One Last Travel Diary???

Shan, one of my dearest buddies, took one hell of a risk...he travelled all the way from kerala to join me(i actually lied to him i had all things planned!) on one last adventure to see a part of India, we knew till then only from textbooks. The beauty of our trip was that it was unplanned, we barely knew where we were going, if we realized a jeep was going close to our destination, we would hop in, hoping that another vehicle would take us from there closer and closer to yamunotri. When nothing came our way we hiked, the rain-gods seemed intent on accompanying us for the whole trip and ruining it, the cold fear at seeing landslides on every curve wondering which one would take us away, the happiness at seeing a hotel to rest our tired bodies for the night(there were many, thanks to the Garhwal Mandal Vikas Nigam Ltd(GMVN), and having a few pegs of whiskey to call it a day. I know the fotos we have here are not the best...i'll need to start a flickr site to upload the scenic ones...here we are the protagonists and our faces had to feature in the snaps...eitherways we both kept squabbling all thru the trip on who was the worser photographer...compressed these pics 20 times over to get it to 50kb!!!

Through Haridwar we reached Rishikesh and the faint beginnings of the Himalayas showed, besides for the first time in my life I set eyes on the Ganga. So majestic from afar, enjoying a position of superiority amongst all the rivers of India, but cursed with a people intent on destroying its aura. The sight of human refuse at the Triveni Ghat which looked so clean in the movies was jarring, the brown colour of the water was disconcerting...just for the sake of it we dipped our hands and feet...will that suffice for my sins to be forgiven?

From Rishikesh, we took a jeep to Dharasu, 100 kms away. The road here diverges into two...one to Uttarkashi, Gangotri and the other to Yamunotri. From Dharasu we get a mini-bus which dropped us at Barkot, the last village/town where civilization as you and i know it sort of ends. From there another mini-bus took us to Hanumanchatti, 80kms away where we decided to cool our heels for the night at a GMVN inn.The snap is from there.

We begin our trek from Hanumanchatti to Janakichatti, 9 kms away hoping a jeep wud pass-by. The scenery from here-on is absolutely breath-taking...the snap here shows Shan all-edgy, next to a cliff, with the Yamuna beneath in all raging fury, with me fumbling with the camera as always. We pass by several locals...all very people, infact we noticed all through uttaranchal the women were hard at work while men mostly hang around tea stalls.

We had walked 2kms and not a single vehicle was stopping for us. The place where we took this snap looked eerily similar to the ones in Yodha. We threw our bags to the floor here and decided to wait for a lift. I saw some kids hard at work here...we had not seen a single school for about 75 kms. Would people in Kerala be able to associate with something like that!

And Behold!...along comes a tractor and the good man in the pic takes us along. It must have been the bumpiest ride of our lives...but we enjoyed it immensely. After all, how many people get to travel on tractors when they are on vacation! The man wouldnt take any money from us...in contrast the rich jeepvalas where charging Rs.15 per head for traversing just 3-4 kms. He lets us off with a warning to watch out for stray rocks falling from above.

Shan mournfully mulls wetting his brand new sneakers...what the hell did he expect...a tarred road!!! The whole place was littered with marble rocks that came down in previous landslides. In that part of the Garhwal, the pavements and milestones are in marble...i sincerely hope quarrying is banned there knowing how expensive marble is elsewhere.

We reach Janakichatti where the road ends, and began a 5km grinding trek to Yamunotri. We huffed and puffed our way up in 3 1/2 hours upto what was a height of 5000mts. Yamunotri is for all purposes a pilgrimage, we had to keep greeting pilgrims with Jai Mata Di, Jai Yamuna Mata, and i forget the other slogans. Young men were taking pilgrims up on their shoulders, on palanquins and ponies which made us trekkers real miserable. The air was thin, we struggled to breathe, the temp must have been 2-5degs, the rain continued to irritate us and foiled our plans to trek further to SaptarishiKund 14 kms away where the actual glacier that feeds the Yamuna and overlooking a beautiful valley of flowers where a mysterious BrahmaKamal flower which has an intoxicating smell and in which Saraswati Devi supposedly resides. We stayed that night at the Kalindi Ashram hotel at Yamunotri and started our return journey the next morning.

