Beijing is a very clean city with not-so-very dense population and has a highly cosmopolitan outlook. We never encountered anyone in traditional Chinese outfit (of course no lean long beards either!!). Dressing is more of Euro-American style, be it small children or adults. Roads are very well maintained, with rose plants along the sideway. In order to control pollution, Beijing has banned the use of two wheelers. Only cycles are allowed. Volkswagen Passat and Audi, two awesome and sleek but big cars, rule the car spectrum. Mercs are also seldom spotted. With no dearth of low skyscrapers, this city is not far behind some of the other cities in apparently more sophisticated countries. One interesting fact about Chinese languages, be it Mandarin in Beijing or Cantonese in Hong Kong, they translate proper nouns as well to the local dialects. This is so because these languages lack alphabets. In fact Larry Ellison himself has authorized the translation of Oracle as Ja-Khu-Va in Mandarin. Now imagine yourself being called out as ******* as per the local translation and phonetics!!!!!
The crux of our stay was undoubtedly during weekends. Weekdays were simply routine-based. Up and going at 8-30, work till 6 and then rush for our favorite Taj Pavilion, a North Indian restaurant next to our hotel. It is run a by paaji whom we befriended and could give us food without taking any order. But for this place, we seldom ventured to other cuisines for dinner coz for every other meal, we would sorely miss Indian food. Afternoons were reserved for Pizza’s/burgers or sometimes rice with vegetable curry (slurp!).
We got to spend two interesting weekends here. What was common between these two weekends was SHOPPING!! We visited the pearl market, where self-cultivated fresh-water pearls are sold. The other malls were that of toys and clothing accessories. The other major shopping spree happened at the electronics mall. We could easily spend hours bargaining with those Chinese sales persons. They neither understand English and nor did we comprehend Mandarin. So the mode of our exchange was the calculator. They would show up their price and we would claim ours. Few common phrases we shared were ‘Finish-Finish’, ‘U tell’, ‘I look look’ It was fun anyways.
The great China Wall and Tiananmen Square were two historical places we visited. A local English-speaking guide called Harry accompanied us to the Great Wall so we could also refresh our knowledge of history. The Great Wall has been renovated thrice by three dynasties, the most important being the Ming. Earlier this was the border between China-Mongolia but currently China extends well beyond the Great Wall. Harry also took to the tomb of the Ming ruler Judi. On our way back from the Great wall, we also visited Jade factory and saw some wonderful jade idols. One of them flaunted a price tag of 5000 USD!
Tiananmen Square is a huge open space with a couple of China Administrative offices. It has a martyr tomb and we also saw some soldier-attired persons marching past, which we presume is a daily guard of honor for all those massacred here in the past. Multi-shaped kites all around make up for a pleasant sight. We were taken around the Square on tri-cycles and we could manage to get some cool snaps.
Ice-skating is a popular sport in China. Fortunately for us, we had a skating rink right in our hotel complex. We also wanted to have a taste of this sport. The skating shoes with a scale-edge sole on the ice call for good balance to ‘stand on your feet’. Sid and Vipul, two of our project mates achieved graceful movements in the rink, but I had to be content with only skating along the railing.
Traveling back via Singapore, Sid and myself were lucky enough to grab an opportunity to go for a city-tour. Although we were not allowed to stroll anywhere, we stretched our muscles at the Sentosa beach. Taking us all around the city, the airport guide Michael shared with us a few facts about this wonderful country. A very well nurtured and maintained country, gifted with a natural deep harbor makes it a strategic port. A fascinating fact is that in this small and densely populated country, 20% area is land kept aside for nature’s bounty.
For those few frozen moments: http://community.webshots.com/user/bsarvind
All in all, it was a memorable visit to the China capital along side of a quick glance at Singapore, exposing us to an altogether new lifestyle.
