Here I go.In the first week of July I visited Nachiket at Buffalo.Atul also joined us and we had a gr8 time.Nachya and atul are my mates from school (real school ...not the grad school..:))).I am a bit of a travel freak in the sense that I like travelling.Long jorneys rarely bore me and thats why I was longing to get out of Miami for a few days.I mean it has been 11 months I have been here and the farthest I have gone is Orlando.The long weekend was the perfect oppurtunity and I grabbed it with both hands.
I love nature and its power never ceases to amaze me.I have experienced the thrill of trekking in the Himalayan mountains and WOW is the only word to decsribe that awesome experience.Same with Niagara falls.Of course I saw it from the US side and I am told that from the Canada side the scene is even more awesome.The Niagara falls is composed of basically 3 falls.The names of those, of course, I dont remember.All I recall and will do so for the rest of my life was the thrill and fun I had being there.We reached early (12 pm is early for any self respecting grad student).On the way we picked up Nachyas friend from the airport and went straight to the falls. The first couple of hours were spent simply Ohh...Ahhing.We clicked a lot of photos of ourselves and the falls and in the afternoon went on a ride.Its called Maid of the Mist.Here u stand on a boat and it rides INTO the falls.As we began to approach the falls the sound of the water made it hard for us to even hear each other and we were not even 2 feet away from one another.Have u ever been in front of a water fountain?As u stand there, static, u can feel water drops sprinkling you and wetting u up.Same here except that this was the Niagara and water drops were more like bigg chunks hitting u all over the body.We were given a thin plastic sheet to cover ourselves and had it not been for the camera that I was carrying I would have been inclined to remove that sheet and stand on the edge of the boat.In TITANIC STYLE.In the evening there was a massive fireworks show.It was the 4th of july celebrations and we were on our second ride then.This one is called Cave of the Winds.Where you are taken down a looooong way by the elevator.Then u get to walk along a man-made wodden planked path and see the falls up close and personal.I enjoyed this one more than the boat ride.We were standing at one particular point and i challenged atul to stand in front of the fall with hands spread out for a minute.Its just too hard .The huge force simply leaves u out of breath and stunned.
Over all an awesome experience and a must see.The facilities were also outstanding and the way the public responds to these facilities is even more amazing for me.There were HUGE crowds ,it being a long weekend and the way in which the crowd effortlessly managed to have fun was a surprise to me.Everything from parking to the rides went on like a well oiled machine.No chaos,no pushing, no jostling.. just people enjoying themselves.I couldnt help but compare this to the sit. back home where watching a cricket game in a stadium is a torture and seeing the ganapati Decorations is out of the question for the physically handicapped and even the female class.The crowds make it impossible.Mebbe theres a lesson to be learnt here in organisation and crowd control.
I also visited a state park in buffalo and we spent the sunday morning just chatting to each other in Fort Niagara.I mean we were meeting after 2 years (atul had been to miami in Dec.) SO i guess there was a lot of information to be exchanged.U can have emails and net and all this stuff.But for me nothing quite comes close to a good old Tete a Tete with ur friends.
I also squeezed in a quick day trip to Syracuse at parags place and SUNY Binghamton at Satej place.PArag is my class mate from VIT and satej is anotehr friend from KHS.
Niagara was definitely the highlite of the trip but meeting my close Buddies is a verrrrry close second.
Adios amigos
More coming soon..