If Yamunotri symbolized what must be the most beautiful creation of Nature we set our eyes on, we headed out next to Agra and the Taj where Shah Jahan gave expression to human creativity at its zenith, the sight of which totally blew us away. We were speechless, just gaping at the magnificence in front of our eyes, amazed at the power and the riches the Great Mughals commanded over India...Shan vowed that when he would marry, he would bring his wife here and promise her that he would build her a Taj in 10 years time! I was amused coz my dad used the same line with my mom when he built our home.

The Agra Fort was equally grand, and obviously more subjected to the ravages of consequent invaders like the Afghans, Marathas and the British. Agra was my opportunity to download all my history knowledge on poor Shan, and the good sport he is, was all ears to my chance to show-off! I was dejected to hear that Fatehpur-Sikri the ill-fated capital of Akbar was 80kms away...another place i will have to put off to visit for some other day.

At the end of the trip, the poor guy had lost several kilos, missed his mummy and her food, had got severely tanned, was so sick of roti, sabji and daal and kept muttering he wanted chicken and was crying at the kolam he had become...i was really amused with his woes because i never felt any of it...wandering through so many places and situations, the last many years, had hardened me. I dont know when i'll venture out like this again...so many places still out there that entice me, so many years of life left, yet so little time for things like these. Pops calls me up a few weeks back and jokes..."i tell folks who inquire about you...avan civil service paditham onnumalla, Discovery of India ilaanu"!!!

Wanderlust Uncorked...

Just back from another typical adventure...typical coz of all the bottlenecks along the way. The opportunity to break free arrived sooner than expected...no classes...i announced my decision to travel...3 pals joined in...the places shortlisted were Nainital, Badarinath and Yamunotri...we decided on Nainital and Mukteshwar. Huffed and puffed our way to catch the last bus leaving for Nainital that night on crammed backseats that screwed our plans to get a decent nap.

Saturday: The morning brought us 4 tired folks to the main junction by the lakeside in Nainital and welcoming us was a steady shower and over-priced hotel rooms. Despondently we looked at our options aka wallets and left for Bhawali, a village-town 12kms away in the hope of finding accomodation. We wandered abt till lady-luck took us to an Uttaranchal Govt Tourist resthouse where they had a dormitory available. This was the beginning of an odd experience as we found ourselves in a room with no matresses on the bed, a hotel without enuf buckets for their bathrooms, hopelessy incapable staff and to make it worse taps that wud spit out only air and my thoughts went to the cash-laden KTDC. My pals were getting angry by the second and my efforts at cooling them down succeeded but not before they had given an earful to the hapless manager. We decided to give the lake, the waterfall, zoo, suicide point, etc which were tame affairs meant for family folks and had become cliched sights at hill-stations, as we knew the only outing that could satiisfy us was a grinding trek and so we headed to China Peak, 10kms away from Nainital on a taxi followed by a 4km trek up a jungle trail.

100 mts up the hill, the 4 of us, threw ourselves at the forest floor, breathing heavily, listening to our pounding heartbeats, staring at each other as we wondered who would be the first to get a cardiac arrest. We decided to carry on, and fortunately for us, were soon distracted from from the physical exhaustion by amazing views of the Nainital Valley, steep gorges on both our sides and the flush forest cover. At the end of it all China Peak lay conqured, it was a supremely solitary spot, far away from the madding crowd, very few of them would be able to make it up here thankfully, and we sat there like in a trance for almost 2 hours and to finally top it all a canteen at the peak, provided us with a much-needed refreshing tea and cream-biscuits. The 4 km trek up had taken us almost 1.5-2 hours but with dusk approaching we virtually jogged our way down unmindful of the slippery rocks or the steep fall on either side. At base-camp, we found to our disgust the last taxi had left and we began a tired walk to the nearest point in civilization...5kms away, the High Court where to our disappintment we learnt that the Mall Road was closed for pedestrian traffic and after another 2kms and our whole body crying out for a much-deserved repreive after a 15km exercise i slept like i had been knockedout!!!

