Travel archive at Rhythmic Dissonance

Archive for the 'Travel' Category

Nov

I Don’t Like It

Raj 14 Comments

Categories: Home, Happy, Travel and Life

It’s never easy to accept the truth especially when the truth is that one is losing interest in blogging. Add to that the fact that one’s swamped with work and what you get is no post for exactly a month!! But lets not talk about it.

So my trip to Lucknow on Diwali went well. I spent 2 days in Delhi and just 9 days at home. Diwali night was fun though a little too windy. I took lots of photos out of which 14 pictures are posted on flickr for all of you. Most of those are of Gurgaon (a city I visited for the first time and what a disappointment it was!)
I also met some really old school friends back home, thanks to Orkut. For some reason, some of these friends felt really concerned about me because of my last post and suggested that I should obviously get married so that there’s someone to take care of me. The fact that I don’t want to get married anytime soon did not go down very well with them which is weird cos its one thing for such things to come from your parents but from your school friends? It’s totally weird!! And the best part is that my parents don’t even care about me getting married. Few relatives do but my dad knows how to get each and everyone of them to shut it. And my mom doesn’t encourage them as well. That’s why i love my parents! They are non-interfering. Just the kind i like.
After the heavy rains last week, I finally decided to buy an umbrella. And know what - it hasn’t rained ever since!!
And to end with some good news - if things go as planned, I will finally have my own personal laptop in a little over a week.

Oct

Home Sick

Raj 19 Comments

Categories: Pictures, Ranting, Happy, Travel, Television, Music, Blog, Funny and Life

Last Wednesday, after being confined to my home on the bandh day, I swore to myself that I would not stay at home the whole day ever. And I spent the whole of Thursday and Friday very much at home because I was down with viral fever. Oh, the irony of life! But those two days and two long nights were horrible. I constantly ran a fever of 103.5 degrees and hence couldn’t sleep. To make things worse, this was the first time I fell ill since I started living alone and so I had no medicines other than few homeopathic ones from my dad.

On Wednesday night, when the illness started, I employed my mp3 player to help me sleep and it worked for sometime. I was starting to feel really sad about the whole situation cos I was sick and all alone but Frou Frou helped me get over it by singing “There’s beauty in the breakdown” in my ear. And so at 3:15 am, I called up my landlady and asked for medicines.

I am much better now. The motivation for getting better, of course, is that I’m going to Lucknow tomorrow for Diwali. And its been a year since I went home. I last went on last Diwali. The difference this time would be that my parents now have broadband at home so I will keep posting and keep reading other blogs. In fact, I may be able to post more than I do now.

And even though I don’t write too many posts these days, its good to know once in a while that my blog can keep people occupied for hour(s) and even make them come back as is evident in screenshot 1, screenshot 2 and screenshot 3. (The third visit was longer than the screenshot). I think that’s enough reason to feel good about. What do you think?

Update: In a major offence, I forgot to tell you all about my new pictures from my trip to Nagarahole in which I saw crocodiles, elephants, dears, birds, a fox and a will boar. The pictures can be found on flickr, as always.

Update 2 This is a small clip from one of the funniest episodes of Family Guy. Take a look. It’s just too funny!! Watch it, please!

Aug

Paris

Raj 28 Comments

Categories: Pictures and Travel

On my last weekend in Germany, I, along with two colleagues, decided to go to Paris. But this time, we booked tickets for a tour which included bus trip to Paris and back, hotel stay in Paris and few sightseeing tours.

Our bus left for Paris on Friday night and I woke up to find myself in a new place. But Let me tell you what I thought of Paris before I continue. It’s fantastic! The best place I’ve ever been to! It’s artistic & beautiful, lively & colorful & yet modern & organized.

There’s just so much to see in Paris, it’s unbelievable. There’s art on every corner. So I obviously took 500 photos and videos. I would have taken more if my camera’S !GB memory card didn’t run out of space. I had to buy a Pro account on flickr to post the 218 better ones out of those. So please head over to Flickr and take a look. You must take a look at my pictures. You all owe me that much. I’ve put in hard work into it.

We went to lots of places and saw lots of things plus posting pictures from Flickr here is a pain so I would only show you few pictures here and for the rest, you will need to visit my flickr page and look for a set called “Paris”. I know I am being repetitive but you must do that.

And here are few pictures and their description:

Tour Montparnasse is the tallest skyscraper in Paris and we went up to the 56th floor for a fabulous view of Paris.

I took this from the top of Tour Montparnasse. The dome in the middle is St Peter’s Basilica of Les Invalides which houses the tomb of Napoleon Bonaparte.

Looking North West from Tour Montparnasse. Tour Eiffel and the La Défense skyline can be clearly seen.

It was cloudy and hence not the best day for taking pictures of Eiffel Tower. But I had to do it anyway. I took this one from Tracadero garden.

Looking North West towards Trocadero from the top of Eiffel Tower.

That’s Basilique du Sacré-Cœur on Montmarte. The sunlight was playing hide and seek and working as a natural limelight.

In the evening, we went for a very scenic boatride on the river Seine. I saw the sunset around 8:55 pm while on the boatride. (I really like this picture.) At the end of the boatrode, we saw the glittering Eiffel Tower.

