Trip to enchanted canadian rockies Alberta-BC Summer 2012

9th July

Drive from Edmonton to Jasper National Park (AB)

Visit lake Patricia, Pyramid lake, Pyramid Island, Malign Canyon, Medicine lake, Malign lake

Spot mountain goat/sheep, carribu, deers and a black bear. Overnight stay in Jasper/hinton.

10th July

Visit Mt. Edith Cavell (stunning lake, glacier and ice crystals), Athabasca falls. Drive from Jasper to banff. Pass by tangle falls, columbia icefield, hike to athabasca icefield (experience the glacier from 1 ft distance) and Lake louise. Overnight stay in Banff.

11th July

Visit Banff Gandola, took 1km boardwalk and ~367 steps to Sanson's Peak.

Gliding high over the Canadian Rockies, the glass-enclosed Banff Gondola flies its passengers above the peaks of six different mountain ranges. These are breathtaking sites and not just for the lack of oxygen.

The journey begins at the base of Sulphur Mountain. En route more than 2,000 feet to the white-tipped summit, the views just get better and better. At 7,486 feet, you'll reach the Summit Upper Terminal, where you can tour the peak's ridge along Banff Skywalk or stop for a bite to eat.

Drive to Kamloops BC, Pass by Yoho national park and breath-taking glacier national park.

night stay at kamloops

12th July

Drive from Kamloops to victoria taking break at bridalfalls. Ride cruise to victoria. The car also goes in the cruise on deck-2, and we enjoyed the vancouver victoria beauty from the top deck (5-6). Reach victoria, visit the legislation building and walk around in the downtown. Overnight stay in Victoria

13th July

Drive around Victoria Scenic drive, visit Butchart gardens. Dinner at Raaga restaurant. Over night stay at Fairmount hotel in vancouver.

14th July

Visit Capilano suspension bridge.

Eat lunch at 24x7 Thai 

Visit whistler mountain   take abt two hour drive away from Vancouver along one of the most scenic drives you'll ever take - the Sea to Sky Highway.

visit rainbow park situated on alta lake overnight stay at fairmount hotel 

15th july 

Take quick break to eat falafal. Visit Stanley Park, Stop by prospect point to get breath taking view of the bridge.

Drive back to edmonton, overnight stay at revelstoke, BC

16h July

Drive from Revelstoke to edmonton. Pass by glacier national park, this is one of the best picturesque park with several mountain peak covered in snow, greenery, waterfalls, rivers, etc. Visit takakkaw falls (short hike, getting wet as we reach near, heard it is one of the tallest falls in Canada) and emarald lake (very beatiful particularly the color of the water and the scenery around) at yoho national park and reach edmonton in the night.   

Trip to Jasper, Banff (Albert, Canada)

Day 1
Started from Edmonton early morning around 6:30am. The journey was interesting as we reached near Canadian rockies. The first stop of glimpse of Pyramid mountain peak and a small lake with clear blue water. Afterwards, there were plenty of vista points and we made several stops. The most interesting one was where we spotted Elk crossing the road and eating grass.

We reached Pyramid mountain in the afternoon and I was mesmerized by the natural scenery. On the way we drove through small town of Jasper noticing a railway track and a very very long goods train. After talking to local people, we realized that timber is one of the big industry for the national park region. Also, my guess is there might be some industry dealing with stones. The railway is also part of scenic Canada cross country excursions. Now, back to Pyramid lake, it was a small lake but very clear water surrounded by enhanced mountains we can see some snow on the mountain peaks. We took walk over a rubber dock for small boats to touch the water and capture nice view into camera. The walk was fun, even aanshi enjoyed walk on the wavy dock. Then we explored the option of doing paddle boating but due to time constraint decided to skip that. Otherwise we sat on the bench for a while to enjoy the view and get some fresh air. My daughter enjoyed sitting on a boat, she didn't wanted to come out!

