Archive for category Places
Washington DC TRIP – Amazing Experience
(This blog post from Smithsonian Zoological Garden)
6:20 AM : Up and ready to leave Blacksburg.
7:00 AM : Reached Graduate Life Center. Met Lindsay and Krishna, they will be taking us to DC. We are joined byTatania and Vuko from Macedonia, Studying Agro Economics, Sadia from Pakistan, studying Architecture and the usual gang of Rahul, Hiren, Sagar and Jigar. DC is four and half hours journey from Blacksburg. Journey was fun, learnt Napoleon(card game) and mastered it.
Noon : Reached Western Virginia, met Saurabh and Vasanth, these are the guys we will be staying with. Kept our luggage at there place and bought a full day pass for Washington Metro. We started from West Falls Church to Smithsonian. On the way, we learnt about the metro, how Blue, Red, Orange tacks work, where do that meet. All set to launch ourselves into the magic world of Museums.
Smithsonian Station, DC
1:30 PM : Reached Smithsonian, now everyone else would be heading there own way. Main purpose of the trip was to watch Football game as Bailey’s but we would be skipping that to check out few museums. Got information from the Smithsonian Information Center, planned a route that we should be following to cover all the places and started.
Smithsonian Information Center
2:00 PM : Checked out places around and decided to go to Air and Space Museum.
2:15 PM : Smithsonian Air and Space Museum, one of the best museums I have visited in my life. This is one place where one must visit. This museum had amount of information about air and space science that I have read till today. If one spends a full day (one might take more time) here then he will have all generic information about airplanes, space ships, shuttles, fighter planes and lot more. This museum is just not for science it tells you about history, future and many aspects that we have not thought of. Real size models, simulators, planetarium and IMAX movies make the environment so interactive that a person remotely related to science will be able to appreciate science. Lets say, we have read many times about a semiconductor chip and how One Lakh (Hundred Thousand) transistors can be accommodated in one small chip, but once you see a heap of a lakh transistors and a chip compared in size and in real, you will see what we have achieved. At one point, I had tears in my eyes thinking about what human kind has achieved.
There was the propeller from the first plane that Wright brothers flew, a real cockpit, console of aircraft carrier, Gyroscope, Oxygen Filter, E Aldrin’s dress, Model of Skylab (Which we can get in and see) and many pieces of equipments that are used in air and space travel. We do not understand the magnitude of effort that has gone behind the development, but after visiting this museum one realizes science behind a lot of things.
To sum for me this experience was like a kid left in Wonka’s Chocolate Factory.
Mars Rover’s Model @ Air and Space Museum, DC
Full set of photos from Air and Space Museum
3:50 PM : Visited US Capitol Building. Only guided tours are allowed to get in, so we clicked few photos from outside.
4:00 PM : Smithsonian Museum of Natural History was our next destination. We did not expect much from the museum, but Saurav insisted that we visit the place. Then he told about ‘Hope Diamond’ and that changed out mind. Entrance to museum was not so great, there were a set of stuffed birds and a souvenir shop, but scene changed at first floor. There was a giant Asian Elephant at display in central hall, it was spectacular. There were a lot of corridors from that hall, leading to different things. We started with the fossils, they was pretty impressive. Then came the amazing life size skeletons of Dinosaurs. There were all kind of dinosaurs at display, took a lot of photos. We moved to next hall and first thing we saw was Hope Diamond, it was beautiful. I am not sure I have ever seen a diamond before (I really don’t care) so I can safely say, Hope Diamond was the first diamond I ever saw. Then there were a series of other kind of diamonds and ornaments. Lots of necklaces, crowns and rings from all over the world were on display.
Dinosaurs Model @ Natural History Museum
Full set of photos from Natural History museum
We visited butterfly park too, but it was closed for maintenance. Then there were set of wildlife models, they looked almost real. We wanted to see more stuff but it was 5:30 and museum closed.
Lot to write about Washington Memorial, White House and National Zoological Park, but times up at Zoo. Continuing post will be from Blacksburg.
(Part II to follow)
Photowalk – Virginia Tech
Posted by veetrag in photostream, Places on August 24, 2008
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| Entrance | Lane Hall – First Building |
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| Pamplin College of Business | Pamplin Hall @ Virginia Tech |
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| Torgerson bridge | William Addison Caldwell, First Student at Virginia Tech |
A walk in IISC
A walk of IISC was amazing experience, you will find a complete different Bangalore there, Bangalore that was 10 years back. These photos are taken around 12 noon and it was not hot at all. All the roads are named after the kind of trees they have, you will find Mahagony Road, Gulmohar Road, Silver Oak Road etc.
IISC, Bangalore from Kumar Veetrag on Vimeo.
