But that sounds so counter intuitive, doesn’t it? Our brains have been trained over the years to believe that choice is always a good thing. It needn’t be. Choice has a dark side too. Think about it. Having to choose something over something else adds an additional responsibility on you. You suddenly think about stuff like ‘Did I choose right? What if what I chose ends up bad? What if I haven’t explored all possibilities?’. It just adds so much more pressure. Don’t take me wrong. I’m not here to say that we shouldn’t have options to select from. But too much of it usually ends up bad.

So eventually, I started looking around on the Internet on the topic; and happily found out that I wasn’t the only with this thought. Relief – I am not that weird as I thought I was. There are people way smarter than me who feel the same. I found this very interesting book by Barry Schwartz titled The Paradox of Choice. Do read it, it is very well researched and explains the concept quite beautifully. The book is available on a lot of places on the web (:grin); but I’ll make your life easier – Flipkart or Amazon.

PS: I do have a copy of the book with me; so if you know me in person; you know you just need to ask for it :)

If you are in a hurry read the headings and skip to the tldr; below.

The Approach & Acclimatization

The popular approach to Leh is via the Manali-Rohtang-Leh highway, but since that journey would take 2 days and we had just 6 days in total at our disposal, we decided to book a flight from Delhi to Leh. Apart from having to wake up at 3:00 AM to catch the flight at 5:00 AM, there weren’t much difficulties considering that we were flying into highly sensitive territory. The flight was an enjoyable experience. There aren’t many views from outside an aeroplane window as spectacular as the ones you get when you fly over the highest mountain range in the world – the snow covered Himalayas.

The Kushok Bakula Rimpochee Airport in Leh is a small one with basic but functional facilities. It is also one of the world’s highest civilian airports at an altitude of 3,256 metres above mean sea level. We took a pre-paid taxi into Leh city (5 kms away) and checked in to a guesthouse close to the main bazaar. The Ti-Sei is a family run guesthouse with modest facilities but with a cheap price tag (Rs 250 per head per night). The only problem I could find is the lack of proper quilts for such cold weather. My fellow travellers disagree though; so I would be hesitant to recommend the place to you especially during winter.

Since we jumped from an altitude of 200m to 3250m in just an hour, we ran the risk of catching altitude sickness and it was recommended that we take complete rest for 24 hours to acclimatize to the thin oxygen content in the air. So that’s what we did. We spend the entire first day in the guesthouse playing cards. Only Sanjay and I knew how to play; so the added pleasure in teaching Sony, Lishoy and Gautham the joys of ’28′. Should be useful in the future too.

In and around Leh

It was still risky to attempt higher altitudes in the beginning of the trip, so the recommendation was to travel around the vicinity of Leh. We first went to an old Buddhist monastery at Hemis some 40 km away from Leh. We were treated to our first views of the strangely beautiful landscape of Ladakh. The monastery was more or less uninteresting to me (having been to countless ones on my last trip to Sikkim) but there is a small museum in the compound which has a lot of artifacts and photographs chronicling early life in Ladakh.

Next stop was the school featured as Rancho’s school in ’3 Idiots’. This one was rebuilt after the Leh floods of 2010; with the help of contributions from the star of the film – Aamir Khan. Nothing much to do there except click a few photos. Next was the Thiksey monastery; one of the most photogenic of all the ones in Ladakh. More clicks followed and we had lunch at the monastery canteen. Food was good; but order time was way above our irritation level threshold.

We then moved on to Shey palace, the erstwhile summer capital of Ladakh. It’s constructed on a small hill on the side of the highway. Most of the palace is in ruins and what’s left of it is a protected monument under the Archaeological Survey of India. The vista from the top is once again spectacular. Following that we went up the Shanti Stupa, a monument close to Leh town, constructed by the Japanese. Another top (double entendre, yea!) spot for landscape gazing. We then walked down the 500 odd steps back to where our car was stopped. And with that we retired back to our guesthouse.

Pangong Tso

The next day we decided to scale higher and go to the famous Pangong Tso (Tso means lake). The route passes through some very treacherous terrain and our first stop was Chang-La; supposedly the third highest motorable pass in the world. The air was super thin over here and we were advised not to stay for more than 20 minutes. The place has a small cafeteria and an Indian Army outpost (which serves free tea). 20 minutes itself felt a bit too much due to the chilly winds and we packed up from there quite quickly. The road descended down the mountains into a valley and they were in impeccable condition. It’s almost magical to imagine how those roads even came to existence in such inhospitable terrain. Kudos to BRO and their army of engineers and workers who made this happen.

