Destination UK - Part II

This is a photo Travelogue.(as they say, a picture is worth a thousand words)

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Destination UK - Part I

Dear diary
My First International Trip, my first Global Project.... Here I am sitting in London UK, writing the first part of the travelogue.

so I started on this voyage on the beautiful day of Sunday the 30th... september.. It was a morning Air India flight to London Heathrow... and luckily I got a window seat.. yippie..
hey.. no offence to anyone but Air India will be on the low ranks of beauty scale.. you know what I mean.. anyways, leave that aside..

So the flight got delayed by approximately 45 minutes and we took off at 10:45 AM.. I reached London by 03:00 PM local time. As I was travelling westward you need to adjust 04:30 hrs in total travel time. In the journey I flew over English Channel, and put my digicam to a good use. One more thing, I always use to fancy Sherlock Holmes so I bought the complete Sherlock Holmes series. I have already completed first two novels and I must say, this guy impresses.

so there I reached, in a new country at a new place for me... first thing i did was to find out from where can I get the taxi.. I found out the taxi stand and enjoyed a ride in the famous london cab. Read more about these at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hackney_carriage. We lost our way and the cab driver didn't know the final destination so it took us a while to reach my booked apartment. finally i was there..

Next day morning..
To the office...

Travelogue: Bangalore, Kodai

For the last few months I was getting stuck in lots of work and all I needed was a short break. And my wish was granted.

I was assigned to attend a training on Microsoft SoftGrid at MTC Bangalore in first week of July. As luck may have it, Bahadur Gabra and Richa planned to come to Bangalore at the same time. Now, my friends Kunal and Manjari who always pounce upon this kind of opportunity, came up with a quick plan for a trip to Kodaikanal... and man what a plan it was.

Gabra, Richa and I reached Bangalore airport on Friday night. I was the first one to reach so I went to Manjari's guest house. Within one hour, Gabra and Richa also reached and we were all set to leave for Kodaikanal by 4 am in the morning.

We hired a Qualis and flagged off for our destination. Four hours later, half of us were half aslepp ;). Around 08:00 am in the morning, we had a pit stop at a ethnic Tamil midway and had a good share of Idli and Sambar. Next 6-7 hours were again part of a beautiful drive on the road to Kodai. And the last leg of the drive was an awesome uphill climb on a "In the cloud" green road.


We reached Kodai, found our Hotel and checked in. And we moved on for a trip to Kodai Lake. first we planned to have a boat ride but then changed our mind. We circled around the lake on foot, then had a horse ride and finally hired bicycles for a few rounds around the lake. Kunal and Richa took a tandem cycle which was kind of funny.

And by the time we finished cycling, it was almost dark. Time for some fuel for our body and we headed for some dinner. Again some south indian food. Anyways, I survived that dinner and we went for some more shopping. After the tiring day, I had a good night of sleep.

The sun rose again next day morning and we set out to visit some toursit spots there in Kodai. After finishing these stereotypical tourist chores, we headed back to Bangalore. Reached 03:00 am in the night and guess what? I had to go for a training next day morning at 09:00 am.. I somehow managed.

You know the best part... The best part of the travel was the drive in the hills while going from Kodai to Bangalore. It offers beautiful vistas and on some occasion you go through the clouds, which is an awesome experience in itself..

So next time you are headed southwards, do pay a visit to Kodai.. it is a heaven of an experience

At Gateway of North East

On 28th of April, I boarded early morning IndiGo flight from Delhi Airport which landed at Guwahati Airport at 08:30. And the first thing I noticed was the pleasant weather. This was a breath of fresh air for us Delhiites who suffer from aggressive mercury and rising pollution levels. There was greenery all around and last night rainfall was adding that extra chill in the air.

Now the purpose, I went there for a cousins marriage. The ceremony was grand as they had two Performance Evenings, one by professional artists (including Gaurav Sharma of Laughter Champion fame and Juhi Parmar of Kumkum) and second one by family members. And a big reception and dinner party the third day. The whole ceremony lasted whole three day which is kind of rare these days. I also put my camera's 10x zoom, 2 GB card and 6 megapixel resolution to good use ;)

And it seems that being an MBA and working as MT in a Top 5 Indian IT company also makes you most eligible bachelor as I gave introductions to 20+ uncles/aunts of mine, many of them I have never seen before.

Last day, I went to Kamakhya temple but somehow didn't like that place much. No offense.
I also roamed in Fancy Bazaar which is quite famous but was a disappointment for me.

One more thing, there is a railway line which goes across the city and there is only one flyover. At ll other level crossings, 50% of the time the traffic is closed to pass the trains. Other infrastructure is not upto the mark either. Being a state capital and The Gateway to North East, the city deserves bit more than that.

So after four days of welcome break from tiring work schedule, I returned on next Wednesday when for a change the weather at Delhi was also likable.

Shooting @ 10x

I have just bought a cool Nikon Coolpix S10 digicam.

And the two best things about the camera are a whopping 10x Optical zoom and a swivel lens. Alongwith it I am using a SanDisk 2GB SD card which can take 680+ shots at full resolution and minimum compression...
You can read the review of the camera at http://www.dpreview.com/news/0608/06082411nikons10.asp

Some observations till now:

• The Optical zoom is awesome and works like a breeze
• The swivel lens allows to take snaps from creative angles without you needing to bend
• It has an exhaustive list of scene modes
• You can't use optical zoom while capturing a video
• It has a Time lapse mode for movie which allows you to shot movie snippets at regular interval which can be used for making a Time Lapse Movie
• It has a sports composite mode which take 16 composite shots of a sport scene and make a 4x4 collage of that.
• The UI and controllers take some time to get used to
• There is some noise in night landscape images.
• While shooting at 10x, the hands should be extremely steady. Tripod recommended.