Watch your sugar intake...

I've been reading some nutrition related information and books the last few weeks and have learnt one thing: that sugar is a killer! Here's an nytimes article in which the author (also of the book: Good calories, bad calories ...) discusses at length the perils of sugar and how the American sugar industry has kept legislation away from acting on sugar.

OTOH, in India, we happily munch away at our Deepavali sweets ignoring the perils of Type II diabetes, which is already an epidemic in India. Time to pause and think!

Not just sweets, it's also time to be watchful of products that look and proclaim to be 'healthy' on the outside. Here's one such.

 

Panoramas from Nagarjuna sagar

According to APTDC, Nagarjuna sagar is the largest masonry dam in the world! That’s quite a feat! But, low inflows mean it’s an absolutely dry dam. The drive to the dam was quite good and was such a pleasant drive!

The 300 sq km expanse of the Nagarjuna sagar offers some great panoramic views! Here are some of the photos, each stitched (using Photo Gallery) from at least a dozen photos shot hand-held. The 360˚ panorama (first one) is stitched from 24 photos!
 

 



 
If you're living in Hyderabad, there is no reason why you would not plan a weekend trip here. The best time is during or after the monsoons (July through December, and maybe, January). And, if you're going with your family, plan on staying at Haritha Vijay vihar hotel, pretty good for a government run hotel - just don't expect decent room service. The hotel has a very nice swimming pool (open from 7am-7pm), online-booking, and convenient 24-hour check-outs to boot!

Seedha, Ondhe Roadu!

It had been many months since I ventured out on a driving vacation. With a sedate car, driving is not as fun as I'd like it to be. And unlike Bangalore, Hyderabad is relatively far away from nice driving holiday vacations that you can visit over a weekend. But then, there is always this hidden gene that pushes me to venture out. I cave in when a hindu festival (vinayaka chathurthi) and a muslim festival (ramzan) came together to give me a 5-day long weekend! With a wife, a 1.5 year old kid, half-a-dozen red bulls, and a few pain killers, I set out on my journey to conquer the north west of Karnataka. Let me say this up front: It was a mind blowing experience!

On a fine Wednesday morning 5:45am, the Honda came to life only to stop at a hotel in Hubli at 5:40pm! This is the route we took.


The road from Hyderabad to Gooty (pronounced guthi as in guthi vankaya, a world-famous Andhra specialty brinjal dish) is, as many would agree, absolutely stunning! Sparse traffic, beautifully paved roads, nice scenery, all add-up.



In fact, it is made even more pleasing due to the connectivity to this road from the Hyderabad outer ring road (this is, at the moment, Hyderabad's own Autobahn!). We gobbled up this stretch of 300 odd kilometres by around 9:30 in the morning.

The baby woke up for food and we pulled off a few kilometres on the road to Guntakal (pronounced, Gunthakalu). This is where the road stretch becomes less desirable. You will know that you've reached Guntakal when you see this giant Hanuman statue.

As soon as you cross the border into Karnataka though, the road condition gets appreciably better and brilliant beyond Bellary but only until Hospet.

We stopped at Hospet for a quick lunch at Hotel Malligi - at INR 50, the lunch was nothing great to write home about but our perceptions about this hotel was about to change a few days later!
Due to construction activity near the tungabadhra dam, first 30 kilometres of the road from Hospet to Hubli is not good and full of trucks. After you endure this, you're greeted with nice asphalt all the way up to Hubli. Sunflower farms on either side of the road, crisscrossing rivers make the drive very pleasant! We stopped enroute many times to click photos.



We reached the hotel at Hubli (Hotel Hans) at around 6 in the evening! I was tired, pale, and exhausted even though the ride was enjoyable. We spent the rest of the day watching Udaya Movies!
--Day 2--
We didn't plan our trip well and that was the biggest fun factor. I was to go to Dandeli forest because I heard good things about the place. The hotel receptionist recommended against it saying that the forest will most likely be closed due to rains. He suggested that we go to Magod falls instead. Other option was to go to the world-famous Jog falls but that was about 180 kilometres away and would be another long and tiresome drive. So, we decided to listen to the receptionist and decided to go to the Magod falls. Man, was he right!
It was the drive of my life. Incredibly good roads. Every driver worth his salt in India should experience the drive here. We were driving through the ghats but it didn't feel like one! See for yourself. I just took a brief respite from enjoying the 80kmph twisties for a brief moment to capture these pictures. A mild drizzle added to the bliss!





