Swiss, Sep 2013

Since a long time Uday was asking me to go and visit him in Switzerland. Finally I decided to go to Lausanne in Sep 2013. I was all packed and ready to leave to Swiss when I went to University to present my 1st year PhD results. Just after my presentation I left to catch a train from Trieste to Lausanne. I boarded the train around noon and I was there around 11.30pm. Uday fetch me up from the railway station and then we walked to his place. I was tired of the journey so we slept just after having dinner.

Montreux

Montreux with Geneva lake

  Next day we went to Geneva to meet Amit (another friend who was on an official trip in Swiss) and then we three bought a 5-day rail pass in the Geneve lake region (this included 2 day free train rides and the rest 3 days half price on selected routes). We started our Swiss sightseeing from Montreux. It was so peaceful to sit and admire the lake and alps in that beautiful sunny day. 

After spending few hours we took a train to Rochers-de-naye. This was a narrow gauge (800mm) rail that went up the mountains around the Geneva lake. In the 1st half of the journey we could see the whole lake and the valley from the mountains then after the 1st stop at Glion village in the mountain, the whole track was through mountains passing one mountain to another. After climbing a steep slope we reached Rochers-de-naye station from there we had to hike a little bit more to reach the mountain tip.

View from Rochers-de-naye

Evian les Bains

 At the top it was so silent, everyone was admiring the view, it was just serene and peaceful, we could see Mount Blanc far away in front of us, just mountains everywhere one after the other; looked like our Earth was covered with a velvet cloth of different shades of green with creases. One can sit and praise the beauty for hours and hours. Soon it was time to leave as it was getting cloudy. We came down to Montreux and took a train to Lausanne from where we took a ferry to have a tour on the lake, so we went to Evian les Bains on the French part and returned back. That night I slept in Geneva at Amit's hotel.

Next morning we met at Montreux station and took the sight-seeing train to Interlaken. This was an amazing trip through the green grasslands with cattles, mountains, lakes and tunnels. We got off at Saanen station and walked along the river through the grassland with cattles to Gstaad. This walk was special for us as this was the shooting place of a famous bollywood romantic drama movie DDLJ which was released in 1995 when we were kids and all was worth-it.

Saanen station

We took another train to Spiez from Gstaad. When we reached Spiez it was already afternoon so we couldn't go to Interlaken but anyway Spiez was beautiful enough to enjoy our afternoon. We caught the last train back to Montreux, the train was empty no one except us in our coach, it was all dark outside. We reached Montreux late at night then we went to Geneva to see Amit off as he was flying early next morning and we came back to Lausanne and dropped-dead.

Grassland along the way

 Next day started late, Uday showed me Lausanne city and EPFL. It is a beautiful city with lots of greenery, I was impressed by self moving cupboards of EPFL library and took out journal Nature 1953 to see the research paper where the molecular structure of DNA was explained by Sir J.D. Watson and Sir F.H.C. Crick. In the evening we had a walk along the lake and called it a day as next morning I had my train back to Trieste.

Me, Uday and Amit (left to right) at Montreux

 A beautiful and memorable trip came to an end and I regained back my energy for some more lab work. :-)

Vienna, Bratislava and Prague, Aug 2013

Castle and its garden

Panda in Zoo

Took a week off in Aug 2013 to visit Vienna and Prague. We (me, Jashmini and Praful) boarded an overnight train from Trieste to Vienna. Reached next morning and ended up in a youth hostel which gave us the worst hosteling experience. We stayed in Vienna for two days went to the famous Castle and its garden and also the zoo. Nothing new was there in the city.. it is a normal European city with all the buildings and churches of same architecture. A must do is to eat Sacher in Vienna, it was awesome!

On the third day we reached the bus station of Vienna to get a bus to Prague but there was a bus late in the evening and we did not want to spend another day in Vienna so we decided to have a day trip to Bratislava.

Bratislava on the other hand was something different from the usual European city, we could see the striking difference between western and eastern city. The city gave me a feeling of being poorer and unorganized with a typical Soviet city landscape.

The cathedral

Later in the evening we caught the bus to Prague, crossing the beautiful green lands of Czech we reached Prague. We were tired by that time so we just called the day off. Next morning we started our sight-seeing and Prague became one of my favorite tourist destinations. It is full of beautifully arched buildings and cathedrals, all of them with different architecture. We also enjoyed the Gay Parade happening during the period of our stay.

There are many things that I did not do like the famous pub-crawl and the night club with 5 stories. I would love to go again and get wasted there.

From Prague we came back to Vienna and boarded the train further back to Trieste with a hope of going back to Prague again.