The deserted barren landscape up until the lake is impossible to describe in words. It was something unlike anything I have seen before. The streams that trickle along the silent valleys; the deserted roads that alternate between winding up and down mountains and then proceeding straight as an arrow on the plains; the huge tracts of white sand as fine as talc; the occasional yak grazing on the little patches of grass around; alien flowers and vividly colored mosses trying its best to thrive amongst the thawing ice – the sight is just surreal.

Pangong Tso is a huge lake spanning 700 km2. Only about 40% of the lake is in India; you almost feel tempted to swim across to China. The lake is mostly unpolluted (our driver Dorjey says that there’s a Rs 1000 fine for even a tiny bit of plastic left on the shores) and provides an ideal hunting ground for us camera addicts. The area is uninhabited except for a few small villages further up the tourist point. There are a few shops that provide basic lunch (read Maggi noodles). I hear that during peak season there are a few places where you can stay and enjoy the morning freshness by the lake. Being just a few kilometres from the Chinese border there is an inconspicuous but strong army presence in the area – which has a medical aid post and a helipad; though I doubt if civilians have access to that.

We returned back to Leh the same day; it was a rather tiring trip with 10 hours spent in the car; but totally worth it!

Nubra Valley

Another big hit amongst Leh backpackers, the Nubra valley is just across the mountains from Leh. But since those mountains are the mighty Himalayas; the route is through one of the toughest roads in the world. First stop was off course; the highest motorable road (contentious) in the world – the Khardung-La. The Khardung pass is located at an altitude of 5359 metres above sea level. And is is the theme with all high altitude outposts; there’s a small military camp here and also a cafeteria (which claims to be the highest in the world). It was quite chilly outside with the local army guys estimating the temperature to be -5 degrees. We had some hot noodles and tea from the cafe there and rushed back down. The roads aren’t very good at this point – but the fact that there’s a road up here in itself amazing – so no complaints.

Down into the valley; we stopped at the first hamlet on the way – the village of Khardung – for our lunch. There’s just one small restaurant open there – but the food was amazing. We resumed our journey towards the town of Disket. The scenery en-route was even better than the Pangong trip. We stopped near the town of Khalsar; along the side of the river Shyok. Being winter the river wasn’t thundering down; and we could easily access the river bed – with towering mountains flanking us on both sides. Just then; like a scene in a Hollywood thriller; an army helicopter raised itself from far away in the valley and flew past us. What a spectacle that was!

We reached Disket early in the evening; but unfortunately couldn’t find a decent place to stay there (all open hotels were booked). We decided to try our luck in Hundar a further 10 kms away. We checked into the Snow Leopard; which was a beautiful little guesthouse overlooking snow capped mountains. We spent the night there; listening to stories from our driver who was a very colourful character; over a light round of drinks.

We checked out early in the morning itself and went straight to the sand dunes of Hundar. It’s a real strange concoction. Sand dunes are the last things you would associate with the Himalayas – but there they were; sand dunes sprawling acres into the valley. You could walk up to the sand dunes by foot or approach them on unique double humped Bactrian camels. We did both. Riding on a camel is a curious experience; and a bit scary especially when you feel like the camels are starting to run! We spent a few hours ‘chilling’ up on the sand dunes and started our return journey back to Leh by around noon.

It had snowed the night before on the mountains; and the roads weren’t in their best conditions – complicated by the fact that we didn’t have snow chains. A few kilometers before the Khardung La pass; we had to stop to allow a huge contingent of army trucks (possibly transporting supplies to Siachen basecamp which is just 100 kms away). While we were stopped; Nanda, Gautham and I decided to walk up and see if we could reach Khardung La on foot. I stopped short by about a few hundred meters away (not knowing that at the time) and waited for the car to reach me. Going up a few more metres just as the army camps became visible there was a second block. But this time the block wasn’t for the Army – unbelievably, I got a glimpse of a Formula 1 car in the background! The Red Bull Racing team had decided to do a promotional drive on the highest motorable pass in the world at that exact moment. Talk about serendipity! We took a few photos up there with the cars and had to leave fast (the temperature was near -10 degs and there wasn’t much parking available). We had food at another small army canteen down in South Pullu and reached back Leh before night fall.

