Pittsburgh Diaries: The Journey to Pittsburgh

As most good things, the news of this assignment came through a week before I had to depart. And depart means B’Lore where I am currently placed to Chennai for a week and then to Pittsburgh (via Frankfurt and Washington DC). Chennai, after a month, was cool, liked every minute I spent there which included running across offices and buildings for various formalities before travelling. The day I left was most hectic I must say – since I got the Forex, my tickets and immigration papers only at 4 given my flight was at 1 that night. And i somehow have grown to like the last minute rushes given that they are part of the so called corporate life.

All done I was heading back home and the cab driver on the way home asked me: “What exactly you guys do?” and I explained it all to him using a simple bank as an example and his reply was: “You get paid to do this?” with a reaction that would be evoked when an old man from India in his hundreds hears that he has to pay $2 (=100 INR) for 300ml of ‘purified imported water’.

All done, thanks to Mom, Dad, Uncle and Aunt, all was set to go to the airport. The best thing about last minute rushes is that you do not have time to worry or get emotional or more importantly ‘cry’. Ok – boys do cry. And luckily the driver this time did not have any questions for me.

The Chennai airport was good, no much questions asked, a form to fill, and I am sitting waiting at the gate. In the hurry I missed carrying a book - a very good companion. There was a bookstore around and I thought ll buy one at the store in the airport. Went in and had a look at ‘2 States’ and turned to the back cover to see that it costed 295INR, 200 more than the price I would have got it for outside. Sigh – no buying books.

First flight – Chennai to Frankfurt:

First things first – the air hostess incharge of my side of the plane was very pretty! She had this matured calm prettyness which is quite rare. My flight was scheduled to depart at 1.50 a.m. and so it did. I grabbed a Times of India and Financial Times at the gate only to leave it untouched under my seat. Dinner was served and I chose Asian Veg – customary I think. Then all I remember was staring out at the darkness outside my window and then waking up after sometime to find my seat reclined and a pillow supporting my neck. Sweet!

Breakfast time – Asian Veg again. Was edible but not delicious.

Landed in Frankfurt at 7 a.m. local time.

Frankfurt Airport:

Very huge! I got down and a staff from the gate gave me the gate no. for my next airline to Washington DC. Walked – Took a train (a small one) - Walked again to finally reach my gate at around 8. No one there except for an old couple playing cards. Frankfurt airport could be better renamed Lufthansa airport as that is the only name you find there everywhere from the displays showing flight statuses to the check in counters.

How long can a person be seated. Given that I had 2 hours for my flight to depart. I walked around peered into the duty free shops where everything was priced in Euros and all i had was Dollars and Rupees. Not that I would have bought something.

Then being the impatient me, I walked to a helpdesk to enquire about my flight, if I was at the right gate and all, only to hear the lady there tell me that my flight which was scheduled to depart at 10.30 am local time would be departing at 1.40 pm local time. Bad.

Slowly, the crowd at the gate started growing and a man who spoke a language I did not understand came over and asked me something showing his boarding pass. I just told him in gestures that this was the gate. Later learnt he was from Turkey – stole a glance at his passport cover.

Finally my flight arrived – United Airlines to Washington DC.

Second Flight – Frankfurt to Washington DC:

My first taste of America. The flight was full of Americans. I got a middle seat and luckily my neighbour did not want to travel leaving the aisle seat for me. The person sitting next to me started telling me couple of things to which I replied in monosyllables and gestures mainly to which he asked me if I spoke English.

Food time – my choices were Pasta or Chicken and I chose chicken not because I wanted it but because I did not want pasta but wanted to eat something. It was plain rice, a piece of chicken grilled, carrots and beans in a translucent liquid. All sweet, I just could not consume it completely. The only good part of the meal was the orange juice.

A nap later – reached Washington DC.

Washington – Dulles Airport:

Thanks to God, they did not push my connecting flight to Pittsburgh the next day. It was scheduled two hours later at 10. All I could see was people walking around in suits and ties. Hungry – had a cookie and water.

The airport looked old but was nicely maintained. Walked around a bit and finally my flight arrived.

Third Flight – Washington to Pittsburgh:

The aircraft was a small one and my seat was the last one in the last row. All tired I wanted a nap but before I could close my eyes we reached Pittsburgh. It was the quickest flight of the three.

Pittsburgh:

Finally. The airport was the most deserted given that it was close to 11 pm local time. Thanks to colleague I was put up at one of his friend’s apartment for the night.

P.S: Ok the 2$ thing – my first transaction in USD, I did it at the Washington airport more out of a need for change for a 20$ bill than thirst.

P.S: I just realised, the best part of writing a post is you are writing something and the bad part is typing your thoughts take a lot of time.

P.S: And in all this one of my old friends got married and I didn’t even give her a call.

Sometimes

Sometimes I feel all excited about the work I do,

and sometimes I sulk.

 

Sometimes I feel all this is a passe,

and sometimes feel doomed for life.

 

Sometimes I feel I have got it all wrong,

and sometimes feel I am all set to rise.

 

Sometimes I feel stupid,

and sometimes unimaginably intelligent.

 

Sometimes I feel all this is unreal,

and sometimes I feel the pain.

 

Sometimes I realise,

and sometimes I refuse to.

 

Sometimes I wonder – why?

And sometimes I think – so what?

Sometimes…

There are few moments when you really don’t know what to do. As in, everything around seems so monotonous and bored with nothing that can evoke and sustain interest. Every little thing that was funny or interesting at other times has suddenly lost its sheen. There’s work at hand, enough to keep oneself occupied, but the mind does not will to do that work. All the mind does is prod over the fact that it is bored and keeps prodding, refusing to look at any possible way out, even though it may know of a way out.

That was with the mind.

