The year that was

Here comes the look back at the year post timed around B'day. Last year I delayed writing this post so much that I never did. This time around I will start with something and try to append it over time.

New Things:
1) After a long long time I finally took the change of moving to Mountain View, California. The first time I ever relocated out of my country.

2) My first vacation to a country in South America. I spent 15 days in Brazil for the Christmas and New year break.

3) Bought my first Road bike in December and have been enjoying biking ever since completed about 1600 KMs in 5 months after a relatively poor 300 KM in first 3.

4) My first trip to United Kingdom: Britain and Scotland.

5) First Couchsurfing experience being hosted by Maira in Rio De Janeiro amazing experience

6) First shot at running a half marathon and completing it successfully.

7) My first ever multiday treking experience in the Uttarakhand (65 KM hiking in 6 days).

Old Fun Stuff that continued
1) Attended the second Salsa Rueda Festival in San Francisco in Feb 2010.
2) Learned many more interesting dance forms including Lindy Hop/Swing/Cha cha.
3) Interest weekend trips in California, Death Valley, Las Vegas, Mt Shasta and to other places: Crater lake in Oregon.
4) Language learning continued. I am much better in Spanish now though my French and Japanese didn't get any attention
5) Visited Malaysia on a team offsite.

Looking Forward in next year:
1) Triathlons
2) Visiting (more) countries in Central and South America
3) Scuba diving
...

Brasilia - Brazil.

Brasilia is often an ignored city when it comes to tourists visitors who would be overwhelmed by other famous places to visit with associated names like Rio (culture capital), Sao Paulo (business capital), Florianpolis (Industrial capital) and so on. But this Political capital city has its own charm and deserves a visit though may be shorter one than others.

From Brazil Brasilia

From Brazil Brasilia

From Brazil Brasilia

Brasilia trip for me was mostly based on the idea of visiting my only Brazilian friend, Camila at that time to try experience the Brazilian culture more closely being hosted by a family and Wikitravel on Brasilia did tell about few interesting places to see like the Cathedral, the TV tower and various government buildings. One drawback for this city is its big distance from other important cities being in the center of an otherwise famous for its coast country. Brasilia is one of the most modern cities of Brazil and being so its very well planned and organized. You would clearly feel so as you drive around, watching well laid out roads, gardens and parks besides the modern residential buildings. Keep it very green and beautiful.

From Brazil Brasilia

From Brazil Brasilia

From Brazil Brasilia

I arrived in Brasilia from Sao Paulo by plane taking about 2 hrs and departed to Rio from there in bus which took about 17 hours. On that note all websites in Brazil are pretty broken when it comes to English users and more importantly most of them only accept Brazilian credit cards and/or American express cards. So good luck purchasing your tickets !

In Brasilia my hosts gave me a very warm welcome and the two days I spent there were amongst the best traveling time I have repeated mentioned how big fan I have become of Brazilian hospitality and this family definitely played the biggest role in that.

From Brazil Brasilia

Camila also introduced me to her friends and we had some long discussions about both countries' culture, history, past and present. Dancing, Music, food and politics. As I reflected open these conversations and I realized another great aspect of them their open mindedness and again friendliness. I have lots of sweet memories of you guys!

So what did we do in Brasilia besides talking, here is the summary (little text, many photos)
Evening 1st day:
We went to take pictures with the Christmas lights in the center of the city called Esplanada. Followed by going to a party called "Funfarra". I didn't really like the party though it was set in a nice place, the park, next to a lake etc. The music was pretty bad.

From Brazil Brasilia

2nd Day:
We went to lunch in Naturetto and to Ponte JK, Esplanada and Palácio da Alvorada (Lula's house). These bridge and the goverment buildings are very beautiful specially the one of ministry of external affairs. The cities modern architecture differentiates it from those of Rio and Sao Paulo very clearly. The well planed way in which this ~50 year old city has been laid out is itself something interesting to see. 

From Brazil Brasilia

From Brazil Brasilia

From Brazil Brasilia

From Brazil Brasilia

To dance samba in the afternoon we went to CALAF. 

From Brazil Brasilia

From Brazil Brasilia

At night we went to pub named Velvet but we just stayed like half an hour as some other friends wanted to go elsewhere. We then went to Cristina/Martinica. I tried the Brazilian dish called Tapioca here and loved it.

From Brazil Brasilia

From Brazil Brasilia

3rd day:
We went to the TV Tower to get the panormic view of the city but rained spoiled the plan as they stopped the tour at that time. Interestingly the TV tower is surrounded by a market which looks very similar to those big markets with multiple small shops or "mela" like setup pretty common in India. 

From Brazil Brasilia

From Brazil Brasilia

From Brazil Brasilia

We then went to Pontão, a popular hangout place for the locals right next to the lake. 

From Brazil Brasilia

From Brazil Brasilia

The trip got over much faster than I expected, I was looking forward to Rio but pretty sad to be leaving Brasilia!

Rio de Janeiro part 2

Continuation of my previous post about Rio de Janeiro.

