India

Travelogue: Ahemdabad Che!

Gujrati Food.. Umm .If you love gujrati food in which ever part of the country you are and then go and visit Ahmadabad for some reason and eat those “Jalebi, Fafda” or Khandvi, I bet your entire “Gujrati Food here(at your place) is good” notion will be changed and you will abstain from eating Gujju Food anywhere else. It has been Months and i haven’t eaten my favorite Khandvi. Its also so pirated here in Delhi. Well.. Food Piracy !

In this travelogue I will go through my adventurous journey into the food and people of Amdavad (as they say there). We were recently there for MakerFest and in whatever time we got I and my group consisting Of Ishan and Saral sneaked into the city to explore be it late night (1am-ish) or early morning! What i am going to illustrate was done in bits and pieces , but surprisingly can be done in one full day! So, the below log can be done chronologically but was done in 2 days due to other important tasks 🙂

We were based out of Nehru Nagar. So most delicious shops were located nearby. If you plan to roam around next day, try eating something light in dinner as the next day will be “Heavy” .

We woke a early( well 10:30am it was i guess) and reached the famous ‘Juna Sherbazaarwalla‘ for his jalebi fafda combo. Fafda is made out of besan and is usually eaten with green chillis. But imagine if you combine the three. Its an atomic combination, Sweet, salty and spicy -3S ! We saw a local person, on the road sitting on his 80’s Lambeda Scooter and savoring Kadhi also along with 3S’s . So we ordered it too. And it added more ammo to the stuff. Kadhi was a bit sweeter and less salty. We ended up ordering Dhokla too.

The best algo is Jalebi in one hand and fafda in another and then dip fafda in kadhi and eat the jalebi first and then fafda. Loop until you drop!

I dont like spices a lot. So, i avoided the chillis. Ishan loved it and posed for it.

I browsed the shop and found some other interesting stuff as well. Jee Lalchaye Raha na jaye

They were basically all dhokla’s and Samosa but a bit sweeter and nice. Not to say we tasted them as well. We were fortunate enough to be in Gujrat at the time of Uttaran which is when you can get the famous Undio (Dish) and see Gujrat in its full colors.

Next we moved to The Khaman Shop! On the same road as Juna Sharebazaar walla , but a little further. Khaman is similar to Dhokla. But I couldn’t understand whats the difference.

The Undio is basically a very spicy but tasty vegetable dish. It contains a lot of oil (I dont know why). But it was very tasty. It had Potatoes,Coriander and lot of other veggies i dont remember. Avoid this is you hate Oil and Chilly.
Then we had the Khaman. It was just Awwwwesome! There was a nice tinge of garlic and sweetness i haven’t noticed anywhere. There is also a female version of Khaman called Khamani. Its a bit more crunchy and Spicy.It has tasty besan bhujia sprinkled over it and served with yellow chutney. Yummy..

Khaman Dhokla

Khamani

PS: Just before you start suspecting me of over-eating. This was eaten by a group of 3 😛

With our input buffer almost full. We couldn’t order full plates of stuff we saw in the shop and were happily obliged by the shop owner who gave us some taste samples!

Taste Samples- Dhokla,Khandvi and Barfi Dhokla

Yellow- Khandvi, White-Green- Dhokla, White-Barfi Dhokla

The shop has almost 20 Different types of Dhoklas. Wow!

Since, our stomachs needed some rest. We needed to sneak out to some place of fun and walk.We headed on to Kankaria Lake. As always, prefer Local BRTS which is quite an efficient way to go around the city. Public Transport is always better.

The lake is a pretty huge one, with a lot of things around it like Toy Train around the circumference, Fish Museum , Eating Stalls,Speed Boating, A Hot Air Balloon Ride,Kids in plastic balls that dont sink ( I dont know what its called 🙂 ) and a ATV track with Polaris quads meant for kids below 12 ( )

Train Ride was pretty good. Good ‘ol Days as kids were revisited. Beware the Train Driver can yell at you if you get off the running train.It doesnt go over 12kmph.So, we did got over at Fish Museum. Hahaha.. DONT TRY THIS!

The Fish Museum was pretty nice. Its a two floor museum with lots of different fishes on display.I dont eat fishes (Vegetarian) and don’t know many fish names other than Piranha ( Piranha 3D 😛 ) , gold fish ( Childhood stories), Sharks (Jaws) and Turtles. All of them were present there. Happy to meet you in person guys! We also did a little experiment to see if fishes react to Jazz Music. Conclusion: Well Some do, Some Don’t!