Magnetic Hill, Zanskar Sangam and Goodbye

Sunday was the last day of our trip and being quite tired from all the travelling we decided not to go far that day. By afternoon we left on National Highway 1 for Zanskar Sangam – the confluence of the Zanskar and the Indus rivers. Nothing much to say about this place – the beautiful scenery is default for any place in Ladakh. On the way though; there is a small stretch of road aptly titled ‘Magnetic Hill’. Due to an optical illusion there, it feels as if a vehicle goes uphill when left to itself without any engine power. It fools the best of us for sure! Tough to make your brain believe that it’s an illusion and not some strange magnetic forces at work. On the way back, we also stopped at the ‘Hall of Fame’; a small army museum with exhibits showing life of the army at high altitudes. It’s just amazing how people cope up with the extreme harsh climate of the whole place.

With that we concluded all our tryst with Ladakh. Next day morning we boarded from Leh airport; back to Delhi. The security measures at the airport was the tightest I have ever experienced (understandably owing to its location in J&K state) – my bag was checked thrice; and I had to pass atleast 5 levels of security checks before boarding the plane. Treated with another grand view up above the Himalayas; we finally landed back in Delhi.

Tips

• The sun is quite harsh in Ladakh. Do carry sunscreen creams (> SPF 50) and good sunglasses with UV protection. Don’t get burned.
• A lot of places (Pangong, Nubra etc) require Inner Line Permits (ILP) for Indian citizens and Protected Area Permits (PAP) for non-Indians. This can be arranged by most travel agencies and would require a government issued ID card (driving license/PAN card/voter’s ID/passport).
• Biking is a good option rather than car if you are interested in riding and you are a skilled driver. There are plenty of places that rent out bikes in Leh. But don’t do this in October though; it gets quite chilly. No one rents out cars for self-drive though.
• If travelling by flight; acclimatization against altitude sickness is a must. Drink lots of water and rest for atleast 24 hours before attempting higher altitudes.
• October is not the greatest month to visit Ladakh; but we were quite lucky to be blessed with good weather. Being off season; things were quite cheap. A lot of shops and restaurants close by end of September and the number of tourists are low. That however also adds a different dimension to Leh; it’s like you have the mountains to yourselves. The peak season is July-August.
• Roaming is available (in entire J&K state) only for post-paid customers from a few states in North India; so if your SIM is not from these states your mobile will not work. There are telephone booths and internet cafes in Leh though. I found a net booth; even in the remote Diskit town. Only Aircel, Airtel and BSNL has connectivity in Leh as far as I know.
• During off season try to stay close to the main market in Leh; as most other shops would be closed. There are no autorikshaws in Leh.
• There are 6 ATM counters in Leh market – 2 of J&K Bank, 2 of SBI and one each of Punjab National Bank and HDFC. I didn’t see even one shop that accepted debit and credit cards. If you are travelling out of Leh, make sure you have money with you. No ATMs outside Leh.
• Good restaurants – Dreamland (Fort road), Gesmo German Bakery (Fort Road) and Happy World (Tukcha road)
• Good places to stay – Santhi Guesthouse (near Santhi Stupa), Hotel YakTail (Fort Road) and Hotel Tso-kar (Fort Road). We spent the last day in Hotel Tso-kar and it was pretty clean with room service and cheap rates (Don’t know about season rates though).
• Other places to visit – Tso-Moriri Lake (200 km), Lamayuru (110 km), Alchi (40 km), Panamik hot springs (140 km), Sonamarg (400 km)

The Route

Mumbai

My first ever visit to the grand old city of India. Though I spent just a weekend over there, I was mightily impressed. The whole enormity of the city just takes you by storm – espcially for a small town guy like me. I need to go back and explore more. But that one weekend I was there; had the fun of my life.

Vagamon, Kerala

A rather unknown destination tucked in hills of central Kerala; Vagamon is a land of rolling meadows, pine forests and tea estates. It’s natural beauty makes it worth a visit. But more than the destination itself; it’s the journey that’s even better. The silent quiet hilly roads and the scenary surrounding it makes it one of the drives in Kerala. There are plenty of routes to reach Vagamon, but the most scenic drive (from Kochi) is via Thodupuzha, Muttom, Kanjar and then into Vagamon. The route is easy to miss though, there are not many boards showing directions. If you are unsure; the alternate route (in fact the more mainstream route) is via Erattupetta – but you are going to miss out the best parts of the drive then.

