Fall Foliage in New Hampshire

My grandmother once told me - Even if you forget that nature is changing, nature will make sure to let you know. My previous experience in the US helped cement that statement. However, it was apparent that something remained to complete an unknown void. Vivid Fall Foliage. And that too in US North East.

So, this time around, I made sure that I drove up north to New Hampshire (NH) to see what is famously touted as the best fall foliage seen on Earth. While I expected to see a lot more colorful scenery, what I saw was not less than splendid.

We left last Saturday at 2:30PM and reached Keene, NH at 7:15PM. We checked into a hotel and then walked around Main Street. Keene is a nice little town, having an old English flavor. People are cordial and nice. I did not notice any other Indian family there other than us. And probably more than 95% people are White Americans.

The route that we took for the scenic drive was the same one as proposed on visitnh.gov. We drove through the towns of Keene, Jaffery, Dublin, West Rindge, Peterborough, Hancock, Stoddard, Marlow and Gilsum.

We left Keene at around 2:30PM on Sunday. It took us a good 6 hours to return because of traffic snags. You could see all vacationing people returning back to their homes in CT or NY or NJ or probably further on. We did some intelligent decisions by taking exits that took us on State Routes so that we could join the Interstates after the exits where snags were being reported. It did help us save upto have hour or so.

The pictures are uploaded on Picasa Google and Flickr. Though the colors were not as vivid as someone has seen in Vermont, I did get to see colors that NH is famous for. Check the albums for more. Here are some of my favorites.

Big Apple beckoning...

Next week, this time, I would be in NJ. Official assignment. With Sujatha and Gauri. Air France flight from Bangalore to Newark via Paris. Landing at Newark (EWR) on Sep 29, 3:40PM. Office in Middletown. Residence likely to be in Parlin or Sayreville. Looking forward to it.


Pic courtesy: Google Maps

And it is madenningly hectic now. Just don't have even 2 mins to sit and relax! Phew!!

Three Time Lucky at Guruvayur

I must say this trip was quite an experience. I managed to do only some parts of my plan and not the whole thing. But that by itself was more satisfying. In one of earlier blog posts, I had listed down the itinerary. A somewhat extensive one - but I had not considered the biggest constraint - fatigue and timings of the temple. Some lessons came forth that I will bear in mind whenever I visit Kerala next. And I surely will!

Something that struck me first was the warmth in the air. It was not the stiffling heat, but a balmy one. It was not so sticky as it usually gets in Chennai or Mumbai. I take it that it is because of the dust and pollution that humidity makes you feel sticky in the aforementioned cities. Thrissur and Guruvayur, in contrast, did not have mad levels of pollution. The air rather makes you feel healthy. No wonder you see all that greenery there. It is the warmth that helps them grow as well.

My next observation is about the water in the land. It may be location specific. But from what I could see, in the places surrounding Palakkad, Thrissur and Guruvayur, every now and then you can see a stream or a canal. Streams have clear waters. Near Palakkad, there are really tall mountains from where the rivers and streams might originate. It was quite refreshing to see that the land is not as parched as you normally expect to see on the other side of the mountains, i.e. in Tamil Nadu.

The white veshti and angavastram is THE best attire for the Kerala climate. No other garb can give you as much comfort as the seemingly unassuming cotton cloth. Wow! People can just about do anything wearing the veshti. From climbing trees to riding the Bullet and driving cars. I know, we have seen people in lungis climb coconut trees and seen Kamal Hassan in madisaaru style saree riding a bullet. But what beats real experience?

The food... wow again! I know of some friends who can't stand the sight of Kerala food. I am quite the opposite. I quite love their diet, including the par boiled rice which is hand pounded. You somehow get the feeling that you get to eat a lot and yet it does not load your stomach too much. For a foodie like me, that is such a nice thing! :-)

The temple comes next. A very typical architecture graces the temples of this state. You can see similar architecture in Mangalore, Udupi and Kollur as well. I take it that it is because of the Malabar influence on those temples and their cultural history. There are somethings that I do have my own questions on... I will come to them.

We took a train from Bangalore (2677 Ernakulam Exp). We reached Thrissur at 4:30PM on Saturday Sep 8th and were in Guruvayur by 5:45PM. I had reserved accomodation at the Guruvayur Devaswom Accomodation facility in advance. You can do that by sending them a DD for the appropriate amount. Call them at the contact numbers provided here. We were able to enter the queue by 6:45PM for the evening darshan. We finished the darshan by 8:45PM. After a nice dinner (we packed some food from home), we went to bed early.

