I hadn’t travelled much around India except for the south. So when Prema asked if I was interested in a Sikkim trip, I yelled my yes. After a long wait, the day finally came..

Getting there
Kolkata, Siliguri (West Bengal)

First stop was Kolkata, and I reached there by flight from Bangalore. The Kolkata airport was disappointing, a sad relic for a metro. I was to stay at the IIM hostel, arranged for me by Gayathri, Prema’s friend and my soon to be co-traveller. The way to IIM (at Jokha on the other end of the city) was filled with curious sights and sounds. Kolkata took me totally by surprise, I was expecting a modern city with fancy buildings. But what met me where old dusty streets, colonial era buildings and narrow lanes filled with cycle-rickshaws. Even though initially it felt like a city stuck in the ’60s, thinking back I guess that gave an amazing charm to the city, that was very different from the other Indian cities I’ve been to.

Next day morning, we got out from Kolkata and visited some places around the city, including the Indian Museum, the Howrah bridge and the Victoria Memorial. And we were joined by the fourth traveller in the group – Deepak. By evening, after roaming around the city on rickshaws and shared taxis we reached the Sealdah railway station to catch our train towards Siliguri.

New Jalpaiguri (the Siliguri railway station) is the starting point of the famous toy train to Darjeeling. This was initially in our plans, but reaching there we found, to our disappointment, that the toy train was closed due to torrential rains and Darjeeling was on strike due to the Gorkhaland issue. With a quick change in plans, we decided to move to Sikkim a day earlier.

The journey to Pelling
Siliguri – Melli – Pelling (Sikkim)

We met our incredible driver – Mr Anjun Rai from Darjeeling – at the railway station and he was to take us up to Sikkim on his Innova. As soon as we neared Sikkim the whole landscape changed and we were now in the vicinity of the foothills of the Himalayas. The roads that were already in difficult terrain, were damaged due to heavy rain. But our ‘Schumi’ negotiated all the curves, bumps, landslides, waterfalls(!) expertly and soon we gained his complete trust. The scenery was incredible, with the road winding around green mighty mountains all around and the Tiesta river roaring in all its full glory below us. It is a sight to behold. And I would definitely rate this as one of the best (and also among the hardest) drives in India.

Pelling is famous for its majestic views of Mt. Kangchenjunga, but unfortunately the cloudy weather and all the fog around us made us miss the view. Pelling was an interesting little town though, with lot of sight seeing opportunities. We visited a few waterfalls and a rock garden. Next day we bid adieu to Pelling and headed to our next stop – Gangtok, the capital of Sikkim.

Pelling to Gangtok
Pelling – Rabdentse – Legship – Gangtok (Sikkim)

On the way back, Schumi gave us two unsolicited stop overs – one at Pemayangste and the other at Rabdentse. Pemyangste was the first glimpse (of many) Buddhist monasteries that we would visit. It was an interesting building, which is around 300 years old. The sights and sounds of the monks praying inside (no photos allowed, but you can visit the prayer hall) is something not to be missed. The second stop – Rabdentse, was our only little trek in the whole trip. It is a moderate 2 km walk on a well laid but slippery stone path away from the main road and once there you are treated with the ruins of the old capital of Sikkim. It is well organized, peaceful and full of green. We spend sometime there and after a few customary snaps we continued our journey through the mountains to Gangtok.

We made our tea-stall stop at Legship, a small temple town on the banks the Teesta. There’s a queer little pedestrian hanging bridge with the river thundering below. Spend sometime there having chai and laddu Sikkim style, with Prema engaged in her ’streetscaping’ experiments. That was our last stop and we reached Gangtok by nightfall.

