Six countries and counting

Island of Adventure - Vieques

travelling_noodles — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 07:46:00 GMT

Island of adventure -Vieques

On a whim we decided to check out of our hotel in San Juan in Puerto Rico and stay at a B & B in Vieques, we had our heart set on seeing the bioluminicent bay.

The time effecient way to travel from San Juan to Vieques is by air, usually they are 8-14 seater flights which hop from one island to the other on the caribbean. The moment the flight takes off its clear that its an adventure. The atlantic sparkles blue and green leaving looming mountain ranges behind. For anyone who has not been on an 8 seater flight, its an experiance that should not be missed.

We booked into Casa de Amistas which is a lovely B&B with a warm welcome and very friendly people. David (owner) suggested that we go to Esperanza for dining and shopping as it is 'the place' to go to in Vieques. We went there expecting a town and what we found delighted us.

The main center of Esperanza is actually a small road along the beach on which locals and outsiders (for want of a better word) who fell in love with Vieques have set up shop, selling beach clothes , souveniers , tropical fruit and a spattering of local restaurants and small food trucks. If you are lucky you might see a wedding. Driving around the island in itself is amazing as you can see wild horses galloping on the road and thick tropical vegetation around. Mango trees bearing fruit, plaintains and coconut trees made my heart soar as it is very similar to my home in Kerala, India which on the other side of the planet.

The trip to bio bay started from Esperanza along with a few other tourists on a small dusty broken down bus. After a very bumpy ride and water from the marshes splashing through the hole in the floor of the bus, we reached thick mangrooves from where the bay started. The tour guide unloaded the kayaks in pitch darkness, as it was a moonless night and the milky way formed a pavilion over us.

After about two minutes of paddling, the water started shimmering when the paddle hit the water. As we went in deeper in the darkness, the water around the kayak starts shimmering and the paddles start shimmering. An occasional needle fish swishes through the water making shiny S shapes over the water.

Soon the kayak is travelling through the bay and the water the kayak disturbs forms a halo around the kayak. Biolumicent fire flies recide in the mangrooves lighting up the surrounding of the bay with their twinkling presence. It has a very eerie, magnificient, ghostly sense to it, no wonder the Spanish when they discovered the bay thought that its the work of the devil and had it cordorned off.

The bioluminices is the work of an innocent single celled organism known as dinoflagellates. To see them at work on a moonless night is truely a one of the kind experience.

Vieques has so much to offer in terms of its warm people, old world charm, secluded beaches with white sand, deep forest reserves and the bio bay its no wonder that the people who found Vieques have a hard time leaving.

My Scholarship entry - Understanding a Culture through Food

travelling_noodles — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 10:13:00 GMT

The air gets thinner and the rich aroma of coffee mixed with chicory caresses my senses as I wait at the dusty little bus stop. A crowd of men patiently wait the next bus to take them into the neighbouring towns, the traffic is composed of jeeps which ferry to and fro from the mountains blanketed with coffee plantations. The faint sun glints off the stainless steel utensils hung in the bazaar while a sweeper quietly sweeps the road adding to the dust circling around the road. Sounds of hymns and prayers arise from the temple nearby, a woman in a red saree hunches over making a ritualistic design with rice powder welcoming prosperity into her home. The coffee grinder goes full throtle grinding up coffee beans and chicory into the perfect elixir of the south indian morning. The ground beans make it to the coffee filter a must for every home in the region, the bigger the filter the bigger the family. The coffee powder thus concocted is pressed, squeezed and mixed with milk and sugar only to be built into a froth with a practised art passed down through centuries. It is then pored into multiple steel pint glasses set inside tumblers, so that you can practise the frothing whooshing action that you witnessed for yourself before sipping the filter coffee which is a foriegn pleasure. The legend that any tour guide in the sleepy town of Chikmanglur will endorse tells a story of Baba Budan who smuggled the first beans of coffee from Arab merchants and planted it amongst the tall teak trees laced with pepper vines. Since then the coffee was embraced as an integral part in the land of chai drinkers. The mountains which nurse the coffee beans have etheral feeling to it much like the heady sweet coffee. The tall trees punctuated with coffee plants where an occasional peacock flits through transports me to a prehistoric time which I have just dreamed about. The ride up to the coffee plantation in the back of an old jeep was the perfect time machine.

The hidden oasis of the Deccan

travelling_noodles — Wed, 7 Mar 2012 01:28:00 GMT

I wouldn't call myself a traveler but I do love travelling. Its a about seeing new places and having a feeling of done that. Having this eirie sense of being part of something bigger, something that was discovered or made by someone so much more talented and adventurous. Experiencing something that is history and relieving someone else's life through this small window of being in the place that all that happened years ago.

Out of my recent travels, the places that have given this feeling were Lothal (which is one of the Harrappan civilizations, this side of the border), Chikmanglore and Ethipotla falls.

Today I'll write about the falls as I went there just yesterday with some real good company .

Ethipotla falls is a three hr drive from Hyderabad, didn't know abt it till recently. What greets one and intrigues one about Ethipotla falls is that once you have seen the falls from a distance and seen that It was definitely made by a sculpture with great geometric precision, are the words written near the entrance of the garden from where one can see the falls. The paragraph is from the journal of a European traveler who braved the jungle which he says was 'infested' by tigers and bears to see the waterfall. But what both he and me agree to is that the falls , fall over a wonderful formation of rocks which look as if landscaped by hand by a master.

The rocks are formed in a perfect table formation surrounded by a flat land through which the river cuts through forming a valley up ahead. The waterfall is the only area where there are palm trees and other vegetation makes the waterfall the oasis of nagarjuna sagar. The waterfalls were definitely worth the three hr drive, getting lost intermediately and having a minor heat stroke.

Photos: Thailand

travelling_noodles — Tue, 6 Mar 2012 23:01:00 GMT

A rainy thai trip

Chicory coffee and me

travelling_noodles — Tue, 6 Mar 2012 16:54:00 GMT

The faint sun glints off the stainless steel utensils hung in the bazaar while a sweeper quietly sweeps the road adding to the dust circling around the road. Sounds of hymns and prayers arise from the temple nearby, a woman in a red saree hunches over making a ritualistic design with rice powder welcoming prosperity into her home.

A coffee grinder goes full throtle grinding up coffee beans and chicory into the perfect elixir of the south indian morning. The ground beans make it to the coffee filter a must for every home in the region, the bigger the filter the bigger the family. The coffee powder thus concocted is pressed, squeezed and mixed with milk and sugar only to be built into a froth with a practised art passed down through centuries. It is then poured into multiple steel pint glasses set inside tumblers, so that one can practice the frothing whooshing action for oneself before sipping the filter coffee which is a foriegn pleasure. The legend that any tour guide in the sleepy town of Chikmanglur will endorse, tells a story of Baba Budan who smuggled the first beans of coffee from Arab merchants and planted it amongst the tall teak trees laced with pepper vines.

Since then the coffee was embraced as an integral part in the land of chai drinkers. The mountains which nurse the coffee beans have an etheral feeling to them much like the heady sweet coffee. The tall trees punctuated with coffee plants where an occasional peacock flits through transports me to a prehistoric time . The ride up to the coffee plantation in the back of an old jeep acts as the perfect time machine.

The plantation with the quaint guest house reeks of coffee as it gets roasted and dried and packed. A gurgling stream which cut through the plantation imparts its earthy taste to the coffee beans as they sway and dance among the leaves.

All I can hear are the monkeys chattering in the trees, the brook babbling and the birds chirping as I sit sipping my cup as they tell me the story of coffee.