And Magod falls? Stunning! Blink your eyes and you'll miss the exit to Magod falls (which is about 60kms from Hubli city center). The road gets progressively narrow. And, as it was a peak rainy season, there was a lot of fog as well.



After visiting Magod falls, we could've returned home. I thought, what the hell… let's go to Gokarna! The road threw even more twisties and some inclines as we climbed up the ghats until we hit the National highway connecting Goa to Mangalore. We took a left turn. The highway, again, was splendid. As we approached Gokarna, I became a little tired. It was close to 3. That's when something dawned on me. We were climbing down from the ghats into the beach. Suddenly, there were water bodies everywhere. Most importantly, the seemed to be well above and we were down. With an ability to swim continuously only for 40 seconds without drowning, I started feeling very queasy! I pressed on without showing it out. The long commute also had taken its toll.
But, it was well worth it! It's a quaint little town with 4 beach stretches. Om beach (because it looks like Om) is the most famous one and we had little time only to cover this. Remember, we had to get back to the hotel before it would turn dark. If you go, plan on spending some time here. The village is small and you can cover all the beaches by walking through small picturesque hillocks!



On the way back, we stopped by at a Kamat restaurant, a couple of kilometres ahead of the intersection (where we turned left). We hurried back to the hotel only to discover that we really could not hurry back! I started pouring. I thought it was fun. But, the roads turned dark rapidly! Now, I was in the ghats, on a national highway, no street lamps whatsoever, in a dark raining night. Thankfully, the rains subsided. But, then came down the fog. And heavy rains! Visibility came down to about 5 feet in front of me, with the dipper! Ours was the only vehicle on the road for many miles. To add to this, we spotted a woman in a hazy yellow/white dress who would just stand on the road not bothered about the heavy rain as if waiting for someone. It was eerie, man! Just don't attempt this. :)
We did reach the hotel safely silently kicking myself for attempting something very stupid and putting the wife and a little girl at risk. But, thanked my car profusely for not breaking down anywhere!
--Day 3--
Again, we didn't have a plan! So, we checked out of the hotel (oh, btw, I must tell you that the buffet breakfast spread at Hotel Hans was decent to very good! Try their tomato chutney if you happen to go. Awesome!) and headed to Badami. I had heard about Vatapi (Badami in olden days!) in my history text books and recently in a Tamil classical novel. We called up KSRTC and booked a room in their facility (Mayura Chalukya). The drive was very good again! In general, I was really surprised with the quality of the roads (non GQ) in Karnataka. We reached the place after a couple of hours' scenic drive. There were some stretches where it would appear that you're going inside a village. But, don't bother. You'll eventually find Badami.





No matter how good the roads are, we Indians always find a way into clumsy situations, like this! 1 truck + 5 tractors: all damaged!


The hotel was a big disappointment. Well, not entirely. When we saw it from outside, it looked great! Like a resort.



But, when we got inside, we were given this room!


A classic case of demand vs supply. This was the cheapest AC accommodation we could find. There was another 2-star hotel (but locals think it's a 5-star one) that charges close to 4000 bucks a day. We wished we spent the extra and stayed there.

We visited the Badami caves (cum fort) and a temple. There was not much else to do there. Strange as it may sound, they wouldn't allow me carry a tripod inside! To take it, you have to get written permission from Hubli from some KSRTC officer and carry it with you! Crazy stuff!





It was a fairly disappointing day. We just wished the night would pass.

--Day 4--
Early next day, we checked out and drove off to Hospet. Just a few kilometres before Hospet was the tungabadhra dam. We stopped their to check it out. It was a good hike. Nice and windy! We grabbed a nice light lunch.


The tungabadhra reservoir committee members must have been a creative bunch. Or, they must have had an English professor for a chief. We found 'advices' like these littered every few yards.


Then, we drove back to Hotel Malligi. We had called them up earlier in the day to book a room. When we went there, things were ready and we were checked in. What a pleasant surprise the hotel was! The rooms were very good and nicely appointed. They gave us a complimentary breakfast coupon for the next day and told us that the breakfast will be open from 6am. Perfect!


