Vizag, or Vishakapatnam, is the second largest city in Andhra Pradesh and is famous for its natural port, apart from the tourism of course. It’s about 1300kms from Bangalore and hence my initial thoughts were to take a flight. But after finding out the ridiculous cost of a flight ticket to Vizag, I decided a train was better. By train it takes about 18 to 20 hours depending on the train you’ve taken (as I found out when coming back, it could take a LOT more than that, so be prepared).

I was pleasantly taken aback by the weather when I arrived. It was very much like what I was used to, cool and calm. Surprising for a beach town. The Vizag railway station however lacks a lot of basic amenities, including a (working) air conditioned waiting room. This would turn out to be such a big damper on my return journey. More on that later.

View of the Haritha Beach Resort from the beach.

My room was booked at the government APTDC Haritha Beach Resort at Rishikonda. That was another 15kms from the railway station and travelling there would be only by auto. Be prepared to pay a couple of hundred bucks unless you can talk Telugu. One thing though, the auto drivers there don’t hassle you like in Bangalore. So you can let your guard down… a little.

Coming to the resort, the staff were extremely helpful. Language was not a problem as I could (sorta) follow Telugu. They’re quite fluent in Hindi, just in case. The rooms were fantastic and we had a stunning view of the beach from our second floor deluxe room. One does not have to worry about food either. The room service was quick and the food was brilliant. There’s even a very nice restaurant called Offshores. A view of the beach and the sound of the water make a very scenic background for a quiet dinner. Don’t forget to order sea food. Cooked in traditional Andhra style, you can expect a spicy affair for your taste buds.

View of Rishikonda Beach from the resort

My only qualm about Rishikonda was that it wasn’t a private beach. However, the crowd was small and the people weren’t privy to what tourists were up to.

All I wanted to do on this vacation was to laze and enjoy the beach. There are a lot more things to see in Vizag though. The Borra Caves, Arakku Valley, more beaches, and lots of temples. If you love to drive, it would be well advised to rent a car because the city has some breath taking scenic roads that one will thoroughly enjoy driving.

My experience with the return train journey was horrible. The train was initially delayed by 3 hours, and it only kept increasing. It finally arrived a whole 5 hours late! This did give me an opportunity to explore the city, and I managed to sit through a whole Telugu movie – for the first time.

All in all, Vizag is a truely beautiful beach town to visit, and for me, it really was the Goa of the East Coast.

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That’s what a friend’s Facebook status said late Sunday evening. The first Formula 1 race in India had just ended. The air was still dusty, you could smell the burnt rubber, and we wanted more!

Barely two months ago, the Buddh International Circuit was still a huge pile of dirt. There was uncertainty in the air about whether the first Indian GP was ever going to take place. I took my chances, booked my flight tickets early. And then, the tickets went on sale the next day! Two days later, more than 15,000 tickets were sold and the South Natural Stand was already sold out! It was going to happen, F1 in India!

I left to Delhi on the 28th, by a very early morning flight. Delhi’s weather was surprisingly very much like what I love and am accustomed to in Bangalore. The only signs of being out of place was being in the center of what is an insanely huge terminal, Delhi’s IGI T3. Wow.

After a few phone calls, I was headed to Ghaziabad, Uttar Pradesh, where accommodation for us had been arranged. I was already in a cab when I was told Ghaziabad was 40kms from IGI. Ouch! Oh well, the cab ride gave me a chance to enjoy the sights of New Delhi, at a price of course.

India Gate

We headed out to Greater Noida, where the Buddh International Circuit is located, another 40kms from our hotel. The roads around New Delhi are amazingly well kept; not a single speed breaker or ditch through the whole ride. I had already started liking New Delhi, and it was just the beginning.

The area around the circuit was hardly complete. I’m talking acres here, because it looked like the Jaypee group owns half of Greater Noida. It was Jaypee for as far as you could see. Amazing really. Then there was the circuit itself, damn. The first sight of it really gives you a sense of pride, making you not believe something like an F1 race was actually happening in India.

And then came out Alguersuari in FP2… oh my gawd. The sound of an F1 car was just unbelievably loud. And for fans like us, it was the epitome of the trip thus far. Unbelievable. A thousand miles traveled, and the just the sound of an F1 car had made us feel it was worth it all.

Friday evening was spent in Delhi, visiting India Gate and the famous eatery Khan Chacha. My opinion about Khan Chacha – the owners are egoistic and the prices just don’t justify the taste. More on this later.