Gangtok

Gangtok is a lovely small city set on the side of a hill. Being the state capital it has all the stuff you need including movie theaters, petrol pumps (a rarity in Sikkim) and even a Dominos. In the morning we did a small tour of the places in and around Gangtok – visiting more waterfalls, monasteries, museums and the awesome nature. The best pick of the lot was the journey on a ropeway above the city which gave a magnificent grand view of the Himalayan landscape around. Our last stop for the day was Tashi view point, from where we were supposed to see Kangchenjunga. We thought we had finally managed to catch a glimpse, and we were quite certain that the peak we saw was Kangchenjunga. But alas after consulting with the locals, we learned that the clouds had cheated us again. What we saw was no where near Kangchenjunga

After reaching Gangtok, we had our lunch at the delightful Tangerine restaurant, an upmarket place. After finding that I had lost my watch when we reached our hotel, Prema and I decided to walk back up to the restaurant to try our luck. We were told of a shortcut to reach the place after consulting with a traffic policeman, and to our surprise we discovered the M.G Marg. A pleasant shopping street, devoid of vehicles. We bookmarked this for later and walked up the road to hunt for my lost goods. Luckily we found it at the restaurant. On the way back we called up Deepak and Gayathri to join us on the M.G Marg, for an evening stroll around the place. Highly recommend a walk on this street anytime you visit Gangtok.

Hello China!
Gangtok – Tsomgo – NathuLa – Baba Mandir

Next day morning, after taking permits from the tourist office, we headed towards the Tsomgo lake and the Chinese border at Nathu La – treading on a part of the ancient silk route to China. This was the highest point I’ve ever been in my life – around 16000 ft high at the Nathu La trading market. On route we saw the highest telephone exchange, the highest ATM and the highest post office in India. We didn’t have permits to reach the border, and had to stop at within 3kms of it. There’s a small memorial of an Indian general there and also a cafe called the Cafe 13000 run by the Indian army. Had some delicious momos (ok, maybe delicious is a bit relative) and a hot cup of coffee up here. We were not allowed to stay for a long time, and we headed back to the Tsomgo lake. There is a small market at the lake, where we had our brunch. The noodles we got were actually transported from China just a few kilometres away . We chitchatted with the lady over there for a bit and it was time to return back. The roads were extremely difficult, and we had to take regular breaks while the army was working fulltime clearing off roads blocked by landslides.

Back to Siliguri
Gangtok – Pekyong – Rangpo – Siliguri
The way back to Siliguri was blocked again and we had to take a round about route to come down the hills. Sikkim’s new (and first) airport is coming up on this route at a village called Pekyong. That’s definitely going to make access way easier to this amazing land. We finally bid goodbye to Sikkim and to our wonderful driver Schumi at the Siliguri station. That also ended the first leg of the trip with Deepak and Gayathri leaving back to Kolkata and Prema and I going to Bodhgaya.

Bihar!
Patna – Gaya – Bodhgaya

Bihar was all what I expected and more. It is a totally different world out there and the place does lives up to the tag of the wild wild west of India. Our train had taken us to Patna, and a Rs.70 bus ride took us to the Bodhgaya gate on the highway. It was already quite late and we had to travel 3km to reach Bodhgaya proper. We met a monk, a local and two Dutch guys there, and our queer gang managed to get a shared auto up to the city. We didn’t have bookings, but managed to find a decent hotel not far from the town center.

Bodhgaya is sort of an oasis amidst the chaos of Bihar. It was a very spiritual place, and it looked like a international meeting place of countries and cultures. Lots of monasteries and Buddhist temples belonging to countries from around the globe. We visited most of them including the ones from Thailand, China, Japan, Sri Lanka, Tibet, Bhutan and even Bangladesh. The main attraction though was the Mahabodhi temple, were Lord Buddha attained enlightenment. It’s a well preserved monument, and its a joy to take in all the peace and serenity surrounding it.

Our train back was at 11PM in the night, but we decided to get back to Gaya, basically because it was a bit risky to travel late on the Bihar roads. It was time to wind up the long trip, as we waited a long wait at the Gaya railway station telling each other the interesting bits of our lives . And as we did that, the Rajadhani Express to Delhi, rolled in to the station.. And that was it, a great 10 day experience.

The Route

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Tech content advisory : Non-techies exercise caution reading this, maybe a bit of geek overload in here.

