New York City - Rediscovered

A year ago to the day, I was running up and down Manhattan trying to get a Malaysian visa (I'd initially planned to travel via Malaysia on my round the world trip because Malaysia had a visa-on-arrival for Indians. They changed that rule shortly after I'd bought tickets!!)

I'd been to NYC before, as a 9 year old (for 2 days, all I remember from that trip is how cool it was to be on the 24th floor of a hotel!) and then again in 2005 (when I stayed with my uncle and aunt who had a flat in Manhattan for a year).

This time was different in many ways - I was not trying to see things (having already ticked the major attractions off my list on previous visits) - but was happy to just hang out with Chitra and Swati and Mukul and Rahul. The highlights of this trip were the Staten Island Ferry (ok, so I lied about not wanting to do the touristy things :-)), an evening at the MoMA (where I absolutely loved the Picasso sculptures, and the micro pre-fab housing display), and pizza at America's first official pizzeria!

See the pictures below for more:

2008 NYC

Chinatown bus, Boston to New York, a year ago to the day

It's been 7 months since I've been back in Edinburgh, and 8 since I posted anything on this blog. But yesterday, as I was walking back from the lab, I got thinking about how exactly a year ago (to the hour, accounting for the time zone difference) I had been boarding a chinatown bus to get from Boston to New York.

I'd heard about the Fung Wah bus (one of the chinatown bus companies - i.e buses that ran between the chinatowns of the US east coast). Business school case studies have been done on this low-cost barebones model and I'd heard and read horror stories of how drivers were sometimes rude, and passengers were sometimes even left stranded by the highway if something happened to the bus.

But things had changed, they now ran from the Boston bus terminal rather than picking up passengers from the side of a main road, offered online ticketing and even wifi on board. Still, I was prepared for the worst, but ended up travelling very comfortably in only 4 hours to New York for $15 (I got to the station and there was a bus about to leave - it wasn't Fung Wah, but Lucky Star, and ticketing/boarding was super efficient - it took only 3 minutes from the time I spotted the bus company's desk to the moment that the bus pulled out of its bay).

In New York City, the bus lived up to its name and dropped passengers in chinatown rather than at the official bus station, and it was fun to walk past the brightly lit streets and stalls selling Chinese food. Interestingly, a lot of the shops selling bags and clothes seemed to be run by Indians/Pakistanis/Bangladeshis. Odd.

Boston in a hurry

Reached Boston late in the evening on the 17th of September. Was there only for one night and left for NYC the next evening. But enjoyed the stay with Procheta (Prerona's sister - Prerona is a good friend from Edinburgh) and her flatmates a lot. I don't think I have ever met so many artists in one evening. Getting there was an adventure too - because Three phones don't roam well internationally (except in Europe) - so I had to borrow a kind Sudanese gentleman's phone at the Metro (T) station to ask for directions.

Got to see a lot in the one day that I had in Boston. The highlight was the USS Constitution.

2008 Boston

Iceland photo gallery

It's been more than 3 months since the last post, and lack of connectivity ceased being an excuse about a month and a half ago - so I guess that leaves laziness and overwhelmed-ness (as in "where do I begin?") as the next best excuses.

Decided to start by at least getting all the photos edited/cropped/captioned.

So here is the first lot

2008 Iceland

Andrea's already commented on these so I hope other people will, too.

ps. Here is a MUCH better (and in realtime) travel blog from another friend who is on a major trip: http://inbetweenneesh.blogspot.com/ (Neesha is spending 6 months in South America couchsurfing and Capoeira-ing with her buddy Aparna - http://backpackingninja.blogspot.com/)

Bill's Bæjarins Bestu

Ate a hot dog at Iceland's most famous hot dog stand. I'm with Bill on this one.

Bypassing Blue Lagoon

On summer holidays in Kolkata, Pushan, Bunti, Rohit and I would walk down to Jamuna cinema and watch classics like King Kong and Where Eagles Dare. The only "Blue Lagoon" I had heard of before today was a steamy-looking "A" rated film that they used to show trailers for at Jamuna.

Today's Blue Lagoon was equally steamy, but it wasn't just A rated - there were kids, babies, and 80 year old grandpas all enjoying it's overpriced joys. The Bláa lónið is a manmade spa about 15km south of Keflavik near a geothermal power station where the salts and silica in the hot spring water are supposed to be wonderfully curative, especially for psoriasis.





Both Andrea and Unnar thought that the 2300 ISK (about 25 USD) price was way too much for something that was essentially the same as a neighborhood swimming pool which costs a lot less. I thought it might have been worth it if I was planning to spend a couple of hours in it and had psoriasis, but not otherwise, so I skipped it. But the water really was very blue (thanks to the silica and salts).

The rest of the afternoon was spent happily wandering the Reykjanes peninsula with A and U (and little Björkvin of course). We started with the giant who lives in a cave overlooking the Keflavik Marina:





(that's her bed!)

