Beyond Here

I have been meaning to change the name of my blog for a long time now. No special reason - "Travel Memoirs" was always meant to be a temporary name till I came up with something I could associate more with. So here it is - the new avatar for my blog - "BEYOND HERE". For places which were represented in old world maps as "Beyond here there be dragons..." For that feeling within, to reach beyond whats around. And for places beyond here which beckon me... P.S. The link remains the same. The basic theme remains the same. Just the name changes. After all, whats in a name!

There is another thing Everglades is famous for and quite possibly why it is called everglades or sometimes the "river of grass". The sawgrass found in the park is not stuck to the ground but is floating and making its way to the ocean continuously. The water flows slowly from a lake in the north to the Florida bay in the south, covering a distance of close to a 100 miles. Since the water is shallow and flows over limestone, the sawgrass found here is also flowing at a very slow rate (or so they say, because the rate at which it is flowing is so slow, that it was unnoticeable to the human eye). The Skeleton Forest amidst the sawgrass Endless views of this can be seen at the Pahayokee Overlook which is a boardwalk to a bridge that overlooks this "river of grass" A bridge across nowhere - to the Pahayokee Overlook Also interesting is the Mahagony Hammock trail. Its a boardwalk to a small hammock (small groups of trees) which is home to the oldest mahogany tree in US. ...

When we decided to go to Everglades National Park for a day trip from Orlando, there was just one thing I knew about the place - I would see loads of alligators. The first one we spotted The guidebooks or websites warned, though, that while there is a good chance of seeing wildlife in the Park, nothing is guaranteed. So when we started on the Anhinga Trail and saw the first alligator, I remarked to my husband - "Look at this closely, this might be the only one we see today". I could not have been more wrong. For by the time we were done with Anhinga Trail alone, we had seen close to 30-40 alligators, in different sizes, most with their mouths shut but some with their mouths open. They were everywhere. And we saw them throughout the park. Even when we stopped my a small lake just for a quiet, peaceful moment, one of these swam up to the shore to bless us with his sight. The trail also provided lots of opportunities for bird watching - herons, egrets, anhingas were in abundan...

I was looking through my pictures and came across some of Fatehpur Sikri. And I wondered - how come I never wrote about it ? Was it simply because the touts made it impossible for me to enjoy the place ? Or was it because the weather was so hot ? Don't get me wrong, the place itself is beautiful. And the architecture great and awe inspiring, especially the red sandstone made it look out of the world. Infact I was reminded of quite a few scenes of the movie Pardes. But still.... So I decided to pen down what were the precise reasons that put me off. Reason 1: First impression - We approached the fort through a small bazaar outside the fort. There were touts in the bazaar who insisted that we stop our car and pay them some amount for parking near the fort. They were using a thick rope as a makeshift barrier to stop passerbys like us. Reason 2: As soon as we got out of the car, there were guides pursuing us like crazy. There seemed to be no official place to get any ticket/information...

We had an unexpected visitor the other day. I was at work and my husband was at home. We were discussing something on the phone when my husband exclaimed - "Oh My God! There's a deer under our balcony. I will have to call you back". And he hung up on me. I would have rather had him on the phone, narrating each little bit. I heard back from him,though, an hour later when he sent in these pictures to me. They still made my day. Some background might be useful. We live in an apartment that overlooks the Los Penaquitos Canyon on the back side. There is a walkway at the rear and a fence that separates the canyon from the apartment community. You can see the latter in the last picture. Now my husband at one time refused to believe that there are any deer near our home. I had seen them multiple times before - once in our apartment parking lot and once around a sharp bend on the road at night. When I told him about them, he had replied back, saying - "It was dark, it was pro...

My writings on Epcot are not complete without this - my favorite ride at Epcot was "Soaring". It was a simulator ride which made you feel as if you were gliding or soaring over California. An exhillarating feeling and more so for us since we have been living in California for six and a half years. The ride provided a different view of the all too familiar sights of California to us. While I don't have any picture of the ride itself (we were all buckled up and everything), here is one of a nice exhibit outside the same ride. And a link from Disney's website with more insight into the ride. As a side note, there is a "test track" ride also in Epcot. Its famed as one of the fastest and longest rides in Disney history. And that was enough to scare me out of taking a ride on it. I am yet to hear the end of it from my husband because I wouldn't let him ride it either.