Beyond Here

No talk about Paris is ever complete without a mention of the most prestigious palace of Paris - the Louvre. More recently it was also featured as the location for the plot of the very famous Da Vinci Code. Divided into 3 wings - Denon, Sully and Richelieu, Louvre is indeed one of the best museums of the world. Following is a picture of the famous pyramid entry designed by I M Pei and the Richelieu wing to its side. It does seem too modern an entry for something that is so steeped in history but it added to its beauty nonetheless. The Pyramid and the Richelieu Wing Sunit and I had a day allocated for our trip to this one. But were we underestimating the treasures that reside here! The long halls, the beautiful paintings, sculptures - all were intimidating and at the same time awe inspiring. To think that one place could hold so much of history was just mind boggling. We could have easily spent 2-3 days more here and that is actually the time one needs to do justice to this place. But t...

View of the cathedral from the south-east end, across the Sienne When Sunit and I were planning our trip to Paris in the summer of 2003, he asked me what I wanted to particularly see in the city. Much to his astonishment, I replied - Notre Dame. He had half expected me to vote for Eiffel Tower, I guess. So it is befitting I think that my first of the many memoirs of our trip to Paris start off with an ode to this ancient Gothic Cathedral. The West side, or the front My interest in this monument was sparked by one of Victor Hugo's famous novels - The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Who can forget the disfigured Quasimodo and his love for Esmeralda. Much to my delight, Sunit actually booked our place to stay in the Latin Quarter of Paris - we were just 5-10 minutes of walking distance from this Cathedral and I had my fill of it because we saw it every single day we were in Paris. Notre Dame at twilight Notre Dame is built on an island on top of Sienne, the river around which most of Paris i...

Its been a while since I last posted. A couple of out-of-town travels, Diwali and then some things back home kept me occupied. But I am back and hope to catch up from where I left off. First weekend of October I travelled to Ann Arbor again to spend some time with Sunit. I also hoped to catch some fall colors which are supposed to be wonderful in Ann Arbor. But as luck would have it, it was still pretty warm in Ann Arbor and Sunit was too busy so we could not travel to the upper peninsula to catch some colors. Hence we compromised for some local gardens itself. We decided to visit the Matthaei Botanical Gardens. We researched on the internet and from what we saw it seemed interesting. It also seemed to have a waterfall and I was very eager to see it. The gardens were beautiful and well kept in their natural splendor. There was a waterfall all right - the problem was it fell just 1-2 feet. Photography can do wonders indeed and the picture we had seen on the internet seemed to be of a go...

The most interesting thing happened last night. I was at Vons doing groceries, when a friend (who had just walked out of Vons too) called up and asked me to step outside and look towards the sky. I rushed out and an amazing twilight show met my eyes. At first it seemed to be a falling missile but on closer look it seemed the trail had been created by a plane or rocket of some kind. I stood there baffled. Things became clearer today morning when my office mate told me ( he is interested in astronomy ) that a satellite was launched from some base in California. What caused this beautiful phenomenon probably was unburnt fuel particles and water drops in the rocket's contrail that sometimes feeze in the less dense upper atmosphere and get reflected by sunlight at high altitudes, easy to observe because the launch took place shortly after sunset. Here is a picture of what I saw as captured by a colleague at work in his camera.

While in Kauai, we chanced upon a number of beautiful flowers. A small trek and one was sure to chance upon some orchid or hibiscus of some kind. The local people as well as the tourists could be commonly seen wearing plumerias in their hair. I remember our monk guide at the monastery telling us that in Kauai it rains so much that all they needed to do to maintain the grounds was pot the plant and then just pray that it grow. And the technique never failed :-) I thought I will share some of the pictures in this post. Some of them are not in good focus, I guess I couldn't get quite right the technique of focussing on something up close. But there I was trying to capture some of them in my camera as soon as it rained (BTW there was no dearth of rain, you just had to wish it and it would come down) Hydrangea on the Pihea Trail It had just rained and we were on the Pihea Trail when we spotted bunches of Hydrangea. They looked really fresh with the raindrops on them. Red Ginger on way ...

On my third day of stay at Ann Arbor, I decided to visit the University and its campus. A striking thing about the Campus was the architecture itself. Some of the buildings were old and Gothic in style while others were more modern. The Law School Legal Research Building ( East Triforium) I especially liked the Law School or the Law Quadrangle as it is more popularly known. This beautiful Quadrangle was a gift to the university from William W. Cook who was an alumnus of the same school. Rumor has it ( Tip 1: Courtesy Sunit) that Cook wanted the building design to be inspired by the Law School at Oxford. But although he was involved with many aspects of its construction, he never came to Ann Arbor to see the magnificent facility either during construction or upon completion for the fear of it not living upto his dream.They say construction of the Quadrangle took more than a decade and rightly so, for I think it has resulted in one of the most beautiful student campuses I have ever se...