¶ Monday, December 06, 2004 1 Comments
It all started with a hundred plus mails and few guys droppin’ out at the usual 11th hour. But nothing could stop the juggernaut of the desire to reach the Kudremukh (Kannada word meaning Face of the Horse) peak. It was finally incumbent on 8 guys to go ahead. Madhu, Deepak, Sarvajith, Hari, Naveen, Amit, RaviKiran and myself (Arvind) who were bound to set out when two of Ravi’s colleagues decided to join us. Nikhil and Ashish, it was to join the bandwagon. Going by the night bus from Bangalore, an uneventful journey to Kalasa, we landed there in the early hours of Saturday, the 24th Jan 2004. After a quick breakfast and a short bus ride, we were right at the foot of Kudremukh, a place called Balegal. One noticeable fact was that we had to shell out 80/- per head to trek the hill. A pretty costly affair but at the end of it, that was worth all.
Naveen’s handycam came real handy; to capture the much needed movements of the apparently graceful male models, crossing the streams, hitting the roads. As we moved along, we treated ourselves with Kabbu (Sugarcane), peppermints, lots of water and some awesome scenic sights. It was a journey of around 6 km on jeep-track and at the end of this we spotted a cool and shady place for lunch, right next to a stream. It was a piece of dreamland as we rested and hogged really well.
Now started the 5+ km on a real trek path. But that was just apparent for the 10 of us. We were wrong at the first turn itself on the trek and it so happened that we ended up walking for another couple of hours before Madhu and myself thought we would toss a coin to decide to move along the same path or move back to a lone house that we spotted from the good height. Luck was not with us though. It was tails and we had to move along, no backtracking. But what held us back were the harsh sun and the open grasslands with no glimpse of any nearby house. Also, Hari had some short-notes of milestones, which we had not seen until then that revealed the location of the most-spoken-about Lobo Mane in the Southwest direction. So ignoring the toss, we walked a little downhill shouting aloud to see if we can garner any help from any cow-herds on the hills. Lo and behold, our SOS calls were heard by a local guy, who took us out of the rut and put us on the right path. Finally, we ended up on the correct track, just 2km away from the destination, the Lobo Mane. But we were literally confronted with another local who also owned a house a few steps away from where we were resting. It was decided that we would camp at his place rather than walk another 2km to Lobo Mane with the entire luggage. What was left to explore was just another 6km of sheer excitement, right atop the hill after a hard but enjoyable walk of around 16 km, quite enough to call it a day.
The place where we camped was real neat with a small stream right next to the house. An evening water-play in the chilled flow across the forests was a real refresher. Dinner was served at the same place and we decided to give our bodies the much-needed rest.
A good night’s sleep was all the well rejuvenating and we were all set to scale new heights. Starting off at 7-30 in the morning, we treaded on the open grasslands and the slant, crooked paths. Interestingly, we had another companion with us, the dog that stayed at the house where we camped. We had named it Kudri (meaning Horse in Kannada), after the peak Kudremukh. It also served the purpose of a guide for us in those topsy-turvy paths. Any water source would make us rest awhile without least hesitation. It was no cakewalk for us moving along the rough terrain. But nothing to beat the satisfaction of reaching the top. An eagle’s eye view of the forests and villages around, amidst the deep fog was worth all the effort. Spending close to an hour there, and finishing the lunch was an experience in itself. Coming down was a little easier and we were back at the base-camp at around 3-30. A quick pack and we set our backs to the awesome Kudremukh. A very interesting and surprising fact was that people in that village were witnessing the electricity for the first time in their lives. We saw them worshipping the newly installed transformer and the locals very excited at this new prospect. Hats off to life’s disparities! Walking back another 3km, we took a jeep to reach Balegal.
Only a few hours left before all of us parted ways. Some mouthwatering snacks at a juice bar and a neat dinner at Kalasa was a perfect end to our sojourn. The Kalaseshwara temple added some devotional flavor to our trek. Monday early morning marked the end of our outing, leaving behind pleasant reminiscences of a fruitful trek and new acquaintances. Back in Bangalore, we were all there to mark India’s 54th Republic celebrations and rest the pained bodies. A resolution was taken as we parted; we all wish to move out at the earliest again.
¶ Monday, December 06, 2004 0 Comments
