most definitely the Large Magellanic Cloud. Being extremely South in the sky, it is very difficult to observe from the Northern Hemisphere. But we took advantage of the latitude of the place (9 deg N) and seas towards the southern direction. Many of us were able to see it naked eye. I took a photo of it to help confirm the naked eye observation.

   

We had a great night of observation with intermittent naps. Next day morning, we got up, took some groups photos on the beach and left for Ramnad.

The next day, 16th Jan, all of us split up and went our own ways. One group went to Dhanushkodi (Tip of Rameshwaram Island, stone's throw from Sri Lanka). Since there's no proper road to the place, they had to travel in weird vehicles.I'm guessing they had a lot of fun!

   

Photo Credit :  Rahul Poruri

Another group went into the Rameswaram Temple. Sathish, Smruthi and me left towards Karaikkudi to attempt our first confluence visit (10 N, 79 E). Blog post about that later. We boarded the train really late into the night at Trichy almost half way from Ramnad to Chennai! We reached Chennai next morning. Here's a pic taken at Chennai Egmore after we got down. This was one trip that I'll never forget! Everything just worked fine, and I really had the satisfaction of having helped organise something not so trivial and succeeded!

 

Photo Credit : Akarsh Simha

Greetings!

I'm addicted to maps. Numbers representing co-ordinates on the earth excite me. Here's a journal of my journey around the earth at various points in another journey (through time) called life!