Sunday: The next morning brought abt a dilemma of another kind. One of us wanted to head back to Delhi while I was intent on staying another day. The 2 fence-sitters decided to stay on and coz of our bone-crunching adenture yesterday we rented a cab and visited the same "tame" places we had derided yesterday like the waterfall, suicide point, etc and what a sham all these places turned out to be and what a miss for the 98% tourist crowd here who would never be able to trek their way up China Peak

Monday: By afternoon we left for Mukteshwar which we found to our surprise to be just a sleepy village with a few expensive resorts and a Shiva Temple with an enchanting suicide point with rocks jutting out into mid-air being the only sights here much to our disappointment. By 3 we came down, waited for a jeep until we finally got one at 4:30 to anther junction Bhattalia, 7 kms away where we were alarmed to find no jeep/bus going to Bhawali until next morning and we had a bus to catch at 7:00pm. We decided to bail out of this gudham and took a jeep to Dhanachuly, an even more remote village tucked away in the hills. The people here were real poor and just when we figured our luck had runout and were gettiung desperate a taxi came by at 6pm willing to take us to Nainital. He raced thru the hills like a madman almost going over a few gorges until a road-tarring derailed the cliffhanger ride and our effort to catch the bus.

At Nainital we heard of a bus leaving for Delhi from Ramwani, a town 35kms downhill at 10:30pm and a Tata Sumo was willing to take us and 3 other families there and so we all crowded inside and I found a little girl too on my lap. I was cold to her and treated her like a nuisance and she responded by a vomiting spree when the hairpins started but luckily she was a smart cookie and thrust her head outside and saved me a lot of trouble!!! Soon she fell asleep on my lap with her head resting on my arm and it felt real beautiful. The silly anger I felt earlier had dissolved...until then we were cracking wry jokes abt our misfortunes, money wasted in unneccessary taxi rides, our ill-planning, the difference between optimism and our idiotic optimism and that even if "aakasham idinje thalayil veenaalum we wud find a way to shake it off and keep living", etc, etc but this child bought such a peaceful change to my heart and spirits, i felt a magic i had never experienced earlier, in this stranger feeling so secure and cosy next to me. At Ramwani we parted from the child and her jovial family, and raced to the bus-stand were the bus was revving to leave.

Tuesday: Another difficult trip was over, many factors were beyond our control, it was impossible to plan considering our ignorance abt the scarcity of transport and like, but in the end we made a good trip out of it, by our cool and steady heads, good-natured acceptance of every adverse situation, the trademark indefatigable mallu sense of humour and an unanimous agreement that we had learnt more about our country, our people and their struggles to survive even at the expense of others and how to deal with that. It was saddening to see how places like Nainital were the last-surviving relics of natural beauty in an earth we ravish incessantly. The souring moment of the trip was at Delhi near Kashmiri Gate ...3 ragpicker girls running away without paying money for tea to a helplessly cursing poor tea-stall owner. There is no escaping the realities of India - whether at a hill-station or a metro-station!

**fotos on the way**

Chalo Dilli!!!

Arrived in Delhi. What do I say about this place? I am absolutely enthralled. Its an absoutely new experience for me...a new culture, a new language, new friends. I need to ge used to Delhi's shabbiness, dust, traffic and Hindi and I'll be absolutely fine here. All I knew of North India was thru books, films and the few good friends I acquired at USC...otherwise I've known little of India outside Kerala...being here itself feels like an education. Got a decent accomodation,my roomies are Assamese...they are nice guys and really helpful. I have already travelled quite a bit around thanks to my cousin's husband who drove me around quiet a bit of delhi and I walked around too quite a lot. I live near the north campus of Delhi University and its all infested with sudents here. The idea of Delhi being unsafe for women got lost for me as I see gals walking alone even at 11 at night.

