Got a couple of pictures yesterday which showed the magnificence of Jog Falls. Copious amounts of water flowing on Sharavati river and the falls just looks gorgeous. This would be worth a weekend visit anytime this month or the beginning of the next month.
But, in this picture the area that I have circled below caught my attention.
First impression was that it is an optical illusion. But, I checked a couple of other pictures also and the same kind of impression were present. Looks like the skin of a tiger.
Went to Belur and Sravanabelagola last month on the second day of the visit to Chikmaglur. The first day we visited Mullayanagiri and Bababudangiri. The initial plan was for another trek on the second day also, but since we had faced some treacherous conditions on the first day, we decided to take it easy on the second. So, we decided to visit the temples Belur and Sravanabelagola.
Belur is in Hassan district and is around 200kms from Bangalore. The road is pretty good and the drive shouldn’t take longer than 4 hours. The temple is really beautiful and it is must see if you are interested in architecture and sculptures. I am not going to describe the temple as it would be gross injustice for my writing skills to describe something really beautiful. So, I am just going to let the pictures do the talking. Thanks to Sindhu for these pictures.
Most of these statues are 3 dimensional. You can see the height and width and also feel the depth as they aren’t attached to the walls. You can actually put your fingers behind some of the statues. Nearly all the statues are locked to their places.
The Lion is the symbol of the Hoysala dynasty which built the temples at Belur, Halebid and Somnathpur.
Sravanabelagola
The Gomateshwar is around 80kms from Belur and we reached this place around 3:30pm. The temple is on top of a hill and the climb is about 600steps. It shouldn’t take more than 30mins if you are reasonably fit. This place is around 160kms from Bangalore. Some pictures:
3 of us ventured to visit the biggest port of the Pallavas and also to catch a glimpse of their wonderful architectural creations. Actually, the place is only around 40kms from my house, but since I have stayed in Chennai for most of my life, this place has always been there to visit. So, I paid my first visit to this wonderful place last Saturday.
It was a nice scenic drive on ECR and it took us about an hour to reach Mahabalipuram. Once you reach the town you realize that it has all the ingredients of a proper tourist place and it starts with the parking fee demanded by the guys outside the town. Though I feel that the fees are reasonable, there are too many places where you have to pay them.
We first visited the Shore temple and then the Five Rathas. We weren’t fortunate enough to even get a glimpse of the temples which had been submerged into the sea even though it was low tide. The Pancha Rathas represent the Pandavas and Draupadi and these are carved out of monolithic rocks. The weather was kind enough to allow us to visit these places properly.
The best time to visit this place would be between September – February. Also, sunrise near the shore temple would look great. I wanted to go there early in the morning, but after watching Harry Potter the previous night, I was in no mood to get up at 5am and move.
This is a good place to visit, if you are in Chennai and have a day to spare. Preferably start early in the morning so that you can catch the sunrise.
How to get there
Mahabalipuram is around 50kms from Chennai and the distance would vary depending on the place from where you start. The easiest way to get here would be to get there would be to ask someone how to get to the East Coast Road (ECR) and from there on it is a straight road. You will see signboards showing the route to Mahabalipuram. ECR is a toll road and you need to pay Rs.45 for the onwards and return journey for Mahabalipuram.
Last weekend was blessed with some superb sporting action. The French Open final between Nadal and Federer, the Catalunya MotoGP, the Canadian GP, the La Liga and a cricket match was also thrown into the midst of these things.
Best Moments:
1. Lewis Hamilton takes victory at the Canadian GP
2. Nadal defeats Federer (I like Federer but Nadal was just better yesterday.)
3. Stoner takes victory from Rossi
Sad Moment: 1. Nistelrooy scoring for Real Madrid and Raul Tamudo scoring for Espanyol, thus putting Real Madrid in the best possible position for the title.
Horrendous Moment: 1. Robert Kubica’s Crash at the Canadian GP (I just stopped thinking about the race after this incident. It was quite horrendous. People have compared it with Barrichello’s accident at Imola in 1994.)
Funny Moment: 1. Synchronized spinning of Trulli and Rosberg at the Canadian GP (am not able to find a video of this. Please leave a comment if you know where the video is. I will add it here)
Two laps later Rosberg and Trulli were battling for position and engaged in a highly comical exchange of synchronized spinning at turn one. Montreal did host the Olympics at one point but never previously considered this art form as a sport. [Link]
At least Businessweek thinks so. My limited knowledge of Geography tells me that Australia is a continent and New Zealand is part of the larger Oceania group that constitutes Australia also.
New Zealand and Australian cities dominate the top slots in Mercer’s new ranking of Asia’s most desirable places to live.
China and India may represent Asia’s economic future, but the most desirable cities in which to live, for foreign executives and their families, are elsewhere. Cities in New Zealand, Australia, and Japan are far more comfortable places to reside, according to a new ranking by Mercer Human Resource Consulting, which provides advice to multinational companies on international assignments.[Source]
Well, I am talking about the hyped up Aishwarya Rai, but about some of the wonderful constructions that are happening around India.
Have a look.
The pity is that I had to find about all this from a magazine that is based out of the US. The report was published in September 2006. There are many more wonderful things around but at least these have got some coverage.
It has been a fun filled last two weeks for me here. First and foremost, I have only two subjects to study and one of them is Negotiation Analysis. That makes my job much more simpler. So, I have been busy scouting the library for DVD’s, playing cricket, volleyball… Sometimes it makes me feel like I have a lot of time on hand, but still I find myself searching for that extra hour when it comes to doing some real work. A lot of my time is spent on solving Sudoku. I have managed a time of 9mins 56secs for the Hard puzzle, which places me in the Top 31%. However, I haven’t been able to solve this quickly consistently. Am still trying and hopefully by the end of my stay here, I am able to get to that mark of 7mins. My schedule in the last 3 weeks has been like
1pm – wake up (Actually the housekeeping person does this job. They would have come for their second round by then)
3:30pm – Get ready to go to class
4:00pm – Go to the cafe and eat something (Drink a can of Pepsi)
4:30-4:45pm – wait for friends to come to cafe. Chat with them for sometime
5:00pm – Attend class
7:00pm – 8:30pm – Play Volleyball (Drink another can of pepsi before starting to play)
9:00pm – Dinner
9:30-10:30pm – Chat with people. Basically I don’t return to the quad. (Another can of pepsi)
10:30-11:30pm – Fight with my quadie for the TV remote (we hardly watch the same channels)
11:30pm – 2:30am – Solve Sudoku/General browsing/ reply to mails
2:30am – Check if something has to be done for tomorrow’s class (Assuming nothing has to be done)
2:45am – Watch some movie or read a few more pages of ‘Hannibal’
5:30am – Sleep.
(The schedule gets advanced by 3 hours if the class is at 11, with the lost sleep compensated for during the afternoon).
My Consumption of Pepsi has reached such levels that people suggest that I should change my blood group to ‘P+’.
I will be writing my last exam today. It doesn’t seem to be very long since I wrote my first exam here, but it has been a very fast 10 months. Technically, once this exam is done, my requirements for completing the course is to attend the last two sessions of the other subject I have taken. So, next week is going to be even more strenous in the aspect that I have to search for what to do other than whatever I have been doing. Maybe I will start solving Kakuro’s again or start packing. We have to vacate this place by the 10th of April and the exit procedures have already begun.
Today, we had a Dunking session and a sort of competition among sections w.r.t dunking. Rules were simple, dunk your sectionmate and the section which manages to throw the dunkee the farthest wins the competition. It was good fun. Here are some pictures.
Have a look.
