Swiss trip Pointers

 Highlights from the trip

• If you are traveling in peak season say June-July cough up the money and get a first class Swiss travel pass
• Vegetarian food is plenty and almost all restaurants we visited had a veggie burger option and their recipes varied a lot
• In about 3 or 4 areas of Switzerland we had a "Golden India Restaurant" and not sure if they all were from same management
• Watchout for train timings while there for after 8:00PM the frequency reduces from 2 per hour to 1 per hour and sometimes the last train could be at 9:00PM or so
• If you are visiting Zermatt area specifically it is prone to extreme weathers and yes train services can get disrupted and if that happens they do run bus services and just reach the station and see your options
• IF you are in Zermatt area don't look beyond Hotel Romantica for stay, wonderful family owned place with amazing hosts and great breakfast
• The Mantra for Swiss travel was to leave hotel/apartment early and reach venue before 8:30-9;00AM to beat crowds
• Remember its Alpine and weather can change at a moments notice
• Depending on region of Switzerland, you will encounter either French or German and very little Italian and most tourist spots speak good enough English
• Lot of towns and villages take pride in being car free and some of them are only accessible by cable cars or cogwheel trains
• Don't trust Google maps for public transport and instead use the SBB app for it can give the right direction down to the last step to the hotel, won't guide you like step by step but helps a lot and more accurate than Google maps
• The number of modes of transportation the Swiss have built is mind boggling from electric buses, trams to high speed trains to gondolas to cable cars to cogwheel trains and all of them running like a well oiled machine is a feast and treat to marvels of Civil Engineering
• Every single day we accumulated at the least 15000 steps on average
• Coop, don’t know if it’s co-op or coop but they are pretty ubiquitous and they are like the HEB and Walmart hybrid. If they have a restaurant they have the best breakfast for a cheaper price
• If you really want to get a taste of Swiss I highly recommend stay in one of the off places and not the city centers like Zurich or Geneva or Interlaken
• If you are remotely interested in hiking the alps even the simple ones, I highly recommend either a hiking boots or a trail running shoes with Vibram grip sole. Yes there is a difference between with and without the Vibram grip.
• For sure the things in Swiss start late and end early specially in the remote villages and hence plan your day a bit with care
• Sorry to say, I couldn’t develop a taste for Fondue
• Swiss cows are another fun aspect for every single one has a bell around their necks and on the rainy day on top of Grindelwald a herd of them were making a music of their own
• If you are in Mt.Pilatus don’t forget their toboggan ride and if you are adventurous and in shape do their rope course. For sure it’s world class and not for the faint hearted
• Mt. Titlis is good too and does attract a lot of Indian visitors evident from the fact they served Indian food in their cafe
• Zurich hosts the Guinness record holding longest serving vegetarian restaurant Haus Hiltl, worth a visit or more and food is always great there
• Most attractions offer tickets in advance and I highly recommend checking the weather and booking your ticket in advance. Thanks to my wife Sandhya for taking care of it for us, for sure she saved quite a few hours for us.
• If there is 1 hike I recommend it will be the Mannlichen to Kline Scheidegg, beautiful hike with the mountains right in the face. Wengen in general has lots more hikes and maybe in the future we will explore. Of course walking in and around Wengen is a hike in itself.
• Make time and spend the morning for breakfast at the restaurant Piz Gloria yes the bond movie was shot there and the restaurant rotates and I assure you great food. Highly recommend their breakfast. It’s 2 step one is to buy the breakfast and next step reserve a spot too.
• Sundays everything is mostly closed, barring some museums and tourist attractions most shops are closed. 

"I am just trying to make sense"

On our recent trip to Switzerland we went to Mt. Titlis and one of the attractions there is an observation deck which is part of a restaurant and it is 50m above the glacier and costs some extra CHF for the same. Of course it becomes free if we spend 100CHF per person. 

While we were looking at the menu at the base we saw another family asking questions to the host and the hostess was explaining it is a deck which takes you 50m above and so on. The guy or mostly the dad was asking questions like what if I just go up and get a 6$ coffee and the hostess was like "you cant make it to the deck", since we had read up we tried to explain to the dude that "its their business model and people pay for it" and the guy turned to us and said "I am just trying to make sense of the cost and trying to justify". 

At that moment, I felt like, "dude, either pay up or leave" you are not the CEO of that hotel, you may not want to pay but others are willing to and hence they have set the price. 

Yes, it did irritate me more for the family was fellow Indian. Don't know from where. 