From pyramid lake, we went to Malign Canyon, where it was a short hike to see the canyon and the river flowing underneath the canyon. I can hear the voice of water (like niagra falls) from a distance, when we walk over a small hanging bridge, the view was just awesome and I was afraid, what if I drop the camera.. it will be gone forever! Anyways, hike was fun, took lots of pictures and videos; continued walking until we decided it was too much. The view was just amazing, there was a fall underneath the narrow canyon.

Trip to New Mexico & Colorado, Christmas 2006

This is one of the best trips of my life so far. Our plan was to see enchanted New Mexico and the winter wonderland Colorado starting from Austin to Alamogordo, then to Ruidoso, Albuquerque, Santa Fe, Durango and back to Austin. We started our journey on a nice sunny day in Austin about a week before Christmas and headed towards Alamogordo, which is a small town near to the white sands national park. Our journey began at 10 in the morning and we started on highway 290 towards Fredericksburg. The National Historic District of Fredericksburg is comprised of several older buildings which retain the traditional styles of Germany. Next, we took I-10 West towards El Paso. The landscape on I-10 W was continously hilly making the drive scenic and interesting. After couple of breaks and long 10-11 hour journey, we reached Alamogordo, New Mexico in the night.

Next day morning, we went to white sands national park. The white sand is made up of gypsum or calcium sulphate and its pure white in color, which is unusual in its own way so, its one of the rare natural wonders around and worth visiting. It is in the Tularosa Basin, which is surrounded by San Juan and San Andreas mountain ranges. The history in short : the gypsum comes from the This Lake Lucero, which was dried out long back as a result gypsam crystals are formed. The wind causes the gypsum to separate from the crystal to form the sand-dunes. You can see the picturesque white sand dunes till your eye sight permits. We spent almost 3-4 hours walking around, sliding and taking few pictures. for detail history checkout: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Sands,_New_Mexico

From the white sands, we headed towards Ruidoso, the drive was upwards towards the mountains. It's a poplular for winter skiing. It's the southern most places to ski in US. It’s right in the heart of Lincoln forest. We had lots of fun doing snow tubing.

We headed to Albuquerque from there. It’s a largest city of New Mexico. The main attraction is Sandia Peak. We took a tram (ropeway) ride to the mountain peak and took some nice snaps to capture the scenic beauty of mountains covered in snow. The one side of mountain is having lots of different rock formations and greenery. Other side is covered with snow and people come here for downhill skiing. The view from the top is amazing and the ropeway ride is also awesome.

Next stop was Santa Fe. We took the turquoise trail, which is a scenic by-way from Albuquerque to Santa Fe. The road curved all the way through mountain with snow on top, which adds on the beauty. We took a stop over in a small town called Madrid, seeing a shop name 'hanuman'. I started wondering that the devotees of lord hanuman have reached up on the mountains in New Mexico!!

We reached Santa Fe, it’s a dream city to visit in US, very different from other cities, because the unique elevation given to each building, which is known as "adobe style". The elevation makes us feel that the buildings are constructed with sand, it looks very pretty. We drove around the historic downtown and took a scenic byway to the espanola town on the way to taos to see one of the pueblos. They are very similar to Indian villages, made up of cement, (earlier they used to be made up of sand). Also, how can I miss mentioning about the Christmas dinner in a casino in chilling cold, may be below freezing, god know the numbers but I was able to see snow all the time and was getting deep as our journey was progressing. We had authentic Mexican dinner with salad, Spanish rice and desert- variety of cakes.

Next destination – Durango Colorado. The journey was again different, as we took a scenic by way, and on the way, we stopped to see Bandera volcanic crater, ice caves and el morro national monument. El morro was something unique, a huge rock formation and little bit of snow on top as you can see in the picture. The US government declared it to be 1^st national monument of United States. We were driving through el malphis national park, which is a deep forest in the mountain range. The fallen snow has added the beauty to the forest, making it a scenic drive. The volcano was an inactive one, obviously! The whole land around it was black in color bcz of the volcano, which was erupted may be 1000 years ago. So not that old I guess not sure 100%. We did little bit of hiking to reach the vista point to see crater. It was not that deep, but a cone shaped valley was formed and almost covered with sand and snow. Sand was red in color because of the lava. Ice cave was a natural formation of ice and the temperature remains 31 degrees all the time, throughout the year.

