The Life aheadPersonal Blog of Ratish Naroor

I don’t know why I procrastinated writing many of the interesting items that happened around me and new adventures happening in my life in the past two months.May be bad mood or I was in my own world. Anyways now over-coming all those factors I am scribbling about something I was dong in the past two month .The Bryce canyon and the Zion National park trip was the one of those that I missed .
I was fed up with no trips for sometime and thinking of going somewhere before the winter starts in Utah.So the only place near to me was the Bryce canyon national Park and Zion national park. And I had only my then room mate Madan , with me to team up for the trip .So we started off renting a car to the famous national parks in Utah state .Bryce Canyon was great place to be, where you can see some nature designs formed of tough soil , sculptured in certain patterns.

The funniest part of the trip was the place we stayed the night .Madan Veerapalli booked a queen’s bed for us through Orbitz.com and we were trying to find the hotel amidst the national park boundaries.Managed to find the place but we were astonished to find that they only had ‘TIPIS’ , which are tents used by the ancient red Indians (of USA) long time back.But it was real fun staying the night in the witch-hat shaped tent .The next day morning was really cold as it rained in the night.Also some leakages brought me out of my sleep wondering whats happening .

In the morning I got a chance to shoot some good fast shots of the humming bird which flies very fast .I was lucky there to practice some fast shutter shots in the new digital SLR.

One of the great things happened in the trip was meeting some wildlife on the roads .It was totally unexpected on a weekend when the crowd and noise are high .I had to put a sudden break when driving and reverse the car to park on the sideways.I grabbed the camera and started running towards the family of deers.They were not much frightened by my approach and I got some cool closeup pictures of the group.As a whole we had a nice time and some new experiences .

The whole set of pictures can be viewed here .
Bryce Canyon National Park
Zion National Park

Its a privilege to get a driving license in USA and I recently got one. That made my plan much easier to go out this week end.To add more thrill to this trip One of my old companions who has the same passion for photography flew from San Fransisco and joined me.That gave me a change from usual activities of swimming or playing racquet ball.
A cool night drive was planned to Moab,so I just wanted to make use of the day light to click something unusual than usual.Salt lake city got many hilarious places that could feast my new canon eyes.One of them was a Copper mine named Bingham Copper mine, a real man-made trench which is seen from space with your naked eye.Obviously the first place goes for The Great wall of China. The mine was spectacular and the digging is still being done which started approximately in the last century.The next point of interest for us was a resort which I couldn’t miss visiting.
The little wood canyon has a ski resort,interestingly it was open in summer too.My idea was to see the whole resort from the top,so i had a adventurous tram ride to the extreme top of it along with Mahesh,feasting my eyes and my camera as well.
It was almost the end of the day.
We had to start for the other preplanned destiny when Madhan too joined us after his work.The moon light was not enough to enjoy the scenic beauty of the way,so we comforted ourselves with the views on way back in day light.when it was almost one in the morning we hit the place.Being tired after the journey we had a nap after planning to see the sunrise in the mountains.

After a refreshment, we started again to see the early rays of the day,towards the canyon land national park(Mesa arches).To see the crimson rays of sunset we decided to hit Delicate arches National park and spend time there specially in my favorite place,Delicate Arches Arches.Its really huge with lots of visitors and could take maximum pictures from there.I was lucky enough to see the Arch of Utah,which is vulnerable to wind and may hit the earth anytime.As my neighbors already reminded me that,I dint even mind hiking two miles after parking to see this wonderful natural monument.The sun set was too beautiful and was happy to be a part of it..

One more day came to an end,a day worth remembering forever,so we planned to camp somewhere with refreshing the sites enjoyed, we were lucky enough to set up a Tent in a good location,enjoying the faded view of mountains in the moon light.It was my first experience to sleep in a tent. The trip was absolutely thrilling and enjoyable, I should thank my friend who accompanied me for the trip and the move to US is really worth it.

The Photo gallery links are as follows :
Utah Bingham Copper mine
Canyonland National park
Mesa Arches
Moab Delicate Arches
Moab Camping

Everytime I read about the forthcoming events in Utah, I have seen the Utah Scottish festival pretty famous in the lists.It made me remember the days when I use to hear the touching music from the movie ‘Braveheart’, which portraits the Scottish history.The Utah Scottish Festival 2008 was held on June 13 and June 14 2008 and I was pretty much ready to attend.
It was a nice to see how the general public here and the Scottish Americans were enjoying the event.My favorite part was the Scottish music played by various bands who came from various parts of America to be part of this awesome event.’Molly’s Revenge’ was my favorite band and ‘Wicked Tinkers’ also took the crowd in their hands with their melodious tones and got the chance to get their cds autographed by the talented performers itself .The combining music from the instruments like the bagpipes,fiddle ,Tin Whistles started make me love towards this style of playing and of course made me a fan of this country music.
Special Thanks to Vamsee Koneru for having the same interests in the festival as I had and sharing her camera.This was the first time I played a lot with a professional SLR camera and also gave me hints that its high time for replacing my SLR-like camera(Canon S3 IS).
The picture taken can be viewed here .

It’s a movie recommendation again from my side. Got some time on the weekend to watch a movie ,The Kite runner .Its a movie based on the novel ‘The Kite runner’ by the afghan author Khaled Hosseini .An amazing touching movie from Dreamworks which shows friendship and bondage .I really love the movies about human beings and the way our mind and heart make you a prove a better person . I recommend this movie to every one of you and am sure it’s worth the time.It also shows how the Taliban regime in Afghanistan has ruined the land with their harsh fundamentalist version of Islamic justice. It made to go back again to the national geographic documentary about Afghanistan which I watched recently.
Also Thank you Lakshmy Pillai , my friend in UK who has done it again in recommending a beautiful movie.

