Las Vegas to Bakersfield via Death Valley in one day

Death Valley in one day - on way to SF bay area

We spent midnight 2014 December 31st at strip and late night decided to cover Death Valley on way back to SF bay area. We are traveling with our 7 yrs old. Though it was difficult we hit road by 10 AM. Out initial plan was cover a couple of prominent places and take CA 178 so we can spend few minutes at Isabella lake and reach Bakersfield by 6 PM and reach bay area by midnight.

We started driving NV 160 north, then CA 190. We briefly stopped at a location where we bought park ticket $20 using a vending machine. But no one checked tickets anywhere and didn't see any posts too. But looking at facilities $20 is totally worth.

link to map

Twenty Mule Team Canyon - a random stop 

On way, we found a dirt road with 'Do not entry' board. So decided to skip, but later realized it was, may be 2 miles long oneway dirt loop road called Twenty Mule Team Canyon. You will hit this just before Zabriskie point. It was a great sight. It looks like some far away planet with very unique mud hills. While going through loop we stopped at at a place where there is some place to park and already found few cars. Apparently it is a great spot for hiking. Sure will get great pics. Hike is not that tough, but a bit slippery due to small stones.

Furnace creek ranch and visitors center 

Stopped at Furnace creek ranch.  The old steam wagon is great piece to look at and wonder about the very first locomotives. And also craftsman ship of those days like making those huge wheels (look like 12 feet  diameter wheels). That was used to haul away borax mineral from mines replacing probably mule carts info board says. And area in general, will bring back any memories you have about western movies backdrops. Right next to ranch, exists information center which was updated during 2012. Facility was good with lot of interesting information for kids. Even info videos are great. Being Jan 1st, we thought we will find no one. But it was full of volunteers and they were very enthusiastic and helpful. You can buy park entry ticket there too. You will get a map too that gives you lot more info. Keep it handy as GPS may not work so well.

We had lunch at visitors center which we bought at Vegas. But ranch has couple of restaurants and general store. So sure you can find some thing easily.

Then we stopped at Mesquite sand dunes and it was already 2 PM.  Its another great location to slide and jump. But you may have to walk at least quarter mile to reach those sand dunes. Of course, if you care, you will get great pictures.

Mosaic canyon road

Near Stovepipe Wells village we took Mosaic canyon road which is 2.5 mile uphill dirt/gravel road. And after 1/4 mile walk you will hit the Mosaic canyon road. While 20 mule trail is dirt one, this one is full of stone. It looks like nature has cut through mountain to make this trail.  We didn't go all the way to end but went for 1/2 mile. At some places stones are very shiny and smooth. So have good shoes with grip. View of valley was breathtaking from that elevation as you can see millions of acer land with sun shining and mountain shadows. It was already 4 pm.

We took CA178, instead of high way 395 and reached Ridgecrest by 7 pm. Had dinner at Denny's feels so great. Our initial plan was to continue 178 but took CA-14 South (Aerospace hwy) and CA-58 west reached 10 PM.  Route CA-14 is very lonely one until you hit Cantil. So make sure to get gas at Ridgecrest. Once you hit CA-58 west its pretty busy one. And in 4 hours by 2 AM we are in San Jose.

For parents with small kids - A hidden gem in Napa valley, North California, USA

This post might be useful, ONLY if you are living in Northern California, USA (or close to Napa valley). If you have kids, then you MUST read this.

Napa valley is one of the place we take our visitors for one day fun trip. But this time I found a hidden gem. Usually we take route-29. But for last few trips are taking Silverado  trail. This time we just took a (left on to )detour at Yountville Cross Rd just for fun. And we don't want to get on to 29 so took a U-turn and stopped  here.

We went middle of July, so weather was pleasant, with water inviting. Not much flow, but kids can play without fear as its very shallow and can catch tiny (really tiny) fish with handy net. There are wild berries you can pick. You can walk along bank and hope to find a lonely place.

There is a parking place, and you need to walk small trail for 1-2 mins, you will find the creek in side bushes. Very difficult to find as its not visible due to bushes.  Walk along bank, and get down (its a bit steep) to river. Its very small streak. It may be dry depending on draught conditions.