Budapest, May 2013

Soon after coming back from the awesome trip of Greece, I got an invitation to a Karolinska CSB meet in May 2013 by my ex-prof Rudolf Ladenstein. This was a great opportunity for me to share my experiences to the experts of my field of research and to learn something from them. Then how can I not use this opportunity to travel. I and my friends Jashmini and Maryse planned a trip to Stockholm (that I have seen) followed by two days in Budapest (since there was a cheap ryanair flight from Stockholm Skavsta to Budapest).

We flew to Stockholm on 25th May and while I was attending the meeting, they saw the city. The meet was very useful for me and I met great scientists. We left Stockholm on 27th May and by the night we were in Budapest in our hostel. We booked a room of 4 beds, but the fourth bed was empty so we had the whole room to ourselves, Maryse took this opportunity to show us her talent of dancing by performing on the song of "maar daala" from Devdas movie, followed by the performance of Jashmini on "silsila ye chaahat ka" from the same movie, while I was busy in recording the performances. :-D After such an eventful night we took a rest to leave early for the city tour next morning. The next day we visited the Buda side of the city, the castle, the churches. The castle is on the mountain from where you can have the panoramic view of the city. Everything went really well and by the evening we were sitting at the banks of Danube when the lights of the castle and the chain bridge went on. That was a beautiful scene to see the reflections of the castle and the bridge in the river. Then we went back to our hostel to have a sleep, instead after a bottle of white wine we ended up dancing again on African songs like "oh mamma I wanna marry this gal" or something like that. Next day was again full of sight seeing of the Pest side of the city and eating chicken paprika and smoked cheese (paprika is famous of hungary). This evening we had the overnight bus back to Trieste.

It is a beautiful city with many things to offer. One can spend some more days there, we did not discover the night life of the city which is known to be one of the best of the eastern Europe. We came back with a lot of memories, pictures and videos.

Greece, March 2013

In Jan 2013, Silvia (my prof) asked me to apply for a workshop in Greece, it was an International Workshop on Fundamentals of Crystallography in Patra from April 1 to 7. Greece has always been a dream and here it was.. an application away.. so applied as soon as I could. Later by end of Feb I got the acceptance letter from the organising committee and thus started getting prepared for the workshop as well as planning the Easter break for seeing Athens and Santorini.

 On 27 March 2013, I flew from Trieste to Athens, spent 2 days in Athens. I booked the International youth hostel in Metaxourgio in Athens for 27th and 28th nights. The hostel was at a good location as it was 5 mins walk from the metro station and also the staff was very friendly who guided me for a walking tour of the city. I reached the hostel by 1.00pm and by 3.00pm I was on the roads walking around and seeing the usual tourist archaeological sites in Athens. Out of all I liked the Parthenon and its location from where one can have the panaromic view and the Panathenaic stadium where the 1st modern olympic games were held in 1896. After another day and an evening in the city and eating the delicious cevapcici and souvlaki I moved ahead to Santorini (one of the most beautiful islands in Europe). Took an overnight cruise on 29th to Santorini to stay a night there, the island was full of serenic beauty (especially in during March/April). A must visit is Oia (in Santorini) during sunset and the red and black beaches. By the evening I was on the cruise returning to Athens to catch the next morning bus to Patra where the workshop was held.

Patra is a small city and the workshop was hosted in a hotel in the outskirts near the beach. I was the 1st participant to arrive later in the afternoon my room-mate arrived. He was a funny swiss. We grew as good friends and drinking buddies. Found a great local drink named Ouzo that accompanied us during the whole workshop. Met a great teacher Carmelo Giacovazzo, made friends there went out to eat yummy greek meat platter with tzatziki. Until then I had never learned so much in a week and never drank so much in the same week. It was a great time. The week passed by and the workshop was over sooner than expected. On 8th of April I was back in Trieste with lots of knowledge and memories.

Andaman islands, Dec 2012

Christmas 2011 has taught me that never spend a festival, important for the country you live in, alone coz all your friends go away to celebrate it with their family and you are left alone. So I decided to spend Christmas 2012 in India with my family and since I got the travelling gene from my parents I wanted to gift them a trip to Andaman islands. It was December 24, 2012 when we (Dad, Mom, Sis, Vishal and me) started our journey by train from Allahabad (my hometown) to Chennai, after almost 36 hours we reached Chennai Egmore on 25th afternoon, after checking-in and relaxing for sometime in Hotel Chennai gate (located just infront of the Egmore railway station) we went out to eat something, but that turned out to be a difficult task and after waiting for almost an hour we received our dosas. Gulping it down was comparatively quicker and we were ready to see Marina beach, worlds second longest beach of 13km, an auto took us to the beach.