Like most people (ok, geeks!) of my generation, my first tryst with programming was with BASIC. Sometime during the mid-90s my dad gave me a book on BASIC programming, which he found in some book expo he attended. During that time, I had just about barely used a computer, and I didn’t really have an inclination towards technology at all. I do not know what made my dad buy that book for me, but that single thing changed a lot of things – a defining point in my life, if you may. That was my first spark. I just loved how programs were written, the system and the method in them fascinated me – to the point that I persuaded my dad to buy me a PC (It was a big deal then – to put that into perspective, I guess the computer density in my suburb at that point of time, would have been probably < 10 in a 5km radius).

So I got my first chance to try out some real programs. I got QBasic 4.5 installed from a floppy disk and merrily enjoyed my time making text scroll around, drawing human faces, creating monotone music, yada yada. I just fell in love with BASIC – for the simple reason that I didn’t even know alternatives existed and I could program as though writing in English. Even now, I feel so sad when people say BASIC is evil. Maybe it is, but it did end up as a stepping stone to where I am now. Eternally grateful for that.

A few years later, I got my hands on Visual Basic. Boy did that change the game altogether. I could make Windows apps now – with all those shiny text boxes, 3d effects, command buttons! And for the first time I found that I could monetize my hobby. Those days were just wonderful, that awesome feeling of having dispensable income while you are still in school! I saved up all the bits of money I got then doing mini-freelance projects and ended up buying my first camera – one that I still own. Technically here though, I have to agree with the critics. I had learned so many bad practices doing VB that I had a tough time unlearning it all. But whatever it may be, it was definitely worth it. I cannot remember another time, when I had so much fun doing programming. Nothing absolutely matched VB for me in that!

My first encounter with a ’serious’ language was, again like most people, C and C++. This was a different beast altogether. I had a strong aversion to the language when I first learnt it in school, but slowly but steadily I have grown to respect it. I am still nervous doing C, but no other language actually gives me that feeling of solidness. Can be slippery, but still solid if you do it right. And that’s definitely the language that has lasted the longest for me. I still enjoy doing stuff in C.

College taught me some very interesting languages like Pascal, COBOL and Assembly. Pascal I loved, because of its cleanliness, but I never had any real use with that (except for the exams off course). COBOL was already of archaeological interest only, but served as a measure that gave me an idea of how much languages had progressed since the ’50s. Assembly was my new friend. But refusal to invest time on it (and basic laziness) has never let me really delve into that deeper.

Sometime sandwiched between all those I came across PHP. And that was only because I wanted to do web (this site basically). And web was just about getting trendy at that time. I have always had a love-hate relationship with this one. I used to hate a lot of it, when I was using it for only personal stuff. But ironically after having to professionally code in PHP, I kind of appreciate the language a bit more. That might raise a few eyebrows – but it’s true. It’s not as perfect as Haskell, but in my opinion it does its job well.

My first real ‘career’ language was Java. And the one in which I can say I am the strongest in. It’s bloated, it’s over-engineered – over-engineered, well I guess that was the buzz word for me. I think I like a bit of over engineering. It was more fun designing for the Java than actually doing stuff in Java. That’s obviously also its biggest pitfall. I cannot say I love Java, but I do like it a lot. And it did improve my design skills a lot and taught me how to think big – really big (and off course it paid my bills for 4 years!)

Then I joined MobME. Things were different here – very different. People coded in Python, Ruby, Clojure, Haskell, PHP.. what not. I was a bit overwhelmed at first, but yeah I got used to it. Python – I liked, maybe because it looked BASIC like and invoked a bit of nostalgia, PHP I had already met. Then there was Ruby.. and here’s were I get the mental block. I just can’t get myself to code in Ruby. I’m in a room filled with Ruby enthusiasts, but I just don’t get it. I even went to a RubyCon for inspiration, but no spark. I read everywhere that Ruby brings back the fun to programming. But I still don’t get that feeling. Have been wondering about that for long, why does the whole world get it, but not me! This post is a result of thinking about that loud. Maybe it’s because of all the unkown magic that happens behind what I type? Or is it that my mind far too entrenched in the bracey C-esque languages? I would never know…

Ah well, let’s leave it there then, for I have to go write a billing engine for a service in Ruby… Wish me luck, or a lot of people are gonna loose a bit of money

Allow me to be that guy who for once ignores his emotions and patriotism and just says WTF.

