I went to Jaipur last weekend on a part work but mostly leisure trip. Jaipur is the third Rajasthan city that I’m exploring after Udaipur and Jaisalmer. I’m quite fond of Rajasthan actually – perhaps its the desert and the timeless charm of the cities that draws me to them. I boarded the crowded Ashram Express on late Friday evening. I spent most of the time reading, completing a book (Fooled by Randomness) that I started long ago. The rabri and curd at Palanpur station (Gujarat) was quite a treat. Served in small earthenware, they were delicious! Apart from that, the journey was quite uneventful as I slept early and woke up the next morning (around 4am) to get off at Jaipur.

I had made a reservation at Arya Niwas, the day before. Its a decent budget hotel with super clean rooms and courteous staff. The cafeteria in the hotel serves some really sumptuous meal – both continental and indian at fairly decent prices. Its one hotel that I’d highly recommend for the budget traveller.

One good way to explore a new place is to go riding around town with a map. I got a scooter, thanks to a dear friend. What struck me at Jaipur, was the amount of tourists – the place is infested with them, unlike any other place I’ve seen in India. The downside of having so many tourists is the exorbitant rates that you are almost always charged – be it at speciality stores or even rickshaws. I visited the City Palace, Hawa Mahal, Jantar Mantar and the old city lanes on day 1. Most of the shop sign-ages were in hindi – bold black text on white background which, by the way, is quite unusual considering the influx of tourists there.

The second day began early, with a warm sunny ride towards the Amer Palace and Jaigarh fort. The Amer Palace is perhaps my most favorite palace amongst the ones I’ve seen in Rajasthan. It houses the Sheesh Mahal – private chambers of the maharaja and his queen. Shards of mirror and colored glass form an intricate mosaic that entirely covers the inner and outer-walls and the ceilings of the rooms. The detailing of the architecture and the interiors is dazzling considering they were built more than 400 years ago. The Jaigarh fort thats perched on the adjacent hill was rather plain in comparison. The fort contains the world’s largest canon, which needs about 100 kilos of gunpowder to send a ball 35km.

There’s a lot more that I’d like to share about the trip , but I’ll save them for another day. I’ve got tons of photographs that needs sorting and some post processing, so that will take a bit of time. I want to build a travel diary as a section on this site and have some ideas brewing. Hopefully, something should materialize soon.

It’s been more than a week since I got back from Udaipur, but I haven’t posted my photos nor written about the trip yet. Time for amends, so with due apologies, here’s my travelogue of the trip.

Delhi is a beautiful place. I love the wide roads, the manicured lawns and well maintained historical places. There’s something about Delhi that makes me want to visit it again.

Much to my dismay, I couldn’t find the time to post while in Delhi. There were plenty of things to do on the work front and very little time to explore Delhi. However, thanks to a friend, I did do a bit of sightseeing on the last two days of my trip. Saw a few historic buildings and even did “mall-hopping” in Gurgaon, which by the way, wasn’t all that great compared to what I’ve heard about them.

Cannaught Place, referred to CP by Delhiites appears to be the business hub of Delhi. Its like this huge circle with radial roads spreading out in all directions. Its pretty confusing to drive through the area as most of them look identical.

Visiting the Taj Mahal was out of the question as one would need a whole day to travel to Agra and back, which I did not have. So, I’ve left that for the future.

On the last day of my trip, barely 4 hours before I left, a friend and I went for a drive to the India Gate. India Gate is a prominent fixture in central Delhi and cannot be missed. The excusite monument has an aura thats very hard to put in words. Inscribed on top is the following

To the dead of the Indian armies who fell honoured in France and Flanders Mesopotamia and Persia East Africa Gallipoli and elsewhere in the near and the far-east and in sacred memory also of those whose names are recorded and who fell in India or the north-west frontier and during the Third Afgan War.

We spent some time there looking at the splendid form and all the tourists who were spread around posing for pictures. It was a nice evening. There was a lake nearby where you could go boating for almost nothing. While walking around the place I noticed the Rashtrapati Bhavan (Presidential Palace) right ahead. We decided to go there and see it up close.

