New Orleans

New Orleans is definitely a party city. Its buzzing, colorful, cheerful and funky, well most of it...

The glitter is interrupted, in too many places by mundane and deprived life.

Cities are like humans, when they try to sell you a image too hard, there is usually a very strong 'other side'. like Vegas, if you stay sober here, you see images of dearth, poverty and the frown behind the smiles. The city brims with heritage but that too seem divided to the haves and the have not's ..

I, unlike my friends,don't think the pain of this city originates from the devastation of Katrina... but from amazing economic disparity. From houses to cars to the dresses to the lines of pains on people face to their attitudes towards others... all cover the complete range. Very much like India. Also tragedies do not create divide, they just highlight them.

Its difficult to understand what is missing with the city. May be tourism erodes sustainable employment making earning dependent on tourist season. May be the alcohol and drugs, end up impacting the locals more than the tourist. May be we should not have stayed at Bywaters, May be we should not have walked around. May be we should have stayed sober....

But the city leaves an unfulfilled feeling, like I just watched an amazing magic show with full knowledge of the magician's tricks ....

Australia Diaries: Chapter Melbourne

Life is all about senses. When you see, you hear, you taste, you feel, you talk, you move, you laugh, you cry,  you savor the passing time.. you are alive.

I came to Melbourne to meet my sister after six years. I didn't just meet her, i lived with her.

i saw her smile, i heard the love in her voice,  i tasted pampering, i felt the security of family, we talked about everything under the sun and the grey clouds of this amazing city, i moved on her instructions like i always do, i laughed with her, we cried too ... we missed our parents.

We lived with Sharad, Anu and Abhi. We had serious fights over music, intense planning for effectual site seeings, agony over missed exists in our road trips, pain on paying for outrageously costly car parking, celebration of home cooked meals, "smart-ass" comments and comebacks, precious morning chit-chat over breakfast, family dinners, avalanche of shopping, surprise at nature's beauty, gazillion coffees and teas, many trips around neighborhood and many more down the memory lane, worries over loved ones, a story to tell on everything, struggle to find enough layers to stay warm, understanding the relevance if "masterchef"....taste of a life-style ...

Abhi's persistence to feature in "reflections" and get his due credit as my trip planner and adviser who drove us around, teamed-up for site seeing, song gathering, sister's temper management and more..... showed his caring and careless side with equal effulgence.

In Melbourne, we saw "the great ocean" road, yaara road, eureka tower, st kilda beach, downtown, highpoint mall , albert park and much more.. but despite the glorious high-rise, beautiful greens, ravishing countryside, green ocean... for me the most beautiful reason and experience of this trip will be my sister....

Australia Diaries: A Picture ...

... says a thousand words . Few of my favorite words of this trip ..





Written in a public rest room somewhere on the Great Ocean Road. Its true, wisdom can be found anywhere.










Australia is lush and green. be it Tasmania, Melbourne countryside, drive through the rain forest to 12 Apostles or the green ocean. and just to add another shade to the "green envy" they even make the swimming pools green too ... at the Cataract Gorge, Tasmania
















At the Graffiti Park at Launceston, Tasmania. Idle kids and their unleashed imagination.










The tear glasses... notice the small buckets under the rims. ne of the most brilliant and funny things i ever saw. Found at Ballarat, the gold rush village.















A post box in country side Tasmania, an angel made from empty beer cans. Goes to say that alcohol can make mundane things look beautiful







I never thought i could see a penguin in the wild without visiting Antarctica, until we visited the St. Kilda Beach. It was so cold that the jackets and jeans felt permeable to the wind. Walking on the long wooden plank leading to the middle to ocean against very strong wind currents did not feel like a very smart idea until we went to the rocky habitat for the beautiful creatures and found this beautiful shiny, grey-blue penguin.

Australia Diaries: Chapter Tasmania

The problem with being born in a desert state (Rajasthan, India)  and living in another desert state is that you become "Green-Crazy". And obviously you don't know because, the most green you get to see in Phoenix, Arizona is on starbucks coffee cup...

But when you land in Tasmania, Australia... you lunacy is exposed. Its a hilly terrain, all covered in green. The emerald of nature scattered with cattle in the countryside and houses in the city, but at no point of time you miss the color of this state. I was told that winters has caused the trees to shed leaves and be "less green". Of course, I did not dwell on this thought as its absolutely beyond the realms of imagination. And I was too busy behaving like a dog chasing his own tail, with obsessive and quick turning, running, clicking, moving, capturing as much beauty i could in my modest camera and even iphone where i was being rushed and did not have enough time to take out the camera.

Country Side on Way to the Cradle Mountain

Dove Lake, Cradle Mountain

More of Country Side

Cataract Gorge,Launceston 

Cataract Gorge,Launceston - another View

Grrrrrrrreeeeeeeeeennnnnnnnnnn

City of Launceston 

The Cafe at Cataract Gorge were filled with "food seekers"

There is definitely something called "too much beauty!!" for one geographical location. Sigh!!!!

Australia Diaries: Prolouge

i can't usually put my travel in words. most of my important travels are towards family, and i experience the vacation with melting heart and gushing emotions. hence it is difficult to cast them in a travelouge.

like when i visit jaipur, my mornings are filled with papa instructing mom to "quiet down" the noises of pans n pots as she cook my fav breakfasts; days are filled with living every moments in the security blanket of the two people who will love me unconditionally, forever; evenings are spent eating dinners that my mom had been planning for weeks in order to remind my tastebuds of all her dishes, in the limited time; and nights spend feeling sad, that one more day is over...

this is no good, non-resuable, immpractical mumbo-jumbo

this trip should be no different, except that i am travelling to the only member of my family who "think" my "awesomeness" needs work.

so far the flight in the 52 seat plane from phoenixto LA has been unnerving. the plane creaked, purred and crackled moving through the cloud cover. i kept getting reminded of my sister's smartass comment "sit in the middle of the plane, to assist its balance" grrrrr. 

ecstatic, excited, exuberant and very emotional .... let the magic begin!!!!!!