Rants of a nerd
travel
Going back on the road
0Another trip coming up, this time to Bangalore and Pune.
Pune should be interesting, if only to see how the city is recovering from the explosion at the German Bakery that (ironically) killed a baker’s dozen. This once again shows that it is not possible to protect targets from terrorism. Targets are infinite. A local news paper here was complaining about the lack of security in some malls to which it sent reporters with concealed "bombs."
The point missed by the media is that the lock-down that follows any incident is what the terrorists are aiming for. They want to incite terror. By giving in to this demand, are we not accepting defeat?
Second, governments love to have the population in fear. This is the ideal environment for concentration of powers especially police powers. When newspapers call for tougher police action, who will defend civil liberties. Democracy is about limited government. And it is incumbent on the people and the media to fight expansion of government power.
Terrorists have an agenda against freedom. Let us not hand them an easy victory.
What I’ve said above is not to say that we should not fight terrorism. We should, but not at the cost of our liberty. Then it is the case of "fighting for peace" a contradiction in terms. Our security forces and intelligence apparatus should be aimed at finding out the root causes of terror and eliminating it at its source.
Bangalore
0Passing through Bangalore today. The garden city has also recently decided to rename itself following the other metros. It is officially called Bengaluru, meaning the land of Bengal, I guess. As to why it has chosen this inapposite name, I have no idea.
Following the recent trend of locating airports as far away as possible from the city, here too the distance has multiplied. It takes about an hour and a quarter if traffic is easy. Which is par for the course for a major city now. If only the railways could set up high speed trains between some of these cities, just eliminating the airport to city transfers would make the train journeys shorter than the respective flights. This is one thing the Europeans have figured out and implemented nicely.
Plus one does not have to worry about shooting through the sky in a little aluminium tube with jet engines stuck to it.
Madras: the last leg
0In Madras for the last leg of the trip. This is a real flying visit accompanied by a bad cold and headache. I am probably the only guy in town wearing a jacket on top of a sweater in this weather. Will be glad to get home after this. The good news is that the tour has been fruitful; the bad news is that now they want me to travel to more cities. Hello Ludhiana, Ahmedabad, and a few other places.
Oh quel cul t’as
0Bad pun, but had to make it as the Telegraph had a front page banner throwing down a challenge to Kareena Kapoor saying Curves Are Back with a picture of Beyoncé (among others).
Oh Calcutta
1In cal today. This is pretty much the last major city to get any form of development or make over. Still new roads and buildings can be seen here and there. I am hoping for a relatively relaxed day today, if possble. The cold that’s been bothering me all week is refusing to let go.
Thankfully the flight getting in last night was not delayed. Perhaps one should refrain from criticizing aircraft and airlines before a flight!
Delhi
0My rant on flights to Delhi must have upset my aircraft, for there was a major technical snag that kept un from taking off for 2 hours following which we were eventually transferred to another plane. Three hours late. Reached at 11 pm, and went to the hotel.
The weather here is pretty cold in the nights and early morning. But the day is quite hot. A lot of haze all the time. Like Bombay, this place is also pretty dug up. But it is not as bad. Here they don’t dig all the arterial roads at the same time.
I saw a nice sculpture representing the Dandi march on the road to the airport. However, I could not get a picture from my taxi. Phone cameras are still no replacement for an slr for darker images.
Note to self: read Delhi Noir.
Bharat yatra
0Off on a tour of the major cities. Delhi, Calcutta and Madras this week. Bangalore next. With the crazy fog situation in Delhi, I am being forced to travel a day early. No guarantee that the morning flights will get there at all. Funny thing about technology: one would have thought they would have licked the issue of weather by now. Even the airlines with instrument landing systems are not able to land or take off.
Spirit Rover: RIP
0It’s not quite dead, but now it cannot move as it is stuck in the Martian mud/sand.
The rover landed on Mars in 2004 with a 90 day, 1 kilometre mission. In reality it did something like 10 km over the next 5 years and more (more than 20 times the initial duration). Mostly the extra duration was made possible by some “cleaning” events that periodically wiped dust off the solar arrays that powered the rover. Little green men with wipers perhaps?
Webcomic XKCD's brilliant tribute to Spirit
Read more at Wikipedia and at JPL. The latest attempt is to try and extricate it from the soft soil by driving it backwards, which apparently has its own problems (probably was never designed to do that in the first place).
Kashid Trip Summary
4I’ve been posting short trip-updates during the weekend break, but this is the full log.
We started Saturday afternoon after lunch and after a long drive (especially around Panvel), reached the resort (grandly named Sagar Beach Resort) by about half-past eight. It had gotten pretty dark by then. Still the drive was quite good and finding the resort was easy in the end – although we were quite sure we would miss it. It was a small, but cheap and nice place. For the three nights we stayed there, we seemed to have been the only continuous guests. Everyone else seemed to just spend one night there.
The following day was beaches. First to the more organized beach to the north of Kashid. Lots of fun but the sun was really beating down on us. After a while, we retired to some shelter erected by the local merchants, and we bought some coconuts to cool us down.
We headed towards Alibag and found a restaurant along the way for lunch (brinjal one). A nap in the afternoon later, we headed to Kashid beach itself. This beach does not have the facilities of shelter and shops and is much more quite and private. Perfect to enjoy the sunset. That night we ravenously devoured the food served by the resort kitchen.
Day two had us heading to Murud and Janjira fort. It dates back to the 12th century and is now mostly in ruins. Unfortunately nature’s destructive powers have been supplemented by man’s, and there is graffiti and litter everywhere.
The fort is built on an island and is approachable only by boats. Rickety sailboats that are filled to the gills with people. As we approached the pier, there was a shouting match on between two sets of boatsmen on who would get to carry the tourists, with some heated arguments on who had the “dibs” so to speak.
With our hearts in our mouths / up our sleeve / anywhere except the chest cavity, we entered a boat and were ferried across. The fort tour (which we had had once before) was nice, except for the heat of the morning sun. Another ride back and it felt good to be standing on solid ground once more. The return trip had its interesting moment when it appeared that too many sailboats were trying to dock at the same time and our boat was “parked” at sea while we waited for a previous boat to undock. No one on board was really happy with that for sure.
Lunch at Murud (brinal two) and then it was another nap and evening at the beach.
That night we remarked that we had brinjal twice already for lunch and the resort cooks had avoided the vegetable so far for dinner. And lo, we had brinjal three for dinner that night.
The drive back was much more fun as we saw the more beautiful parts of the route by day this time. We also stumbled on to a by-pass around Panvel that saved us an hour. All in all, a good break.
Updated with all brinjal references
Janjira fort
0We went to Janjira fort this morning, and had a good outing despite the sun & heat. It is a wonder that we cannot maintain monuments in this country despite professing a great love for our history and culture.
The fort itself is some 900 years old and unfortunately it has been done over with graffiti and littering. The boat ride to the fort is an adventure in itself! People hold on to anything, if only hope and prayer, as the rickety craft sails towards the rock in the middle of the sea.
Picture of the fort at right on my flickr stream.