At Vagamon, I had stayed at a friend’s house which was part of an old tea estate. The views from there are exceptional. You can go and visit the meadows and get inspired by the vast majestic emptiness in the mountains all around you.

Kodaikanal, Tamil Nadu

Once the star amongst South Indian hillstations Kodai has lost its old charm by become way too touristy. It’s now basically a small city struggling to expand on a hill. Despite that, if you know the right places (or you have someone who knows the right places – in our case we had our Thomas) Kodai still has a few things to offer you. For instance, we had gone to this awesome orchard just a few kilometers from the city center and surrounded by peace and quiet. Nobody to disturb us for a long while. Unless you are willing to go off the beaten track like we did; I wouldn’t really recommend a visit to Kodai.

Ooty, Tamil Nadu

Just like Kodaikanal, Ooty too has dropped down from its glory days of being amongst the best hill stations in South India. The present city is a shadow of itself – I still have photos of visits to this place as a young kid; and the place has lost all its inherent beauty. The purpose of this trip for us though; was to meet up with my gang of buddies and catch up on the old times. If you stay at a decent hotel far from the city and not plan too many excursions and relax all the way; Ooty might still do the trick.

Mussorie and Dhanaulti, Uttarakhand

It was a quickly planned excursion during my short stay in Gurgaon in the beginning of this year. Mussorie is a typical British hill station; with its quaint buildings and streets. It offers a good view of the city of Dehra Dun at night. But apart from this there isn’t much to do here.

We met a guide in the city and he offered to take us to some off beat places further up the hills and we set off to Dhanaulti. En route to our pleasant surprise it was snowing there. Had a lot of fun playing around the snowed out landscape. The snow gave a peculiar look to the entire vista and it felt so displaced from the rest of the India we had just left behind.

Definitely worth a one time visit; if you are in and around Delhi. It’s just a 6-7 hour drive and if you have a weekend to spare; do give it a try.

Muzhappilangand Beach, Kerala

India’s only drive in beach. The only problem is getting your car up there. The road up from Kozhikode up to the beach is in a rather dilapidated condition, the 80 km stretch took us nearly 4 hours to complete.

If you survive that though, the beach is pretty awesome. Just the fact that you can drive into the waters makes it an amazing experience. The beach in itself is pretty clean and not very touristy. The views around are brilliant.

Muzhapilangad is on the Kannur highway from Kozhikode and is around 80 km from Kozhikode and 12 km from Kannur.

Ramakkalmedu, Kerala

Ramakkalmedu is a not so well-known hill station located in Idukki district. The views from here are amazing as usual. You can see the expanse of Tamil Nadu as you look out from the hills. The green and blue contrasts leaves a lot of options for amazing photographs. There are also unmarked trekking paths you could try if you are interested.

Ramakkalmedu is around 40km from Kumily/Thekkady on the Munnar route.

The site more or less conforms to the HTML5 spec and I have tested it across most browsers I have access to. It works best on any standard compliant browser – read Chrome (visitor share of 24.4%) , Firefox (23.5%), Safari (1.9%), Opera (4.3%), IE 9.0+ (1%). On the mobile, it works good in iOS (0.2%), on Android (0.2%) and also (almost perfect) on the Opera Mini (0.1%). IE versions less than 9.0 are a bit rough on the edges – IE6 (5.3%) is the worst but still readable enough. IE 7 (8%) & IE 8 (7%) are more or less ok. I don’t plan to spend too much time on that though as long as more than 3/4th of my visitors see what I intend them to see :)

The site is still powered by WordPress. All the extra HTML, CSS, JS and PHP were coded on gVim on Ubuntu and the logo on top was my first experiment with the excellent vector drawing tool Inkscape. So the new avatar is a 100% pure open source product! Yeah design is possible without spending a penny.

I have also moved the site on to a dedicated new account at A small orange. A big thanks to Anand Bhai for hosting me for free all these years. I finally moved out to my own home :D

I hope you do like the new version. Comments, criticisms and suggestions are most welcome!

First of all, I give it to Anna for clamouring this much support. It’s no mean feat to rally around so many people for a cause. Have to appreciate that. But is the cause good though? Giving it a naive glance it would seem so. But things are not so simple in the real world. The real world doesn’t comprise of writing blogs, tweeting tweets and liking posts. The real world is a lot different. The real world is a lot more complicated. And I don’t think Anna’s cause is going to have desired effects. Let me try to explain why.

