Trip to Gothics, Adirondack Mountains.

The trip to Gothics had been cancelled twice. Once because it was tough for people to find two continuous days to spare on a long weekend. Other time we had a more stupid reason, but I don't remember now.This time, for the sake of Gothics, we decided to drop those who were not "free" enough. Still we had 9 people in our group, 4-5 more than the optimal size. It is not optimal because, you run a fatal risk of having everyone who reads your Facebook status message, with you right there. Actually this didn't deter some of us from updating their status from the top of the mountain. I hope they got lots of "likes" and "+1's" for their additional effort after climbing the mountain.

Coming back to the trip, in preparation for these 9 people, we booked lean-to at JBL (John's Brook Lodge) for Saturday night's stay. It can be reserved beforehand (all the state owned ones are first come first served) and was wild enough for our taste (thankfully not wild enough for the bear's taste that day). On Friday night we stayed at a motel in Glen Falls. In the morning, after having a little too much of the breakfast, we left for the garden parking lot. Because of the frequent download breaks, we reached late and couldn't find a spot. A word of advice, be there before 7 on long weekends. Since we didn't follow this advice, we parked in a close by parking lot and took a shuttle to garden (that took almost half hour extra).

We started the hike around 8:30 and reached JBL at around 10:30. In preparation of a long hike ahead, we had lunch. At this point I discovered that our zealous friends have packed some avocados, "boondi ke ladoo" and around half the BJ's for the 2 day trip.
With a heavy stomach and without avocados we started the hike to Gothics. The area around JBL is filled with trails and it is advisable to have a clear picture/map/idea of what trail you want to take. We went towards Lower Wolfjaw from the registration post. After around 2 hrs we reached the fork, where we changed our direction to go towards Upper Wolfjaw. The other direction leads to Lower Wolfjaw. It was an intelligent decision to skip the round trip to it and it will be soon clear why.

The ascent to Upper Wolfjaw was really tough, but that was just the beginning. The views from the top were decent, but the climbing ordeal forced us to take a long break. From there we went to Armstrong. The view of Gothics from there was awesome and intimidating at the same time. That was one of the moments when you say to yourself " How the hell am I planning to climb this thing ?". Few people had told us that Gothics is the real prize. But according to me the views from Armstrong were also quite good, except that from Gothics you get a 360 view.


From Armstrong to Gothics was not very difficult and we reached at the top at around 5. Gothics was worth the wait and had amazing views. In the immediate neighbourhood, it is the tallest peak, so give you 360 views. Also you can look at Marcy and Algonquin (the highest peaks in Adirondack) from a distance and appreciate the scene.

The toughest part of Gothics hike is supposed to be the chained part which takes you towards Saddleback mountain. You have to go down a bare rock face with a 45 degree slope. It is more scary than dangerous. Except few casualties, we had no major incident. Actually all of us were able to come down injury free, but it took almost two hours to cover that section (all because of the able guidance of few pro hikers in our group).

That delay ensured that we traveled last two hours in darkness and last one hour without knowing what was 1 meter away from us. Ultimately we ended in the lean to at around 10:30, completely battle wounded. Some point before that we realized that the one bottle of water-purifier we had given to some hikers was the only bottle we had. The other one had just cotton. So we had fresh untreated Adirondack water, and till now everyone is alive (at least till one week back).

The food tasted really good. But surprisingly we were not able to finish avocados and around 50% of the food we got. Then without further ado, we went to sleep and no bear or snake was able to disturb us. In the morning, after having Maggi (the best breakfast), we came out to Garden parking lot. Few of us came back to NJ and few visited Lake Placid etc. close by.

Overall the trip was fun and made possible by the help of this website. They have detailed topographic maps and lot of information in general about the Adirondacks.
http://www.adirondackjourney.com/
The trip we did is mentioned as "Lower Range" but traveled in opposite direction.

Python

The day has finally arrived. The blog post which nobody thought will happen, has happened. I had planned to work in theoretical computer science even before entering computer science department. As an ardent believer in the sanctity of mathematics, I avoided programming at all cost. As a wannabe cool dude, never showed any traits of a geek. But today I will shed all the inhibitions and write about a programming language, called "Python".

Few days back, my friend "Bandar-hair" convinced me to learn Python. His name is being changed because of the privacy issues (I like to believe that many people read my blog, in spite of the evidence for the contrary). Many thanks to him, for the wonderful advice.

The reason why it is awesome is because of the intelligence in the structure and design. To start with there are NO DECLARATIONS. Sometimes I also don't know whether the variable is integer, double or single; but the language knows:). The amazing thing is it has almost all operations for every data type. So a string can be added or multiplied, all with the usual symbols. So just name a variable and let the program take care of data type. Another brilliant thing, You don't need to put semicolon or dot after every sentence. In effect, saves at least 1 compilation error every 5 lines you write.