We visited 'acamo pueblo' on the way. Its known as sky city, since it is in the heart of mountains. Next, we did a stop over in a town called Farmington. We had nice dinner with a Gujarati family. I had the best ‘khichadi’ of my life, made in Surat style, very spicy and tasty.

Next day, we were in Durango, Colorado. I must say it’s an awesome place particularly in winter, looks like a fantasy town, covered with snow, surrounded by mountains, Christmas trees, and a stream of river following through the town. It’s a winter wonderland. And I felt like I’m in a heaven, really I’ve never seen such a place before. We had lots of fun doing sledding in snow at Chapman’s hill. Initially, I was falling and not able to stop my sled when I reached down the hill. We had nice time. Then we tried little bit difficult level, started to sledge down from a higher point. Best one was, when we both set in the same sledge and sled down! It was amazing and had lots and lots of fun. Afterwards, we took a scenic way towards Silverton. On the way we stopped at natural hot springs. We tried to reach to the peak of mountain almost 12,000 feet above sea level. The tallest was engineer peak I guess. The snow covered peak was glowing in the sun light and was looking majestic.

Our journey was coming to the end, but the best part was yet to come. When we took the Durango – Silverton narrow gauge train ride. In winter it goes up to cascade valley. I can see the snow, Christmas trees, mountains, houses of people staying from the window throughout the train ride, and of course how can I miss the overlooking animas river flowing along with the train. This view was one of the most beautiful scenic views of my entire life. The best part was to drink hot chocolate at the cascade valley station and spend some time there and get back on the same route on the train.

As the scenic journey was coming to an end, I was mesmerized by unique beauty of New Mexico and the beauty of snow covered mountains in Colorado. I was filled with wonderful memories of my life and my eyes were trying to capture the amazing beauty of winter wonderland Durango.

Diary of a Tsunami relief work (Jan 2005)

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Five different people, one goal in mind - to help the people who lost everything except their lives in Tsunami and bring the livelihood back in their lives.

Suchitra is a social worker based in Bangalore. She worked really hard to set everything up for us including contacting AID (full name – Association for India’s development?), getting requirement, gathering funds and purchasing items for relief work. AID is the organization that..

So far, around a month has passed since the devastating Tsunami struck. Many NGOs and volunteer organizations are helping in providing victims with clothes, food items. We asked them what specific items are needed at this point in time and they told us to get study material for children since the state level high school exams are nearing. So we took around 4 boxes of study materials and some toys for kids.

We started the journey from Bangalore on Friday afternoon around 3pm. We reached Pondicherry around 9:30 in the night. We were going to World science forum (WSF), an organization that is organizing relief work for the Tsunami affected villages. We handed over the books that we had brought from Bangalore to them.

15/1

The volunteer from WSF, Pondicherry guided us to visit M.G.R Thittu and Muddukutturai villages in Cuddalore district. The nearest unaffected village to these two villages is Killai. Most of the relief work starts from here. We handed over the toys to the relif center in Killai. All the people who lost their homes have been given shelter here. We met a girl who survived Tsunami along with her family. She took us around the area to see the destruction and shared her experience. It was such a horrific sight that I will never be able to forget it.

M.G.R Thittu Village

The village M.G.R Thittu, is an island; we went there in a boat. Around 180 people died here during Tsunami. It is completely empty now. As we walked along, we saw broken boats, broken fishing nets, broken boat engines, pieces of brick walls, wooden , pieces of broken huts, lots of coconut tree leaves, utensils, etc. It was clear that these people were living a reasonably comfortable life. They had all modern facilities in their houses including TV, fridge, cane furniture, etc. Now, everything has been ruined. There is no means of any livelihood left.