Last weekend I travelled to Ann Arbor, Michigan. It was my first visit since Sunit had joined MBA school. After a lot of lazing about, we decided to take a walk in the Fuller and Gallop Park. I name both because I am not sure which one we ended up in - Both were next to each other on River Huron and we couldn't figure out when one ended and the other started :-) The Parks had a river flowing right through the center and serene wilderness stretches around. There were some people canoeing in the river, some cycling about on some of the paved paths and some like us were just walking around enjoying the surroundings. There was this one particular stretch of boardwalk that ended in a rugged path along the river. We decided to walk it. We had just taken a turn back and I was just catching a breath when Sunit whispered - "Pooja !!! Look !". I turned around and lo behold, about 30 feet away was a family of deer. This was the first time I had seen one at such close quarters. I st...

Sunit and I are big fans of the Wild Animal Park at San Diego - we've been there numerous times and everytime we come back filled with wonder at something new. Spread over 1800 acres, the park provides a lot of space for animals to move and they are not enclosed in small cages as in a Zoo. It also allows the animals to mingle and follow the same natural habits as they would in the wild. The train safari provides a quick tour of the place, but if you have the energy to walk around and view some of the interaction areas, the Park can be a lot of fun. On my second trip to the Park, with Vijay ( a friend who is crazy about wild cats), we caught the Cheetahs during their feeding time. A huge moat separates the viewers from the feeding area, some meat is left on the logs and then far-from-sight the Cheetahs are let loose. One can actually see their long strides as they run to the meat and then feed on it. Vijay gets the credit for this picture. We also went upto the tiger observatory dur...

We travelled to Lake Tahoe on July 29th. It was a weekend camping trip with Sunit's uncle (Ravi Mama) and his family. The trip proved to be some nice relaxing time with family just before Sunit resigned from Cisco. The slow paced hikes, Mamiji's cool sandwiches in mid-afternoon, the campfire stories and jokes, the game of 20 questions by the campfire (at which Ashwin proved to be genius) - All made the trip a memorable one. We stayed at the DL Bliss State Park. Spread across about 1800 acres along with the Emarald Bay Park, the DL Bliss park offers a comfortable camping ground, a couple of beaches and some very interesting hikes with beautiful vistas. We decided to do some light weight hiking - we went on the lighthouse trail. About 2.0 miles long, the trail ends in some very awesome views of the Lake. While the lighthouse trail is a bit rugged, curvy and steep, we took the easy(and very short) way back along the Rubicon trail. Ravi Mama managed to take this picture of the lake...

Half way into our stay at Kauai, we decided to explore the west side of the island (Waimea Canyon) and the inaccessible north-west side (Na Pali Coast). Taking highway 50 and then 550 into the National Park, we drove about 1.5 hours from the east side to catch the first glimpses of the Canyon. The Canyon itself was created by an earthquake that almost split the island into two. The Waimea river still flows through the Canyon, eroding the basaltic rocks at a fast pace and depositing the red mud into the ocean. Erosion of the rocks is quite evident in this picture taken on our drive along Waimea Canyon Drive. This is the main view of the Canyon from the Waimea Canyon lookout. Look at the left side of the picture, you can spot the Wiamea River flowing. It has its origins in Mt. Waialeale, the wettest spot on Earth with an annual rainfall of about 450 inches. At the end of the drive, we came upon this amazing lookout (Kalalau lookout) to catch the first glimpse of the Na Pali cliffs. The q...

July 4th, 2005 Right before we left for Kauai, I happened to run into Shaker who told me to check out the Kauai Hindu Monastery. We went, more out of curiosity than interest - A Hindu monastery in the middle of nowhere. Our trip, though, was fully worth the effort. Set in some very lush greens, about 3 miles from the wettest spot on Earth, the tour of the monastery and its grounds was one of the highlights of our trip and here are some pictures from the same. For more information on the monastery itself and "Hinduism Today" - the magazine published by the monks at this monastery you can visit: http://www.himalayanacademy.com/ssc/hawaii/

June 30th We travelled to Kauai, before Sunit finally leaves for his 2 year stint as an MBA student at Ann Arbor. Here are some pictures from the first day of our trip with more to follow later. A white sand beach, Kealia Beach was just a few miles north of our hotel and the first one we visited when in Kauai. Located on Kauai's northern end, Kilauea Lighthouse has the world's largest clamshell lens. Anini beach is one of the most protected along the North Shore of the island. A fringed reef runs the entire length of beach. And it is here, that Sunit took his first dip into the ocean Travelling back from our drive to the North end of the island, we came upon the Taro fields of Hanalei. These flooded taro fields, called kalo lo'i, are an ancient way of life in Hawaii. Located off the north branch of the Wailua River, are the Opaekaa falls. An overlook provides an excellent viewing area from where we viewed the falls before finally heading back to our hotel for the evening.