Technology adaptation in Bali

 For our recent trip to Bali, all the planning was done by Sandhya and I just went as on the tour.

It was a great trip, people were friendly and entry and exit process at airport was smooth and hassle free. There is no tip culture, yet the service is out of this world. I come from India and I can vouch the hospitality in Bali was much better. There is no tipping culture, only experienced once during the whole trip. Of course we stuck to the religious and scenic parts of Bali, Ubud and south Bali.

They are not kidding when they say traffic is bad in Bali, 2 lane roads and lots of tourists and there is no public transport 😊.

Considering the island has 70% population of Hindu’s, but the main diet is pork and meat. They have temples in every household and every village and reserved only for locals. There is no entry for foreigners. One can hire a Balinese and go to the scared areas as their guest.

Believe me, Sandhya managed to book the drivers in Bali through Instagram and WhatsApp. That’s right, the primary form of communication in Bali is WhatsApp and with Apps like Klook one can buy data plans even before landing in Bali and in our case worked seamlessly the whole time.

I used to think Thai food is spicy and Indian food can be made spicy but after tasting Balinese food, I have changed my mind. The spice levels were so high that I could not even put the thing in my mouth without gulping few liters of water.

What amazed me was the amount of technology penetration that has happened in Bali, case in point was the river rafting videos. While we enjoyed the rafts and rapids, there were drones flying at different locations capturing us and also the guide was making pit stops to collect the recordings which were transferred to their servers and downloaded to our phones while we enjoyed the food. I learnt a lot about IOS thanks to Bali trip. Another occasion is the Bali Swing, they have an efficient operation setup with men and women and all photos taken on your mobile and there is no editing and all such but end of the day beautiful pics.

At the end of the day, they are an island blessed with beautiful tropical weather. The island depends on tourism and I think that’s ingrained in the people and making it a perfect travel destination.

Ps: for the first time ever in my life and maybe last time, I stayed at a suite with a name instead of number.

Pps: we didn’t spend our time in party areas of Bali, one tip if I may give you is, if there is plans to visit water falls in Ubud, start as early as possible. Negotiate, negotiate and negotiate.

No more PIO only OCI

Back in 2010, right around the time Avni was born, I started researching the options for her as she will be born in USA and the parents were Indian citizens. People had all different solutions, some were crazy as suggesting that she can pick her citizenship when she is 18 years and others that she can get Indian citizenship if registered right at birth.

Turned out all were wrong, since she would be born on US soil, by default she would be citizen of USA and also India does not support dual citizenship.  In the end she could become either a PIO (person of Indian origin) or an OCI (overseas citizen of India).

We the parents were Indian citizens and not foreign passport holders, she could only apply to be PIO. Even further, for some reasons un known,  being PIO had way more restrictions than being an OCI, few from top of my head are, it had to be renewed every 15 years and if the person had to stay for more than 180 days in India then they had to register with nearest police station. The only saving grace was that PIO was 1 step and OCI was a 2 step and longer process.

It always pinched me that the fact that we are citizens of India and my daughter had to be PIO but if we gave up our Indian citizenship then my daughter can be an OCI. To say in another way, government of India government rewarded non-Indian citizens better than Indian citizens. I was so annoyed with this that the last 3 times I took my daughter to India, I went with a visa for her.

Thanks to Modi and the new Indian government there is no more of PIO, only OCI and all PIO’s are being converted to OCI’s.

Great going, I am happy with this. I believe it is time to make Avni an OCI.      

Eco friendly India

Remember back in March of 2013 when the city of Austin banned the use of single use carry bags and one had to pay $1 or $2 to get the carry bags? I am seeing a similar initiative in Mysore, India. If you shop in the major stores like Sapna Book House, More and Shoppers Stop at the end of your shopping you will be asked the question “Do you need a carry bag?” if you say “yes” then be prepared to cough out any where between INR 1 to INR 5. Pretty cool and nice idea but not a major impact as this value is not shared by lot of the smaller stores which makes a lion share of the stores in India. Also, in my opinion INR 1 to INR 5 is not that big for the people who shop at these locations.

The kicker was when we went to Karanji Lake, a state owned lake and nature park. At the entrance they inspected our bags and took out our “one time use plastic carry bags” and replaced them with paper bags. More about the Lake nature park at some point in the future.