Muddukutturai village

This is the village, from where you can reach MGR Thittu through a boat. We were able to see the massive destruction with our bare eyes. The water had come up to 4 kilometers inland. Small lakes had formed at several places. All houses made of clay and bamboos have been wiped out. The school was setup in a tent and people moved to their relatives’ and friends’ houses.

A lady shared her survival experience, her house was wiped out and she was buried in mud, covered completely with the broken things of her house, clothes taken away by the Tsunami waves. She had to remove the mud and broken sticks with her hand to come out and someone gave her clothes to wear. According to her, government is giving 6000 Rs and 4kg of rice, 3 kg kerosene, and stove. Everything else is coming from volunteer NGOs. She was asking for clothes for her children. Certain people in the village don’t have any places to stay. The government provided shelter is very small, 6X10 feet, made up of aluminum sheets and prone to extreme weather. The permanent shelter will be constructed next year. These people were very much in shock and not willing to speak to anyone.

We tried our hand at learning a few tamil words like ‘vangi kongu’ (please take it) and distributed some household stuff and goodies to the villagers. I felt very happy to see smile on the faces of children and women.

Vadakumudasolodai village

This is again an island village. According to the people, the sea water rose up to 15 feet during the Tsunami. The water tank was completely broken into pieces. The 7 feet high pump was covered with sand. Still we were seeing lots of sand-dunes near the beach. Main destruction here is they lost their boats and fishing nets. The fisherman's daily life is almost 24 hours in the sea, looking out for a big fish to earn a big chunk of money. Now, they are doing nothing besides eating and sleeping, to bring back their lives back as before Tsunami is a big challenge for them. since, some of them are still afraid to go back near the sea, even if they go, they have to go really deep in the sea in search a big fish, since the waves have taken away lots of sea-lives as well. Biggest question, how they will go fishing? Since their boats and fishing nets are useless right now either broken or completely eaten by Tsunami waves!

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We accepted the challenge to bring livelihood in the fisherman's life and get them back to as they were before Tsunami. First thing in the morning was to meet the village people and talk to them and get the facts straight. How can we help them?

Trip to corpus christi

It was my 1st trip after marriage, I had done some research on the web, did not find it that much attractive. We were moving the apartment on Saturday, so whole day till midnight, we were moving!! So totally tired, next day I woke extremely late around 11:30!! Being a long weekend, suddenly, we thought of going somewhere and he insisted to go to corpus cristi, I agreed bcz it was a beach and I like going to a beach a lot.

We started driving sometime between 12 and 1 Sunday afternoon. It was as usual burning hot Texas afternoon. We had to go via San Antonio; there was good amount of greenery on both the sides of the roads unlike Austin-Dallas drive. As we’re closing Corpus Cristi, the drive become little more interesting, as the landscape on both the sides turned more scenic. We reached around 5. Our aim was to go to the beach directly. That’s what we did, we went to C.C beach. Now, the real fun begun. The place seems to be different than what I expected, really nice small town, also the geography was interesting. It was having bay of Corpus Cristi and other side were port arnsas and Mustang island. the water was kind of ok, not that hot, lukewarm kinds... so it was good to get inside the sea and play in the water for a while, very relaxing... gradually sun started setting, and we decided to find a place to stay... there we saw a big naval ship parked on the beach. I was wondering what it is, so aim become to find about it.

Our search begin, so we asked few places around beach, but rates were very high, so thought of looking for a place away from beach. We took 37 n back to san antonio, and started search there, so finally, we checked-in Travelodge.

It was very decent hotel, we were totally tired, bcz of moving and driving... Next day morning, we planned out our day, 1st thing was to visit USS Lexington (ship parked on the beach), suppose to be a US Naval Museum.