Classes started today. My teacher Prof.Jha is just brilliant. I am really looking forward to a year of challenging myself to the extreme limit. He has set for me an 14hrs a day studying schedule...more on that in a later post. A cook comes in and makes us lunch and dinner and he does a good job. The climate here is pleasant for now but everyones warning me of the bitter winter setting in by december. When you guys hav kids and they are in school, shop for their books for a lifetime only in Delhi....y'all cud save a fortune. I am getting 30 and 40% discount...the bloody bookstore guys in tvm have really milked us dry of what wud have been good pocketmoney during those years of need in college. My hindi is improving rapidly. Still a lot of gaffes but I'll get there. My mobile fone still not working...heard i need to reinstall some software coz its US-made...eitherways i really dont need it. It sucks that I am not being able to check out all your blogs...but i'll soon start to make time...after all whats life when your only surviving hobby has also got to be suppressed. Before leaving tvm, got time to talk to fellow blogger, FlaashGordon but cudnt get hold of Neil when I called.

The reason I blog even due to lack of time and a computer at home is not anymore about my love and passion for writing. Its for all you family and friends affectionately following my progress in this endeavor. It will be impossible mailing you all personally again. Besides after reading about the Indus Valley Civilizaion I just wondered how it would feel for a human 3000 years from now to read abt a Jiby Kattakayam, his friends, and his life in places like Trivandrum, Los Angeles and Delhi....well that is if Blogspot survives...ooh dont think I have already cracked up!!! So consider this as me writing personally to you all. I realized this is the first time in life that since internet arrived I have not had it at my fingertips. This is a post I wrote in two shifts of 20 mins each when i came to browse at this cybercafe. India rocks guys...India rocks...I was always meant to be here. I love my India.

An Adventure to Remember...

From experience I have come to believe that life is all about taking chances....doing something out of the ordinary. I have long been yearning for a vacation...almost 15 months now and the opportunity sprung up on me out of nowhere...Bipin Sadhwani my pal at USC got a job at Boeing in Philadelphia and needed help moving his car to Columbus, Ohio where his parents live. It was a moment of reckoning really...I always dreamed of a road-trip coast to coast across America but I was loosing two days of pay and consideration of the risks involved. Anways I am back in one peice and glad I followed my heart.Well here is a day-by-day account of the trip.

Day 0 - I pack my stuff hurriedly and leave for work. Conduct an interview with a telugu gal for my own position....am struggling hard to not show off my own inexperience. The interview is going fine until my co-worker Khanh, who is all into fashion and latest dresses, asks this gal what is that on ur forehead...referring to the potte...I loose my control and burst out laughing...so much for professionalism. I escape from work at 1:30 drop one of Jisha' s friends for an interview at Irvine and head to my own interview with a recruiter at Santa Monica. Hopefully something good will work out in the next few weeks. After that visits Jisha to say bye to her and get to eat some sumptuous food she has cooked. From there I head to USC and grabbed Chackochan's digital camera and road atlas(in hindsight my best decision...otherwise we wud have been driving around all lost in the American Mid-West). Then to my loyola classmate pappanabhans house to get a jacket for the snow. By around 10 I reach Bipin's place and our plans to have dinner at the gurudwara are foiled as its too late and we head for In-n-Out which is giving a hot challenge to McDonanalds and BurgerKing in the burger industry. By around 12 I hit the sack but one of Bipin's friends Deepak comes to bade farewell and their talking interrupted my sleep but I cud understand.