After our input buffer almost empty, we though of eating ; Whats better than Vada Pav. We ordered Vada Pav at the local stall on the lake! It was pretty bad. Some famous person has said, ” Chilli is the mask of a bad cook” . The Vada Pav was filled with Chilli. This is a pretty old street food trick when they sell water/drinks by selling spicy food. Busted!

We then had some ice-cream from the “What-we-thought-local” shop called Havmor. But it was some real bang on buck. Totally awesome! There was no Kwality Walls, Cream Bell or Mother Dairy there but Havmor was infact a chain of Ice-Cream Parlors Spread across city.The Raja–Rani flavor ice cream is pretty good, just in case you have trouble choosing.

It was now time to leave this pleasant lake and move to some godly place. ISKCON Temple was the place. There is a bus stand outside Kankaria Lake and you can get direct bus to ISKCON Temple. We passed over the Sabarmati Lake front and captured this beautiful sunset.

It took us quite a while to reach there. People were happy to help us when we wanted. Good People always smiling! We reached ISKCON Temple near the time of arti and as always the ISKCON Temple Arti is pretty hair raising! We paid our tribute to Lord Krishna and stayed there for a while. Bliss!

Then after the ARTI was over, we had the prasad and went outside, collected our shoes and ate chinese samosas. This is a pretty standard ‘delicacy’ in any Indian Marriage. Its basically a Indianized Fried Wonton and is served with Momo Sauce. Still better than that Vada Pav!

The Question was now what? Go to the BaseCamp or Go somewhere else? Obviously Go somewhere else, But where? We were suggested by a person to do visit the “Drive-In Cinema” . Its probably there in two Indian cities Mumbai and Ahemdabad. So, why not! Bus Route is way out of question suggested Here Drive. We took the Auto to “Drive In Cinema”. It basically a place where you can Drive into a large ground with your car and watch the movie out of the car itself. The Screen was huuuuuggggeee ! Dhoom-3 was being played. We joined in. Its a great experience but even if you dont have a car, there is a small auditorium built near the projection room that can accommodate you!

There were small poles with built in speaker and Amps too, because if they had a central amp, then those long wires load the central amp a lot.

We enjoyed the movie and had “Dabeli” during the interval. It was way better than that Vada Pao and Standard Pop Corn. Its a type of Vada Pao only but a bit different.I guess they dont use Besan in the tikki/vada they have inside it. Prefer a butter Dabeli if you have an option.Below is the picture captured when the butter was smoked.

It was a bit spicy, but the chutney neutralized some of it. But the time the movie was over. We were hungry! Damm Hungry. We took an auto to Nehru Circle. It was 10pm so night charges apply! We asked the auto person to drop us off the circle as well. We found another good shop!

It served the best Vada Pao and Khasta Samosa Ever!

The shop owner was a pretty nice lad. He was from Rajasthan and was very much patriotic about Gujrat and kept on repeating “Aap humare Gujrat mein aaye ho“. When asked about NaMo his words were sweeter than the Jalebi we had in the morning.

We ate Vada Pao and Samosa! The Vada Pao ( i am a fan boy of ) was a bit different than the one i had in Dadar,Mumbai near Siddhivinyak which is rather advertorial to be the best in Mumbai. It was spicy but good but this one was the best! 10/10 . When asked about the secret, he said he has a special chutney which uses Khumani (I guess). If you love Vada Pao go here! Its near Nehru Circle and opens till late!

The samosa was also good. But it was the chutney that had all the magic!

Next we moved to a Pizza Shop-Real Paparika. Unlike Dominoes or Pizza Hut in Delhi, Amdavad has a lot of there joints which are essentially home-grown Italian Food Chains. Since we were half full, so we ordered the 4 pizza Combo! Surprisingly they have an unlimited food combo for 129 INR.

Well the pizza was good. But not surprising.It was comparable in quality to Dominoes and far well prepared but was pretty basic! Next we moved to the local soda parlor to have some late night soda! The soda shop had a chach flavored soda that was worth trying.

As we drank the soda , we could see city getting ready for Uttarayan. Kite thread ( Manja) was being glazed with glass and various different kites were being made.Too bad we wont be in the city on the day! But there is always a next time.