Marina beach

We spent the evening there with waves becoming higher and higher as sun was setting, a sea beach is a romantic place and that was proved by my dad who bought gajra for my mom. After it was dark we started back through the market at the beach, had tea and later while walking back to the hotel we saw M.A. Chidambaram stadium and had banana pakodas, when we were near the hotel my mom was keen to know the market where she can buy Chennai silk, so my parents and sis went to the T market famous for shopping and Vishal n me were waiting for Shubhankar (a close friend of mine) who was supposed to meet us, soon he arrived and I went down to pick him up to our room. We spent some time chit-chatting, later he took us for dinner to a Bengali restaurant nearby where we had fish paturi, chicken and rice. Parents came back by 11.00pm to the room with some silk that mom bought for her.

Dad and Mom

 26th morning we had our flight to Port Blair at 10.30am that took 2 hrs to Port Blair, Shakti Singh the person responsible for the tour was present at the airport to receive us, he took us to the hotel (an rss ashram) that was located in a very peaceful area, we freshened up and went out for lunch in Anand restaurant followed by a fun bath in the waves of Bay of Bengal at Corbyn's Cove beach and later a watch of the light n sound show of the cellular jail depicting the struggles and tortures went through by the freedom fighters. We weren't hungry when we were returning so Vishal and me went out later in search of a restaurant to pack something for dinner, ending up into a small fast food corner we bought egg rolls, fish and chicken chops.

Corbyn's Cove beach

place where prisoners were hanged in Viper island

Ross island

Ross island

North bay

Next day was for the island trip by ferry, we covered Viper island where freedom fighters were hanged, Ross island, old capital of the island where British had administrative building and officer quarters. Now all are in dilapidated condition, the island is like a forest with some deer moving around without fear of humans and also the island is full of coconut trees. Later we went to the North Bay which is famous for water sports and coral life, we enjoyed a glass bottom boat to see coral and a family speed boat and the rest of the day in the water. We were back in Port Blair by 7.00pm and had dinner in Anand restaurant on the way back home. The day ended with playing cards with mom, sis and Vishal. 28th was allotted for local sightseeing tour that included the Anthropological museum showing the lifestyle of the tribes still living in Andaman and Nicobar islands, the Cellular Jail also known as Kala Pani the name is derived from the architecture of the prison, each room is like a cell 4.5m x 2.7m with only one ventilator keeping the prisoners from communicating with each other, there were 7 wings with 3 stories of such cells radiating out from a central watch tower, Fisheries museum, Chatham Saw Mill in the first half of the day followed by lunch and visit to Rubber plantation, spice garden and the quiet n beautiful Wandoor beach. We were at the beach in water playing with sand and water till the beautiful sunset, with that another wonderful day came to an end. We all loved the egg rolls we ate as dinner on the 1st night in the island so we had them again, played cards and slept.

Rubber plantation

Spice garden

Wandoor beach

Vishal, sis and me (left to right)

Next day we woke up early in the morning as we had to travel for long to see the Tribal Reserve Forest and then Baratang island. We drove through the forest with a hope to see something but it was just a nice drive through the nature ending up at the ferry port that took us to Baratang island where motor boats were ready to take us for a ride through the water to the Mangrove forest. We entered the forest, there was a wooden bridge over the marsh that took us deep inside the tropical rainforests, I love such kind of hikes in nature and I was already enjoying the day when I saw the huge limestone cave infront of me, this was the first time I saw mangrove forest and limestone caves, I was so excited to see the stalactites and stalagmites.

On the way to Tribal Forest Reserve

Temple on the way

Mangrove forest

Tropical Rainforest

Stalactite and Stalagmite

The long drive back, was tiring and everyone in the car slept, we reached Port Blair, had dinner and then called it a day as next day was going to be another long day to Havelock islands. 30th morning started early again and we were pretty excited to see the beautiful beaches of Havelock island until it came to our knowledge that the ferry from Port Blair to Havelock was full and no tickets were available.

Vishal swimming @Mundapahad beach

Maa with kulfi

Kulfi in water

Mundapahad beach

Everyone in the travel group was upset but Mr. Shakti Singh offered us to show some other place of the island. After breakfast he took us to Gandhi park, driving through Chidiyatapu to Mundapahad beach. It was really a beautiful beach with clear water and we couldn't resist to get wet. That day became important for me because I learnt floating from my teacher Vishal. In the next trip to any beach I have to learn swimming from him. Later dad bought kulfi for us and we four had it while sitting in the water. We wanted to stay long but we were running out of time for the next destination, Mount Harriet was another wonderful drive through nature on the mountains to see the panaromic view, a walk in the woods and also to see the scenery capturing North Bay from the mountain printed on Rs 20 note. After such a great trip we went back home had egg rolls in the dinner, went out for a walk as it was our last night in the beautiful island.

Wandoor

On the way to Baratang

We had our flight back to Chennai at around 1.30pm from Port Blair that landed around 3.30pm in Chennai. We hired a taxi from airport directly to Chennai central railway station to catch our train back to Allahabad. We spent the new years eve in the train while travelling with a hope that new year will bring many more such memorable trips for us.