We woke up at 12AM, took bath and went to stand in the queue for Nirmalya Darshanam (from 3AM to 3:20AM, said to be the most auspicious darshanam) at 1:10AM. At that time, there were probably a 100 people standing in front of us in the queue. Can you believe that? As time progressed, the queue only lengthened. There was a separate ladies queue, which was much shorter in length. But Sujatha and Gauri stayed with me.

At about 2:15AM, you could hear ladies singing songs in praise of Lord Guruvayurappan. This went on, on and off, till almost 2:50AM. After that, the police came asked people to form a proper queue. The length shortened. Only now I realised after seeing how long the queue had progressed that - there might have been atleast 500 more people standing in the queue for the Nirmalya Darshanam. Come to think of it, would 600 people manage to get darshan within 20 minutes. I started doing my math. I told Sujatha that we might be lucky to get darshan in the 3:15AM to 3:20AM time window. After that, it was all the abhishekams and neivedyam darshanams.

The temple doors finally opened only at 3:05AM and the queue started moving quickly. As calculated, we got our darshan at about 3:15-3:17AM. A very beautiful sight, it is indeed, to behold the Lord devoid of all material alankaarams. There might have been some 30-40 more people who would have got the Nirmalya Darshanam. The rest would have gotten to see the abhishekams and other puja. After the darshan, we went to collect the prasadam and realised that there were not open until 4AM. The most cherised item, Nei Payasam, was not going to be available until 5AM. We decided to come back later for the prasadam. We went to our room and slept for a few hours.

After we woke at about 10AM, we decided that we did not have enough time to undertake the journey till Thriprayar to visit the Lord Rama temple. So, we went to Punnathoorkotta. The Elephant Sanctuary is located here. I think there were atleast some 70 elephants who were housed in this sanctuary. It is nice to see the way these pachyderms are taken care of. And it certainly looks like it is the "rut" season for these gentle giants. For those who know to read the signs, there were enough of them to realise that. We saw the young ones and the old ones, the oldest being Padmanabhan bull elephant and Gajarani Lakshmi among the cow elephants. There was one who looked similar to the famous "Gajarajan Kesavan" and was named Keshavan. But the locals did not regard him as the same. I asked one of them, and he told "Ah! That great one was blessed by the Lord". Such is the regard for Gajarajan Kesavan. His statue stands in front of the Administrator's office in Guruvayur. A tall and imposing one that.

We returned to Guruvayur and did some shopping. Things are pretty cheap around here, but don't expect them to last as well. I was surprised to see many shops selling "Made in China" stuff compared to local stuff. That was a sad realisation.

We did not manage to get prasadam in the morning. So, I made a last attempt for that. Went to room, changed to traditional attire and went back to the temple by the rear entrance. I was able to directly access the prasadam counters, and collect the Paal Payasam which was the prasadam for the day. While returning from the prasadam counter, I decided to go in pradakshanam direction. When I reached the dwaja-sthambam, I found that the last batch of people were being let in before the temple closed for the afternoon. I stood along with them and got third time lucky. Fully satisfied with the Lord's darshan, I walked back to our room. I had lunch and went to sleep for some 30 minutes.

We left Guruvayur at about 3:40PM and arrived at Thrissur at 4:45PM. We were under the impression that we can stove away our luggage in the cloak room and go for a darshan at Vadakkumnathar Temple. We had not locked our bags because they only contained food or clothes. The cloak room officer would not take our bags without locks as a matter of policy. Either I could lock the bags and give them to the cloak room or I could take them with me - which was a near impossibility. Next, the officer informed us that we cannot go to the temple in the attire that we were in (I was in Jeans and T shirt, Wife was wearing Salwar Kameez). With no feasible option to change attire, we dropped the idea of going to the temple. This would have to wait for another trip down to Guruvayur.

We boarded the train back to Bangalore (2683 Bangalore Express). We had a somewhat uncomfortable journey back home as the seats in Sleeping class are narrower than the 3rd AC ones. We reached K R Puram at 4:00AM and reached home at 4:15AM. After some small work, we went to bed again at 5AM. The fatigue of the journey was showing up only then. It took almost a day to get back to normal energy levels.

Gauri loved the train journey as it was her first. She loved watching the elephants at the sanctuary. Overall, I think she enjoyed as well.

I will be uploading the pics to Picasaweb and provide a link to the albums here as an update. Come back for this one.

Adios!