During next visit, we will prepare to spend here for sure.

My experiment with 3 day (long weekend) juice fasting

During President's day holiday (in USA 2/20/2012) I decided to do a juice fasting ( why am I doing? because  I watched that video on netflix fat, sick and almost dead -:)  ) .
My real reason is very simple I want to give a rest to my internal organs. I always feel how hard my digestive system must be working when I enjoy foods mostly greasy foods, needless to say !
So Friday I had a nice mutton biryani and from Saturday till Monday night I drank only juices.
By the way I bought that   Brevellie Juicer and bought all my vegetables, fruits from local Farmer's market. First day I drank 3 liters of juice (I didn't measure well, so its a guess ).  Second day a little less and 3rd day may be 2 liters. I squeezed orange juice also and counting that too. Though it has very little pulp I felt that is fine.

2nd day was tough. I started feeling headache by evening and I was so tempted to eat when my spouse was having dinner. But anyway I survived that and continued. 3rd day was normal again. During those 3 days I did all my stuff normally (probably I should have simple slept at home, rather went outside and did normal chores which could have been caused that second day headache) I lost 5 lb in 3 days (I weight 175lb at start) Coming to fruites and vegetables I used: apples, asian pear, celery, blue berries, oranges, kale, baby spinach, beetroot, ginger, pine apple, carrots. Though I used to mix lot, I made sure at least one juice is to my liking and remaining times it is simply picking which ever is handy. Toughest thing is preparation and cleaning the juicer. I juiced like 3 times day.
Finally I guess I achieved what I want and it may be a good idea to do it at least once a month.
Usually when I am in India we used to fast due to some religious occasion, but pretty much lost that habit.

2011 western caribbean cruise by norwegian pearl

We took a western Caribbean cruise during last week of December 2011.   
I decided to blog this for first timers.
Ship: Norwegian Pearl, Balcony room.
Duration: Dec 25th 2011, 7 nights cruise
Locations/ports: Western Caribbean starting at Miami port, Great Stirrup bay, Ocho Rios, Jamaica, Cayman Islands, Cozumel Mexico returning to  Miami port. We flew from San Jose, CA to Miami, FL.

If you never taken a cruise, and you have financial strength to take one, I strongly suggest to take one. Its lot of fun doesn't matter whether you are single, couple, or with kids. (especially with kids). But if you get a chance go with friends and family it is going to be a blast.

Cruise line & service: This is my 2nd cruise (first one is with 3 day Carnival cruise to Mexico from LA) I felt Norwegian is good in following aspects:
Quality food (never felt they cheap at any point) this is very important as we tend to eat a lot, so better have good quality food. Service is very professional whether it is room service or front desk, at restaurants. And great entertainment with in ship too. Literally tons of activities with in ship both for adults as well as children. This trip we didn't take our kids, but we bumped to few parents and they said they have great programs. 
Negatives are: Room I felt small. They could have put a nice TV, I felt it is like a 14 inch computer monitor. They could have put one big single bed rather than adjoining 2 single beds. So it created a gap and caused a discomfort while sleeping.

Stop overs: Great Stirr bay is Norwegian's private island.

Day#1 (12/25/2011) boarding at Miami, FL. We flew to Miami
We stayed in a Regency Hotel Miami 1000 NW Le Jeune Rd Miami, FL, US 33126. I felt this is not good hotel for people taking cruise. May be for business. I felt for the price I paid I got a crappy room (with lot of noise, and horrible shower and AC unit). But anyway only one night. Nice thing is hotel got a shuttle to drop you at cruise port. We checked in early (I felt early but I saw tons of people when I boarded) and lines were OK. we waited around 45 mins in line. We didn't use the luggage check-in so we have to carry luggage with us along the line. If given a chance do check-in the luggage first.
First day went good. Went around ship.