As we were walking towards our apartment, we thought about various things, the people’s love for the city, NaMo, Food and It was never a bad time for some late night ice cream. Ice Cream anyone?

Cheers,

આવ્જો (āvjo)

Rohit

Edit: There is a bit more to Ahemadabad – The Sabarmati Ashram, Vintage Car Museum, Science City and Delux Gujrati Thali ! Maybe next time ! 😀

Travelogue: Bangalore

Bangalore! Bangalore!!Bangalore!!! . Twice i have missed chances to go there.. The last missed chance was when i had invested a full weekend in planning out the probable travel outings after my presentation ends.. But due to unforeseen reasons.. I missed that opportunity.
Being a an Engineering Student and that too in the Electrical Engineering School , one never gets time to visit places too often ( Thing only an Engineer can understand ).

Long story short, I and my friend [Jaspreet] had made a project for TI-ADC 2012-2013 which ultimately got selected as ‘Consolation Prize Winner’. You can see the project video that we submitted here . Basically it was initially developed to log the data from our solar car and display it on the GUI wirelessly. Not only that we can switch many loads inside the cars like fans and lights but also we can monitor and control everything except the driver! We scaled up the project into a multi-nodal sensor system. The use of it is that we now don`t need to wire these units physically. The GUI does that entirely!

Micro-Nodes!

As consolation prize winners we had to present the paper at TIIEC-2013 and demonstrate the project at NIMHANS Convention Centre,Bangalore! At about the same time, another college team of [Shashank a.k.a Shank] and [RohitKrSingh a.k.a RKS], our juniors also made it to the Consolation stage with their Autonomous Ship Navigation System. It was great!! Now we all had to reach bangalore. The possible ways was by train or air! Train took a hell lot of time ( almost 2 days) and plane took just 2 hours. So we booked Air Tickets and We were soon on board Spicejet SG-211 !

All the participants will be grateful to TI as they had arranged accommodation for two in an awesome IBIS Hotel,Hosur Road , All meals, all travel and were even reimbursing us train tickets.. In the mean time ,since we had planned to visit and roam around in Bangalore and maybe visit Mysore we need accommodation for an extra 2 days.. Since we wont be staying in the hotel after the conference we needed some alternative place.. I ringed some relative and cousins in Bangalore and finally got us an accommodation for the next 2 days! I also made some city roaming plans in my little diary. I had heard that Public Transport connectivity is pretty good in Bangalore and one should refrain from taking the “AUTOS” . So , i noted all the major route and at least 3 alternative routes with bus numbers in case Google Maps ditched me! ( more on this later)

Sambhar Dosa- Not like the one we get here in Delhi.Chutney and Sambhar served in equal qty.

Conference was great! We talked with a lot of like minded people from across our country and made new friends , learned some “Marathi” from the team we shared our booth with. Their description of the marathi songs we heard in some TV shows was enlightening !

It was the best exhibition i had attended and the best part was that our booth was the first of all, nearest to the gate. So , everyone would first come to our booth. [Jaspreet] did all the explaining most of the time. I was mostly roaming here and there, asking others exhibitors about their stuff ( Courtesy: Restlessness ).
I would be great to bring the fact that the Conference was inaugurated with an electronic lamp which is a project i was involved in.You can read about it here!

In between the conference after the day got over, i had to make a quick run to my aunt and the case was same for [RKS]. Apparently the route was pretty much the same. We had planned that all four of us will go, but that did`nt panned out . So, only two of us were going at their respective aunts. We walked to the Bomanahalli bus stand waited for like 40 mins. It was 9pm and none of the buses google said i could get, were coming.. Further, the place where my aunt stayed was kadubesanalli. I repeatedly kept saying it to the drivers/conductors and they all made faces like ” What the hell?? Is that a place , in around here? “.I found out i was pronouncing it very badly. Finally at 9:15 pm a bus came and a passenger said that go to the “Silk Board” and catch the bus. No bus goes directly from here.

We went to silk board and got the bus!
MISSION ACCOMPLISHED! The buses were great, very clean and with an air conditioner that was really effective! Reaching at my aunts place was not difficult after that. We returned at about 12 that night and crashed on the bed to go to the conference the next day!
I presented my first paper and then the next day was the Awards night!
Now, we had planned to roam around for the next two days! The IBIS Hotel offered us extended luggage vault this saved us a lot of miles else we would have to run to my brother about 20km away and that would cost us quite a part of the day.