And that’s L’Arc de Triomphe at night. We walked down from there through Avenue des Champs-Élysées like everyone who visits Paris is supposed to. We had diner at one of the restaurants there, saw the glittering Eiffel Tower from the obelisk one more time and then went back to the hotel.

Next morning, we went to Musée du Louvre and just like everything else, it was spectacular too.

The amount of art displayed here itself is overwhelming.

The Pyramid only adds to the beauty contrary to what few people suggest.

Two days is too small a time to see a city like Paris. But thats okay because I will definitely visit Paris again and with more time on my hand.

And finally, don’t forget to take a look at all my pictures.

Aug

Rome, Pisa, Florence in 2 days

Raj 20 Comments

Categories: Pictures and Travel

Last weekend our group of three set out on our first major weeekend trip, to Italy. We left for Frankfurt in the wee hours of Saturday morning and took a flight for Rome at 7.40 am. Reached Rome in about 1 and a half hour, checked in to our hostel (which was very near to Termini Station) and then started our tour of the city. Italy seemed far more foreign than Germany did to me.

I’ll let the pictures do the talking from now on.

We walked for 10 minutes through the streets and saw huge roman buildings and ruins.

It was amazing how there was so much to see in just a small compound.

The Colosseum was also conviniently located right next door. There were hundreds of people there and very few of them were Italians. Atleast 60% of tourists were Americans. There was a fairly large number of Indian tourists everywhere we went.

After having a pizza in one of the famous roman roadside restaurants, we headed towards the Spanish steps (the only place in our trip that I didn’t care much about) which were extremely crowded and then to the Vatican. Needless to say, The Vatican was truly amazing. The Piazza was huge. We tasted our first Gelati there as well.

Our last stop for the day was Trevi Fountain which was swarming with people. We managed to find a place near the fountain to throw the customary coin though.

Day two of our journey started with a train ride to Pisa. The whole track ran parallel to the beach and if you remember this post, this was the closest I’ve ever been to a beach.

Our first and only stop in Pisa was Piazza del Duomo because all the attractions are inside one walled area. Somebody must have thought of tourists while constructing these buildings. The only low point of my trip was when I got to know that we could only go up the Leaning Tower at 4.40 pm as only few people are allowed at a time and that wasn’t an option for us as we had a flight back to Frankfurt at 7pm from Florence.

The cathedral (Duomo) is spectacular on the inside but since it was dark, I couldn’t get too many great pictures out of it. Outside, hundreds of people kept taking pictures in the cliched pose and we went to the base of the leaning tower to atleast see it properly from the outside.

A 1 hour train journey took us to Florence but we didn’t have much time left to see the city properly. We just went aroud the station which is pretty close to the famous Duomo and quickly caught the shuttle to the airport. From whatever I saw in the 2 hours that I was there, Florence seemed like a really great place, very modern and clean and the only place in Italy I can imagine leading a normal life in. Others are just worth a short visit, in my opinion.

We soon got into a really small plane and left for Frankfurt. The view from the flight window was beautiful though. After an hour and a half, we reached Frankfurt and all of us felt relieved to be back home.

In the end, it was a really successful trip and I was doubly happy since I was the one who planned it and made all the arrangements.

I took a total of 338 pictures in 2 days out of which I’ve uploaded 85 on flickr. So if the pictures posted here look good to you, go take a look at my flickr page.

Aug

Trip to Heidelberg n More

Raj 18 Comments

Categories: Pictures and Travel

There are lots of things to write about but I don’t have much time so I will only list down the important ones.

• My colleagues from India who are accompanying me have a tough time with the lunch served in the office even though vegetarisch (i.e. vegetarian) main course is served. But I like the food here and have totally no problem at all. So all of them complain about the food and all I can do is sit and sympathize with them even though I enjoy the food.

• We didn’t do much over the weekend. The only noteworthy place we visited was Heidelberg. It’s a beautiful city. It looks like a typical European city one sees on those postcards. Mannheim, my host city, on the other hand, is very modern. We basically just went to two of the biggest attractions in Heidelberg, the castle (Schloss) and the main street (HauptStrasse). The place was full with tourists even though all the shops were closed cos it was a Sunday (which seemed a little strange). I mean, why would they not want all the business from the tourists? I have uploaded lots of pictures of the place as well as few others of Mannheim (More pictures will come soon). So go take a look at my “Trip to Germany” set on flickr. There are some 50 photos right now.

The first pic you see right here are of the view of the city from the castle.

The second pic is of one of the walls of the castle.

• We passed through an area outside Mannheim called Kafertal Wald where there was a huge US army base. The place was full of Americans, American military vehicles and most of all, American flags. There was a Wal-Mart nearby as well. It was weird.

• The weather here right now is just like the weather in Bangalore. Complete with the wind and unexpected rains. So its very comfortable for me.

• As you might have noticed, I have picked up quite a few German words. Not sentences, just few common words and names of places. It can be helpful at times even though most people here do understand English. I haven’t faced any major language problem yet. Lets hope things stay that way.