A day and a half in Chennai

The last post on this trip is here...

Have to start becoming a live blogger to catch up on travels these days. New sights, new people.. 

So tend to forget things with a photo/video overload.

We landed in Chennai late on Thursday night and left Chennai Saturday afternoon. 

Within that time frame, we managed to spend a few hours with my parents, San's 95 year old grandma, visit three temples, eat out twice and meet a lot of relatives (leaving out the blog shy ones in the post)

The most special relative we met was the latest addition to the extended family. It has been a long time since I held a baby in my hands. We showed the picture to someone later in the trip and were asked why we decided to have a baby so late.

My father who is not his usual self saw us fall at his feet for blessings and wished us a boy child. We said something about our 25th wedding anniversary and maybe he heard things partly and automatically blessed. Somehow in his mind, us not having a boy is still a "lacking" thing, at least he used to keep telling me that according to my horoscope I am supposed to have female and male children. He would keep asking me how that horoscope could be wrong? We know the time and age he is from where male children are considered the representation of the gene pool. He always means well. 

My dad turned 85 that morning and he was not aware of his birthday. I seem to be the best at playing dumb charades with him and sadly am not close by. We both realized that, in the hour we communicated. He said bye to me as though he was losing his translator or least that was my perception. My only thought was "If by some karma, I end up in this same state with parkinson's, need to train San and some folks around me to play dumb charades regularly, starting now!"

If only Tantra shastra was spread to the masses, things would be different on this boy child business.. that is multiple topics all colliding in my head right now. So that discussion will be sidebared. When my dad finished his blessing in bits and pieces, we just thanked him for it. Told my mom that we are almost ready to have grandkids in a few years.. one topic led to another and we fished out the kids horoscope which my mom had saved all these years! 

Given the short time in Chennai, did I mention how my mom told me to go sit and do parayanam at the local Saradhambaal temple? She prioritized my praying for two out of the three hours! In any case, the goal was to make her happy, so I just went and met with all the familiar folks in the recitation group. They were all happy to see me. Many of them have seen me as a teenager. One thing I miss is this recitation group. Seriously thinking of starting one in Cupertino every Saturday morning. One of the folks even took a photo and sent it to my mom! The mama's are better insta bloggers than me.. and my mom was beaming with happiness that they had good things to say about me. Mamas happy, Mom happy, me happy..

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The nights food at Geetham was still backed up with Upma my mom made me in the morning and still had to eat at Kamakshi mess... India trips are an exercise in stretching your stomach muscles way past what you think you can. 

then there was the first train ride of the trip.. on Rameshwaram express.. brought back so many memories of long train journeys in India.

"Kamalahasanukku porai eri irukkum!" was the thought as we saw this while standing at the door

we were going to see Ramanadhaswamy.. One picture from my aunt's place that stayed with me.. loved this .. all the stores in Mylapore which did framing were still not open when we went to the area.. so could not find it. Maybe on the next trip, will get a print of this!

Will continue the write up of Rameshwaram in a day, the next chance I get..

A different hike to Mission peak

Last week's hiking did not go well.. 

My back is still recovering. That does not stop my wife from committing me to another hike this weekend. 

Our planning relies more on weather.com app than looking outside our window. 

When I woke up at 5AM to get ready for the hike, I nudged her and said "it is pouring outside! are we still going?" and she says "yes we are" and goes back to doze off.

Comes out after 30 minutes and says "it is not supposed to rain today. so we should go".. I have never seen anyone who thinks the sky should obey the weather app. That kind of faith in anything is hard to see these days.

So off we went. The trail was not hikeable for the first mile. It was pure slush.. and a few people who tried to go ahead of us just came back as they were not in right shoes and were skidding down. We being us... just went ahead and crossed this area. Even though it was still drizzling, foggy and windy, we made it to the top and back. On the way back we probably saw 10 people total making their way up, when we were almost back down. By then the sun also came out, but the trail was still very slippery and muddy.

The "lone cow"

a hilarious video snippet of our morning..

Chai never tasted this good...