We leisurely drove our way to Hampi (a few kilometres from Hospet). Mistake, big mistake! We just had a couple of hours in the evening to see all of Hampi, an entire kingdom in ruins. There was a piece of history every few yards. I just could not get enough of it. We had to leave as it was getting dark. I'd advise anyone going here to hire a bicycle and roam around the town for 2 days discovering everything about the great Vijayanagara empire. You can get a map from the Hotel reception.



The marketplace in olden days!


The famous vittala temple.



--Day 5--
After a great upma and filter coffee for the owner, the Honda City started its journey on its way back to Hyderabad. It was a long boring drive until Gooty. After which, we just flew our way into Hyderabad! The drive back was lifeless until we saw this car hurtling down at 100kmph.

No dearth for lunatics in the great motherland!

Okay, I didn't tell you why this post is titled 'Seedha, ondhe roadu'! That's the response you usually get when you ask a by-stander to go to any place in Karnataka! :) It just means, "keep going straight". And most often, you just need to do that to get wherever you wanted to.

We reached home after a cathartic drive on the Hyderabad ORR!

Developing a popular software

Here I was waiting at the Charlotte Douglas International airport waiting to catch my flight back to India. As a couple move away from one of those nice rocking chairs, I move in to occupy one of those. The husband reads out the logo in T-shirt and asks me, "Are you a SharePoint developer?" In reply, I tell him that I work for Microsoft as part of the SharePoint team. The lady in her early 40s screams, "I love SharePoint. I use it everyday." Wow... can there be something that can make me more happy? Some stranger moves in and tells me that she loves the software that my team is building. I, as a programmer, derive utmost satisfaction when realb users tell me that they're using the software I'm building. And then she goes on to add, "I don't send attachments any more in my emails. I just send them links. So, even if I had to update the document, I can very well do it and not have to resend the email."

I didn't realize this could be such a killer feature. Just makes me believe more in the cloud. Cloud is the future, I guess. I hope India gets usable Internet speeds to make cloud possible. Cloud offerings will take computers to more people in India.

Sleeper buses

Travelling by bus has come a long long way. Gone are the days when the luxuriest bus was a Thiruvalluvar from the TN state. While the local city commute has been made incredibly commuter friendly by the introduction of B7R in all the 3 southern big cities, the long distance travel by bus continued to remain painful. Then came the Volvos adapted for comfortable semi-sleeper travel (remember the KSRTC’s airaavath service between Bangalore and Madras?) it was still no match for even a peaceful sleeper class travel in the local train notwithstanding the cockroaches, rats, and other rodents that we frequently encounter in the sleeper class coaches. So, I always chose the 2^nd AC train travel for long distance commutes.

The Indian Railways’s 2^nd class AC travel is superior and strikes a pretty good compromise between 3^rd AC and 1^st AC in terms of cost and comfort. The 2^nd class AC offers curtains, removes the clumsy middle-tier, provides bulbs for individual berths for night-time reading, has a longer side-berth, and better AC efficiency by virtue of accommodating fewer passengers. But, this is only on paper. More than 75% of the times I took the 2^nd AC coach, the AC was never set at the right temperature – there will always be an odd old couple who’d want the AC turned off or want the temperature increased significantly. And the reading bulbs will most likely be fused out not to mention the stinking toilets. And most importantly, despite the coach you take, even the superfast trains have an average speed of 55 kmph! A typical travel from Hyderabad to Madras (or approximately 670 kilometres) will be anywhere between 13 ½ hours and 20 hours depending on your luck.

In come the sleeper buses. The Volvo semi-sleeper buses, I must admit, are not quite comfortable. With no support to hold my foot firmly, I tend to slide down and down until I wake up and adjust myself. This is hugely uncomfortable. The sleeper buses, on the other hand, allow you to sleep in your natural position (See the pictures – this one was from kesineni travels plying between Hyderabad and Madras). The average cost of travel between the 2 cities is in the ballpart of Rs. 1000/- and has great goodies – A personal 240v AC charging station, personal portable monitor for the movies, and an ear plug for each berth! And a helpful staff who would generally be willing to play the movie you request. This is cheaper than the 2^nd AC train ticket, berths nearly as comfortable, reaches the destination faster, leaves a little late in the evening so you can wrap your work day as usual, and has a zillion dropping points (not so many in Madras, though).

The catch? There’s no toilet, which will be a huge turn-off for the passengers of the fairer sex. We men have no problems in shamelessly peeing on the roadside (blame the government for not building public toilets on the GQ).

Guten Abend!