Day#2 Great Stirrup Cay, Bahamas  (private island of Norwegian) be early to get down the ship so you get to enjoy lot of stuff. By the time we get down it is almost 11 and you need to be back by 4 pm. They have live music, lot of activities on island. If you just want to chill out on beach, it won't cost you any thing. But if you want to do any snorkeling or para sailing or any activities you have to pay. Important thing is you need to pay day before and get those tickets. Buying on spot is allowed on this island but you may be out of luck. I see few vacationers are asking about para sailing and were turned down as it was all booked.

Food was great. Especially Jamaican jerk chicken.

Day#3  Day at sea : There are several activities on board. We participated on some quizzes and spent some time at pool. We enjoyed shows during evening and late night shows too. Same night I did wall climbing first time. Which I thought is easy, damn its not! Finally finished it.  Felt good. At same time there is another blind lady also did. All spectators are helping her to find where the grip is and she did successfully showing that you need will to achieve anything in this world.

Day #4  Ocho Rios Jamaica. We booked  white river tubing. We were told to get down by 8 am on that day and a bus took us to that spot. Ride was good and guide also entertaining. Me and my wife both don't know swimming but tubing was fun and easy. While we heading to the spot where it starts we kind of fearing what if tube flips and along with us we saw a grand mother may be in her 70+ then we both laughed at our fears. You better of using storage or keep your valuables in bus itself including glasses, sandals etc. Because at one spot almost 70% of tubes will flit and very likely you going to lose any loose hanging things especially glasses and caps. When we arrive at flipping spot the guides will ask if anyone doesn't know swimming and without hesitation we said yes and he came along with us. Luckily I flipped and some how I managed to hang on to my wife tube and swim few feet (I learned swimming but never got opportunity to practice it enough to master it)

I lost of my flip-flops luckily it got recovered. The whole thing took around 2 hours and we thoroughly enjoyed it. Water was pleasant and most of the ride was smooth and little fun.  On the way the tour people are taking lot of pictures and will give you in CD. We bought all pictures for $40 ( a bit expensive we felt) After that bus will drop everyone back at port. We decided to drop off at shopping mall (Taj shopping mall). We bought  few cloths. Quality isn't that great as the shorts I bought by next day zipper stopped working and I have to throw away shorts. I felt cost is also high. You can bargain though. Only goo thing is I felt cloth used to make those tees and shorts was really good and soft.

Day #5 George Town, Cayman Islands: We took bus amphibian bus tour and it was good. At the end we dropped off at beach and  afterwards spent some in shopping around. Heat was bit high so better have cap, glasses and sunscreen lotion.

at cayman Island beach

cayman island beach

Cayman Island shopping

Day #6 Cozumel , Mexico. we took a tour of Mayan ruins. Tour was OK. A bit informative. As part of tour they provided food at some local beach location. First time I tasted authentic Mexican tacos beans and rice. I can immediately sense the difference in food and it was way way better than typical food we eat in US. I always feel that we living in US were a bit unfortunate as we made guinea pigs in the hands of corporations, feeding us useless high calorie food in the name of "fast food". Even if I shop at wholefoods, I always doubt how organic they can be because business has already killed lot of natural variety in corn and other foods. Anyway that is another big discussion.
We spent 2 hours at beach before heading to port by tour bus. We dropped off near port. But took a cab to shopping center as we have 2 more hours to kill before boarding. Shopping was good. My wife had beads (don't know what it is called, but they make plaits or braid with beads) first time in life. She enjoyed it. But looks like lady has did it very tightly and by morning she got headache and took them all out.

Cozumel beach - enjoying a hammock

Cozumel beach - a funny tee shirt

Day #7 at sea just relaxed.

Sun raise on 1st Jan 2012

Day #8 we got off during early hours (if you are willing to carry your own luggage you can pick early time and get down) as we have flight around 11 am. We got off by 8 and by 8:40 am we are at airport and have around 2 hours to kill.