Followed by the spot where the rift between the north american and european continental plates is only a few metres wide:









(the rift cuts through diagonally across Iceland, from the SW to the NE, so Iceland is geographically neither Europe nor N America, though it is European historically, and visually / architecturally / drinking-fountain-ly / shopping mall-aly North American (I have almost never seen a drinking fountain in Europe, and there were tons here)

Then we drove down to watch the waves crash into the shore (on a very windy day) at Reykjanesviti:



And stopped on the way back to see some icelandic horses and a geothermal power plant blowing it's nose (they release high pressure steam from newly drilled bore holes to remove all the rocks/dirts until they get pure/nearly pure steam):



(Icelandic horses are much valued internationally because they're super hardy, docile, intelligent, and have a fifth gait unlike other horses that have only four, called the flying pace which, done well, can apparently feel like flying along the ground because it isn't as bumpy as a gallop)



The 'american' feeling was complete when we ordered Pizza from a takeaway on the former US military base where A and U live now!

ps. Chris' excellent game flitta was a big hit on Sunday morning. I was telling Andrea and Unnar about it in the morning and by the evening, Unnar had the highest score (and when I checked just now, he'd beaten that again, and someone called Jarmi is running him close - am guessing he's one of Unnar's friends).

Kumin in Keflavik

The neighbours might have been wondering what the smell of frying cumin was doing at 56N-3E.

Landed in Keflavik airport yesterday and was trying to figure out how to use my phone (it was seeing all the networks but unable to connect to any) when I saw Unnar standing at the arrivals gate with my name on a sign. Andrea and Unnar are a wonderful Couchsurfing couple who live on the former american base in Keflavik. It was very interesting walking into a flat that was ENORMOUS. And, after two years of living in Edinburgh, I could instantly tell that I was in an american bathroom because of the size/layout!

Andrea's mom and partner had come for dinner and I offered to cook Indian food for everyone, so we had Chhole (chickpeas in a tomato/onion gravy) and Aloo Gobhi (potatos and cauliflowers, with Paanch Phoran - a Bengali spice mix with 5 things in it - aniseed, cumin, onion seeds, fenugreek, and mustard seeds. I think I overdid the tomatoes and the Paanch Phoran, but everyone seemed to enjoy it anyway (or they were too polite to say otherwise).

From 2008 Iceland

The flight from London Stansted to Keflavik on Iceland Express was super comfortable. The MD90 (I don´t think I've ever flown a non Boeing, non Airbus jet before) was practically empty and I stretched out on a set of three seats and took a much needed nap after having gotten up at 430am to catch the 7am flight from Edinburgh to Stansted.

From 2008 Iceland

From 2008 Iceland

From 2008 Iceland

Stansted airport had it's own share of adventure. The place is larger than I thought - but way more organized than Heartbreak Heathrow (as my mom likes to call it)- but it still had a design flaw: I had 4 hrs to kill, so I decided to take the transit shuttle (driverless two carriage fast train) to the other concourses just to see what it was like and because I like riding on anything that goes on tracks! Unfortunately, once you get to another building, you can't come back on the transit shuttle! (something about being designed to only bring international arrivals back, on the other side of passport control). So there I was, stuck at gate 30, with not a single airport official in sight. There was one other guy, who hadn't gotten off at the right stop so he was stuck there too. But unlike me, he had a flight to catch in 20 minutes. He finally got through to someone on the intercom and they said they would send a car (!) to pick us up. We were escorted (through a swipe card door I hadn't even noticed earlier) out on to the tarmac, to a waiting car, and went tearing across the airport to his gate so he could make it on time. I asked if he would be dropped right to his plane and the driver said "Can't do that, or else everyone would start deliberately getting 'lost'" :-). He said he had to pick up about 60-70 such stranded passengers every day (so clearly they need better signs saying "DO NOT GO THIS WAY IF YOU DON'T HAVE TO"). Some would be parents taking their kids on a ride in the train (same as me, except, I didn't have a parent to blame ;-)), others because they though their check-in serial number was their gate number, and still others because they thought they could get to gate 40 by walking from the stop labelled "Gates 30-39".

Anyway, the first afternoon in Keflavik was very relaxing and I had great fun playing with Björgvin who is 10 months old and is one of the happiest babies I have ever seen. Learnt lots about Icelandic history, culture and politics. Also saw the Icelandic custom of letting babies take their daytime naps outside in the open (under a covered porch, i.e. not in the direct rain) no matter how wet, windy, snowy, or cold it is), all bundled up in their prams!

ps. For those of you who are wondering - The 'rollu' in the blog URL was what my nani (mom's mom) would call anyone in the family who had the travel bug (literally 'wheels under their feet') - an honor she bestowed on my dad as well. This first post is in memory of both of them - and they would have both approved of couchsurfing - Nani was the ultimate couchsurfing host (her house in Calcutta was practically a dharamshala - so many random people, friends of friends, etc would stay there) and Baba was a great couchsurfer - having spent nights with everyone from tribals in Nagaland, to social activists in Ladakh. Oh, and funnily enough, the first time my dad met her (i.e., his future mother in law), it was as a couchsurfer! He needed a place to stay at the last minute in Kolkata for a work trip and his colleague at work said "Why don´t you go stay with my aunt in Kolkata" :-)

UPDATE: Spelling changed from Björkvin to Björgvin. Thanks Andrea!