US Return
Jul 26, 2010 Photography, Travel
I am back home after my first US Trip, Biryani in any Chennai hotel will seem to taste 2x-times better now. I was on a short business trip for 2 weeks to Saratoga Springs, NY. Had a marathon visa application process (I don’t know why it gets so complicated for US Embassy to issue a simple business visa) after getting my visa stamped on June, I was all set to travel on first week of July.
From Chennai
[6th July, 2 AM in the morning IST]
I am at the airport with my buddy Vijay [just as usual 
], haven’t slept the whole night, and have very little prospects of sleeping in the day. And the routine begins, check-in baggage scanning, check-in, and I am off into the immigration counter, But this time I was clever, I told my two colleagues who were travelling with me that It will take time for my immigration to complete, and it was as expected, took about 5 mins , yes!!! whopping 5 mins (people who were behind me would have cleared the security check by now) this guy was like asking allllllllll sorts of questions, I know Chennai Immigration will ask weird questions, but I don’t understand why just me. Now time for security checks, here is my two cents… never travel with too many things in your pockets (or) simply never wear pants which have too many pockets while travelling…. I had to go back and empty my pockets for like 3 times… After convincing the security check guy that I am not going to burn this plane, I was let off…
Qatar Airways & Doha
The flight route is like this Chennai/MAA -> Doha/DOH -> New York/JFK and you won’t manage to get good sleep because here is how the flight works, It starts at 4 in the morning and will leave you at Doha at around 7, very little chance of sleep, since you have to be awake during takeoff, food, breakfast and landing, etc.. and the next flight starts during morning at around 8 local time/Doha and will have you kicked out of the airplane at like 1 PM local time/New York, and considering the excellent comfort we get in economy class 
, sleeping during the flight is a luxury. So if you want to get good sleep and rest… Never take this plane… I am not complaining about any of the Qatar services, they are good, but it’s about the timings. About the flight service, it was good; I have heard for lot my colleagues complaining about Qatar, but having flown Lufthansa and a couple of other European carriers before, I find Qatar has better seats in Economy class (leg room, comfort, etc..) and In-flight entertainment is excellent, I have no complaints about the food, but the flight attendants very were not that active (interactive maybe…).
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Doha Airport was good, except for the inhospitable outdoor climate, the airport was huge, was not offered any time to roam around the airport but It looked kind of big with hundreds of planes parked around and all that. As soon as I walk into the airport, Some security guy said “New York? Gate 18, Please proceed quickly to Special security check for US…” and I was like… “I hate it…” the only thing to celebrate is that I was not randomly selected, it applies to everyone.
And I was off to US of A, from the skies of Qatar, the view of ground was excellent, there were absolutely no clouds what so ever, it was a great experience to see the curvature of the earth, I could see the land (desert), sea, sky and space all in one picture. After 13 hours I was at JFK, this is the shocker. JFK as I have been misguided in movies is not really the coolest airport, but I looked like some Mumbai/old Bangalore airport. I was not really the great airport, but just another place where flights land and takeoff + security + customs and a parking lot for cars, absolutely that’s it, nothing more, nothing less. Add to that the terrible heat, 37C (Chennai was 26 when I left) and really really rude security staff at the airport, people yelling, noises, jumping queues, etc… etc.. It was a home experience; I think Delhi T3 will be like a million times better than JFK. My wifi didn’t work, seems like you have to pay bingo some dollars a month for using wifi at JFK, forget about airports we started getting free wifi at our railway stations here in india… Enough of complaining, to simply put it, this airport sucks. Did I forget to tell you that a luggage trolley costs 5 USD, yes it does. So after identifying the fact the my skype-out won’t work in the state-of-the-art US airports, we resorted to use GSM over VOIP to make our telephone calls
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Saratoga Springs
We had to go to a place called Saratoga Springs; it’s near Albany, which is the capital of New York, 3~4 hours from the City, yes! NYC is NOT the capital of New York State. We reached our Hotel; this was our home for the next couple of weeks. About Saratoga Springs, this place is a traditional resort town, not much business activity, slow pace of life, lot of tourists, much like typical European city, Saratoga is known to be famous for horse racing and there are a couple of lakes around which offer a good sightseeing opportunity. The racing season begin just about the end of July. So we were in town a couple of weeks before. Personally I liked Saratoga very much, just for the pace of life; I like it when people have time to live their lives, instead of running and rushing for everything. No much to talk about Saratoga, there was a Walmart Super centre nearby, a colleague of mine did buy like half of it (he he he). Used the public transport (CDTA) rarely, the services were on time. You will find horse statues and springs in every road in Saratoga, The water from the springs is very sulphury, you can may be taste it once, but it is not like really drinkable. Cost of living in US is lot cheap, compared to europe, people can probably live with what they earn, food is really inexpensive. For example, a large pizza costs about 5~10 dollars, costs pretty much the same price in India. And for oil, well everyone knows the modern world history, gas is cheap in US. So comparing the economies and wages, I fell its quite cheap.
