The Niagara....

Well i am stayin home free after a pretty looooong time... got nothin better to do... so here i am trying to update my blog with few more craps...

Last week i went on a short drive to Niagara...(yup the drive was 8 hours short of a full day).... the ditance between the place i stay and the falls is exactly 763 miles... the plan was to start friday evening at 4... drive to Niagara non-stop... checkin to a hotel early morning and take rest till noon... roam around Niagara for as long as the body premits... spend the night again in the hotel room and start back on sunday morning... now any American who reads this would faint immediatley...because i am talking about 26 hours of driving in a 50 hrs trip... when i went and told my manager (an american) of my travel itinerary he looked me up and down and said "man, why dont you take another day off and break your journey... i mean iam born and brought up in this country but i've never crossed Balttimore in North... and even i myself would not dare to plan a journey so hectic as urs..." well thats him... a very nice guy and had loads of advice for my safe journey...

So as planned we started at around 4P.m and by the time we reached charlotte,NC it was like the entire population of America was trying to get into interstate I-77... my friend on the wheels was new to driving in American interstates and was driving as if he has taken a vow never to break speed limits in US...it took 2 hours to cross a 12 minute stretch and amidst this we had to take a break to empty our tanks and fill the car's tank... once we reached the Virginia's the view of the smokey range was breathtaking... it was like we have come to a totally new fresh world... with all the abundant natural vegetation zooming along both the sides of the car... and then came the dusk and i had to take over the wheels... i was already half asleep... and the backlight of the cars in the front and the shimmering lights in the other side of the road were making sure that i feel comfortable in closin my eyes... now this part always is fun... you never know when you sleep and when you are awake... i was drivin like this for about six hours... and after reachin Buffalo i handed over the car again to my rule abidin friend... and by the time we reached it was 6 in the morning... we went to bed and woke up and were ready to see Niagara by 12 noon...

we took the all-park pass and were ready to get on board the Maid of the Mist... so there we were waiting for the boat to unload... and by looking at the crowd i got the feelin like the boat has come straight from Indian coast... out of the 70 odd ppl aournd 60 were indians... just then i realised that even amongst the crowd waiting to board the next maid, 80% were Indians!!!... Then i realised why Americans are pissed off with Indian techies... So here i was riding the maid for the second time in the last six months... and then we marched to the Cave of the winds... but there was no cave there... instead it was like standing in front of kutrAlam falls... except that i was wrapped in polythene bag instead of a thick layer of nallennai (oil)... and there were no masal vadai stalls around and there were no lungi clad Reps trying to sell me some highly rare herb that would boost up my "preformance"... (if you know what i mean....)...

Now the reason to drive to Niagara for the second time was to take the chopper trip over the Niagara.... but i could not do that on Saturday due to bad weather... and there was no light and music show in Niagara that day to the disaappointment of everyone... so the entire crowd of 40 Indians (in 10 cars) who have travelled 16 hours for this show had to go back to bed a bit earlier than their plans...

The next day we woke and got ready and thanks to like minded ppl in my car... we decided we would cross the Niagara border only after takin the chopper trip... and there we were shuttling from America to canada in air over the niagara.... oh man the trip was worth every buck i spent on it... A few photos from atop Niagara....