Trip to India...

I have already written about my travel ordeal, so would be writing about the places I visited: Kanpur, Bangalore, Goa and Chennai.

KANPUR: For those of you who dont know me well enough, I spent the first 18 years of my life here (that does make me sound old). I have no particular affinity to place (yes i am heartless) and went only because my parents live there and to visit my old school(spent 14 years studying here).

This place never fails to shatter my notions about life. I arrived at Kanpur on 19th dec'06 only to find 12hour powercuts and a 2-3kbps connection called Reliance High-Speed Data Connection... which supposedly is some sort of improvement over dial-ups. One would think that I would be frustrated with no electricity and no internet... but I wasn't. Yes I didn't read Digg every 10 minutes, did not blog every week, did not check my mail every 5 seconds, did not watch videos online, or did not surf the 100+ channels we get on television... but it was really relaxing not to do all these things. After 1.5 years of running on the information highway, it was great to settle down for a month. This gave me ample of time to bond with people, talk at leisure with my family, make small talk with neighbors, give advice to wannabe engineers... without thinking about anything else in the back of my head. It was as if I had my garbage collection done.
To top it all, there was a reunion at my alma mater. It felt great to return to the place after 6 years and see some long forgotten faces.

I didn't do any touristy thing here. Living without a broadband internet in an old industrial city(350+ years old) was touristy enough for me.

GOA: What can I say... I spent the New Year here. It was crowded with people from all over the world. That, coupled with a warning from Al Quaeda added a few policemen to the already crowded place. The entries to the local clubs and pubs shot up by 600%, rendering them inaffordable to poor students like me. Rest assured, it was heaven... albeit a crowded one.

BANGALORE & CHENNAI: I did my engineering in Chickballapur, 50km from bangalore, so most of my friends are in Bangalore. Most of my friends from Kanpur have also relocated to this area, making it impossible for me to meet everyone of them. I ended up sending bulk mails on community websites, asking for phone numbers of people who want me to contact them. I called few of them and scheduled time slots to meet the rest of them. Unfortunately, I did not leave buffer time between the appointments so ended up saying "Hi" and "Bye" at the same time :( ... people need to be more punctual. I was in Bangalore for two days, in which I met my relatives, went to my undergraduate college to collect some papers, and met few of my friends. Trip to Chennai was relatively less stressful.. I just relaxed at my Aunt's place and spent my days there in front of her "wall mounted, 72 inch plasma display, home theater system".

All in all, my trip to India was what I wanted it to be... refreshing.