Where I almost met the President

The Rashtrapati Bhavan has a breathtaking architecture. While we were outside the palace, I got an opportunity to speak to one of the guards there. During the course of our conversation, I candidly asked him what it would take to meet the President. He laughed at first, but when he realised that I was serious, he asked me try another gate which was located at the far end of the palace. We went there and told the guards there our intent. To my luck, one of the guards happened to be from South India, so speaking to him in native language helped enormously. We were let in and asked to contact the Central Registry Office.

Now, normally one would need to take an appointment weeks in advance to meet the President and it should have to do with some issue that needs to be discussed. But we did not have any. We just wanted to meet our President and spend few minutes with him and we were very honest with that. I met a nice person at the Central Registry Office and told him my case. He turned me down saying that it was not possible to meet the President like that which obviously was right. But when I insisted that I’ve come this far, he asked me to write a letter and had it sent immediately to the Personal Secretary to the President (PSP). We were asked to wait.

We were excited with our prospects and spent few minutes looking around while waiting at the office. The palace was massive with lush green grass laid out as a carpet and a few peacocks straying around. After about 5 minutes I got a call from the PSP, saying that it was not possible to meet the President at such short notice more so as he had prior commitments with the visiting Bangladeshi prime minister. They asked us to come back the following morning. I knew at this point it would be futile pushing it any further as I was already getting late for my flight back home. We thanked and left.

Looking back now, I wish I had that one extra day so that I could have met the President. Hopefully some day, I will.

I’m off to Delhi tomorrow on work. The last time I was in Delhi was more than 15 years ago and I look forward to seeing what its like now (although I really doubt if I can spot the difference). Visiting the Taj Mahal, India Gate and other places of interest are definitely on my list, but I dont know how much I can cram in this trip.

Besides a couple of friends, I also look forward to meeting the organizers of BarCampDelhi to learn about their experiences on conducting the first asian/desi BarCamp. It should be interesting to learn about what went into making it a success and how we at Chennai can raise the “bar” higher.

More from Delhi…

Last Thursday, I completed 3 weeks of my stay in Riyadh. A lots of things happened which kept me from updating this blog. Here is my long overdue take on the trip.

I landed in Riyadh on the 7th of April at about 13:00 hrs local time. The immigration and baggage clearance took less time than I anticipated and I was out of the airport within 45 minutes. My colleagues came to pick me up after about 10mins of waiting and finally we were on our way home.

Riyadh has changed quite a bit since the last time I was here, which was nearly a decade ago. A lot of western departmental stores like Debenhams, Harvey Nichols, Saks Fifth Ave (the store where Liz Hurley recently introduced her beachwear collection), etc have set up shop. Mall culture is evident and booming. Kingdom Towers which caters primarily to the affluent is a must see. It boasts a 56m long observatory SkyBridge at the top giving a breathtaking view of the city. I haven’t been to the SkyBridge yet, but will definitely make a trip before I return.

There is also another part to Riyadh which one can observe here. This is the more mellowed version where Islam is so central to all aspects of daily life. Shops and businesses remain closed during the prayer timings (which lasts between 10 – 15 minutes) allowing Muslims to perform their prayers. Women wear abaya and gender segregation in public is common. Some of the malls have specific timings for women and families.

For the expatriate population, entertainment is something that is unheard of here unless ofcourse you have the privilege of spending time with family and friends. Thats what I thought..

The weekend before last, my colleagues and I decided to visit Faisaliya Mall, which is walking distance from office. When we got there, we were surprised to see hoardes of cops and security personnel outside the mall, running about chattering on their radio. The scene was tense. We got into the mall and it was crowded; mostly women in their teens or something (its difficult to tell anyway!). Our first thought was that we got in at the wrong time, but then decided to stay as we spotted a few men around.