Cell phones and India

In US I have always lived with AT and T as my cell phone service provider, barring a few months of hiatus in which I switched between Verizon and T-Mobile and again came back to AT and T (or Cingular as it was called then). When my wife came along I switched from single plan to family plan and with the addition of smart phones I added data plan but remained with AT and T itself. Every time I had to get a new handset due to my umpteen reasons I have signed a new 2 year contract and gotten the handset at a discounted price. For my usage, there is no concept of prepaid plans or pay as you go but I pay a fixed monthly cost each month. Another point, I am stuck with a locked phone and there is probably no concept of a dual sim.

Now compare this to the cell phone market in India

• There is no contract as we went with a prepaid plan and each street in the city has plenty of places that offer mobile currency recharge. 
• The cost of the sim was INR 100 out of which 81 was reimbursed to our call plan
• The cost of the calls is INR 1 for 1 minute for outgoing and incoming is free and INR 1 per SMS for sent only and received is free, contrast this with 20 cents per SMS both incoming and outgoing in US
• The concept of dual sim is a pretty standard affair and I know a lot of people carry dual sim phones and some even use 2 SIMs one from BSNL and one from either Airtel or Vodafone or something similar. I may be wrong but in general BSNL is a fairly standard feature.
• The killer is the internet plan or mobile data plan as it is called here, for INR 300 one can get 1GB/month plan and for INR 100 one can get 300MB/month contrast this with US where I pay $15 for 200MB/month or $20 for 300MB/month
• Thanks to the Android OS and lack of discounted phones from providers, one can witness true innovation in terms of handset design and manufacturing. One can get an extremely decent handset (dual core processor, ~1GB RAM, 4-5MP rear camera, high resolution screen, dual sim capable) for INR 10,000 or less.
• The price range and feature range of smart phone handsets is also huge INR ~7,500 to INR ~70,000 (Galaxy S4’s and Iphone’s)       
• Another plus is that one can have their choice of manufacturers (SAMSUNG, LG, PANASONIC, SONY, LENOVO, MICROMAX, KARBON, HTC, INTEX, GINOEE, APPLE, NOKIA and so on) contrast this to US where we only see 2 main ones Samsung and Apple with Sony, HTC and LG being the distant 3rd.  
• As I said before the market is highly segmented and in my observation SAMSUNG is one of the few manufacturers who is playing the whole range and I now understand why the analysts were disappointed with Iphone 5c (not cheap enough)

Before you guys pounce on me, I do agree that my analysis/comparison is not apples to apples as in US we have lot more features in the plan plan like free nights and weekends, cell phone  to cell phone free, lots of wireless hotspots and so on. Also, I haven’t played around with budget carriers like Cricket or Virgin wireless in US. 

Men eat 33% more than women

Shocked by the title, its not my statement but a statement by a reputed restaurant called Rajdhani in Bangalore. Don’t believe me, I have the proof below.

During our recent Bangalore visit our good friend took us for a lunch at this Rajasthani restaurant called Rajdhani. The food was wonderful and the service was nice too. In our state of extreme contentment we didn’t look at the bill and paid it off. But my curiosity made me look at the bill once for sake of it and I must say I was slightly surprised to see that I have been charged 33% more than the other 3 persons having lunch with me.

The location of Rajdhani that we went to was UB city mall, the construction of the mall made me understand why kingfisher airlines has gone bankrupt.

Not fair, I fight for equality :).

Does the name India itself brings out the “take it easy” attitude

My daughters tourist visa to India expired and had to be renewed for the upcoming trip. After my first experience of sending by post, I decided to personally go and drop it off at the office in Houston. This time around Travisa is no longer the company it has been transferred to a different one called BLS international.

The new company is pretty professional and their website is pretty detailed. After due diligence and processes, I made an appointment for a particular day at 11:00AM. I showed up at the office at 10:45AM and here is how the conversation went

BLS: Hello, may I help you

me: Hi, I have a visa appointment for my daughter at 11:00, should I come back as it is not 11:00 yet

BLS: No you are fine, can I see your appointment letter

me: Sure, here you go

The lady looked at it once and started looking for my daughters name in her list of appointments sheet. She had a total of 3 sheets of paper and going by the font size I would guess a total of 50 odd names. She glanced through the whole list once and couldn’t find it and meanwhile I was getting slightly worried.

BLS: the appointment is in this name right? (pointing at my daughters name on a sheet)

me: yes

She handed me the first sheet and asked me to look through if I can find it while she looked through others. I took the sheet and looked at the appointment times it was sheet for appointments from 9:00-10:00

me: Maam, these are for appointments from 9:00-10:00 but mine is at 11:00

BLS: Oh yeah, found it

She marked my daughters name with a yellow marker and asked me to take a seat.