Over all it was really good, with friends and family it would be lot more fun. Specific to Norwegian, I felt they served really QUALITY food and entertainment was great. I wish to do it again may be Royal Caribbean this time just to experience different cruise. Otherwise Norwegian is good.

how to install ruby & rvm on Ubuntu 10.04 LTS

How to install Ruby & RVM on a fresh Ubuntu 10.04

-------------------------------------------------

-- Get a new VM Ubuntu 10.04, make sure no ruby is installed.

sudo apt-get update

which ruby  -- should yield no results.

sudo apt-get -qyy install curl git-core ruby

-- use sudo if you install it as root (so available to all users by default, I didn't test it myself)

##sudo bash < <(curl -s stable https://raw.github.com/wayneeseguin/rvm/master/binscripts/rvm-installer)

bash < <(curl -s stable https://raw.github.com/wayneeseguin/rvm/master/binscripts/rvm-installer)

-- You need to replace the line that says

[ -z "$PS1" ] && return

-- with

if [[ -n "$PS1" ]]; then

-- Now add this to the last line of the file

if [[ -s $HOME/.rvm/scripts/rvm ]] ; then source $HOME/.rvm/scripts/rvm ; fi

fi

-- then run bashrc file

. .bashrc

rvm notes

sudo apt-get -qyy install build-essential bison openssl libreadline5 libreadline-dev curl git-core zlib1g zlib1g-dev libssl-dev vim libsqlite3-0 libsqlite3-dev sqlite3 libreadline-dev libxml2-dev git-core subversion autoconf

rvm list known

rvm install 1.9.2-p180

rvm --default 1.9.2-p180

ruby -v

Now install mongo gem

----------------------------

-- make sure you install rvm, ruby

gem update system

gem install mongo

gem install bson_ext

What is mac equivalent of windows alt+tab, to go through ALL opened windows

'Alt + tab' in windows = 'cmd + ~' in mac. 
Let say you have 3 Firefox browser windows opened. You need to still use 'Alt + tab' to arrive at one of the Firefox browser window and then start pressing 'cmd + ~ '.

I recently started using Mac and one of the feature I really wished that existed in mac was ability to bring up any opened window I want. I searched over internet, but not found anywhere. But accidentally found this. I always wonder why not Apple publish a simple cheat sheet with such short cuts?

Visiting Bruhadeeswaralayam at Thanjavur & Meenakshi temple at Madurai, Tamilnadu, India

Hope you read my previous blog about Guruvayoor which we visited during Dec, 2010. 

From Guruvayoor we went to Thanjavur. I stayed with a friend so no details about hotels or travel. I reached by a train. I would like to write down few things.

Thanjavur Bruhadeeswara temple is exactly 1000 years old by 2010. I heard there was a one hour program about it in discovery channel and this was recognized as one of the world heritage spot by UNESCO. We visited it on Wednesday and temple was absolutely empty. I heard from my friend that on some days (not sure which ones) it is absolutely packed. My guess is Mondays as pooja for Lord Siva typically done on Mondays.

Brief history: Built during 1010 AD, by Raja Raja Chola. It is truly magnificent. If you really a person interested in history and Indian culture (or Hindu religion) you can spend easily a week watching all aspects of this great temple.

After Cholas, Telugu king, Sree Krishnadeva Rayulu ruled it and then Maratha kings may be muslim kings in between. Of course finally British.

As there is no way I can do any justice to this great temple in this blog, I will close my blog by just showing few things I noticed. As I said, sculptures are magnificent and they are very interesting too. Here is one. I noticed two sculptures showing an elephant killing a horse rider(probably enemy soldier in a war).

Here elephant is angry with its tail raised, grabbing person from horse with its tusk, angry eyes.

On other side of that pedestal of temple (this is one of the side temples devoted to other Gods) we noticed elephant, carrying dead soldier with eyes normal and tail flat. Like these you will find so many sculptures around temple.

One more interesting is there is a sculpture of some foreign (probably someone from far east, like Combodia or Malaysia as India used to do trade with them) male and female.

Above picture you can see a male with a hat and hands crossed with a pose as if he is looking over a open window. Below is female with long straight hair, sitting with one leg folded vertically with her hand on knee and then chin.

Below is another interesting with Lord Siva and Parvathi, Siva's hand around Parvathi with his fingers showing up just above Parvathi's left palm.