Day1, Thursday, Feb 17-We had planned to start at 6 in the morning but loading Bipin's stuff into the car takes longer than expected and finally when we hit the road at 8am we were up against the unrelenting LA office-hours traffic. We crawl out of LA and by then we have lost precious time and we stop at 100 mile intervals to take turns driving. At Barstow, we have lunch at a Subway and see the gujju owner giving an earful to his white employees...we saw more of their dominance on the way at motels and 7-11's. The rive through the Mojave Desert was boring and finally we crossed California and entered Arizona where the desert took an interesting turn with landforms of all sizes and shapes and some breathtaking views. The heart-breaking part was that we were within sniffing distance of The Grand Canyon National Park and had to give it the go-by bcoz of our unbelievable determination to hit our goals for the day (Bipin remarked if we had tried this hard we wud have been working at Microsoft now!!) Finally Arizona gave way to New Mexico and all we had for company on the road were giant trucks and trailers who went at 75-80 mph(never knew trucks cud go that fast) and by then we had mustered the courage to set the cruise control to 80 and just eased our foot away and let the fingers do all the driving. The roads were straight for miles on end and we had taken that so much for granted that curves were becoming an unneccessary nuisance. Mathew called me up in the afternoon to give some depressing news - a USC senior and a half-mallu had died in a car accident....we decided to be extra careful while driving. The sun was beating down on us harshly and the desert heat was forcing us to take breaks every 100 miles to cool the engine. The car was a 2004 honda civic and gave us no trouble all the way. By nightfall around 9:30pm after 12 hours of driving we reached our destination - Albuquerque, New Mexico. We checked into a motel and had dinner at a Chinese restaurant but the food was yuck.

Day2, Friday, Feb 19 - We woke up at 6 in the morning after a 5 hour sleep and had a free continental breakfast at the motel b4 we pushed off. We decided not to stay hungry as both our stomachs had developed cramps presumably from a combination of the long innings "in the driver's seat" and hunger. By friday the storm which had struck the california coast on thursday had caught up with us. We were in for a really wet drive and again our decision to drive at 65 was reversed by the other cars and trucks which kept going at 75-80. On wet road, cars and trucks splash such a high spray of water its hard to see the road ahead...i wonder why none of the cars here have mudguardson their tires like in India? The roads here are amazing...the water doesnt stay on the road for long, very few potholes, roadsigns to warn us of curves, construction, deer crossings, what not! But we deeply missed some of the pleasures of driving thru an Indian highway. No people on the road, none of the uncertainities of driving in India like wondering whether there is oncoming traffic beyond a curve, overtaking, etc. I had developed a bad cold which gave me a miserable time all thru the day. From New Mexico we entered Texas and here we passed thru a small town called Amarillo. Here i lost a bet to Bipin and had to take him to Starbucks and sponsor his cofee....otherwise for the whole trip the entire expense was taken care of by him. From Texas we entered Oklahoma and were beginning to see villages..I have never seen a village in America and I was certain the way ppl looked at us they hadnt seen many Indians b4. Our progress had been slow till then bcoz of the rain and we had to reach St. Louis which was on the Missouri-Illinois border for the night. But around 100 miles short of St.Louis after crossing Oklahoma and 3/4th of Missouri and close to 15 hours of driving and 950 miles covered for the day Bipin was beginning to doze away in the naviagtor's seat and I was fading too we decided to call it a day(or say night) we took an exit....after focussing on the road 50 meters away it suddenly became difficult to see the close road and signs....my eyes were crying for sleep and bipin wasnt any better...i missed a motel and we both started yelling at each other....finally after 5 minutes of a little erratic driving and quarrelling we reached the red roof inn. By then the heated words were forgotten and we were laughing abt it. We checked in and just crashed to an unconscious sleep by around 1am.

Day3, February 20, Saturday - We woke up late at 8 and after another free breakfast we were off only by 9 with Bipin behind the wheels. I had done most of the driving yesterday and was still reeling from the strain but thankfully the cold I had yesterday mysteriously vanished and with another 600 miles to go we still had a lot of driving to do. Bipin took up the challenge and soon we passed St.Louis at 11 and entered Illinois....I drove only 200 miles and bipin took care of the rest. We had seen isolated snow yesterday and were beginnning to reconcile to driving on snow for today and the rigours accompanying it like skidding and low speed now that we were out of desert country and were soon entering the heart of the mid-west. But every time I have been on the east coast the weather has been thankfully great. Slowly but steadily we passed Illinous, slogged our way thru Indiana and entered Ohio. By 6:30 pm after what seemed like an eternity we reached Columbus. We had not picked up a single speeding ticket and had not had a single close shave too...god was with us rite thru.I had a quick dinner with Bipin's family and soon Viswan, my sct-pal and Mithun, my Loyola bud, my right and left arms in the US were at their doorsteps waiting to pick me up. It was the icing on the cake...being with these two good friends after a great journey. I was reinvigorated and soon we were joking away and I havent laughed like this in a long long time. Viswan and I were seeing each other after 15 months and he had to endure a speeding ticket to get here while Muthu came with good news of finally getting a job after a 2 month search. We hunted unsuccesfully for motels in Columbus and not finding any started driving towards Indianapolis where we were supposed to have lunch with our sct friend Merine. On the way we stopped at a small town called Springfield where we decided to spend the night at a Super8 motel. We had a bottle of Chivas Regal to celebrate the occasion but everyone was so tired we just had a little b4 we started watching the movie, Chakram but we slept off midway.

