This weekend adventure was in Top Slip, a mountain place near the city of Coimbatore in TamilNadu. also happened to visit dams along with a gang of some 20-22 people. Courtesy :Shweta , whose group in HP was going for the same. Aditya and I joined in. here are some of the pics from the trip. I enjoyed the trip very much, the beauty of nature just leaves one bedazzled.
Parambikulam Dam
Monkey Falls....
On way back to Coimbatore .......
The story of India’s high-speed journey began more than 100 million years ago on another continent, called Gondwanaland. This continent, which lay near the present-day South Pole, was a large landmass composed of what are now Africa, Australia, Antarctica and India.But around 130 million years ago, Gondwanaland began to drift apart. That may have been because it was being heated from below by a giant volcanic plume, says Rainer Kind, a geologist at the Free University in Berlin. Whatever the cause, it sent different parts travelling off at different speeds in different directions, he says.
Antarctica remained more or less stationary, while Australia and Africa drifted slightly farther afield. But India took off for the north at an incredible speed of 20 centimetres a year, Kind says. That might seem relatively slow, but for a landmass it’s an impressive clip. In fact, Kind says, "this is the fastest speed of a continent ever detected".
The results help settle a debate about how lithospheric thickness influences a continent’s motion.
7th read of Paulo Coelho. Hard to grasp at first. Tough to read with lot of religious context involved. Since I am not well versed with Bible it was difficult to grasp some portions of the novel . Story begins in not to usual way where 2 men are talking to each other in a hideout waiting for the death which they are quite sure they would receive. The reason being they are in a land called Israel whose king has ordered execution of all prophets in the region. One man succumbs to death while other (Elijah) survives. This man is a carpenter turned escapee as he told the king what he heard from the angels. This man hear from angels which show him what he should do next. Whenever he is on the verge of losing hope because of despair , the angel come to rescue and show him the path. The Queen is shown to be the culprit with her beauty seducing the King and making him convert the city to follow her God. The story is about this survivor, how he goes to other place Akbar, find refuge but only to be traded for money in future...the people of the place worship Gods which live on the 5th mountain( the name derived so as not to make angry any gods and 5th mountain in series visible from the city area) . To many versus with angels are somehow not interest binding. The man takes shelter in a woman place , but tragedy struck and widow's only son becomes ill and dies....the resident put blame on Elijah, who is suppose to be executed. He has to travel to God place where lightening from heaven will struck and take his life. That doesn't happen and he comes back from mountain unscathed and brings back life into the dead boy. All in village are in great praise for him. He slowly gains confidence of governor....but not with commander and very influential high priest. Elijah has considerable power but uses his power to solve disputes in front of common gathering of people . The governor is in high praise for him. Then war breaks out and Elijah loses widow whom he has fallen in love and is curses himself ...He also has a obligation he feels that God has chosen him for bringing back his Lord in his land called Israel. The man rebuilds the destroyed refuge city named Akbar from ruins by installing confidence in all those who have been left behind because they cant go to other place after destruction. The story brings point that sometimes one has to be in fighting stance with the almighty.Quite a heavy read. 
Saturday : Savera Hotel, Chennai, Beer session with Nitin (who has just returned from Singapore) , Sachin and his office colleague.
( he has no clue where he is.....but still it didnt stop him from speaking and eating non stop)
(..still trying to hold the ground...not knocking off) 
Captured right after cleaning up for 3+ hrs before it loses face again. The other side belongs to roomie Kaushik . Sometimes uncleanliness gets on unclean people and so such action.
On my way back from trip back home, I had booked a ticket with Kingfisher airlines. As soon as I arrived at the airport , a person nicely dressed in red shirt and black pants came up greeted first and asked if I was flying by Kingfisher airlines. Amazed, as I have never seen such instance happening to me , I said yes. He asked me to wait till he gets a trolley to carry my luggage, for a moment I thought he might have mistaken me for someone else :p. We then went in to the check in counter , where there were about 5-6 people in queue. On observing this , the guy asked me to wait and carried my email print out of ticket to a lady, first I thought is this some kind of token system but later realized that it was electronic ticketing system , the lady was carrying one electronic gadgets and issuing tickets apart from regular counters. Two experiences side by side. Really created a "Wow" effect . Now thats called customer service. Though the flight got delayed by 50minutes and food was ok type....still the initial contact left the wow effect of flying with this airlines. Was wondering later if the same thing is repeated by all competitors then it would become a necessity and would no longer have a wow factor. The flight had individual TV panels for all , also there was some information with respect to height(went till 11000 m), speed(max 847 Km/hr) , temperature( went upto -46 degree celcius) and travel time(started from 2.15 hrs) remaining for destination, map in the default channel. Good experience flying with this airlines .
The Sixth book. Third in the series of the trilogy “the seventh day”. This one is about the question of whether the human being is good or evil? The story to portray this is about a stranger who comes to a small village, where everyone knows each other and any activities doesn’t take long to spread around. There is a young woman who is having lot of dreams about moving out of the village like others of her age. The stranger puts up a game play in which all in the village are involved of choosing to make a sacrifice in order to attain some wealth which the stranger has got. His intention of playing the game is to seek and answer he is looking for “Is human being good or evil?” Extended debates on good and evil, many short stories related to the village and otherwise, some legends which people believe in.
