This and That ...

This post comes on the day the greatest democracy in the world celebrates its Independence.

If you ask me what is one thing about India I'm proud of, may be its the Indian culture, traditions and family values. That's the only one that comes to my mind. Its the Indian history that's impressive, not present-day India. In 63 years of Independent India, I really don't think we have achieved that much compared to how a country like Japan rose from the ashes after WW-II. After fighting for 90 years, we finally became independent only to be governed later by a group of selfish politicians. The whole scam about the Commonwealth Games makes me feel so ashamed while all those people using tax-payers money to make statues of their own, sanction budget for maintaining some non-existent bridges and dams, don't even feel a pinch. IMO, corruption, uncontrolled population growth, and brain-drain are some reasons we haven't been able to do much and continue to be a developing nation. Anyways, will stop here for now and get to my story about a recent trip we made to India.

So, after postponing our India travel for a long time we finally landed in India during peak summer, that's May. Though its the wrong time of the year to visit, I've been missing Indian mangoes for three years and was prepared to bear the scorching heat for the love of mangoes. Desi mangoes are something. After feasting on sweets and mangoes, I came back with 4 extra lbs :( Anyways, "jo hua so hua". Like most international arrivals, we arrived at midnight in India. After tears of joy at the airport on meeting my family, it was time to check-out the city of Hyderabad. Though its not that glitzy at night, I did notice a lot of new construction. Amazing to see how silent the city gets at night, particularly the colony where we live. Here in the US, it really doesn't matter.. Day or night, the residential streets always carry a deserted look. Sometimes they look like picture postcards to me, no motion whatsoever. Anyways, I had the best time and definitely the tastiest food in about 1.5 years. I always have this jetlag problem when I travel from India to US, but not vice-versa because I just don't feel like sleeping while others are all awake, talking, eating, doing the typical Indian family activities, you know.. Attending functions in your best dress, meeting the newest additions to the family, man! I miss all that here. Dear S, those two hrs I spent with you, that's one of my trip highlights.

Most NRIs start cribbing, the moment they land in India. My only complaint is the traffic situation. After zoom-zooming on US freeways, I really wonder if I can ever drive in India. Who cares, I'll have a chauffeur-driven car :) I was a little surprised to see quite a lot of working families there have a maid, a cook, and a driver. I so envy them 'coz I play all those three roles while being a 10-to-6 "alien" worker at the same time. My mom, if she wants some groceries real quick, all she does is make a phone call to the neighbourhood department store and there he arrives at your door-step bringing all you wanted. There are times when I get dressed up, wear my winter clothing and all just for a trip to the mailbox. My husband was a little cranky about the heat and the filth on Indian roads, but I felt so much at home :) Talking about uncleanliness, during my trip to New York, I was surprised to see soda cans and fries along the sidewalks in downtown. Cleanliness is directly proportional to population. When New York can get dirty, why not India? My hometown of Vizag is relatively prettier with more greenery and all, mainly because its not a major "city". You can't argue with me about the shadiness in India, I can always come up with a counter :) Trust me, only when you don't compare India to US, will you have a good vacation there.

The only one thing that always bothered me even when I was living in India is the lack of civic sense, or its the lack of respect to your fellow-human. I always used to feel bad about it and now after 3 years in the US, I feel more disgusted. Agreed, people here are more in-their-own-world kinds, but atleast they are not indifferent. Even though conversations begin and end with "How you doing? You have a good day", atleast there's a conversation. In India, everybody is in a hurry Nobody cares for pedestrians crossing the road, getting work done in public offices is a Herculean task, people pushing each other in buses, stampedes at temples, there's no concept of "queue" - its always multiple lines converging into one with a mad-rush at the vertex. Those are some of the things that will never change, its in our mindset may be 'coz even here, I find a few desis who put up this rude expression as I walk past them. May be they're thinking "so you're also here to make money huh?". Whatever..

After shuttling between Hyd and Vizag, I began to wonder how different both these cities are. More than anything, its Vizag that surprised me. Bigger malls, newer multiplexes, wider roads, newer chain-stores from the Reliance group. Even though Vizag doesn't have any techie companies, the real estate there is like crazy. A 3BR apt in suburbs for 30Lakhs, no kidding! Talking about afford-ability, India sure has become much more expensive to live, particularly in the last decade. Yes, Nike shoes may cost the same in India as well as US, but I had to spend my two-days salary on the Reebok I bought several years ago while its only a fraction of my daily-wage here. And yet, people in India don't think twice before swiping the card at all those fancy shopping malls. The biggest shock I got was in one super market, all those groceries, soaps and shampoos cost about the same, may be a little cheaper when compared to what is sold in the desi stores here. I was more concerned thinking about the quality of goods I have in my kitchen out there, how could they be so cheap? Is export duty really nothing?

Family is the one big reason anybody plans a trip to India. But for me, there's more to India, besides my loving family. Memories.. The house where I grew up, that bus-stop where I waited for my school-bus for 8 something years, the friendly gesture from a bookseller who saw me graduate from a school-girl to an Engineer, my neighbors, my driver, the beach road, so on and so forth.. Yeah, I may sound silly but they all matter to me. That's why I so yearn to return. Home is where my memories are..