We went there; it was very big one... and different naval/airforce planes on the display. So, we looked around and also went on to the deck, there we saw phantom, skyhawk, avenger, trojan, tomcat... all us airforce/naval fighter plans... I was amazed to read the description and took some snaps. Best one was the chopper - Cobra... There was a IMAX show but we had some time left... so we came out and thought of going to aquarium, but that didn't work out so we came back, ate something inside lexington.. Oh I forgot to mention about the reaching top most cabin on the ship and we talked to a volunteer he told us little bit history, it was built for world war II, and lifespan was 1943 to 1991. It retired in 1991, and become museum. Mainly used on pacific ocean to take charge of war with Japan during WW2.

We drove along the bay of CC to reach Port Aransas and to Mustang further down. So, we took 181 N, saw few dolphins jumping in and out of the sea... that was also one of the unique thing I saw on a beach. Than, we had to take a ferry to reach Port Aransas, this was a ferry where we can go in our car itself! I was having full fun; it was different experience, plus seeing lot of different things for the 1st time! We reached port Aransas, there we figured out way to beach, went there... it was a island, so feeling very different, the driving itself was something different, very windy and nice breath.. beach was also good, many people out there in burning heat! We also went into the beach again... Saw lot of small size fish, than we realized, it’s famous for fishing. amazing thing was, the water will come till knee than if we walk further down the sea, it will become shallow again! Also, lots and lots of birds on the beach, we took some snaps and started driving back bcz it was almost 5 pm, we wanted to come back before night. On the way, we saw a bird trail, so drove there, saw lots of birds.. also saw 2-3 birds doing fishing on the sea! With all the good feelings and nice moments, we started driving back! It was smooth drive back, expecting traffic but luckily we came back without any stop and gos! We had nice dinner at Fuddruckers.. since than become fan of Fuddruckers burger!! I would like to end here.. small but nice trip, we spent some nice time together away from normal routine and a good change as well.

Stressed out, feeling overloaded... here is a simple tip on how to manage time

Many people complain, I'm not able to cope up with work and life. Work is piling up and personal things are just hanging, how to manage? If you have noticed, some people do lot of activities and they manage the things very well. But the question is how? From my experience, when I used to run into this kind of situation, what I used to do was, every day before going to bed, think what needs to be done tomorrow and keep it in writing. Also, at work, keep list of things to do on my cube's whiteboard along with the priority. So, the most imp item goes on the top of list and once it is done, remove from the list. This simple technique used to help me a lot in many ways including no need for staying late at work! Also another good thing to follow at work is instead of spending time chatting with collegues, taking unecessary long coffee breaks, try to finish the work and head for home! I know it is not very easy to follow but what my experience says, if we practice it is not that tough.

Let me explain bit more by giving example. I know this not the best one, but what I can think of right now. Once, I had gone to a team building training. We were asked to build 9 inch structure in a given time limit, where a person should be able to stand for 20 secs minimum, using only papers. This was a team activity and we started off with some plan, that ended in a argument and without any proper plan, we made something. Then when we were suppose to demo, the person tried to balance on that but that structure could not withstand and it was a failure. There was one team, where they were able to successfully build that structure and demo was a success. So, what we learnt is, if you plan properly before executing, it will be a success and also, lot of time will be saved plus you will have peace of mind while executing! Now, how this relates to managing time? The successful team had proper plan and timeline. They strictly followed it and at same time, they tasted the victory also! So, if you manage time very well what you get is success and peace of mind.

Today's Thoughts

Every day is special in its own way. The day starts with routine work, we feel in our thoughts and make it good or bad. I was thinking yesterday morning, after meeting with my boss, why this happened with me. There was a nice opportunity but the plan shattered because of change in business needs. Which was a big disappointment for me. Whole day went on in the disappointing mood and my thought was stuck at why this happened with me; why did I dream, which remained un-fulfilled. Then on 2nd thought, started thinking.. Is it in my hand to get the opportunity back? NO. So, what next....? I started looking beyond that and what else I can do. There I saw lot of things which I can do and that will keep me more happy. For instance, I started blogging... And one more possibility which I've created long time back, is "be happy and make others happy".. So today I'm back in full swing and looking in this direction.. I enjoyed writing my first blog.. , Hope to write more .. And keep on writing...