Day 4th
So this was the last day of 2009 and it turned out that we were going to celebrate the coming of 2010 with a big feast. So everyone was suggested to cook something from their country/region. The cooking went on for hours and then dinning went on for some more. It was greatest collaborative effort on cooking I had participated yet and also the biggest number of international cuisines in the same meal i.e from 5 different countries!

From Brazil - Rio De Janeiro

From Brazil - Rio De Janeiro

In the evening was the most awaited celebration of New year eve at the Famous Copacabana beach. As per wikipedia about 2 Million people get together to welcome the new year here. Just imagining that got me super excited. The one time when I saw a cricket stadium full of people I was astonished so I knew this was gonna be big.

Well we started from Maira's place about 9 PM with all those delays waiting for about 5 girls to get ready :D and as lots of departing photographs and good byes as other Couchsurfers were leaving permanently. Anyways by this time it turned out the buses have decreased frequency and the roads being full of water and traffic caused lots of delay, we somehow reached Niteroi stop in 1 hour. Now from Niteroi to Rio was another pain as no one would agree to go (for no apparent reason but traffic). Again some ad-hoc arrangement by Maira (needed Portuguese definitely) and we got a mini-van agreed to dropping us rt at a metro station. The clock was ticking fast it was already about 10:45.

From Brazil - Rio De Janeiro

From Brazil - Rio De Janeiro

Now the best part, it turns out that at this point the Metro tickets are not sold and you can only use the prepaid tickets which fortunately Maira had bought for the other CSers and who didn't collect from her :) So we got into the Metro! Wow what a relief. Of course the metro were as you would see Mumbai locals but with doors closed. Not an inch to move (well not really) and the crowd all super excited. I could almost felt like being in India during Ganesh Vijarsan, lots of noise, shouting, singing etc. And when the door would open for the people to get in everyone would say "Why, why" in portuguese.

From Brazil - Rio De Janeiro

From Brazil - Rio De Janeiro

We made it on time just about 10-15 minutes before 00:00 we reached the beach and OMG it was superb. Lots of people every where. The lightings from the buildings right across the roads look beautiful as did the well lit beach. The fireworks then begin at dot moment and Wow almost like those in Opening ceremonies of international sporting events mesmerized everyone. We watched and watched as they went on for next 10 minutes. I could totally agree Revillion in Brazil is one of the best new year parties in the world. Of course they had beer and Caiparinhas sold every 50 fts and at 3-5 Reals a glass and even with all that supply by about 4 AM everything was gone!

From Brazil - Rio De Janeiro

From Brazil - Rio De Janeiro

Day 5th/1st:
Next day was pretty laid back from the last nights party. However as we were about to leave Rio, I and Jake decided to visit Christo. The timings etc didn't work out and after spending almost 3.5 hrs transiting we were on our way to meet others at the Niteroi's beach. Not to realize we were walking on "Rua Rio Blanco" and we almost got mugged as a guy approached us very rapidly and we had to run across the road through the traffic for safety.

From Brazil - Rio De Janeiro

From Brazil - Rio De Janeiro

Niteroi's beach was pretty cool. Not very rocky or dirty and the much more safe (or may be because we were in a big group). Maira then showed us a bit of Sao Gancalo city through a car tour.

From Brazil - Rio De Janeiro

From Brazil - Rio De Janeiro

Day 6th/2nd:
As we missed visiting Christo last day, we went to Christo again, this time as a big group. On the pretext of being a very crowded day they increased the price of ticket by 10 Reals per head to 24.4 Reals. BTW, we decided to go in car instead of talking the train all the way which is recommended but costly. Also the lines for getting a ticket and entering are different so you can divide the group in to two and optimize time.
Besides the statue itself being huge and impressive in all senses, the views from the place are just as great. You can see islands, buildings, green mountains and perfectly blue ocean everything from that point. I wondered how nice would be the helicopter tour of the place be as I saw few helicopters go above us.

From Brazil - Rio De Janeiro

From Brazil - Rio De Janeiro

Being in the city I suggested visiting Copacabana beach, which I haven't seen in day light yet! That beach is beautiful but as with any common and popular beach has its share of dirtiness in the water as people through stuff around as the like. The beach front is pretty big and you can see lot of people walking or running across or playing beach Bollyball or other games.

From Brazil - Rio De Janeiro

In the evening was a surprise event, Paulo took us all to the Forro dance place. This place was huge, it was more like a stadium size location and as you would enter you will see a big active market along with multiple big dance performance venues/stages. Pretty impressive. I found myself tapping on the beats of Forro pretty soon as Paula has already given me some idea at home. I call that dance a double-merengue based on its beats. I was also impressed by some superb dancers there. Not unlike other days the party went on :) We would have come back home by about 6:30 AM.

From Brazil - Rio De Janeiro

From Brazil - Rio De Janeiro

The next day was the last one of the trip, we lazed around and by the afternoon it was time to leave to Paraty.

From Brazil - Rio De Janeiro