Saturday involved being late to Qualifying because of traffic, visiting the F1 Village, returning to India Gate, and heading out to Karim’s. Karim’s too, was over hyped. It was 9pm and the Biryani and Raan were already over. WTF?

Sunday. Race Day! And boy, was it worth the 2 hours in traffic. We made it just in time for the parade lap, and cheered as Vettel, Schumi, Massa, Alonso, and Karthikeyan went by on old classics; and uttered racist words as Hamilton passed by. We watched as Massa and Hamilton collided, Massa’s Ferrari grinding to a halt as it passed turns 10 and 11, Massa being scootered away (on a Honda Activa! ), and after the race, the damaged Ferrari being towed away just a few feet from us. Ahh, worth it all.

We were THERE!

And as an added bonus, we saw the God of Cricket, Sachin Tendulkar, stuck in traffic right besides us, happily acknowledging the crowd that had stopped their cars to take photos!

Sunday night’s dinner was at Kake-Da-Hotel, and WOW! The half an hour wait was a small price to pay for what was the best Butter Chicken and Mutton Keema I have ever had. Khan Chacha and Karim’s can learn a thing or two from Kake-Da, the food was superb and light on the wallets. A must for anybody visiting Delhi.

Sides: This post was to be written more than a day ago, but I ended up sleeping for 20-hours straight after coming home!

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I’ve been using an Android phone from the past 4 months now. I like it for the most part. My main activities mostly revolve around texting, calls, and using the Internet. The 3.6″ screen is pretty nice for surfing, BUT, it doesn’t do a good enough job of reading articles and ebooks. That’s where I feel a tablet would be handy.

Sure, you’d argue that carrying a tablet and a phone would be quite troublesome. For most people that would be true. For me, nope. Six days a week I carry my backpack with me. I have an immense need for it. Adding an additional tablet to it would just about me perfect for me. I could catch up on a book or read the news while travelling, and I travel a lot.

What made me realise that a tablet is much better than a phone at reading books and news was the iPad. Actually, the Pulse newsreader application. It’s magnificent. Having the iPad in your hand and reading the Huffington Post makes you feel like you have the hard copy of the Post in your hands, and THAT is simply orgasmic.

I’ve been driven towards an iPad, but cost is obviously one thing that isn’t going to let me have it. I’ve come to terms with that. The iPad isn’t for me. But I’m not going to give up on reading the Huffington Post on a tablet idea. After all, Android tablets are just around the corner (forget the Tab. Samsung and I have a mutual allergy to each other). The supposed Motorola tablet should be a beauty. It probably won’t be very cheap, I get that. So even though a Tablet isn’t for me now, two years down the line, my prediction is that every book and news lover will have a Tablet in his hand, and the costs shall obviously be driven down, THAT’S when a Tablet will be mine. Why settle for a closed book reader (Nook anyone?) when you can have the openness of Android on your tablet.

P.S. – This happens to be my first post from the WordPress app for Android. Mobile blogging at last.

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The check-in time was supposed to be around noon, so leaving at 6 in the morning, we were sure to reach there around noon. After a few hiccups that I’d rather not mention, we were at the bus stand at 7 am. We caught the first bus to Chikmagalur only to realise there weren’t any seats left. Getting down at the next stop, we spent some time snacking on biscuits while I spoke to a friend. In the heat of the moment, someone brought up the topic of going to Mangalore, and just as that came up, a bus to Mangalore was in sight. Without thinking, all of us boarded the bus and began our trip to Mangalore. “Screw the room bookings money”, we said.

Epic Bhatkal

We ended up staying in Bhatkal for a couple of days, visiting Idugunji and Murudeshwar in the process. Then headed over to Honnavar and Jog Falls. Jog was brilliant, even though it wasn’t the right season for it. We stayed here for a night and boy, was it fun!

All in all we clocked about close to a thousand kilometers and about 6 days out of the house in total. EPIC!

Here’s the map of the whole trip:

View The Bhatkal Trip in a larger map

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One of the main reasons for me not updating my blog has been a hectic college life. An 8 to 6 time table isn’t exactly something that gives you time to do anything much apart from studies. Any how, there’s been a lot happening in my life right now. Let me update you.

I’ve been traveling a lot these days. The East Coast was where I started off. Chennai and Pondicherry to be precise. I’ve blogged about the recent trips to Gokarna and Mysore. Gokarna especially was an amazing experience for me for various reasons. I’ll be going to Chennai again for Cruisemaniac’s wedding this weekend and I’m eagerly looking forward to it. It’s also going to be a break for me from regular college life. Did I mention I have 8 hours of classes this Sunday?