Indians, you and I, have a culture of corruption inbuilt in our genes. It’s not just the politician who’s corrupt – that bracket includes the common average Indian. A simple example. You are caught at a traffic signal violating the red light. The policeman who catches you red handed gives you two options – pay Rs 100 to him and you walk free or he gives you a ticket that needs to paid in court. What would you choose? I bet 90% of you who are reading this would go for option 1. We are inherently corrupt and are willing to sacrifice our principles to cut some corners. That’s the only practical way we know of dealing with such a situation. I myself remember just 2 instances in my life where I have given a bribe. I did have plenty of oppurtunities where I could have bribed.. when I got my passport, when I got my DL, when I built my house – but I never paid a penny. I feel strongly about that; but then again I believe I was just lucky. I never was challenged enough in such situations. If I would have been; when I think about it; I might have paid. Even with so many ‘set’ principles in my head – I admit I’ll be corrupt if the situation demands it.

There is a general misunderstanding that only the person who accepts a bribe is corrupt. The person who gives the bribe is equally responsible. Corruption in India therefore needs to be solved from the bottom levels before we go into tackling it among the highest authorities. Frankly, I don’t see it making any difference at all. I read posts saying that the day Lokpal is passed; India’s going to be transformed overnight into Singapore. Bullshit. In fact, from the way I see it, it’s just going to be the opposite. An Indian does stuff only if he sees an incentive for himself in it. Very very few people are selfless or are keen to be professional in what they do. Applies to politicians, applies to government servants, applies to you, applies to me. Sadly, I think the whole motivation behind a lot of development activities in India is because the people responsible for it see an opportunity for grabbing something for themselves. If they think they’ll be caught; they’ll not take a bribe; they’ll just not do the project also. That’s where India is going to lose. There I said it! – India has actually benefited from high level political corruption. Sad, but true. Corruption is what drives development in India.

Ok, so that was my rant. What is my solution sitting in an armchair? Forget about the guys at the top level. Eliminate the root causes of corruption at the lower levels. Increase the salary of the policeman, the teacher, the clerk, the secretary and every single government servant. So that they don’t feel the need to be bribed to do their job. Atleast some of us would be converted – I’m sure. This may still be naive; but not as naive as telling me that having an additional bureaucratic engine would solve the problems of corruption in India. That would eventually just become another set of officials that need to be bribed. One more obstacle.

Corruption is not a problem that we can afford to solve at this moment in my humble opinion. We as a nation are not at that stage. There are a lot of other pressing problems like poverty, infrastructure and education to solve. Corruption is too big a challenge and too expensive to monitor and eliminate at this point. We’ll someday reach that stage. But we are nowhere near that now.

And like it or not; India is a democracy. Arm twisting the government isn’t the way to get things done in a democracy. Having no politicians is worse than having bad politicians. Think about it.

Let’s be civil. Let’s think of a practical solution to our problem and not indulge in foolishness.

After all these years; after working on embedded devices and the web; I finally got a chance to build a real app on the desktop. Despite my long standing interest in this field; I was totally lost. The whole landscape was now very different – and I to spend a few days researching what works and what doesn’t.

I ended up choosing Python, Qt and the PySide python bindings for Qt. Why?

1. I prefer working on Linux; my target was however Windows. The gamble on Python and Qt to be truly cross-platform as they both claimed. Paid off!
2. My C++ days are long gone; I don’t think I can write 5 lines of good code in C++ anymore. Next choice was Java; but I was just a bit scared of over-engineering if I started with Java. So the natural choice was Python; even though I was not yet proficient in it.
3. Next question was which GUI framework to go for. I saw Qt and to be honest I fell for it at first sight. It had everything I had dreamed of during my VB6 days.
4. PySide vs PyQt was the next question. The product had a commercial angle to it; PyQt seemed more mature but had the GPL restriction or pay a very hefty licensing fee for a commercial app – so again was left with the Nokia supported PySide. Worked for me.

So that was it. I developed it completely on Linux. Since I am an IDE person; I opted for Eclipse with the Aptana Python plugin. After making sure it worked well in Linux; the next step was packaging it for Windows.