Day4, February 21, Sunday - We woke up only at 10 am and by the time we got ready and started out for Merine's house it was 1:30pm. Shan, one of our fellow Savages, had come online and we chatted with him for an hour b4 deciding this wuz not enuf and also rang him up. On the way we did a real crazy thing. We watched the rest of the movie, Chakram on Viswan's laptop inside the car with Muthu driving and amidst pouring rain. I remarked I had the balcony seat bcoz I was in the back while they had the thara tickets. Speaking of the movie we three were convinced Prithviraj given time is goin to hit it big in Malayalam. Merine meanwhile was livid with anger as we had been hours late and finally when we got there I got the biggest surprise of the trip.It was a pleasant one though - the dear gal had cooked up a real feast for us - there was aviyal, pulissery, theeyal, vendakka thorran, cabbage torran, pachadi, chicken curry, carrot thorran...dunno what all i missed...viswan had given her a list of things to make but none of us expected her to take all this effort. We three ate like dogs and after sitting and talking and joking and pulling each others legs merine showed us some of the sights of Indianapolis. We bade goodbye to her and reached the hotel at 10 pm and again went to sleep. We three had just more than a day together but it was filled with so much bonhomie and laughter and fun...muthu's wildly exaggerated tales and viswan's inimitable ability to take pokes and my slippery ability to comment adikkufy without getting any flak back and the way we use famous mallu movie dialogues to intersperse our conversations it was one hell of a time together.

Day 5, Monday, Feb 21 - We wake up at 5 am, have breakfast, checked out, said a hurried goodbye to bips and his parents(wish i had more time to spend with them...they surprised me with gifts for accompanying their son...one friend lesser in LA now) and then viswan left for New York...he left me with a bearhug and kisses(!!) too(sadly he got a ticket on the way back too...now 7 alogether in US, Canada and India...i think he will soon give hollywood stars a complex) and Muthu drove me to the airport with just an hour left for the flight. His driving is just amazing...even under pressure he doesnt go beyond 70. I reached Santa Ana en-rote Mineapolis but Bipin's roomie whom he had delegated to pick me up went to LAX bcoz he mistook the name. Anyways got back thru an airport shuttle, met Jisha and drove back at night towards San Diego. And today here I am in the office...jotting down this long long blog dreaming of my next vacation...hopefully if we three save enuf money a trip to Bahamas in July.

Christmas 2004 @ Silicon Valley

I had made plans to visit Vikas, my USC roomate who lives in San Jose for this Christmas. After days of endless uncertainity I left for Long Beach where Bipin Sadhwani, one of my close friends at USC and fellow GC on Thursday evening. The traffic was so bad and my car kept getting overheated I felt relieved to get there. We went to pick up the car we had reserved for rental but they shocked us by cancelling our reservation for being under-25!!! we frantically went around all the car-rentals at Irvine airport but were either met with a sold-out sign or the under-25 year olds prohibited sign!!! we had almost given up on making this trip but Bipin hooked up with a friend of his who was going to SFO to meet his guruji and we finally planned to leave on Friday morning. I had a discussion on religion, godmen with this "bhayya" and so many other stuff. The drive to SF was uneventful save for getting lost a couple of times but thankfully traffic was lite.