As suggested, we took the One Day AC bus Pass ( Which i have secure in my ‘Ticket Collection’ ). As planned we would go to Banerghatta Park to watch some animals, then go to a couple ( which ultimately came down to one! ) museums. It was Saturday and roads to park was packed! The AC bus driver was playing local songs in Kannada ( i guess). The other passengers were enjoying it.. It was alien to me but i enjoyed the tune..
The bus conductor dropped us about 1.5km before the entrance of the park. I still don`t know why as the bus was there at the park when we reached. As we walked towards the entrance, we saw a group of “Art Of Living” volunteers on a cleaning mission, we shopped some drinks and local “namkeens” (which i am really fond of tasting where ever i go) and at last reached the gate. Then, i turns out there are several options and ways to browse the park, we went with the most common one that is normal bus with cage like windows! If somebody happens to have been to Borivali National Park, the bus is pretty much the same! But the catch is that you have to occupy the seats in order of your entry to the bus and they are hell strict about it.The Park is very well maintained and its not allowed to take any plastic stuff inside the park and the guard on the gate packed all the “namkeens” i had bought into separate paper bags!

Phew! We happened to be at the last one and we got the back seat and also there were lesser people so, we could choose, Right or Left??
We ended up on the Left Side ( which was an awful choice as it turns out later ). The bus started, everybody got their shooters out . There are separate areas( bigger than those as in Borivali National Park ) for lions, tigers,bears, deers and elephants! The bus driver would stop at every place from where we could see any animal. This time we were in the cage and animals were in open. You can check out the pictures below and have a look at all the animals we saw. The bad thing happened on that particular day all the animals choose to come on the right side and we could hardly see then with all the people busy finding their niche in those 7 windows of the bus ! . But thankfully [jaspreet] and [rks] chose the right side and they could click some pics which we rejoiced later!It was pretty hot that day, most of the animals were either in water or near water .

After the bus ride got over, we were left like in the middle of nowhere , A walk with the other people on the bus, ended up at the ButterFly park! It is a good place to visit and has a lot of nasty butterflies roaming inside the specially prepared bio-dome for them which creates the right amount of humidity for them to survive. There is also a museum about the butterflies which we quickly breezed through. We saw a lot of people bringing macro lens clad DSLR to click those tiny restless butterflies. Wonder how they (butterflies ) felt about the photo session (Random Thought !) 😀

Here are some we manage to catch in our CMOS-CCD!

Having spent the day, in such a wonderful way was just great! To make it better, we wanted to go it HAL Museum which was pretty far. So, we boarded the Bus , which dropped us at Richmond and then we boarded another bus to HAL Museum. The stomach was ringing hunger bells but it can be ignored for a while as the museum entry closed at 5pm and it was already 4pm. We had to hurry! Fortunately the bus came in about a minute and we were on the way to the HAL Museum. But this time again, even after mentioning to the conductor that we needed to go to the “MUSEUM”. He dropped us 2.5km before. With the time not on our side and no bus stop near we had to walk..walk..walk..walk. During, the walk we saw some great labs (from the outside ) like Shape Memory Alloy Lab and Metal Workshops also. Being students of engineering the very sight of “Textbook” words written on laboratory doors was pretty spell-bounding and assuring that what we are studying is not fiction.

So, we reached the Museum all drenched in sweat and thankfully the doors were open. We got in.. We saw a PSLV Heat shield (used/recovered/prototype ) in which the satellites are protected during the launch!

Heat Shield Inside!

There are several real models of planes used in Indian Airforce and they are pretty well presented. Apart from that there is a whole museum of circularly arranged chambers which show Indian History as far as Aeronautics is concerned. We were blessed by the presence of [RKS] who in my eyes is the mobile wikipedia of Aeronautics. The moment he say a name plate which may be of an engine , ejection system or the plane.. He would tell us about the history and specifications of the engine and all such details which none of the display boards mentioned. It is a great place for someone who is interested in seeing planes.

We spent close to an hour in the museum and then we were back at Mc`Donald`s for feasting! We then boarded the bus back to IBIS Hotel (actually a couple of buses) to get our luggage and move to JNCASR,Jakkur where my brother was waiting for me!

Ah! What a day spent after a wonderful conference!

We had plans for Mysore the next day! Catch it in the next edition i.e Travelogue: Mysore!

Stay Tuned!

Indian Tinker