Just happy to have made it back without any accident like last week. Usually we do this in 2 1/2 hours. Took us close to 4 1/2 hours today because of the weather and the muddy and slippery path!

Now for some much needed rest!

A fall at a waterfall : Mt. Diablo

Last weekend saw us resume hiking on a serious note.. not the jujube local hikes but a solid long hike in Mt. Diablo to see the waterfalls.  We had already hiked to the top as part of covering the bay area hiking grandslam three years ago and this time we wanted to cover the waterfalls. 

It was all great till I decided to go to the center of the creek to get pictures of the falls.. and fell into the creek. My head missed hitting the rocks, thanks to the backpack. I am very lucky to be writing this post now. Did bruise my elbows and palms badly and there were a few blood clots that showed up within a few minutes. 

San and my friends cheered me up, told me all is well and thanks to adrenalin and waterproof shoes, made it through the rest of the hike. We did slow down a lot because of my fall but made it back in one piece.

Always, always go easy when trying to go over slippery rocks!  There was a discussion on how I am not the same young guy anymore who can deftly go over rocks like a mountain goat, and how I should be more careful etc.. Will be more careful, but hopefully will stay carefree. 

We did get great pictures.. and as San says, even some cheesy ones. 

There is a visitor center where the trail head starts. There is a 6$ parking fee. If you have the app, you can pay from your phone.

We started on the Mitchell canyon road trail head and decided to go counter clockwise to do the hard part of the hike first. 

This was the place where I fell into the creek.. 

After recovering, had to take a picture on the creek side.. 

There are a lot of small and large waterfalls on this trail. They were all beautiful

we covereted Bruce Lee road, Back creek Trail, Meridian point, Donner Trail and Muricho Road as part of the hike.

The sun made the falls light up!

We got to sit and have tea on a rock with a view of the falls.. 

The ladies did some dancing here (which I thought was as risky as me clambering on top of rocks to get a photo).. sadly there is no permission for that masterpiece to be shared in this blog!

the long expsoure mode in iPhone comes in handy, given I did not take the SLR with me on this trip. Usually I do when waterfalls are involved.. given I was taking 2 1/2 liters of water and change of clothes, decided to keep SLR at home. The change of clothes was there in case I sweat too much.. luckily it helped after falling into the creek! In case you are wondering "I don't see different clothes?"... I switched one Bikram Yoga shirt for another.. when your wardrobe is full of the same T-shirt.. changes will not be obvious!

we were talking about seeing god in nature and we saw this "black dog" on the mountain side

Zooming in, saw it was a shadow of a rock outcrop that looks just like a god.. sorry.. dog!

Guess it takes ~ 25 years of marriage before the wife decides some PDA is okay. This seems to be a trend among desi women I see in bay area.. either they turn 50 or have a 25th anniversary party and suddenly they decide enough is enough and start wearing tank tops for their jogs and bikinis to the beach and even start holding hands with their husbands in public! If the stats are any indication of what is to come.. I need to mentally prepare myself. You cannot suddenly ask a domesticated dog to go run wild in the forest.. 

This photo was Photoshopped with two versions of the same photo.. one with Long exposure for the falls and one regular to capture us..

all said and done I am a happy camper..

talking of seeing god everywhere.. there was a "govindaa goooovindaa" moment..

Pay before you start hiking.. or you get a ticket!

A video of all of us crossing the creek 20 times over the hike..

It would have been even better if I had not fallen... but it is what it is. Next time we will go when there is more water and I will be safer walking on rocks!

Back to the bench, after a week

We decided to go to India on a last minute decision. We covered a lot of ground in 11 days. Also it has been some time since we went to India and jet lag hit us hard. After 6 days we finally got over jet lag, thanks to Maha Shivrathri. 

This weekend we decided to start hiking up hills again.. baby hikes.. 5 miles on Saturday and 8+ miles today.. 

Some pictures to commemorate our getting back to the usual. Our sincere thanks to the hiking group leader, who is becoming an expert at taking our bench photos.... At this point our "bench photo" collection from local parks has crossed a 100..

The weather was amazing this weekend and that also helped! 

we also saw some deer, coyote, turkeys and jack rabbits ..not everything made it to the photos..