Assuming the BLS lady marks up all the names that has showed up for the appointment, there were only a couple of marked up names on the sheet I was looking at and couple more on the sheet the lady from BLS was looking at. So, does this mean people made appointments and never showed up during their appointment time? I think that is the obvious conclusion. If they haven’t shown up during their time then will they show up at some arbitrary time as they please?

Taking a guess here,since it is a visa for India and looking at all the people present there it will most likely be people like me who have booked their appointments and have not shown up. My thoughts on this incident,

1. If one cannot keep the appointment that too for a visa then why make it in the first place?
2. Would we do the same thing if we were applying for visa for any other country like Europe or while applying for USA visa from India?
3. I am fairly certain the people who booked these appointments are fairly educated and in some sort of white collar job. So, why this don’t care attitude for the Indian visa? 
4. Does the name India itself brings out the “take it easy” attitude in people?
5. For BLS, If you can make an appointment and can still show up anytime then why keep these slots for appointments?
6. For the BLS folks, since you know this is the case then why not just organize the appointment names in alphabetical order and be done or why not do the TRAVISA way and do on first come first serve basis. 

To be fair, I didn’t pay attention to the names to guess the origins of the people who did not show up for their appointment nor did I talk to the BLS folks to know how this business work and my post is based solely on my singular experience in that office.         

When the intentions are strong . . . . .

This incident happened nearly a year ago. Back in 2009 we made a trip to India and in that we had planned to visit the Bangalore Ashram. The reason to visit the ashram was two fold, one was to see the place itself and the other was to buy stuff from the divine shop in the ashram. All was well and we picked a date to visit the ashram and since we were travelling from Mysore to Bangalore we added couple more items to our agenda.

We reached Bangalore as we had planned and thanks to my laid back attitude and inadequate planning, by the time we reached the Ashram there was a satsang about to start and because of which they had closed both the divine shop and the main meditation hall. We were told they will open it after the satsang, we were a bit disappointed but we got to see guruji and that took away half the disappointment. Since we had to return to Mysore the same day we couldn’t wait for the satsang to finish and then the divine shop to open. So, we came back empty handed from the Ashram.

After returning to Mysore, we checked out the local music stores to see if they had any of the CDs we wanted and all we got in return was bad (read angry) customer support. All avenues were closed and I was thinking we should make another trip to Bangalore before we get back to the US.

A day or so later some volunteers from Art of living Mysore came around distributing flyers about their upcoming courses and events. My in-laws took the flyer and kept it on the table. I saw the flyer and I remember making comments on its design and sandhya took it for safe keeping and we forgot all about it as we had a wedding to prepare for (sandhya’s sisters wedding).

One fine evening I had a brain flash and it occurred to me that if the Art of Living Mysore is a big enough chapter, then they probably have their own divine shop and I could get my CDs from there. So, I called the number on the flyer and the lady on the other side was really nice (true with any AOL volunteer whose phone number is listed on the flyer) and she told me that they do not have a divine shop yet but there is something better going on in Mysore. She directed me to Mysore Dasara exhibition where Art of Living foundation had a stall.

Next day evening we strolled to the exhibition grounds and visited the stall, we found all the things we wanted and much much more. I was ecstatic, it had saved my extra trip to Bangalore and since I was in the exhibition grounds I visited the Navakarnataka press stall also and got to pick up couple of books from there as well.

Later It occurred to me, when the intentions are strong, nature will show a way and all I had to do was to energize my brain cells and do a little effort.              

Columbia river gorge drive

The famous Columbia river of Oregon has carved through the mountains and created the gorge and the scenic highway, which was our destination on day 2 of our Portland trip. We started off a bit earlier than previous day and started our drive to the gorge, idea was to drive through the highway and end up at Mt. St Hood by dusk and drive back.    

Columbia river gorge scenic highway is a narrow and windy road that runs parallel to a highway. True to its name, it is scenic, on the  way before entering the gorge itself we witnessed some beautiful farms and view points. Since it was a bit early in the morning the view from the view points were foggy.   

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Driving along the gorge we realized the gorge has a ton of water falls, some big some small, some have nicely built access and some are more obscure.

The first one we stopped at was a small water fall with a short hike, there was a ranger led program going on at the same time we were there. We couldn’t attend the program but managed to hear snippets from the ranger. It was from him that I heard that the gorge has over a 100 water falls.