Speaking of college life, I’ve started to realize that being away from home, Bangalore, and my friends, is something that is a herculean task. I remember a year from now, telling my mother that I wanted to be far away from home for studies, and that I would do just fine. Now, I end up taking the first bus home on every weekend. There’s something about Bangalore that makes me feel like home. That sense of insecurity I have in college vanishes just as I knock on the doors of home. I feel welcomed and cared for as soon as I meet my childhood friends. These guys have been the reason I’m able to endure college.

College hasn’t been as bad as I just pictured it to you however. I’ve joined the IEEE, an organization dedicated to empowering students and encouraging them to participate in co-curricular activities, something that becomes a rarity during Engineering. SIT’s IEEE student branch has been great so far. We’ve had a lot of fun building robots (and blowing them up), hunting for treasure, and spending a night dancing to DJs. I’ve also been given an opportunity to design the IEEE SIT website, something that’s a work in progress right now. Of course, I’m building it around WordPress, the opensource platform all us adore so much.

I also have a new laptop now. A very gorgeous mistress I’ve named as BlackBeauty. She’s a Dell Inspiron 14, and yes, she’s dressed in Obsidian Black. And, I’ve developed a deep liking for Windows 7 and Visual Studio lately. Cannot wait to try out the full release version of VS 2010. I’m lucky to be getting it licensed as an IEEE member and as a Microsoft DreamSpark candidate. It’s probably something Microsoft have done right, recently at least. Now for some Apple news; I’ve upgraded from an 8GB 2nd gen iPod Touch to a 32GB 3rd gen iPod Touch, aptly named SanPod. I still use both.

And I’m somewhat ashamed to mention this, but I’ve become sort of a Facebook addict!

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We initially wanted to go by train, but the train timings were such that we would reach Shimoga in the middle of the night, and from there, we would need to take a bus to Gokarna. Instead we took a sleeper coach bus right from Bangalore itself. The bus was an hour late! En route, our dear friend Somo made the bus wait for a good 10 whole minutes as he came running from home.

We reached Gokarna at 7 in the morning. What was surprising was that there was almost no humidity despite being a coastal town. The weather was excellent!

Once at Gokarna, we had to hire autorickshaws to Om Beach. The beach is pretty far from the bus stand and 100 bucks for the rick is worth it. En route the tiny ghat section, you will see Gokarna’s other beaches which are equally as beautiful as Om Beach. Once at Om Beach, we had to walk till the end of the beach to find a place to stay as every other shack was either booked or available only to foreigners. Apparently, charging foreigners a large amount for a lousy shack is how these people manage to keep the price cheap for us.

The entire stay for 2 days was just brilliant. Day 1 went away with exploring the geography of the place, lazying by the beach, and a visit to the temple. On day 2, we trekked quite a lot in the somewhat hot sun and found a stunning spot where we could see a panoramic view of the sea. Sadly we hadn’t taken our cameras on the trek. The rest of the day was spent floating in the sea, playing catch in the water, and losing precious stuff.

Budget wise, I had expected us to spend close to Rs.2,500 like the last trip to Mangalore. Surprisingly though, the whole thing worked out at exactly Rs.1,600 per head! Here’s the run down for those planning to go to Gokarna:

• Travel – by bus (to and fro), sleeper coach (Seabird) — Rs.800
• Accommodation – Sunset Cafe — Rs.300 per room (2 people in a room with maximum 3 allowed)
• Food – this was the costliest because we did not skimp on our non-veg craving, and yes, ’cause we’re hogs, lol – Rs.450
• Autorickshaw – the only way to travel from the beach to the town — Rs.200

I haven’t gone into much detail about the trip due to lack of time and patience. Gokarna is overall a very nice place to visit. Om Beach is calm, quiet, and a privy place away from hooligans. Contrary to recent rumors, the beaches are kept really clean and morally well looked after.

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Now about SIT. Hats off to the Principal and to the Director. Two amazing men who have gotten together to organize Personality Developmen Programmes to everybody at the hostel. It sounded lame at first, listening to a guy speak about how great he is and all that. But a few hours past, all of us were glued. The speaker, Arjun Devaiah, an international athlete, was absolutely BRILLIANT. It was evident when I spoke to Prashanth HN that I had already changed in just a couple of days. More on this some other time. For now, I’m enjoying classes and the PDP classes as well. SIT is probably the best thing to happen in my life (yet).

P.S. I wrote this in a hurry on my iPod. Leaving back to Tumkur in a couple of hours. So do excuse the lack of information, photos and what not.