Lets come to more substantial points. It has extensive libraries which cover Matlab, Maple and Mathematica. So you get all the functionality without the rigid and painful syntax. And like scheme, you can pass functions as arguments. That give the programmer immense power, which I don't know how to use :P. A small point, if you write "if i=10", the interpreter shows you an error, and does not assume it to be always true. See, a very intelligent language.

This fills up my quota of talking about a programming language intelligently (or in a partially intelligent way). I knew this entry was going to be short, but still I underestimated my coolness (or overestimated my geekiness). It all started with a small tutorial "Learn Python the hard way", available on net, and finished before the tutorial was not over.

Given that I have finished the blog entry before the tutorial, probably should look into alternate career path :P. On this thought, let me say good bye and leave you wondering about your career path.

NYC eatathon

There are few people in this world who eat to live. They have the liberty to stop reading now. This post is for people who live to eat. Yeah, we are going to talk about a food filled day in New York city.

My quest for finding a good lunch place in "The Big Apple" for a recent trip made me realize the potential of NYC. So we (party of 5) decided that just a lunch can't do justice to this place. Only a complete day devoted to exploring street food will satisfy us. So below you will find the list of places we tried and "non useless" information about them.

1. NYDosas : Washington Square , Sullivan st. Probably the only vegetarian place to get best street food prize. We included this place so that the only veg guy in our group couldn't complain later (but didn't help :( ). The Samosa was excellent, Uttapam was good but we didn't like dosas. One of us really liked the Rava Masala Dosa (but he also thinks "boiled plain lentils" is a delicacy:P)

2. Mamoun's Falafel: 119 Macdougal st, Greenwich village. They don't just taste good when you are drunk. We had veg falafel and chicken kebab, both were awesome. One of the best places we tried that day, not a small compliment :).

3. Meat on a stick Chinese kebabs (Xinjiang Kebabs) : Divison st at Forsyth st. This is the place in Chinatown where you get 1$ chicken, lamb or beef kebabs. We ate at one of the cart and still not sure if that is the famous one. The kebabs were decent but slightly sweet. For the first time tasted cumin powder in Chinese cuisine.

4. Margon Cuban sandwich : 46th st between 6th and 7th avenue. Great lunch and breakfast place. Things to try are roast chicken, Cuban sandwich and roast pork. This place was the motivation for the entire eatathon.

5. Biryani Cart : 46th st and 6th avenue: Best Bombay spicy chicken biryani ever , better than the one you get in Mumbai :). Previously decided to leave it because one friend said "not another desi place man". Not listening to him was an intelligent decision. There were no kebabs that day, they should be good also.

6. Ben ash : cheesecake place . I am not giving the address because don't want anyone else to waste the money. Lesson: Don't listen to people who only eat sweets and are vegetarian :P.

7. Burger joint at Le Parker Meridian : 56th st between 6th and 7th avenue. Yeah, this is the name of the place. It is "in" Le Parker Meridian and it is not expensive. To reach this place, go inside Le Parker, ask the receptionist and follow his pointers exactly. Great burgers (cheeseburger and hamburger only), and nice milk-shake. Definitely worth it for its location. Oh and for its burgers also.

8. Creperie NYC : 112 Macdougal st in Greenwich village. Good place to try Crepe, if you know how to pronounciate "Crepe".

9. Joe's Pizza : 7 Carmime st (at Bleecker st). Heard that they have the best pizza in NY. Huge disappointment, probably because they didn't have many toppings. We made every effort to like it, went there after Backfence, but still.

10. Backfence : 155 Bleecker st in village. The pub was just legen ...... dary. It had live music, both the bands were really good. Lot of beer on tap and free peanut. To top it, you can throw them on the ground:). Really great atmosphere and enjoyed throughly.

If you are taking so many advices, take one more. Don't listen to anyone else, go to NYC and try these places yourself:).

Inspite of the Gods

It is a hard task for a foreigner to write about India. There are already many books which praise India without any limit (Shantaram, Maximum city). On the contrary author should be really brave to write something critical, just because we are too many and we are everywhere :P. That is why "inspite of the gods" is such a wonderful book. It is very critical but does not demean India by any means, because it is honest.

The author, Mr. Edward Luce reported for Financial Times from 2001 to 2005. It is merely a collection of his observations about Indian Society. He talks about multiple things in very different dimensions which affect our country. Given that he is a journalist, there is not much of a flow to the book:P and that is going to be my only crib about this book.