Now this was a challenge. The app required a Python install (15 MB) and a PySide install, including the Qt Libs (around 25 MB). This meant a total weight of 40 MB; for my app code that ran into just a few hundred kBs. Plus the ugliness of using consoles and shortcuts to run the application using python. Well, the perfect solution for that was PyInstaller. It worked like a charm and I was left with an exe file and only the absolutely necessary python modules that were needed. Running it through UPX futher reduced sizes and my whole app along with the libraries were now a saner 7 MB.

Next I ran them through the excellent InnoSetup tool; to create a Windows installer wizard that everybody is familiar with and the product was ready to be shipped.

Sun’s Oracle’s VirtualBox avoided the clumsiness of rebooting into Windows to do all the above; I just ran Windows on my Ubuntu installation as a virtual machine.

All this was surprisingly easy; just needed some figuring out initially. But once you get the hang of it; developing cross platform applications (at zero cost) is surprisingly easy. All tools I’ve used for this (except for Windows off course) are free and open source software.

So what are you waiting for? Start with those application ideas that you all have! It’s still fun!

This year was an year of changes. I have relocated to a new place, a new home, a new job and even a new career to an extent. And I am happy that I made all those switches. I have a job that I love, I am doing stuff that matters more. That’s upside #1, and somehow that has floated this year really high in terms of endearment. I miss a lot of things too though. I miss Bangalore, I miss Bosch, I miss the evenings with friends there. But to gain you have to loose some. And eventually I guess the balance tips in favour of the new life. So not a bad decision in the end. Pat on the back.

2010 was also seems like a season for weddings. Two of my dear cousins, umpteen number of close friends – everybody seems to have chosen this year to get married. And as the year ends, the bachelor count in my friend circle is being heavily battered. I am wondering if I’ll end up being the last man standing, the next year I write the post. Watch this space.

Travel wise too the year was good. I finally got to see a lot more of India. Mumbai, Gurgaon, Delhi, Kolkata, Sikkim, Bihar, UP – all first time visits, all happened this year. So yeah, I traveled to my hearts content.

Material gain was also quite high. I’m obviously getting paid more, and with that spending a lot more too! I bought a new car, my new house is nearing completion and I got a new camera. So some of my dreams are finally coming through. Life’s become more extravagant, but I don’t mind that. Whatever the philosophers say, materialism is still important to some degree, atleast for me. Thanks to 2010 for that.

On the flip side, I bid goodbye to a few close friends, whom I might never see again. Having a life built around friends, that needs some adjustments from my side too. But yeah, things won’t remain the same forever can it? I’ll consider that a small blemish amidst all the positives. And yeah, atleast there’s Facebook – which is why I don’t care about the privacy stuff.

All in all – 2010, you were a super-duper-awesome year for me. And I can quite safely say that it was definitely one of the best years in my life so far. 2011′s peeping by the door – welcome, but you do have a tough act to follow!

Photo by Deepak Gupta

Catching an auto for a ride in Kochi, compares well to buying a ticket for a block-buster movie on its opening day. Its a major circus act. The supposed auto-stands here rarely have an auto on stand-by. And by chance if there is one parked, the usual conversation goes like this – “ചേട്ടാ, സൌത്ത് റെയില്‍വേ സ്റ്റേഷനില്‍ പോകുവോ?” (Brother, can you give me a ride to the railway station?). The guy gives you a blank stare as if I have abused his ancestors. No other response, so I ask again. He grunts rudely – ‘ഇല്ല!’ (No!). And that’s it. No reason. He just doesn’t want to go. I doubt if I have seen any city with auto drivers like this. Compare that to the multitude of drivers, jumping at you when you get out of Volvo in Bangalore. I hated paying exorbitant amounts there, but this is much much worse. Atleast you got home quicker!

And then there is competition. No the participants are not the autos, but the poor wannabe passengers. 10 different people located at strategic spots on either side of the road, hoping to be the first to wave down an auto that’ll privilege them with a ride. I could almost spot a smirky grin on the lucky winner – ‘You losers!’. Oh then there is a thing, all autos here have electronic meters. But well, of the hundreds of rides I’ve already taken in this city, I haven’t yet had the privilege of seeing one of them turned on. Its just a fancy item attached to the vehicle, with no apparent purpose at all. I wonder how many rickshaw-wallahs here actually know how to operate one!

Yes, I have had a few good experiences with auto drivers even in the small time I have been in the city. But the other side of the coin heavily outweighs those good deeds.

Maybe they are actually doing me a favor without them knowing. Those long walks… definitely healthier. Ha! I win!

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 :D . 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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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 ;)