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Niagara Experience
Deepak came down all the way from Madision,WI to take us on a trip to Niagara Falls. (In return, I have promised him, that I will come all the way from Pammal to Anna Nagar to take him to Kutrallam). We started off early in the day on Saturday and were in Niagara Falls at by about 2:00 PM; we found inexpensive accommodation at America’s best value Inn (Right opposite to Holiday Inn Express and near the airport), left out things and started off to Niagara. We had our lunch at an Indian restaurant (Maharaja Restaurant, Just near the park) and we headed for the falls. One the way I saw an Indian family speaking in Telugu, I told my friend, that they are from my place, he told me to keep watching, and after a few mins, I realized that every one is speaking in Telugu, It’s like 80-90% of the Indians who are visiting there look to be from AP, it looks like a mini Andhra of some sort, I was waiting for someone to shout “Jai Telengana”. That will be kinda funny to believe, but that’s very true. The Maid of the Mist tour was very good, took a lot of pictures, felt jealous about the Canadian Side, they have the most exotic view of the Niagara Falls. Few moments into the tour, I was in a dilemma, whether to take pictures of the stunning scene or to just stop and watch the natural wonder. Little later I realized that if I continue to take pictures too close to the falls I will end up losing my expensive camera. We left the place after the tour and went to the local casino to spend some time there and were back in the falls at night to watch the light show. Here is the catch, the best view of Niagara is not during the day, but at night, when lights and projected on the falls from the Canadian side. If you don’t trust me, see the pics below. It was the awesome-est experience that I ever had taking photographs. We were like clicking and clicking and clicking, and during one photo I had to hold everyone from moving since the shutter needs to be kept open for long during low light and any slight movement can introduce shake.
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New York City
New York City was our last leg of travel, we took the Adirondack Trailways from Saratoga to NYC with a transit in Albany, although it was exceptionally late, the scenery on the route was very good. We reached the outskirts of the city and the city was lit up with lights and the city offered great panoramic views, and all of a sudden we are taken into a tunnel (Lincoln Tunnel), after 5 mins of drive in the darkness, the bus jumps out in the middle of 42 St, in the heart of NYC. The sky was lit up with multiple colours, skyscrapers, cars, traffic, for the next 2 hours I couldn’t not believe that I was on our planet, it was a completely out of the world experience. There is nothing to match the night experience of NYC. We took residence in a state-of-the-art budget hotel right near Times Square (Carter Hotel), the hotel was very basic, but what can you expect for 100$ a night Near Times Square.
Next day morning we went on a trip to Liberty state, took the Subway 5 from Port Authority to Battery Park, then took the ferry from there to Liberty statue and Ellis Island. It looks if you were to visit the crown of Liberty statue, prior arrangements have to be made, Tickets for the Crown visit will not be available directly at the Castle Clinton. We came back to hotel after the ferry ride, roamed around Times Square, took some random pics and were off to JFK to take out flight back home.
There are few things I missed in NYC; Emipre state @Night, Saravana Bhavan, WTC Memorial, Although I was staying a street away from Madame Tussauds, didn’t get enough time to visit it and the UN HQ.
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Spent a long 6 hours at JFK before boarding the flight. Got a free business class upgrade on the way back, I would certainly appreciate Qatar airways for that. Arrived home at around 3 AM in the morning in Chennai/MAA, after having a lost 1 day in my calendar.
