This blog is my way of keeping in touch with all my friends back in US. After staying in US (WA & FL) for over 14 years, I decided to pack it up and move back to my home town of Pune. This blog is my way of capturing some everyday scenes from pune for the enjoyment of my friends.
It is not very often that you come across something that resonates so well with your thoughts. In this post I want to share with you an article that I happen to stumble upon. This article written by Shobha Narayan has struck such a chord with me that I pretty much can associate with each and every small detail she has described.
Everyone who is in this dilemma ought to read this article! I know so many of my friends who desperately want to return to India but are afraid...afraid of giving up all that they have built over years, afraid of making a mistake! We went through the same emotions ourselves but finally concluded that "it is better to try and fail than to not try something at all!"
Just got back from an awesome paragliding trip to Bir/Billing. Bir is a small tibetian village located in Himachal Pradesh. Himachal Pradesh promotes various adventure sports such as paragliding, white water rafting, hiking/trekking etc. As part of it, they organize a paragliding fly-in and competition every year around October.
The flying site is truely world class! I have flown at various sites around the world including a paragliding cross country paradise in Mexico at Valley De Bravo. Out of all the sites I have flown, Bir/Billing stands out to be the most consistent and with biggest potential. The thermals were big and still smooth. There were plenty of birds to mark out thermals.
I chose the costliest but quickest way to reach Bir. I flew to Delhi and then took a flight to Dharamshala. From Dharamshala I had to pay Rs. 1100 for the taxi to take me to Bir. The drive to Bir took about 2 hours. There are cheaper ways to reach Bir but they take much much longer. The most popular way is to reach Pathankot by train and then take a taxi to Bir. Pathankot to Bir by taxi takes almost 4 hours.
Himachal Pradesh government oraganizes the flyin and I was pleasantly surprised how welcome paragliders were in this remote portion of India. We lived in Bir which is a small village mostly occupied by monks from Tibet. There are many monasteries in Bir which are worth seeing.
From Bir, you can hire a taxi to go up to launch. The cost of the taxi comes to about Rs. 100 per person with a glider. The road to launch is relatively very good and it takes about 45 minutes to drive up to launch. We usually had a good breakfast in the morning and drove to launch. Thermals started popping around 10:45am or so. We usually launched at around 11:30am. Then depending upon your appetite for thermals, you could stay up as much as 4 hours. While we were there we had low cloud base and we routinely used to reach cloudbase. Then we used to fly out to avoid flying in clouds! Cross country flying of over 50 kms is pretty common on most days. We went up for couple of evening flights and they were superb.
There is so much more to write about this relatively unknown paragliding place....however I will stop here with some pictures and videos of the trip. Feel free to send me an email if you have any questions about flying in Bir/Billing.
Mike and his brother launching in white out conditions. They flew for over 7 minutes in clouds before they could see land. They did have compass to fly with and obviously they are very very good paraglider pilots!
Here is Pawan doing a forward launch. Pawan only had few hours before coming to Bir. But he did outstandingly well in terms of catching thermals and staying up!
Here is Dipankar flying next to me. Behind you can see tall mountains with fresh snow on them.
Here is me coming in for landing. The background songs are not my choice. Himachal Pradesh tourism was playing them in the LZ! :) (video courtesy, Dipankar)
I am sure you are getting bombarded with lot of media material about current US economic crisis. The numbers that are being discussed are just unfathomably high! It is indeed an unprecedented situation and kind of a perfect storm that has been brewing for long time.
If you are even remotely interested in how US economy affects you, I would recommend investing one hour of your time to view Warren Buffet talk about it here. It is a gem of an interview by Charlie Rose where Warren Buffet slices and dices the current situation and gives his candid views. This guy is really good and knows what he is talking about. My respect for him grew many fold after seeing this interview. Here are some of the pearls from his conversation,
i would rather be approximately right rather than precisely wrong! -Warren on the need of having a $700 billion bail out plan devised quickly.
Be greedy when everyone else is fearful and be fearful when everyone else is greedy! -Warren when asked why he is investing now when everyone is selling their positions.
We are trading away piece of our country every day! (America imports more than it exports, more specifically $2 billion every day. So someone else in the world owns $2 billion of America every single day!) -Warren on how to fix the US economic engine in the long run
Slowly but surely SaaS (software as a service) is becoming part of my everyday life. Here is a fun example of how a website provides a simple service to take a photo and turn it into professional looking vintage avatars! Here are some of the cool year book photos it created for me. More funny avatars are available here. The coolest thing about this service is that it is entirely over the web. This is the first time I actually manipulated a photo over the web and the overall experience was very impressive. This goes to prove that SaaS is slowly but surely becoming suitable for service delivery over the web!
Some photos I took while on my way to Mumbai. It was quite interesting to see a horse rider in the middle of mumbai traffic. Also notice their make shift rain hats! Last two photos are of a local fish market. Quite appetizing isn't it? :)
Out of curiosity, I fed it my resume and it spit out following representation of it. I think it is a good way of getting a gist out of someone's resume. In a cool visual way, it reveals a person's traits and characteristics! (click on it to see it in larger size)
Everything Google touches turns into gold. I am a HUGE fan of Google software. Just recently I have been using Google analytics for my company web site. It is such a cool app that you really have to use it to understand it.