Finally we got to Vikas's place by around 3pm and by then Ganesh and Rohit (Bipin's old roomies) and Niranjan ( Ganesh's dosth) joined us and we just went back in time to the old days where we just kept pulling each others legs. None of the guys drink or are as jolly jolly like my mallu friends but nevertheless I had a good time. Evening we went to eat at a paki-indian restaurant called kebab & curry and the food was pretty good. we had tikka, karahi, tandoori and butter chicken besides naan.i really envied vikas and co for the first time in life. frm there we went for a movie, Meet the Fockers, and there I saw how much Indians dominate the bay area. The whole damn theater was filled with us and I just realized how easy it wud have been to pick up new friends here....I also made a mental note to include SJ in list of cities I am open to relocate for jobs. we got back, popped open a rather expensive wine vikas's bhayya got as a gift from his company and then chatted away till 3 am.Next day morning bipin and ganesh rented a mini-van for our trip to napa valley.the b@#tards looted us by charging 180 dollars for a day but with 6 of us for the trip it came to be pretty cheap. While bipin was renting the car vikas dropped me at a nearby church for the christmas mass. It felt really good to see the inside of a church after a month and I was able to spend some quality time with the Maker. Am gonna try hard never to miss sunday service again.

we had lunch at saravana bhavan(yeah the same one in madras!...) before taking off for napa. I expected the same taste but unfortunately the masala dosa disappointed. on the way we picked up vikas's friend and fellow trojan, harsh mahasey from palo alto(stanford univ) . neways vikas, the butt of all our homo jokes bcoz of being on the wrong side of his 20's and his hatred for gals blundered...on staring from home and abt to reach the freeway he calls harsh and says "yaar, mein entry maar raha hoon" and on getting close to his house he again calls and tells him "mein abhi exit loonga, jaane ke liye thayyaar kar" and on reaching his house he calls him again and says"aah harsh, i have come!!"...we twisted that out of proportion and we gave the poor guy a miserable time. taking mahasay along was a big mistake....he was a chatterbox, kept cracking jokes and laughed by himself. I cudnt understand the jokes(I thought it wuz bcoz mujhe hindi maloom illa!!) but then the hindiwalas said they cudnt figure out his cracks either. Anyways I bore the brunt of his "jokes" as he sat next to me...and the only way I realized I cud save myself was to pretend to sleep. neways the way to napa was beatiful. we were driving thru a valley between mountains(green motta kunnukal) on either side. bipin cudnt understand why the grass on the hills wudnt grow and he believed the govt was getting them trimmed!!! the houses looked so elegant and classy...i am sure all the seven fobs in our car dreamed of owning one of those. at napa we were met with disappointment as all the wineries were closed bcoz of xmas and our wine-tasting tour was nipped in the bud. we headed back cursing each other and on the way bips wanted to pee and we stopped at a town on the way.It was like a ghost-town...all the shops were closed , nobody was around and angane we answered nature's call right in its backyard...a deserted woods little off the road.

from there we drove non-stop to san francisco and there from atop a lighthouse we saw the golden gate bridge and the alcatraz(aka the rock and aka hotel california). next stop was castro street (the gay capital of the world) and it was a sight for sore eyes...gays walking hand in hand, some even making out...that vikas remarked a woman wud feel safe here even at midnight.next we went up sfo's up and down road's with the city's impressive skyline looming at eye-level. dinner was had at a punjabi bar cum grill and again it was the same...tikka, karahi, tandoori, biriyani and naan. the food wasnt good but the consolation was the really excellent tea they served. It was complimentary and vikas, used to a 6 cups a day tea routine made up for the defecit there.back at home we spent another 3-4 hrs talking b4 hitting the sack. next morning(sunday) bipin left for his pooja and the guruji's place and vikas and i shopped for some groceries, spent a couple of hours at a starbucks b4 rohit came to pick me up and we all left to have lunch at bipin's. we unashamedly walked in, everyone staring at us for coming in after the poojas got over but the embarassment was soon forgotten in the best food I have eaten in more than a year. there was gobi, paneer, noodles, rajma andsome other vegi stuff but the quality and taste of the food was superb. vikas and rohit left and soon bipin, raju bhaiyya and i started the long drive back to LA amidst thousands of other cars carrying vacationers like us returning back to SoCal.