All in all, it was a great experience and definitely worth the long flights (and the security checks).
Tags: Airport, Business class, New York, Niagara Falls, Qatar Airways, Saratoga Springs, Travel, Travel Blogs, US
New Camera
Feb 11, 2010 Photography, Travel
Gifted myself with a new camera, a couple of weeks ago, so was busy researching on it. This is a Nikon 3000, it came with a 18-55mm Kit lens, Kit bag, 4 Gb mem card, etc.. .
The Camera as such is excellent with a wide range of enhancements, the zoom is the only thing that hurts. I certainly do know the metrics behind zoom lenses in SLR cameras, but having got used to a superzoom (FujiFilm S5700) for more than a year, I find this very hard to get used to. But if you go to a store and check the price of those super zoom lenses for SLR’s you wont think about them.
Here are some of the snaps taken with the new camera
Also see, Snap from Kodaikanal trip Jan 2010, taken on my friend’s Sony A200 DSLR
Tags: chennai, D3000, Kodaikanal, Nikon, Photography, Travel Blogs
Photography – the old NEW hobby
Feb 25, 2008 General, Photography, Travel
Hi, all
Its been a long time since i had posted anything on this blog. Reasons are simple, i m too busy with my work, havent found time to travel or to take a few snaps. There are too many things happening over here, couldnt catch up with everything in these schedules. Well the good thing is that i managed to find a small trip to coimbatore (fotos below) and an across the border view of kerala for a couple of days and i have got a new prosumer camera (FujiFilm s5700) for myself and what next would you expect me to do all these times… its only been fotography.
Coimbatore Trip
Photos near pallavaram hill
and i seem to be learning a good amount of photography skills as well, look at my best photographs collection.
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Tags: Airport, Coimbatore, Corporater, Pallavaram, Photography, Travel Blogs
Stavanger – Norway
Oct 1, 2007 Photography, Technology, Travel
Norway was my next travel destiny after Gwalior trip this April. I have been waiting for a long time to run-away from this tengshn-filled IT world. No trips in May, June and July meant that I have been waiting for something big to happen, never thought that I would end up travelling to the top end of the hemisphere.
This one was to a place called “Stavanger” in southern Norway, a small city with the Size of 1/17th of Chennai and a population of 120 K. Stavanger houses the Global Headquarters of Corporater AS, where I am designated to work for a couple of weeks. Stavanger is a beautiful place to live in, its lush green everywhere cold air blowing all the times, the place is quite windy, but you can manage if you are not as thin as me.
When I first got the info that I will need to travel to Norway, I was kinda worried, I thought is this some sort of punishment for not doing the work right , I thought Norway is completely filled with ice and I will shiver to death if I had to go there. But only when i m there I came to know that Norway is not that bad (at least Stavanger is not that bad). I never got a chance to see the ice. It doesn’t mean that it doesn’t snow in Stavanger. It jus means that you are reading an august-posted-blog in December (wake up ? ). The good climate in Stavanger is because of the hot winds from the Atlantic Ocean. So if you end up in this beautiful place in the end of august you have 2 choices to call yourself, Lucky or Extremely Lucky.
Technology and Norway
Norway has a lack of human density, for a city which can be called as one by global standards (back in India, Stavanger will not even qualify for town-status) there are very few people to live in. If you walk on the road you won’t see a human being for miles. And this is a country which tries to compensate its lack of human resources with technology. Almost every shop in Stavanger has a website (bolia.com, kvadrat, deal.no, datakjeden, it goes on…). Wherever we go you will end-up finding a wide amount of automation in systems that were otherwise considered to be manual. I suppose there are very few police (I am even afraid if there are any), becoz I have never seen a police guy during my whole trip, other than the guy who was diverting traffic towards airport on the last day. It seems that all traffic violations will be billed at you residential address. Hotel check-in and check-out is automated and you are debited on your credit-card (I don’t know about others, but at smarthotel.no it is the case). It s really funny that you don’t find these designations in Norway which we consider to be assumed as default in India, I have listed some of there
- Lift Operator
- Bus Conductor – (I am from Chennai, yes)
- A guy issuing tickets for parked vehicles
- Traffic Constables
- Room Boy
- Security (Other than the guys with big guns at NATO office)
Norway and India are at two different ends when it comes to population, one is suffering from decrease other by increase.