The next one was a more obscure one with no clear view of the falls and we had to do a couple of miles round trip to clearly view the falls, which we had to pass, but the hiker in us wanted to do at least a small hike and hence we took the small hike to the famous Multnomah falls. The distance was small but it had more ups and downs. Thanks to the rain and the abundant shade in the gorge there were a lot of ferns growing underneath the tall trees. Frankly, I had never seen such lush green fern undergrowth till then. The path had a magic of its own. It took a while for us to reach our destination but it was well worth the time.

Multnomah falls, is the biggest falls on the gorge and a true tourist attraction. It is not as big as the other falls in the world but definitely very scenic. It is a cascade of 2 water falls and a viewing bridge in front of the falls. It is a small hike up to the bridge to view the falls in full glory and the bridge was real crowded. There was a hike going up to top of the falls which we passed. Since it was time for lunch we stopped at the restaurant near the falls for food, being vegetarians the only option we had was the burger and the waitress commented that they get a lot of visitors from Texas and I thought we Texans need some escape from heat every now and then.

Driving along we made a stop at one last water falls called Horse tail falls, Sandhya was very happy to for she could take off her shoes and get her feet wet and I was happy to click pictures of the falls and her. If I remember right, this was the last water fall along the scenic highway and the road merged on to the actual highway after this.          

Driving along the highway towards Mt Hood, we saw the exit for Bonneville Dam and after a couple of moments of hesitation we took it. The dam wasn’t much and Sandhya wasn’t impressed at all. But it was almost full and due to security reasons they didn’t allow us any where on the dam. 

The exit on the road that would have led to Mt Hood was so backed up that we passed Mt Hood and made a U turn and head home. The drive back even though not the official scenic route but it was still pretty and scenic most of the way.

On the next post I will write about Crater Lake and Redwoods.  

Portland trip part – 1 : Rose garden and Japanese garden

Me and Sandhya love traveling and would love to take time off from Austin few times a year. So, when the time came to decide on where do we want to go for this year’s vacation, the choice wasn’t easy to make. Considering Sandhya’s present condition hiking was ruled out and hence most of our favorites were crossed from the list. No California and no Utah left us with east coast or north west coast. We picked the north west when my brother announced that he will be moving to Portland for his new job.

When we landed in Portland, it was a near perfect 70F temperature and the greenery of the place completely impressed me. There were a ton of rose plants planted along the side walks. While in Portland we visited a few places in the city, took a road trip to Crater lake and Redwood national park. Also, did a road trip to Mt St Helens. In this part I will cover the places in Portland.

Rose Garden: My brother who is currently a resident of Portland and had visited the places before mentioned that Portland Rose garden and Japanese gardens were worth a visit.  He also cautioned us that it is off season for roses. We wanted to start the trip slow and easy, we drove to the rose garden. First thing that amazed me was there were a ton of roses for the off peak season and the park visit was free. They had multi colored roses, some specially bred and dedicated to great personalities. they had roses with single layer of petals to roses with multiple layers of petals. I was amazed with both the quality and quantity of roses in the garden. Some of the roses were in bunches while some were individual, some roses were shrubs while some were individual plants.

           

           

          

They truly had some unique colored roses. Considering it was  a weekday and afternoon there were considerable number of tourists in the place. I had to control my shutter finger and see the roses through the naked eyes rather than through the camera lens. The fragrance in the garden is worth mentioning and sad there is no technology to capture the same. It was very colorful and picturesque. I wish I had taken an over all picture of the rose garden to share. Since the garden is on a hill top it also offers a beautiful view of the down town In the end, I recommend rose garden and it is worth the time.

Japanese Garden : Just above the hill top from the rose garden is the famous Portland Japanese garden. There is a small road that we could walk up or there is a free ride shuttle ride to take us up to the park. I have to mention the effort the shuttle driver made to accommodate a handicap women and her scooter into the shuttle, made me think this guy should run for the senate or even better governor. Unlike the rose garden visiting Japanese garden costs money ($10 entry fee). It is a nice place but we weren’t completely blown away by the garden, may be our lack of understanding for Japanese culture or our eyes were colored by such beautiful roses. The garden had some unique and nice things and supposedly one of the Japanese ambassadors to US had told that this place is the most authentic Japanese garden outside Japan.

      

      

They had a few unique things and it was real clean and well maintained. I think we spent less time at the Japanese garden than we spent at the rose garden. After the Japanese garden we thought we would head towards Powell book house but on the way we stopped for coffee and shopped at a locally owned grocery store, which my brother said there were a lot of them in Portland. Finally instead of Powell book house we headed home. 

Day 2 of the trip we headed towards Columbia river gorge.