If you climb the top of main temple (not sure it is allowed all times) we can go inside and see 108 rocks around temple, with only 80 rocks sculptured with Lord Siva's dancing poses. Some of interesting poses I noticed were: 1) Lord Siva with his head turned 180 degrees looking backward, 2) taking his ear ring that dropped during dancing with leg and putting it back while dancing itself. Guide told me that after finishing 80 sculptures, Chola king has decided to shift his capital Gangai konda cholapuram.When King comes to temple, he will climb the top and priest will be doing pooja from lower level.

160 degrees view of top of temple

right side from temple

Sivalingam (Lord Siva is a "nirvikara" means "without form" so is round shape for which start and end can't be decided,  with Brahma and Vishnu on pedestal, showing supremacy of Lord Siva) is probably biggest one I seen.

The way temple built was they simply started stacking interlocking stones one over the other and filled sand till they reached top. At base it was 18 feet width. After every thing done, removed the sand. Rocks were chiseled in such a way that they interlock with each other.Elephants were used to haul these rocks from near by mountains.

Above picture shows the round bulges of outer surface of stones. All stone structures were built by Chola, and red brick were by Sri Krishnadevaraya and wall around temple and canal (for safety ) was by Maratha's as per my friend.  There are lot of writings on these walls(bottom portion of above picture) and line will start at one and ends at other. I came to know that is just logistics and worker details nothing much.

I read in news paper that one of the kalasam (small pot on top of gopuram, temple top) was fell down during a thunder storm. See below, the 2nd one from left is missing. It is gopuram (big arch) at the entrance.

At this temple I found considerable number of Caucasians. It would have been nice if some kind of boards are displayed explaining these stories or someone prepares audio tour CDs. Luckily we got a good friend who knows this history well. Personally I found tourist guides are useless as they tell you all rubbish. Rather you are better off reading any book and go around yourself. After UNESCO declared as world heritage center, I heard it was maintained well. As usual I didn't find any rest rooms close by. I was traveling with a kid, so I was forced to think of these things way early...-:)

Allow at least 4-6 hours to see and enjoy sculptures. If you are there just to have a darshan, I guess 1 hour is enough. From here we went to Madurai.

Madura Meenakshi temple
From Thanjavur we went to Thiruchinapalli, and following day took a cab to Madurai. Ride was really good and took only 2 hours to cover almost 120 Km. On the way we took a detour to Azaghar temple but by the time we reached it is 12:30 pm and temple was closed. So we said hello to local residents (see below monkeys) and resumed our journey to Madurai.

Azaghar temple mandapam (hall)

Azaghar temple hall

Madurai Meenakshi temple is another marvel of South Indian culture and ancient science. It was fully packed. (visited on Thursday evening, should have gone on morning) and long lines existed. Temple is very huge and we were exhausted and with 3 yrs old, you can imagine!!!
We straight away went to have darshna of Ammavaru (Goddess) Meenakshi and then Lord Siva (Sundaresan). It was absolutely beautiful and I had unexplained divine feeling. And there is no way I can explain the richness of the temple and various paintings, sculptures. You can see lot of sculptures depicting people's life then, different costumes they wear and how they look like (lot of them had belly fat...-:) ).

It is huge temple, but as usual,  vendors, small businessmen and all other sorts of sellers are rampant in and out of temple. Temple was literally encroached and you can find vendors with in 10 feet of temple wall, damaging it slowly with their diggings and buildings surrounding it. There is one rest/bath room at south side (heard one more on north side) but it was absolutely disgusting. Have some change as you need to pay to use that. In side temple also you will find spit marks (red color marks due to beetle leaf chewing ). And we can NOT blame any devotees or visitors. With such huge temple, lot of devotees and visitors, I hardly found any dustbins or fans or drinking water facilities. And of course no directions to what to see first and then proceed next. It is absolute chaos. Looking at this great, great, absolutely fantastic temple in such condition, for a moment, I felt we are using Kohinoor diamond as a ginger, garlic grinding stone in our kitchens. To console me, my friend said, it is 100 times better now than 3 or 4 years back. Below is picture of south gopuram.

Key words: visiting India visiting south India Madurai Hindu temples Meenakshi temple; what to visit in South India; Best place to visit in India