A few weeks back, there was big fanfare orchestrated by a lot of Indian media outlets regarding a homegrown web browser called as Epic. I was a bit skeptical already, but after downloading and using Epic, I outrightly recommend reading those reports as a case study in technology sensationalism. I’m not putting down the Epic packaging, as a one click browser suite it has quite done its job. But what puts me off are the claims that this is India’s answer to Mozilla! But hey, the browser IS Mozilla’s, just that they have packaged a few utilities, plug-ins and wallpapers into one single pack. It is not a new browser, and it definitely is not the hallmark moment marking the maturity of Indian software.

This is not the only example. After this came the $35 palmtop. This time it wasn’t just the Indian media that jumped into the bandwagon, I saw such reports even on foreign news outlets like BBC News and The Guardian. I don’t really know how this $35 laptop is going to work out, especially since we import most of the hardware from China. Haven’t these journalist had the sense to look up the status of some of the other low cost appliances the Indian government announced a few years ago? I’m talking about the Simputer (to be fair, it was atleast insignificantly successful), the under $100 computer and the numerous other projects. They are all paper tigers that didn’t seem to have seen the light of day. I sincerely do hope that I am wrong and our Government actually builds this. But I’ll believe it when I see it.

And does anyone remember Bhuvan? Touted as the Google Earth killer. I haven’t even been able to get it working so far. After all the media hype surrounding this, I don’t even find a mention of that now in any of the newspapers or by the government.

What we need to do is to encourage the REAL projects that came out from India and Indians. Like Zoho or Varamozhi or Quillpad or MashiThantu or Posterous (atleast in part). Why don’t these awesome products never get a mention anywhere in the media? Sad!

6 PM on a Sunday evening, and me and my friend, Hazer are chatting away at our usual hangout – the parking lane in between the museum and Kanakakunnu palace in Trivandrum. Not knowing what to do next, we decide on going for a movie. Now, the best part of Trivandrum city is that there are atleast 15 cinemas that you can browse through during a 2km drive. I have read somewhere that probably Trivandrum has the highest density of movie theatres of all! So we screen movie by movie en route and finally reach the New Theatre which was showing ‘Kites’. Just about managed to get a ticket in the non-balcony section, with 5 minutes to go for the movie.

After so much fanfare the movie ended up being a disappointment. As the movie started I had this feeling (which I seem to get regularly while watching Hindi movies nowadays) that I have seen all this somewhere before. After some hard thinking, it turned out that the starting plot of the movie was eerily similar to Woody Allen’s ‘Match Point’. But somewhere on the way it started deviating from that plot and merged into the plot of Quentin Tarantino’s ‘True Romance’. Bollywood script writers are getting smart these days. Blending and mixing. If only they knew how to do it better! The last 15 minutes were the worst! It was slower than watching paint dry. You knew what was going to happen, and the director seemed to be bent on killing you softly while unveiling his masala melodrama. Ouch!

Outside after the show, it was raining heavily. And that ended up making me totally over the moon with nostalgia. That regular routine we had almost every other evening after college – dropping off my friends at their homes, the lonely 10km drive to my house, the sound of the rain drops and the perfect old mallu songs on the radio. Atleast the movie gave me a chance to do all that once again. The saving grace!

I was lazing around in a nostalgic mood watching an old Malayalam movie on TV and was a bit surprised when my dad interrupted and told me to get ready, ‘We are going to see an astrologer’. Astrologer? Hmm. My parents and astrologers?… something is awry somewhere. The only relationship my parents had with astrology as such is probably celebrating our piranal based on our birth stars. Apart from that, despite my dad being very interested in spirituality, I have never heard him talk or hint about anything related to astrology. I agreed to it anyway, a bit puzzled, but with kind of an idea where this was going considering the discussions I had with my mom the previous day.