PS : Gulmohar – Delonix regia
Silver Oak -Grevillea robusta
Mahagony- Swietenia macrophylla
When we went to ‘shoot’ a crocodile
This incident happened 2 years back, it was republic day and we (My friend Nishant and me) decided that lets go for photography to some nicer place. There is a place called ‘Bagdadha’ near Udaipur, which is now converted to a crocodile sanctuary. This place is a dam where there are a lot of crocodiles and you can see them from the fence. By the time when we reached there it was afternoon and because of the heat all crocodiles had gone into hiding. Since there were no crocodiles we thought lets capture the scenery around.
We climbed down the other side of dam and started clicking photos. Talking and clicking we did not realize that we had gone deep into woods. There was a small stream coming out of dam and that area was cool. This stream is surrounded by small plants so you could not see where the stream starts or what is there inside. I asked my friend to move some branches to get a proper shot. This guy is adjusting and I see a crocodile in my view finder around 50 meters from my friend. I shout at him and ask him to run and we started running towards the dam, we never looked back till we reached dam. We were running for our life. We had no idea how far can crocodiles go? With what speed they move? They like the taste of humans or not? We just knew how to run.
When we told the ranger that a crocodile attacked (or move towards) us, he said it was nice that you did not run into other direction otherwise you could have seen some Panthers.
Ranakpur Temple
Ranakpur Temple is an incredible complex in milk-white marble, a complicated series of 29 halls, supported by a forest of 1444 pillars (no two alike), the interior completely cover in intricate knotted carving. It was built in 1439.
Inside Temple
Art
Roof Carvings
Pillars
Carvings
Halls
Mistake
Text Source
Outing
Coauthored by Mandeep
Outing, this is what we had been planning for the last 6 months. Sometimes I gave the idea of going for one, sometimes it was Cijal’s birthday that made us plan for a picnic. But as usual nothing materialized, people were always busy… some doing coding, some in testing and some attending onsite calls. Finally, Mandy did her research, decided on a place and emails were sent out. Cijal and Mandy became the organizers while Priya took charge of food and beverages.
So on Saturday, July 15 we started for this outing, and still there was no one who could get the name of the place right. There were variations from “Devraja Durg/Durga” to “Devarayana Durga”. We had no idea what the place was like. Mandy’s research said, that it had a few temples, a fresh water lake, and a hot water spring and is really scenic. Cijal was saying it’s a place for pilgrimage. We decided to check it out and started.
Owais, Jappo, Megha and Rini joined us. Our first stop was at an ashram.The ashram had a beautiful temple/meditation hall with the preachings of Lord Krishna to Arjuna from Shrimad Bhagwadgita. The entrance to this temple was through a majestic chariot which looked awesome. Outside there were seven statues representing rivers of India, and the rivers originated from the pots in the statues’ hands. We tried to identify which one was The Ganges, but now that was difficult!! Explanations varied, like the position of the statues was according to their stature or geography, nothing convincing, but it was a lot of fun.
Our next stop was at Devarayana Durga. This place has two temples on different hills. We went to one of the temples, had to climb around 200 steps and the scene from the top was awesome, there was greenery all around with small water bodies at the bottom of the hill. It was drizzling and the weather was best suited for a picnic. We moved around the temple. Checked out the small pond and clicked a lot of snaps. There was a cave near the temple and we decided to go and explore it. The entrance to the cave was very narrow and dark and a few people who were already inside were not moving ahead. It was also a little slippery (my friends might disagree with the slippery part) but we went in using the light from our mobiles. At the end of the cave there was nothing but just a small water source, but it turned out to be fun (we managed to take some pictures here as well).
Next we moved on to see another temple but ended up at this beautiful place at the top of the hill. The view from there was awesome and with the wind blowing so fast we were having a good time balancing ourselves near the edge. Sat there and enjoyed the beauty of the mountains.
As it was almost lunch time, we thought of stopping at a Dhaba and then moving on towards “Namada Chilume – the hot water spring”. But with no Dhabas in sight we had to make do with Bananas!! The way for this place is breathtaking. But to our disappointment the spring turned out to be just a hole in the ground. However, it has some mythological significance attached. This is the place where Lord Rama had shot an arrow into the ground and water had started gushing out.
Since there wasn’t much to the spring we decided on going for a trek through the jungle.That was fun!
After getting back from the trek, we had some refreshments at a Cold-drink shop outside.
By this time all of us were tired and hungry, so we decided to head back towards Bangalore and stop at any of the roadside Dhabas to have a late lunch (at around 4:30 – 5:00). Lucky us, we found this place called Friends Dhaba and the Dhabewala was sweet enough to oblige us at that time. The food was good, though very different from the roadside dhabas up North.
And with this we wrapped up our trip and headed home after a lovely weekend trip to Devrayana Durga.