This time, for some reason, I just didn't want to return back. May be its my parents who've grown older by an year since I last met them, may be its the fear of ending up as a non-returning-Indian, may be its the "I'm so done" feeling after experiencing everything I wanted to in the US (trust me, working here is no different from working for a multi-national product based company in India).. The first few days after I landed here, this place felt more foreign to me than ever before. The empty residential streets even at mid-day made me miss India so much. Despite living in the bay area, despite my frequent trips to El Camino Sunnyvale which can be re-named MG Road for the number of Indian businesses that set up shop here, I still feel this is not where I belong even after two months of returning from the vacation. I wish and pray this feeling grows on me with each passing year. Got some unfinished business to wrap up here, a week each in Hawaii and Alaska, quick darshan of Fall colors and that's it,, I'll be all set to hand over my I-94 in style! Looking forward to the day we purchase one-way tickets.... to India!

Here I am, back with yet another post on travel. Utah it is, this time. After reading the Utah travel guide back-to-back, making endless phone calls to the travel offices there inquiring about the weather, what-to-see and what-to-skip, we got ready to travel back in time. Yes, it did feel like a peek into the past.

The road-trip Google map - four days, about 1000miles pickup-to-return.

Rough itinerary:

day 0: fly to salt lake city

day 1: visit salt lake and drive to Bryce, spend the rest of the evening at the canyon

day 2: hike@Bryce, drive to Moab via Goblin Valley State Park

day 3: Arches park, dinosaur track sites

Yosemite National Park is the third most-visited nat park in the US, BUT the number of people visiting during the winter months account for only 10-15% of its annual visitor count. Having visited Yosemite in July as well as February, I can say I've visited two entirely different parks having the same name. Trust me, if you haven't seen the Yosemite in snow, you haven't seen Yosemite at all. That said, here follows my travelogue..

First some history. After hearing almost every other Californian speak great about Yosemite, we decided to pay a visit during the July 4th weekend. After an exhausting day, the park just left a just-another-park kind of an impression on me. Why? maddening crowds and pathetic restrooms. A friend of mine who travelled to Yosemite during the long weekend in May often complains that he didn't get a chance to get out of his car to tour the park. Multiple rounds of looping around the valley was all he could do. That's so true because like I said, 85% of the people visit during the summer months. The only good, rather terrific thing about that trip was me purchasing a magnet that had a picture of Yosemite in snow. I'll forever be grateful to myself for buying that, since it was that small souvenir which gave me a taste of what heaven might feel like, 6 months later.

From the day we moved to the bay area, I was looking forward to re-visit Yosemite in winter. If you've read my other posts, you'd know what kind of a travel planner I am. I try to do a virtual tour of what I plan to see by searching on YouTube and Google images. :) "yosemite in snow" were the search keywords this time, and this was the reference album. Everything seemed so damn inviting until I Googled for "driving in snow". If you've been to Yosemite before, you'd know the road conditions that lead you to the park. So winding, so narrow, rimless, at an altitude of about 3500ft overlooking the valley.... even in July, I was scared. Once snow comes into the equation, the drive becomes more complex. Yes, there are chains, but that's a pain too. So, for about 15days before the planned travel date, I used to check the weather and road conditions every morning on the park website. Until three days before the President's day weekend, chain usage was enforced. I should really be thankful to God 'coz there was no snowfall, and tire chains rule the day before we were supposed to go, and the forecast for the next couple of days was "sunny". So, Yosemite it is!

Can't go further without putting up some pics.. People say, Kashmir (a state in India) is like Paradise on Earth. Haven't been there myself, but this sure felt like Paradise to me.

For many of you, the above shots might seem like throwing in some white color to your mental images of Yosemite. True, but let me tell you snow brings a drastically different beauty to the park. Above all, if you were to visit in winter, you'd be sharing this beauty with just few other people. When we went during the Presidents day weekend in February, there were some view points where we were the only ones present. Imagine being surrounded by awesome beauty, no noise whatsoever, besides the downstream flow of the Merced river, just the two of you (if going as a couple) - can something get more romantic? Even though the Grand Canyon occupies the first place, its Yosemite (in winter) that qualifies as a Honeymoon destination amongst all the places I've been to in the US.

Talking about what all places we've been to inside the park, well, for the most part, the park roads remain open in winter. You have the entire valley to yourself - the valley view, tunnel view, Yosemite and Bridalveil falls and the sentinel/swinging/El Capitan bridges. If I were to pick my favorite vista point, I'd say its the half-dome view from the sentinel bridge (2nd row, 2nd column above). El Capitan bridge is great too.. There's this bridge. El Capitan and the Cathedral rocks facing each other. Both over 7500ft mass of Granite. I might sound weird, but as I looked above standing at the bridge, felt as though two mighty warriors were standing face-to-face. Yes :) go see yourself. You're there, the El capitan (3rd row, 1st col above) stands with pride next to you, I don't know, to me it was as though the cliff had something to say to me :) FYI, I'm a perfectly sane human :P

The Yosemite valley loop can be toured in 5 hours time, but you can spend several days in the park too. Most people only scratch the surface by touring just the valley. There's lot more to do. The Wawona grove of Sequoia trees, Badger pass ski area, and many many hiking trails. Accommodations inside the park fill out like two months in advance, but there are some decent hotels within 20miles of the entrance which are pretty much fully booked too. So plan ahead! We usually try to catch the Sunset views whenever we travel. The last rays of the Sun expose a different perspective of the scene, something more elegant and something unseen during the day. For Yosemite, Sentinel bridge is the place to be for Sunset.