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In June, I was always at home, either watching movies or doing something not at all worthwhile. I was repeatedly told to leave the house and go out a little.

In July though, the complaint was that I was constantly away from home. I would leave at noon, having gotten up only at 10am, and then come back home only past 10pm. There were quite a few times that I had to stay over at a friend’s place because it was too late.

I watched six movies at the theatres in the span of a fortnight, almost each with a different group of friends. Finished watching at least a dozen different TV shows. A couple of hundred movies still left. Gotten high a dozen times. Lost my mind at least a couple of times. Killed my iPod Touch once. Resurrected my iPod Touch once. Almost killed myself once. Waatevaaah!

As with all things, this damn 6-week long run comes to an end. On Saturday, I bid goodbye to Bangalore, at least for another 4 years, as I move to Tumkur,  a town that’s around 70kms away from Bangalore. And although close, I still won’t be able to come down to Bangalore as much as I would like to. I’ve never left the Garden City for more than a couple of weeks. And I’ve never really lived by myself either. This is going to be… weird.

I’m not leaving depressed or even a bit sad. I’m actually looking forward to this part of my life. A whole new friends circle is something that has gotten me excited as well. That doesn’t mean that I forget or leave my present friends circle. Nope. It just means we get closer. The fact that each and everybody close to me has said that they would ‘miss me’ (surprisingly, even the guys!), an emotional phrase that none of them had ever come even slightly close to uttering before, just brought us all closer than ever.

Well that’s that, it’s time to bid goodbye to Bangalore…

Image source: karenebiggs.

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1. Be the CEO of my own company. (current status: in the works already)
2. Live far away from the city. Probably a nice little village on the outskirts of Bangalore.
3. Splurge on all the latest gadgets I can lay my crappy hands on, just once. (technology jumps a mile each month, so no point splurging over and over)
4. Build a sound-proof room. (for various naughty reasons)
5. Drive at 200+kmph, with the windows down and my head out, doggy style. lol
6. Bungee jump. (lets keep it realistic, I doubt I’ll ever be jumping out of an airplane)
7. Create something (anything) that I would have usually bought from a store instead.
8. Get a damn tattoo. Even a small one will do.
9. Attend Rock in Rio \m/.
10. And while I’m there, visit “Christ the Redeemer” and perhaps Peru (Machu Picchu :D.
11. Slap a wild bull on its arse, TWICE! (like in the movie Wild Hogs)
12. Eat a live squid. (yes, people actually do this!)
13. Break a guy’s nose. (oh c’mon, you’ve seen it so many times in the movies. Just once I would love to do it! Volunteers anyone?)
14. Try and watch all Star Wars movies in a day. (Wow, there’s _actually_ another nut like me. And thanks to him for the image for this post.)
15. Add some more stuff to this list.

Stuff that should have been on the list, a.k.a. the ones that I’ve already completed:

1. Paintball. (yay! never expected it to come to Bangalore _ever_. Read here.)
2. Get stoned. (disclaimer: if you’re family, this never happened!!)
3. Get involved in a street fight. (if you know me well, then you know that this just _had_ to have happened to me)
4. Smash an electronic gadget (preferably a mobile phone) to pieces. (props to my friend C.S., who wanted a reason to buy a new mobile phone.)

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I’m pretty sure all of you already know what a tweetup is. If not, JFGI. We Bangalore folks love our tweetups, ’cause we sure do know how to have a kick ass time (oops, does that qualify as a pun?).

The last tweetup (on Saturday, 30th May) was at Amoeba Bowling, Church Street. This was our first #bowlingtweetup (useless Twitter hash tag). The Bangalore tweeps, consisiting of @fagunbhavasar, @hnprashanth, @dkris, @tsuvik, @viralsachde, @santoshp and myself played two games, enjoying each one thoroughly. Of course, it would have been a lot more fun it only @fagunbhavasar had not won both by a landslide (128+ and 100+, WTF? ). Besides the bowling, we had a lot of fun looking everywhere else (rather, at everybody else), which for us guys, proved completely distracting, but enjoyable at the same time. (Err.. *hint*: birds, bird watching, you get the point?)

We visited Indian Coffee House (ICH) too. The new location on Church Street is small, but they still have the same coffee and brilliant ‘cutlets’. I’d recommend it to anybody coming to visit Bangalore.

Ah.. Good ol’ Bangalore. Awesome fun. Follow me on Twitter, and I’ll tweet when you can join us next time. Open invite.

Oh, by the way, there’s a fun photo scheduled for blog post tomorrow. You might want to subscribe by feed or by email.

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