We headed to the top floor to check out a few gadget stores, the kind I’m interested in. We were greeted with no space to walk. People, mostly women folk were thronging at the center of the mall. We found out that a local celebrity named ‘Hisham Abdul Rahman’ was visiting the mall to sign some copies of his new album. Apparently, Hisham was the winner of a recent talent search called Star Academy in the Middle East (a la ‘American Idol’ in the US and copies of the same in India). There were security people (the men-in-black kinds) talkin into their suits and trying to control the crowd. Members from the ‘The Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice’ (called ‘mutawwa’) were present too, doing their round of checks. Women were blatantly screaming, waiting to catch a glimpse of their celebrity son.

Due to lack of space and also because some of us were scared, we decided to go to the nearby coffee shop and stay away from the crowd, lest we get into trouble with the cops. I had my camera with me and I knew that this was the only chance that I’d ever get to take a snap of a spectacle of this kind and that too, in Saudi Arabia. Now public photography is sort of banned here. But when you have hundreds of people using their camera phones to take pictures, you tend to think twice. So, I took a colleague (the more daring one) and we headed to the centre where people were thronging. We waited.. for Hisham to arrive and, more importantly, for the cops standing right behind us to leave. After waiting for sometime and realising that the cops were busy, we waded ourselves through the crowd inching towards the center where the action was slated to happen.

We stopped when it became impossible to go any further. I took out my camera and started to break sweat. I asked my partner in crime to check if the coast was clear. Meanwhile, a young arab standing right next to me noticed my camera and told me it was okay and showed me pictures that he took on his phone. I changed setting on the camera to night mode, switched of the flash and got ready. After confirmation from my colleague, I took a few snaps.

We headed back to the coffee shop soon after, to join those who hadn’t come. On our way back, we noticed the cops ordering all the shops to pull down their shutters. We decided to leave and headed home, discussing what happened, all the way. It was one evening that we will remember for a long time.

One of the things I like about Saudi’s, is their taste for cars. That, I’ll save for my next post. So, stay tuned..

I have at aleast half hour before boarding my flight, so thought I’d check email and catchup with a couple of blogs. Fortunately, Sify has an outlet in the waiting area. I can see my flight right behind me and the view is fantastic. Surprisingly, there is no wifi zone in the airport. There are quite a few passengers trotting laptop bags and I’m sure setting up a hotspot in here would be profitable and I dont see a reason otherwise. Chennai Central, on the other hand, has a hotspot with relatively fewer people carry laptops there.

By the way, I’m off to Riyadh on official visit and should be there for about 2 weeks or so. Its quite exciting to go back after almost 11 years. I did 2 years of schooling there shortly after the Gulf war and I remember that to be the best part of my growing years. So visiting my school there is included in the ‘things to do’ list apart from cramming as many sights and sounds of Riyadh as I can.

Updates to The RadioHead will be infrequent while I’m there, but hopefully I’ll be able to post something occasionally. Saudi Arabia has strict internet laws so I’d be happy if I’m able to check my emails!!

Adios!

I got back from Hyderabad early Saturday morning. The trip was good, although I didnt get to see Hyderabad much, not even the charminar. I stayed at Banjara Hills, close to Taj Residency which was the venue of the RFID summit. Its a beautiful city with wide roads, lanes and gardens – a la Bangalore. There is also another part to it – the old Hyderabad, which is chaotic, has narrow lanes and crowded junctions. I just caught a glimpse of it while passing through that way. Its like two different worlds that co-exist in perfect harmony. From what little I got to see, I must say that I was pretty impressed with the city.

Some of things that I really wanted to do but couldn’t due to time constraints – visit the IMAX theater, take photos of the Charminar, eat Haleem, etc.

And some of the things I did – tried Hyderabadi Biryani at Tabla – a fine dining restaurant at Banjara Hills. Somehow it didn’t feel all that great. Hyderabadi biryani should be tried at old Hyderabad with the crowd, where they prepare it in large quantities and serve in plenty. The whole fine dining experience spoiled the very essence of it. But Tabla is quite a nice restaurant. Got to see Est – Azharuddin’s state-of-the-art gym. It was pretty impressive. With a membership of Rs.25K per annum inclusive of a spa and a beauty salon, it had to be!

I dont clearly remember how those 2 days zipped by so fast. But as with everything else, theres always a next time. Looking forward to that!

A few good snaps from our trip