You expect that this will be a book review. But just to make you go through the entire blog post, I am going to claim that it is about problems faced by past, present and "most probably but hopefully not" future India. The book will only provide the motivation, facts and ideas; rest everything is mine. You can safely conclude that book is a great read and well worth spending time on (specially if you are also living outside India and want to feel that you give a damn).

Before reading this book I used to blame education (lack of) and population (by no means lack of) for almost all the problems in India. Rest would have been blamed on issues which arise because of education and population :). Half of you already disagree with me, because you think that population is a strength and not weakness. It is because skilled (most cases educated) population, and not just population, is a strength according to me. Since both education and population are tied in a vicious circle, where one affects the other, breaking this circle might greatly help India.

But after reading this book, the finger can be pointed to another major culprit, caste system. There is a saying in India \ref~{In spite of the gods} "we don't cast our vote, we vote our caste". The side effect is having leaders, who think, making their giant statues everywhere is going to improve the condition of poor people "drastically". People are chosen because they belong to certain caste and not because they are qualified. Given that prime minister is a hereditary title in our country (almost), this leaves very few places where qualification counts.

The discrimination on the basis of caste is still very prominent. Ironically it seems people can't escape from this prejudice after changing their religion also. The book states that most of the clergymen in India are from upper caste, and there are places of worship in most of the religions still not accessible to lower caste converts. Probably this intolerance motivates people from lower caste to adapt practices like dowry and discrimination against "lowerer" classes, so as to show that they belong to higher caste. The removal of caste system will help Indian society and specially unmarried youth who can't find partner in their caste.

Coming back to the book, another appeal is its honest criticism. It talks about how "Khadi" was important for freedom movement, but its continued love affair with government was a deterrent to fabric industry. The other fascination, socialism, motivated by Nehru and Indira Gandhi, inhibited the progress of Indian economy and still does. This is open to discussion, but it is high time that we privatize at least some of the industries (at least Air India).

One of the interesting fact which I was not aware of pertains to Aryan Invasion Theory. The author states that there was definitely a migration from central Asia. The point where historian differ is that whether it was invasion or not. So the contention is about "Invasion" and not the "Migration" part. The idea that Aryans were indigenous is the creation of Hindu nationalist. I tried to confirm this from various sources and author's opinion seems true. But more information about this will be really helpful.

It is shocking when someone questions your beliefs, so deeply rooted in you because of your upbringing in a certain environment. The following self-inspection gives rise to clarifications, more confusion and a new blog post :). So go on, give it a try and you might have something to write about.

Trip to the lone star

This story unfolds as all the usual ones with parents coming to visit their child/ren in America. And yeah the first trip was to Niagara by default. Since I have already qualified to be a "desi" by visiting Niagara twice ( once with friends, other with parents), now I should only look for a girl whose parents have already visited Niagara. Anyway I expressed my astonishment at the gigantic waterfall, "again", and condemned myself never to go back there. Definitely not from the US side.

Luckily that was not the only trip this fall. After much deliberation, I decided to go ahead with the Texas trip. There was a certain anxiety about landing in an airport named after George Bush, probably because of all the viewings of the "Daily Show" when he was the president. You have to concede that the show was a lot funnier under his presidential term.

Now you would expect a detailed account of all the hot spots in Texas. Let me hamper your hopes already. We are only going to talk about social and political differences, somewhat shocking, between north (NJ) and the south (Texas). Given the democratic values (the party ones) instilled in every NJ resident, it was really hard not to be surprised at the stark contrast between two states. So here goes the list.

The first thing "you get tired of" is how frequently you hear "god bless Texas". It seems impossible even for all the innumerable gods of our religion to give away blessings at that rate. Probably I landed at religious/political places most of the time there, but my ears have never heard "god bless New Jersey" from someone in NJ, although occasional "god bless New York" can definitely be heard.

I was equally amazed to see monuments for Southern Confederacy in the Capitol Building at Austin. It made me go back to history books again and read about the civil war. This was my first visit to any Confederacy state and never thought of their perspective on the civil war. There should be a discussion about there reasons for going to the war, but wait, that will be the topic of another blog entry:P.

Lets not talk about only the controversial political topics and shift the focus to a delicious point. Yeah, that is food ... fried food. Luckily we were able to sneak into one of the county fairs. That earned me an opportunity to see all the celebrated food stuff which I had only heard about. Fried butter, fried cheese and fried ice cream were still palatable, but the cherry on the cake was
fried coke. As it turned out later, fried coke had won the "most creative" food in one of the state fairs.

To conclude, the trip was entertaining to say the least. The malls were really big and saw hockey game inside a mall for the first time. The vegetables and fruits were XXL too. But was unluckily enough so as not to go on those long highways with no cars, or to meet our ex-president, whose name was given to so many of the public places (It helps to have the same name as your father).