I always believe there are two forces in a person – mind and heart. The mind – rational and logical, the heart – emotional. At many times, they contradict each other and we have to make a choice – a very difficult one as, on an event of something going wrong with the choice the other entity overtakes the entire system giving no space for the first entity. And that’s when a balance is lost – a balance that never seems to exist but actually does.

The mind while losing its interest, the heart tends to lose its heart. Seriously, maybe they both love each other. What an irony!

So at these times, like this, what does one do? Is there any solution to get through this?

Getaway!

 Mani: ‘Jo, its 4′

Joel: ‘Hmmm’

Joel: ‘Are we going?’

Mani: ‘Hmmm’

Joel: ‘Are you sure?’

Mani: ‘Hmmm’

A minute later…

Trrrriiiinngggg

M: ‘Hello. Yes Uncle – Thank you!’

M: ‘Hey, get up its the house owner, we better start.’

———————————————————————-

Fridays are so much fun, just because you get two days off, even though you dont really konw what to do. To keep the spirit high,we went out for dinner at Beijing Bites, HSR Layout, Bangalore. Oh and yes, we means Jegan, Dilip, Mani and me (J). After a decent meal with an overdose of laughter we were like – what to do tomorrow?. And as always Mr. M had plans:

M: How about visiting Goat’s Leap

We: What!!??@#$

M: Ok, the place is called Mekedatu, is quite far from here as in we have to bike for some distance around 30 km, then cross a river on foot or boat, and then take a bus, the place is a beauty I heard.

We: Interesting! I’m game.

M: Cool, but the prob is bikes -  5 of us and two bikes only.

We: Hmmm yeah, let’s see..

And then we reached home only to find that Jakku, another of our friends was ill, he had fever and was aleady asleep. We asked him and said he could not make it.

After another round of discussion we decided on Nandi Hills as Jakku had already been to that place and we had not. And we soon decided to see sunrise from Nandi hills. Ambitious ain’t it?

Then started the planning, at 11 in the night, thanks to Google Maps, we found the route. At this point, Dilip was fast asleep. And since we wanted to see sunrise from the hills, we looked up the time fr sunrise in Bangalore – 6.11 a.m.- and we needed atleast two hours to drive to that place. That meant we had to leave at 4 in the morning. We were like – fine we will get up and go, but there was one problem: we live in the second floor and our house owner has a dog which he lets loose in the night once everyone is home and the dog is secured at only around 6 in the morning. So Mani called him up and spoke to him about this thing and he said he’l get up and secure the dog when we leave.

At 4 in the morning:

Mani: ‘Jo, its 4′

Joel: ‘Hmmm’

Joel: ‘Are we going?’

Mani: ‘Hmmm’

Joel: ‘Are you sure?’

Mani: ‘Hmmm’

A minute later…

Trrrriiiinngggg

M: ‘Hello. Yes Uncle – Thank you!’

M: ‘Hey, get up its the house owner, we better start.’

And then, the lights were on, the bags packed, and bikes started.

 

Mani and Dilip (Right) & Jegan (Left) 

It was cold (obviously @ 4 in the morning in Bangalore, you don’t expect to sweat). First stop was the petrol bunk on the way to NH 7 and then when reached NH 7, it was cool. The road was awesome. (No pics here because it was damn cold and all we could think of is ‘keep going’ since we dint want to miss the sunrise.)

The awesome road continued till airport, after which the road slightly seemed to decrease in width . And then we reached a point where the road divided into two, we stopped asked the chai wala nearby and continued. At this point we could see light at the horizon.

We then reached a point where the road branches out to the foot of the nandi hills. Then the sun was almost out. So we took a photo break and enjoyed the beauty. The road was like wow! A simple straight road with trees either side with almost nil traffic – all this in the first rays of the sun. Mornings indeed add splendour!

 

 The road to the heights

Straight ahead for another 20 minutes and we reached the foot of the hills with the sun slowly rising above. And then came the entrance to Nandi Hills.

 

 

The entrance 

The hills basking in the morning sun

The mountain roads then started. A nice ghat road devoid traffic given the early hours, interspaced with the hairpin bends and garnished with a beautiful early morning view of mother nature. The trip to the top was nice, very nice.

 From L to R: Mani, Me, Dilip, Jegan – on the way up

Once atop, we bought our tickets and set about looking around the place. There’s a tippu fall, no that’s not a waterfall as we initially thought. It is a point on top of the hill from where prisoners are pushed over to meet their fate. Then there was Tippu’s summer palace (or ‘lodge’ as mentioned by ASI). The word palace raised our expectations and all we got to see was a ill kept two storey building painted pink with a slab inlayed stating that Tippu occasionally used this as a resting place when he came hunting here. Apart from this the view from the hill top is amazing perfectly supplemented by the morning weather.

 

Tippu’s Lodge

Few hours later the sun started showing its true colors and that was when we decided to head back home. The trip down was good too, with few people cycling downhill and a good number of young couples on their way uphill.

Few days back when I was coming back to Bangalore from Secunderabad, I came across this point on NH 7 after the Bangalore Airport proclaiming a fort called ‘Devanahalli Fort’ said to be the birth place of Tippu and since we were heading back home slowly and this was enroute, we decided to check it out. The place was essentially a town which was once fortified. The fort walls were nicely maintained even though all that remained was only the fort entrance and then walls supporting the entrance. Hoping that there would be a building or something we decided to explore the town only to discover that there was nothing else at that place.

 

Devanahalli Fort

On the go for more that 6 hours with no breakfast had got us exhausted. We then decided on no more pitstops or photo stops and reached a hotel, had a good lunch, came home and caught up on the missed sleep.

The essence of a good trip is that is should be both tiring and enriching and this was one good trip indeed.