Pilgrimage to Thrissur and Guruvayur

I am planning a 2 day pilgrimage trip to Thrissur and Guruvayur. Primary agenda is visiting the Guruvayurappan Temple. However, I do want to see how best I can utilise my time. So, here is a tentative agenda.

September 8th
6:30AM to 3:50PM - Train from Bangalore to Thrissur
5:30PM - Reach Guruvayur, check in to accomodation
Planning to have one darshan of Lord Guruvayurappan the same evening
Retire for the day by 9PM or so.

September 9th
Get up by 1:30AM
2:15AM - Stand in queue, Nirmalya Darshanam
5AM - Back in room. Sleep for 2-3 hours.
9AM -Check out. Rent a car that can take me around.
10AM - Punnathoorkotta - Elephant Hostel (2 hours)
12PM - Head out to Thriprayar to visit the Rama Temple (25 kms). En Route, visit Arattupuzha Sastha Temple (9 kms before Thriprayar).
4PM - Back in Thrissur, visit the Vadakkumnathar Temple (1.5 hours)
5:45 PM - Reach Thrissur Rly Station
6:30 PM - Board train to return back to Bangalore

Where can you help?
1) Check the schedule and let me know if something can be done better
2) Recommend nice places to visit
3) Share your experience or knowledge about places listed above

Please put in your suggestions in the comments. Thanks in advance.

Chunchi Falls trip-o-log

Ferrari has done better than I could have wished. So here it is.

Some more to aid the piece, if I may...
1. The roads are in pathetic shape compared to the hype that surrounds Mekedatu and other surrounding locations. Not worth it!
2. No food anywhere. We luckily packed food for our journey, including water. That saved the day for us.
3. When we reached the place and parked our car, we started walking towards the falls. Some distance later, we saw a long rocky bed that once could have been covered with frothy water. You could call this the rapids then... very dangerous nevertheless. But where was the water?
4. The place is littered like a dump yard. I hope people have better civic sense. You can see beer cans, broken glass pieces lying all over the rocks. Kingfisher Beer surely would not want such publicity.
5. We stopped at a small village en route and noticed the villagers were breeding silkworms. You cannot imagine the stench that these cocoons let out. Very pungent! Little does one know about this because all we see is only the silk cloth. I will post a pic of those cocoons in a while.

That said, we set out for the drive just because we wanted to go out and be back by 2PM or so. The drive was more pacifying than the location we visited. And yes, Ferrari is a great driver with just 2 months behind the wheel. Ladies, are you listening??

Did you know?! :- Research has proved that we Men do not think of our cars as a separate entity as the Women do, rather we believe it is just an extention of ourselves. That's why you see we enjoy our driving, and we take care of our cars like our babies. ;-) Last Word? Women are safer drivers than Men.

Jostling for Space

Clicked amongst the several water puddles that formed in the rocks that formed the bed of Cauvery River at Chunchi Falls. The lone white flower amongst everything green kind of attracted my attention. The puddle by itself was not more than 4' by 3'. But it was a world within itself. Ecology is so important, whether big or small, or even minuscule.

The terrain at Chunchi Falls was a stark exhibition of the gorge that Cauvery river has created in this area and a reminder of the force of water as a geologic agent. Hell, it created the mighty Grand Canyons (Arizona, USA) as well as a Mekedatu! :-) From huge sharp boulders to medium sized rocks that could not have been polished smoother by human hands, from small puddles to caves - one could see everything over there. More pics would follow that exhibit what I have just described herein.

Camera: Canon EOS 350D dSLR (Thanks to Prabhu)

A quick drive on NH209 and back...

6:45Am to 1:45Pm. Sounds good for a quick long drive? You bet. I am going to attend a birthday party now... and when I return, I am going to give you the trip-o-log! :-) Some nice pics as well...

C'ya...

Sunday Drive

Ferrari, Maverick and your's truly met today evening at Little Italy on 100 Ft Road, Indiranagar. Besides gulping down some great starters and pasta, we discussed among other things, some place to drive down to and be back in Bangalore by 4PM or so. After much discussion, it does appear that we would be headed in the direction of Kanakapura and visit Chunchi Falls and couple of other places in that general direction. Come back here tomorrow to read about it.

gute nacht !

PS: Amuzing to watch English Tail (Monty and Tremlett) lifting up and not relenting in the face of Indian attack. There is speculation that India might not enforce follow on and provide rest to the bowlers by opting to bat. Should be a nice strategy to pile on some more runs before giving English a chance at the target again. Congrats to Jumbo (Kumble) again!