It is extremely simple to get started with Google Analytics. First of all, it is free! All you have to do is sign up for it (using your existing gmail account) Then you point it to your web site. You have to insert a small javascript into all your web pages and you are all set. Google Analytics magically starts collecting data about your visitors and provides you with GREAT reports.
I am so hooked on to it that I have started using it for my personal web page! Ofcourse not many people visit my personal web page :( but it still indeed provides me with a sandbox to experiment various things. As you can see one of the reports shows visitor data overlayed on a map. You can even drill down into country/state to see exactly what city your visitors are coming from. Isn't that cool? Now if all of you reading my blog visit my personal web page, I will have much more hits and hence will be able to see a cool map overlay of where all you are hitting my web page from. So what are you waiting for? Click here NOW! :)
Tell me how do you explain this to a two year old....
We had stopped at a traffic signal the other day. With Rhea and Roma in the back seat, a girl selling balloons approached us. The girl was of the same age as Rhea...not wearing chappals, hair all messed up, torn clothes and holding dozens of balloons. Roma instinctively wanted the balloon. We obviously refused to buy it for her. (as a policy, I neither buy anything from child vendors nor give money to beggars....) This made Roma very sad. Looking into Roma's sad eyes, a thought passed my mind as to what Roma might be thinking....from Roma's point of view, was she thinking that the girl on the street selling balloons is the luckiest girl? A girl who has a dozen balloons as opposed to Roma who has no balloon? How do you explain the irony of this thought to a two and half year old?
For many months I have been thinking what I enjoy so much of going to my favorite restaurants here in Pune. Undoubtedly they all have great tasting food but thats not the only thing that gives me the most satisfaction. The idea that I can order anything I want, in any quantity I want and not spend more than $10 is very fulfilling! (Yes, obviously I do not go to yuppie/expensive restaurants that cost a lot more for a mere cup of coffee!) When we were in US, we would routinely spend $40-$50 on each restaurant visit!
As you can see part of the reason is because of the PPP (Purchasing power parity) between US and India. (But of course it also depends on individual taste and choice you make. e.g. I can spend more money going to a hip restaurant in Pune than most places in Seattle)
Coming back to my personal satisfaction index, I have realized that it is not how much money I make or whether I can afford something expensive. It is the differential between what I make and how much I spend that makes me more happy. If all this is confusing, all you can take away from this is that I am a cheap guy! ;)
i am loving it, well not everything but couldn't help using it as a title for the blog! :) Yesterday I through McDonald's drive through for the first time in life....in INDIA! I never thought I would be using a drive through in India. Why I make that statement would be apparent to everyone who has seen indian roads and size of the shops. However the outskirts of cities, such as Hinjawadi IT infotech park near Pune is (relatively) better planned and hence has the luxury of having drive through (at least until that area gets densely populated)
Couple of observations and comparisons (w.r.t. US) of the indian McDonald drive through experience,
I was the only car in the drive through...
The annoying non-working mic/speaker system was not present. Instead I used one window to place an order.
The drive through is clockwise unlike the anticlockwise drive through of USA. Felt a bit wierd when I noticed it! (This is obviously because cars in India are right hand drive)
I asked for Large fries and asked the guy whether they have anything bigger than large. That guy looked at me as if I was crazy! :) BTW, does anyone else hate the coffee cup size system Tall, Grande, etc.? It took me long time to remember that Tall is actually the smallest size you can buy! LOL
Just got back from an awesome paragliding trip to Arambol beach, Goa. We took the sleeper coach bus to Goa to maximize our time in Goa. Unfortunately the bus broke down on the way before Kolhapur. It was my first time traveling all night by bus which has sleeper coach. It was kind of crammed but was comfortable. We reached Arambol beach early morning.
Arambol beach is at almost at the north most tip of Goa and is a pretty secluded beach. There aren't any big resorts or hotel here. Lot of western tourists call this beach their home due to it's secluded nature. There is a sweet water lake right next to the beach. The sand of the sweet water lake is supposed to have medicinal powers.
The flying at Arambol was fantastic. Smooth coastal conditions. Nice on shore winds would start at around 11am which gave us plenty of time to have a relaxed breakfast by a sea-side restaurant right below our hotel. Then we lazily made our way to the arambol beach and set up our camp one of the shacks. This is where we would hydrate our bodies with orange/watermelon juices. We would then hike up the 700 feet next to the beach.
There are numerous options for launches. You can pretty much launch in any direction except East!
After flying all afternoon, we played in the sea followed by dip into the fresh water lake. The night life at Arambol was limited to having great fresh fish :) and King's beer (goa's local beer)
All in all, I got to fly all five days, a feat I have not been able to do in many many years! The temple pilot group is simply fantastic and I look forward to flying with them many years to come.
And here are some videos,
Flying at Pawna lake. Pawna lake is a site very similar to Whidbey in terms of launch elevation and top landing possibilities.