There are a lot more benches in bay area trails that we are yet to visit.. 

Wife is already getting tired of this tradition! 

The india trip was interesting. Hopefully I get to blog a small piece of it everyday and will be done before Christmas!

Chilling in Rio

The previous post on this series is here..

After a hectic all day tour of Rio which ended in Sugarloaf, we were all tired. After our Europe trip in 2018 when the kids made a new rule that there will be a "rest day" within the trip if we walk more than 6 miles a day for a few days in a row, San had put in a rest day.. Hell, she put in two rest days before we flew out as that was what was available ticket wise..

So we ended up spending Christmas eve and Christmas day in Rio before flying out on 26th morning. 

We were told that the city shuts down by 1PM and most places close. We didn't care. Our plan was to go see two more sunsets from the two other popular places in Rio.. the first one was the Arpoador rock, the second one was the Copacabana beach and area. 

San had made friends with a lady who worked for the city of Rio on our flight into Brazil from Argentina and she had suggested spending time at a local mall.. eat at a famous Vegan place called Teva..

So we woke up late, took a cab to Teva (we had made reservations) and sat down pretty much as soon as they opened. I ate the pita bread with some side but the family ordered a lot of items and seem to finish everything with relish.. I am allergic to Jackfruit, so had to skip a lot of stuff, but San and the kids said it was mouth watering. 

After the lunch, we went to the mall and walked around for a good 2 hours. The stuff there was at least 50% to 100% more expensive than similar stuff in US malls. We also got the location of the mall wrong at first and ended up being dropped somewhere else.. so we walked around the local tiled streets before finally making to the actual mall location. After enough window shopping and having some ice cream there, we wanted to walk to the carnival area near the lagoon.

We never found the right spot and tickets were all sold out anyways. So we decided to just walk along the water front and took an Uber and came back to the Arpoador area. Got a nice vantage point on the rock to watch the sunset and headed back to the Airbnb. 

We did get great pictures that evening..

There was a photo by Jr. of the little one taking a photo of me taking a photo of San.. that photo I cannot find..

Here are video clips of our chilling in Rio..

the entire area was cordoned off by cops to local traffic for some reason..

had used this picture as the Happy New Year card for 2024.. 

It was time to make some pizza and thachchi mummum.. The kids made it after getting all the ingredients from the local supermarket which was still open! We also got stuff to cook for the next day.. 

Christmas was a laid back day.. we lazed around in the morning and did laundry! Then in the afternoon we decided to visit the Copacabana beach. We were clearly over dressed for this beach as the videos will show. The rain clouds rolled in and there was no way to see the sun set, but we got beautiful family pictures.. and startred walking from there all the way to Ipanema area. It was a long walk and the rains hit before we could walk back. We got cursed by the kids for not taking an uber. We were flying back the next day and wet clothes on the night before was going to be tricky. 

Rio is full of tall trees with wide leaves on all the local streets.. Chennai (Madras used to be like this when I was a kid.. not anymore) .. these streets brought back a lot of great memories..

we saw another painted step as we were going from Copacabana to Ipanema.. we stopped by a pastry store to get some stuff to eat as well..

This was my last shot as it started raining all of a sudden..

To date I have not washed and wrung clothes the way I did that evening. They were almost dry by morning and I ironed the collars and waistbands of what was not dry and got them to dry as well.. one of Daddy Narayanan's proudest moments! "There, see... all dry!!" and all I got in return was some eye rolling from the women.

We got to see the Redeemer one last time on our drive to the airport (you really cannot miss this guy from anywhere in Rio!) and took off.. We got to see a beautiful Panama city skyline and had a 3 hour stop over before heading back home.

Jet lag for a +5 hour time difference was interesting to deal with. We have. never been to a place 5 hours ahead till now. It wore off in two days though. The fact that we went on a break before the rest of the folks went on break was a blessing. 

On a whole we enjoyed the trip to Argentina and Brazil.. We definitely all agreed that Argentina was more welcoming than Brazil but we did have fun in both places.

Have managed to finally finish blogging about a Christmas trip in early March!  That brings me to the next trip..