So I was greeted on the door by a very serious looking, but by no means intimidating, old man. First thing he asked me was ‘ഈശ്വരനില്‍ വിശ്വാസമുണ്ടോ?’.. ‘Do you believe in God?’. Hmm. Great question. I told him ‘Kind of’. Uh oh! Wrong answer. He went on into a lengthy discussion into that subject. He started off with the exact same argument that I use to convince people about some of my controversial stand points – “I was like you once, I didn’t believe too much in that either. But then…”. That usually works, but not to me . Anyway this got me thinking – where do I exactly stand? Do I really believe in God? Off course I do. I can neither prove God’s existence, nor can anyone prove otherwise. To me there God is something that I probably will not be able to truly understand, but I firmly believe in the existence of a power beyond our thoughts and beyond our science. As an engineer, yes I would have been very happy to find proof or some tangible evidence. But being an engineer also makes it easier for me to understand that not everything can be explained by science.

Having said that my God is not really the same as your God or the astrologers God. What the old guy told me was that God is someone to be feared. Feared? Why? Respected – yes. Feared – no. I see God as a friend, like those imaginary friends that all kids in Hollywood movies seem to have. Someone I can talk to in my mind, someone I can talk to anytime, anywhere, anyplace. I don’t believe you need to go to a temple, a church, a mosque or a synagogue to see God. So what does that make me? I’m sure I’m not an atheist, neither am I am agnostic, but as I once replied to my ex-roommate Bachu – maybe I am a non-religious devotee. And ironically that still makes me a Hindu – even an atheist is a Hindu and I am at least one degree above that, I do believe in God. In that sense I am proud to be a Hindu then. I don’t see the need for religion in my life, but I can understand why it makes sense for a lot of people. And maybe it is needed, a blueprint for life, maybe. But I just fail to understand why religion makes some people fanatic.

Coming back to the astrologer, the main purpose my parents took this unusual step was probably to give hints to me that I’m slowly getting into the ‘wedding years’ bracket. But ironically that didn’t help, because the astrologer told us that it’s best that I get married only after 28. I suddenly love astrology

PS: Disconnected thoughts, but I just felt like writing this

I was speaking to my friend Manju the other day, and she was asking about my new life in a new city. She asked me to blog about my thoughts on Ernakulam. Being one of the few people I have found more fanatical than me about my hometown, Trivandrum, her demand was that I do some match fixing and say that Trivandrum is way better . Well I’ll try my best to be neutral, so here it goes.. My thoughts on Ernakulam compared with the other cities I have stayed in for some length.

What I like most about the city is that it is really close to the sea. That scores a big plus in my books. There are plenty of places were you can stroll along the sea-shore or enjoy the sea breeze or just sit there – I can watch the sea for endless eternity. These are things I really missed in Bangalore and Plochingen. This doesn’t score a point above Trivandrum though – plenty of places there too to do the same things.

Plus there are plenty of shopping areas around here. That’s not high on my list of priorities, but it does help. It presents itself as a very bubbly city, which is great for me. It may not be a Bangalore in this respect, but definitely good enough. Both Trivandrum and Plochingen are laid back cities, which also works, but at this point of my life.. hmm.. I prefer ‘bubbly’ over ‘laid-back’ .

What I really don’t like is the traffic here. Horrible. I survived Bangalore and I thought that was worst I would see. Ernakulam beats all that – with 1/5th of the vehicles of Bangalore – now that’s an achievement! And the driving culture here is even worse. I don’t think I’ve seen it this bad in any other place I’ve been to. I am now even more scared crossing roads – nobody ever stops here!

Another bad thing is that I find a lot of people here imitating cosmopolitanism (if there’s a word like that); despite the city not really being what you would describe as cosmopolitan. It all ends up looking very artificial. I don’t know – KFC-s, Baristas and multiplexes seem like a mismatch here. Maybe that’s just a feeling that’ll go away.

Overall I think the city will grow on me, just like the other new places did. It’s just as good as the other places I’ve stayed in. What makes a city unforgettable are the number of friends you have there and I had a few in all those special places I’ve stayed in before. I guess I’ve already started that process here. So maybe, it’s just a matter of time, before I fall in love with this place too!.