Prices and Lifestyle
“Norway is Expensive”, there is nothing much you can do about it. So don’t try be creative to find best deals. The best thing to do in Norway with prices is to forget about it , stop converting NOK2INR or stop going out. I did the first two and it did really worked out well.
Here is a small indicative of prices in Stavanger
- Coffee = 20 NOK (140 INR vs 5~10 INR)
- Coke(1/2 lt) = 32 NOK ( 224 INR vs 20 INR)
- Cigarattes = 80 NOK (560 INR vs 40 INR)
- Beer = 60 NOK (420INR vs 63 INR)
- Mentos = 15 NOK ( 105 INR vs 15 INR)
- Bus Ticket (Stavanger to Sandes in a Volvo) = 27 NOK (200 INR vs 20 INR in Chennai, 40 INR in Banagore)
The prices are relatively 10 times of what they cost in India, Its infact quite simple to manage, just assume you are spending Rupees instead of Kronas, 20 Rs for a coffee: ok, 27 rs for bus ticket : ok
About the people, Norwegians are shy and nationalistic. They are not open to talk to strangers, but they are helpful. If you ask them a route to some place, they wont say ” I am shy i wont talk to you”,instead they do help you . One strange think about Norwegians is their proud feeling about their country, they are always kind of asking you about Norway, well thats funny.
To be honest, the strangest thing about Norwegians is their insatiable appetite for acknowledgment:
“What do you think of Norway?”
“What do you think of Norway’s nature, athletes, politicians, musicians and (yes, I really heard
this one:) women?”
“why one earth someone expects me to comment about Norwegian politics in 3 days”
I’m not going to claim to be in possession of any facts or statistics, and perhaps the fact that I’m not a Norwegian and that I personally knew very little about Norway before travelling here, colors my impression. However, I do think the truth of the matter is that the vast majority of the Earth’s inhabitants do not like or dislike Norway. Quite frankly, it’s not that they don’t think much of Norway—it’s that they don’t think much about Norway.
And, to be honest, I’m envious by this kind of proud feeling among people.
Nature
Fjords
Fjords are crazy formations of sea that you will find only in Norway. Fjord looks like a river but it has the source at the other end. They are a formation of sea towards the land. The complete western coastline of Norway is covered by fjords and they are beautiful.
Pulpit Rock
Pulpit rock is the destination point for any traveller to Stavanger. its a view of a fjord from a cliff top 600 mts above the sea level and a near 8 km mountain climbing track.
Its sheer fun to be on top of cliff to view the fjord, with a fear of being blown away by air.
DalsNuten
Dalsnuten is near Sandes (* a twin town of Stavanger), its a small mountain( i am not used to the word “hill”, otherwise i would have called it a hill). this is a place where my mountain climbing skills are put to test and certified a “fit”. Its a easy climb, i was shivering in the beginning but i was able to catchup and do it with ease later on.
Cricket for Brazillians
We found friends with the two brazillian guys Christien and Roberto who had come into stavanger to wind-up a business deal with us. We were discussing about lifestyles in our countries, prices and a wide range of things. Finally we went to a restaurant to have pizza, and we were discussing about sports, thats when Roberto quoted about cricket saying
“Oh that strange game where you hit the ball with some kind of a stick instead of kicking it…” I just managed to imagine some batsman kicking the cricket ball to boundary… ha ha ha . Then it was hard time for both of us (maddy and me) to explain the game with little references to baseball. I was really amazed when someone asked about cricket to me, in here its a part of your daily lifestyle that you can’t imagine a person not knowing about cricket.
One more amazing fact about the people there is, many of them know about “Vishwanathan Anand” more than “Sachin Tendulkar”, well that hurts me badly.
