Six months in Shillong

It is hard to believe that I have already spent six months at Shillong. Time passes so fast. These six months have been so much fun. Thought I would share a few good pics here.

Before I do so, I should say that not just Shillong, but the entire North-east is filled with so much natural beauty that it is worth buying at least a basic SLR camera (if you don't already have one). Flipkart always comes up with some exclusive deals. (Click below to see what is on offer currently).

Anyways here go the select few pics.

On the way to Cherrapunji

On the way to Cherrapunji

On the way to Cherrapunji

At Cherrapunji

Cherrapunji Waterfall

At sacred forest, Mawphlang

Elephanta Falls, Shillong

Shillong Peak

On the way from Shillong to Guwahati

At Kamakhya Temple, Guwahati

The glass is one-third empty, but there is still two-third left. And these remaining days at Shillong are going to be legen-wait-for-it-dary! Looking forward to it!

Animal lover, am I?

Ten days of PS2 in Bengaluru were over; work in Mercedes Benz had not started in full swing yet and just when we felt that we were well settled in our rented apartment, the army of bed bugs marched out from their hide-out one night, and killed our night's sleep. Bed bugs, bad bugs!

We had made up our minds to dispose the old mattresses and buy new ones, but I was in mood of a treasure hunt. Bed bugs usually hide in the dirtiest corners of the mattress and are about 5-6 mm in length. So in 45 mins, I managed to find and kill 10 bugs, from my bed and sprayed Baygon too. Later that night I had a good sleep without a single bite and sweet dreams about hmmm...

On Thursday, we went to Ulsoor lake and did a bit of paddle boating. The lake is beautiful. Though we reached after the closing time, I was able to convince that guy to allow us boating for 10 mins, which we later extended till 30 mins :P

On Saturday, we planned a trip to Bannerghatta National Park. The Grand Safari ride of about an hour, was fun. Though the rightside window seat was claimed by Pintoo, luckily for me most animals were on the left side of the bus, Left-side rocks! Teasing me backfired for Pintoo! The bisons, deers, bears, lions and tigers awakened the animal lover inside me. And later we checked out the beautiful butterlies too.





The zoo was legen-(wait for it)-dary. I borrowed Pratik's mp3 player and finally succeeded in convincing Vidyadhar to give me his mobile camera and took some awesome pics. Earlier that morning I had not taken a single pic as I had left my DIGICAM at home. I loved the birdies so much that I ignored the chicks for a moment! :P The golden pheasants, the hornbill, peacocks, grey partridge, heron, pelican grey, eagle owl, pigeons and the russel viper, python, zebra, iguana, emu, porcupines, hippopotamus were just few of the beautiful creatures about which I had until yesterday only read in textbooks. The lion tailed macaque started jumping when we reached there; understandable why it got excited!













Pratik, Anand, Antony and Sandeep went on the Elephant Ride. I saw tears rolling down the elephant's eyes and could feel how much he was troubled, so I decided not to trouble it more. Anyway I have been on an elephant ride before, so I only took pics and yeah, we touched the elephant's trunk! :P

A walk to remember

Two months since my last post, and my readers seemed furious with me for having kept them waiting so long. I had to blog tonight, even though it meant staying awake as late as 3:00am. Well that's the earliest I sleep actually ;) Thanks to my totally messed up schedule. Anyway back to the post.

It was a walk to remember, a stroll along the beach with Amey, Girish, Anand and Pratik. Early morning (9am is early according to my time zone) we met and after a light breakfast at Hotel Kamat started off to Benaulim. Rain God was kind with us; light drizzle was fun to get wet in while we played with a ball and a frisbee. We let our bags and belongings have the shelter under the tent built from my umbrella, lest Pratik would have to buy his 4th cellphone in 3 years!

Then we walked and I kept my Digicam busy. The shells, the starfish, the dead snake and the supposedly poisonous jelly fish (if you touch them you would get boils on your hand) were the main attraction.

Well, the last one is a jelly fish. We decided to poke it with a stick to see what's inside :P

That reminded Pratik and me of a butterfly, it reminded pintoo of something else!!

We continued our walk and Pratik suddenly dreamt of a Jeannie. Watch the video below.

The walk helped us build a good appetite by the time we had crossed Sernabatim and reached Colva and so we decided to have lunch at a nearby shack. It was the right time to try out new dishes, each of which rocked; fish was really tasty.


After a splendid lunch we took a bus to KTC and walked to Natural World, had a tasty scoop each and then returned home, tired but happy!

It Finally Happened

After a long time, it finally happened. Before I tell you what ‘it’ is I have to tell you the background. So read on!

This weekend we planned to go to Elephanta Caves and also roam around a bit at Churchgate. Frankly, I am not much interested in history, so as expected I didn’t love the caves much. A few pics here and there, especially of monkeys, a snake and shops there, meditated a while there; but what really rocked our moods was the boat trip while going to and coming back from the caves, which are located on an island. This was the first time I had adventured into the sea; luckily for us, it was not raining that day; but the currents were still strong and they almost threw me off my feet a few times while I tried to stand on the deck and take a few pics. We decided to go on the top deck by just paying Rs10/- extra which were worth the amount of fun we had there. The driver even allowed me to manoeuvre the boat for a while, (when it was docked of course :P). The view was amazing, awesome, breath-taking, overwhelming, (even MSWord Thesaurus won’t provide me enough words, so let the pics say the rest. For higher resolution pics see my orkut album).

And yes, the boat trip begins and ends at Gateway of India and Hotel Taj. Earlier that day we took a few pics there.

After returning from the boat trip my friend did a bit of shopping at the Fashion street, we had ganne ka juice and went and sat at Marine drive for a while. Just then there was a drizzle, light enough for us to enjoy getting wet in it and strong enough to cause the rainbow behind us. My friend and I (both mechanical engineers) had a good discussion on how tetrahedral shaped concrete slabs, piled on top of each other, would help to disperse the stresses caused by splashing sea water tides and prevent the wall from falling. For nature lovers like me, apart from bird watching :P there were variety of crabs, (no pun intended here if it exists) and in all sizes. And finally I think I have told enough things to tell you what ‘it’ is. Unfortunately, ‘it’ happened. My DIGCAM battery got discharged, I had not charged it for a long time! I cursed myself over a hundred times for letting ‘it’ happen. So I could not take any pics at Marine Drive.

When the sun was almost about to set, we decided to retreat. I had a hamburger at Wincy and took a packed local back home. It was neither BCC, FCC, nor hexagonal packing; but worst kind of packing I have ever encountered, the density was highest I assure even without any calculations.

On Sunday we went to Juhu Chaupati, which was not much different from Colva beach, only it was more polluted as the tides brought with them polythene bags in addition to sea water. However, some things that you won’t get to see at Goan beaches are the Bombay Pav Bhaji and other chat stalls, the kalakhatta, chana masala, fruit decoraters, flute-sellers and the state-of-the-art fortune tellers, not humans but robots! (See the pic). We transformed our jeans into shorts and enjoyed the splash of waves for a while and then fed our hungry bellies at the Chat stalls.