The day dawned bright and sunny after full 24 hrs of rain. So I decided to visit New York City again and this time alone as it’s a weekday and sanjit is working. Empire State Building One of America’s biggest landmarks’, the Empire State Building is an absolute must-see. You cannot come to NYC and not climb to the top of the Empire State. As it happens, a lot of other tourists think that way too…so I have to wind my way through a queue for nearly an hr. finally the elevator takes us from the 2 nd floor to the [View Full Entry]

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Its Sunday, and we have to visit NYC. It is also the New York Marathon day and all the news channels are full of it. Sanjit saw aishwarya in one of the commercials here ( she truly is an international star). We trudge to the White Plains metro station which is 3 kms away according to me and 2 kms according to Sanjit. The wind is particularly nasty … We manage to catch an express train which means non-stop to New York. The metro is nothing to write home about..the swiss rail system is much much better…from grand central terminus ( [View Full Entry]

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After a month-long preparation ( and a visa-application wait of 3 months for me ) we’re finally here for 3 months. Sounds like a long time but I know it will go by in a flash. The journey from Bangalore to New York was too long …made more uncomfortable by the 5 hr wait in Mumbai. Stopover in Paris could have been a breather ‘cept that the French do not allow you to disembark !! well to cut a long story short..we arrived at our hotel in white plains ( about 30 miles north of Manhattan) totally exhausted….next morning we set [View Full Entry]

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Misty hills, serene backwaters, wild life in abundance …Kerala is the very summary of the cosmos. And what stuns the weary-city-type is the lush greenery. We arrived in Cochin and headed straight to Kumarakom…a small ( albeit wealthy ) hamlet 70 km from Cochin. We stayed at the cocobay resort..which is on the Vembanad lake and accessible only by water…so we got our first taste of the backwater. The waterfront is beautiful…with several boats of all varieties cruising along at all hours. Traveling in the monsoon meant perpetually overcast skies …..but that had [View Full Entry]

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