Beach
Our team mates had planned a team outing on a friday . This is the funniest one, from the morning everyone were talking about this team outing at the beach, I am from chennai, this is where marina beach and few other big beaches are located and I frequently travel to the arabian coastline too, So the moment someone says the word beach , the only thing that comes to my mind is open sea with atleast a 180 degree view of the horizon. But when we went 2 the team outing at stavanger i came to see the smallest beach i have ever seen in my life, i think it should be termed as backwater rather than a beach.
Way back home
Tor Inge, our CEO was grateful enough to pick us up from the hotel and drop us at the airport at 4:00AM in the morning, just when he has a flight to catch at 8:00AM in the morning. Well i got only one word to say “Great”.
I was a nice morning flight from Stavanger to Frankfurt. Back at Frankfurt we had a nice time shopping with the euros left with us. The flight back from Frankfurt was really empty , there was so much space inside. Maddy told me that its quite rare to find flights being so empty. There was a nice looking air-hostess. You can find beautiful girls anywhere on earth but these airhostess are just awesome. They look soo confident but still listen soo patiently to whatever stupid things we say. They smile a lot. There was one beautiful indian-look-alike ,who came to me asking for drinks, i ordered a coffee. She gave me a make-
yourself-coffee kit comprising of cream, coffee and sugar. Just when i thought of protesting over such unconventional way of serving coffee she smiled at me broadly and moved on to the next row. Again who wants to waste the short interaction time with a beautiful girl complaining ? Damn these airline guyz might have been recruiting psycology phds.
Landing back in india was really a happy moment, and i reached home by some 12:30 am
Tags: Brazil, Corporater, Krishna, Madhavan, Norway, Stavenger, Travel Blogs
“Being Randomly Selected”
I was travelling across to Norway, this week, It was a business trip with my boss. This is my first trip abroad and I have this unique fear of airports and other places of heavy security. I got this unique ability to attract people (let people suspect me as someone). So the party begins right from Chennai Airport. I went into the Immigration Check point, the Immigration Officer ‘randomly selected‘ me and started asking me all sorts of questions (studies, study details, school school details, company , purpose of visit, father’s name , occupations, … every unexpected detail .. )in a parallel corner, my boss cleared in with ease, no questions at all. Next we went had a break . and then we checked into the boarding zone, “Gate no:3 for Lufthansa” , Madhavan, had no problem in going in, but i was the one to get ‘randomly selected‘, the immigration authorities went on to verify my identity, passport, visa, travel docs,etc. the tricky part here is when the asked about the purpose of visit. I said official work ,and they asked the invitation letter, who cares carrying an invitation letter from the same company. I am just travelling to meet my friends at the headquarters, i don’t think i never needed an invitation letter, its not a “client visit” in Services terminology, where you need to get invited by some company and so on… i work for a firm and i just travel. but the airport authorities never seem to agree on that. we had discussions, he took all the id cards, business cards, passport/visa with him to his supervisor, they were discussing about this… just imagine this happening right in from of the airplane doors on your first international visit. Then they came back to me saying, its okey this time but not anymore, next time onwards you should carry an invitation letter with you. All I can say was thank you. He also advised me that authorities do make ‘random checks‘ so i should be careful and have proper documentation.
I boarded on to my Lufthansa, had a good flight across to Frankfurt. got down at Frankfurt. I was waiting for someone to do a ‘random check’ on me. no one did. then we went on to have some food. roamed round Frankfurt airport a lil bit. and did a lots of things… right when we were about to check in to the Stavenger flight. we had to send our hand-baggages thru the scanner. My laptop got randomly selected now. The security guy next to the scanner said to me “Krishna your laptop has been randomly selected for a security check” . He said that in a tone which sounded like ” Krishna you have won a all expenses paid trip to Hawaii on a random lottery”
I went into a room in which the security guy did all chemical tests on my laptop. And i was declared okey and set free. (free to go to hawaii )
We had a long ride to the airplane, it was a regional plane, pretty small one. It was more than one hour air -ride to Stavenger. The view of Norwegian coastline from the air is awesome.
We landed in Stavenger, I was waiting form someone to do a random security check on me, but no one did.
I will post on the travel stories on stavenger soon… until then hang on
Tags: chennai, Corporater, Stavenger, Travel Blogs