Malta, Aug 2012

Malta is one of the world's smallest countries and one of the most densely populated one. It is an island just south of European mainland and north of African mainland. It is rich in human history starting from 7000 BC i.e. the neolithic period. It is also a very beautiful island that have been through a lot of struggles and have witnessed the rules of Romans, Arabs, Normans, Spanish, French and British. It has quite a few great beaches and the official languages are Maltese and English. This is what we knew about the island, we just didn't know that it was a party n fun place as well until we reached there in August 2012.

We were six friends all from Trieste Francesco, Elena, Marco, Mauro, Carmelo and me. We planned for the trip in Malta for eight days in the end of August. We flew from Treviso airport to Malta on 22nd Aug 2012 morning and reached there by the afternoon. We had booked a 3 bhk apartment for the week and the owner was supposed to pick us up from the airport but he was not there when we landed so we called him and took the suggested bus to reach at a meeting point, after waiting for 40 mins he came with a vehicle to take us to the apartment.

a walk in the evening

Sliema

After relaxing for some time we went out to a nearby shop to buy some beers, water, milk and cookies. The plan of the evening was to keep it calm so we went to a bar to have some beers and snacks, later after having a walk in the city centre we barged into a Sushi place, we ordered 2 sushi combo plates that contained sufficient amount of various kind of yummy sushi. With a stomach full of sushi we walked back home to sleep. Next day we went to the Paradise bay and spent the whole day in the clear water of the sea and relaxing on the beach while sun bathing.

Paradise bay

After having a shower in fresh water at the apartment we relaxed in the afternoon to go out in the evening to the party place of Malta, Paceville, it is an amazing place full of young crowd, loud music and bright lighting motivates you to party whole night. We got many coupons for 1 euro shots that we used that night. 24th Aug was another day full of sight-seeing, we went to Mdina the old capital of Malta, I was amazed to see the architecture of the city, all the main cities were fortified and had a ship port built especially keeping in mind that the sea is full of enemies as in past sea was the only route to reach this island.

Mdina

Mdina

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Indian Restaurant

The city had narrow alleys with high walled houses and small balconies giving a look of Arabian nights, telling us about the rule of Arabs on the island. Had lunch in an Indian restaurant followed by visiting Valetta, the capital of the country, to see more of the island's historical architectures, ending up having dinner there. 25th Aug, Saturday was for the Golden bay where a scene of "Troy" was shot, this was another fun day full of sea and sun bathing. In the evening we went out for dinner and I wanted to try Rabbit as I had heard that Rabbit was a traditional meal in Malta, it was delicious very soft and sweet meat. Later at night we went to Paceville to enjoy our Saturday night, we were out till late at night drinking and dancing. We took Sunday abit calmly and spend the day in the nearby area in St. George bay again in sea and under sun. On the way back we bought some easy-to-cook food for dinner and things for breakfast. Next day was spent on a ferry to see Gozo, Comino islands and Blue lagoon, though I enjoyed the scenery, the trip would have been more fun for me if I would have known swimming.

Golden bay

We

Blue Lagoon

Tuesday and Wednesday was spent in archaeological museum - to see the history of human civilization witnessed by the island since the neolithic period (new stone age era) i.e. around 6000 BC, even older than the pyramids in Egypt that dates back to around 3000 BC (bronze age era). I am always interested in seeing the lifestyle of old human civilizations on earth devoid of the modern technologies and luxuries we have today, ancestors always hold my respect because they started from scratch and gave a direction of development and building huge stone structures like megalithic/neolithic temples or pyramids without today's machines seem impossible for us.

St. John's co-cathedral

Mosta Dome

interior of Dome

I also saw the St. John's co-cathedral in Valetta that was built by Knights of Malta in 16th Century to save Christianity during the era of Arabian attack on south of Europe. It is a very beautiful and huge cathedral that has 9 chapels belonging to different knights from Europe like Germany, Italy, France, Spain, etc. The ceilings are covered with paintings and the carvings are golden in colour giving a rich and royal look to the cathedral. It also contains a painting by Caravaggio depicting 'The Beheading of Saint John the Baptist'. Also saw the Mosta dome or Rotunda of Mosta, the third largest unsupported dome in the world. The internal diameter is 37.2 metres and it contains a replica of the bomb that penetrated the dome but didn't blast during an afternoon air raid. In the evening we played a funny drinking game Mauro and Elena went to sleep but Marco, Carmelo, Francesco and me finished Beers, a bottle of red wine and a bottle of vodka while playing. That was really a fun night. Soon came 30th Aug when we had to leave for Trieste, the owner dropped us to the airport and we boarded our flight back home with some cherishable memories and a hope of having more such vacations.