Been there about a week ago, but it feels like a land far far away. But it only took us a little more than 3 hours to be transported from the spaghetti junctions of the bay area to the place I call heaven. If you live in/around the state of California, and if its still winter as you read this, go plan your vacation. You don't want to miss what Yosemite has got to offer you. Those towering granite cliffs, the fresh smell of pines, the roaring Merced river, with a little snow all over the place - miss you all, promise, I will be back!

After a long time, I wanted to blog a gadget review here.. When I started this blog, I had this idea of posting first-hand experience with a variety of things. "ireview-here.blogspot.com" was what it was called back then. But for the last one year, nothing we bought has attracted me enough to sit down and type a story...... until the droids arrive! Yes, this post is dedicated to my newest addiction - Android phones. We got this Verizon deal wherein, you buy Motorola Droid, you get HTC Eris free. Motorola has 2.0 version of Android, while Eris has a slightly older version. That apart, they're both pretty much the same.



First the goodies..

FYI, none of the above are available on an IPhone. Actually, I was leaning towards getting myself an iphone. The only reason I ditched the idea was because of the 5 mega-pixel camera built-into the droids. A photo-enthusiast that I am, I make sure I carry my camera wherever I visit. But lately, there isn't much room in my bag for the camera we have and hence planned to purchase a smaller, lighter camera as a Christmas present for myself. :) Cellphone and high resolution camera in one device sounded like a good deal, and so, the desire to own an iphone became history.

When we bought the droids, a month ago, I didn't know about points 2-4 above. Each of these features is brilliant in itself. Voice search is good fun. Your order is Google's command, interestingly it can even understand the names of Indian restaurants most of the time. :) Voice based navigation is really helpful. Once you're in the car, you don't have to take the trouble of typing out the destination address. Speak "Navigate to subway" and zap! The GPS gets locked and before you even realize, it starts spitting out the directions one-by-one. The other GPS we had would take like 5-10min to get contact with the satellite. The droid phone is superfast, you dont need to wait for satellite connectivity. And guess what, GPS comes free! Coming back to voice search, the other day when I got bored of flipping AM, FM and CD on the car stereo, I launched the Youtube app and said "take my breath away". That's all it took to take my breath away. :) Man! I enjoyed the ride so much listening to the song. I know, its hard to control yourself from looking at the video, particularly if you belong to Tom Cruise fan club.. :)

And finally multi-tasking.. When I learnt from a friend that IPhone can't keep more than one app running, I was shocked. Its such a basic functionality you expect from any computing device. Android lets you open upto 6 apps at once. That's pretty cool. I can listen to a song on youtube while reading a news feed, and quickly respond to a gmail notification that says I've got mail!

The UI isn't as outstanding as the IPhone's is. But its pretty decent. Zoom-in zoom-out with fingers, flipping thru pages using fingers, superfast scrolling, are all there. Motorola droid has flash camera but HTC Eris doesn't. Picture quality for both is pretty good. So is the sound quality. Also, the Android marketplace has plenty of free applications. I could even find an Indian news widget to keep myself updated with the latest news from my homeland.

With this I stop the sweet-talk. The only major concern I have with this phone is, some of the applications drain away all the battery power. Particularly the browser.. If a page becomes non-responsive, the browser hangs up, you forget about it and launch other applications, then come back to the browser, and then you see the "white screen of death" as I like to call it. The phone becomes non-responsive and you have to reboot it. The usual problems with a computing device like system crash, hang up, blank screens occur once in a while on this phone. Its then that I realize my old phone was better. Because of the operating system issues, the availability of the phone is reduced. IMO, the most important function of any phone is to be up 99% of the time, to keep you connected, and the system down time should only be attributed to discharged battery or weak cellular signal. But now, with the operating system intruding into the cellphone, making them mini-computers, there's a good chance you're missing out on phone calls while you're phone is busy rebooting. This applies to any smartphone. So, talking about the droid, I'm yet to figure out a way to "ctrl-alt-del" the phone so as to bring it out of the non-responsive state without having to reboot.

The second problem is, there's no close button for the apps. So, you'll have to download an app killing app to close the apps after you're done. Its kind of like a task manager. The one I installed can't be killed. To close an app, there's task manager, but to close that, there's nothing. Painful.

On the whole, its a pretty good investment. Verizon's network is good too.. There's coverage in the hills of Livermore, CA as well as the beaches of Monterey. With the Nexus One scheduled for release, I'm sure Google is going to give Apple a run for their money.