For more details on the movie,

Official website
Wikipedia

After a long wait the iPhone 3g was launched in the market hours ago.I was much concerned about the reviews that it will have but was unhappy the way Yahoo news reported flaws in the iPhone software(Why did I read it at first hand ???).That was not expected but I came to know that it was not a software issue but the itunes server issue.The fans had to wait for long to be connected to the server which made some guys sad.I don’t know why Yahoo is acting like Microsoft and not admiring innovation .
Anyways got to read some wonderful reviews and have decided to go for it soon ….

Read the latest reviews here

Gizmodo
Cnet tech news
Cnn Money

Its been sometime I am hearing my friends asking where am I in this world right now ,So I decided to make it clear about my whereabouts.I have moved to USA and right now working for Aramark Corp in Draper,Utah.Its been two months of working here and working on something that I love , Search Engine Optimization.
About Utah, Its a beautiful state in USA and I think,the best place I should be.Its a place for Outdoor activities and never allows me to keep my camera aside when I am out.The people are really good and its a state with very less number of Indian migrants like me.I am very thankful to Priti Tayi (my colleague) and her hubby Vinod Rayala for giving me the support and help whenever I required .
Also I got to know that its really hard to be in US without a car .So planning to my driving license done and get a car soon.I am waiting for the winter experience here as Utah is known for the highest snowfall in USA.I am a bit scared about it and hoping for the best

Las Vegas was my next destination before I relocate to Salt Lake city,Utah from Phoenix Arizona for my job.And my brother has some of his household stuff to move it to his new house.So we rented a Van and started the drive to Navada,Las Vegas.
The Drive was great with Hoover Dam on the way.Got a couple of snaps of the dam and I can say the dam is really huge.We reached their safely and now it was time for the casinos.I went to most of the casino’s like Startroopers,Falmingo,bally’s etc but the star troopers was my Favorite.I got the whole view of the Nevada city from top.I took some snaps managing without a tripod stand.Got some stunning performance by the bike experts at the Fremont street Experience..
The pictures has been shared here for viewing.

I was much waiting for an outing near Phoenix, Arizona and we got a reason to go. Rajeev’s neighbors (Old neighbors in Nevada, Las Vegas) Anil and his family ( Soham ,the elder and Anirudh ) were visiting us in Phoenix .We made a plan to Visit the Grand Canyon visiting Sedona first on the way.
We rented a car and drove to Sedona, which has great rocky canyons. People come here mostly for biking and cycling. It was a nice drive and the climate was too good. I got a good chance to shoot some good panoramas and some cool snaps of the kids.

We decided to stay in Flagstaff and move to Grand Canyon the next day. The night was really cold and we had a nice time. I forgot to take any woolen clothes or Jackets. Grand Canyon was really rocking . It was windy a bit but really we had a good time taking breaks at each points and shooting snaps.
Have a view of the snaps here .

Life came to a stand still for me in the past three weeks and I really felt the difficulty when you are in a house arrest like that. I reached my native place Payyanur on 12th February for a 3 weeks stay, with lots of plans, but it was Chicken Pox written for me. I had never had this disease and now I know how difficult it is when the virus is in you. Due to some cross-reactions with a medicine that I took, I got my lips and mouth seriously wounded with ulcers. With not able to eat anything properly and bleeding all the time I really had the worst time in my life. I got lots of free time to watch some interesting movies that I downloaded when I was in Mumbai and I would like to recommend a list so that you can also watch if you get a chance to.

The Bucket List
Disturbia
Ratatouille
The kingdom

With lots of new things happening in my life I am moving ahead with full confidence and hoping for the best.

Its been some time my friends (Sreeram,Ravi,Mahesh ) and myself planning for Harishchandragad which is said to be a pilgrimage for the trekkers. We decided to start on Saturday morning.
We started at eight in the morning and reached kalyan station at ten. We had to catch a bus to a place called Kubi Phatta which is the starting point of the trek. We had to walk for half an hour to reach the bottom of the mountain and from there started the real climb through the 600ft vertical rock patch. There was a big team returning and everybody were giving us their explanation of how the trek is going to be. Some said its two hours walk but some said its gonna be easy for youngsters like us. It took us almost five hours to reach to the top. It was really a tough and challenging terrain to climb up. And it was a great feeling to reach the top after the tedious climb. There is a temple atop Harishchandragad which gives the trekkers a place to rest and stay the night. We had a dabba setup by Tukaram Bhoire who makes food for the trekkers and live there with his family.

The night was really cold and we managed to setup the sleeping place with whatever woolen cloths we had and it was not sufficient to fight the cold there. Woke up at six because we had to see two places in the near by areas. Konkan Kada being the main attraction at harishchandragad and we headed to that point which took us around half an hour to reach the place. It was a marvelous view from there. The whole mountain has a serpent structure due to the wind blowing there and the rocks breaking in an incremental manner. Its really a beautiful view from there.
The next destination was the shiv ling below the temple called kedareshwar. The 5 foot shiv ling was placed in the center of a cave which is filled with ice cold water all around the structure.

At about ten we started back to the city. We took the second path to reach the city which is not that difficult as compared to the path we took the previous day and is more scenic. We had to walk around five kms through that route and need to catch the bus at two at noon. We managed to get the bus and headed back to Kasara , from where the local trains head to Mumbai city. Reached Nerul back at 10 .
This trek for me can be said once in a lifetime experience and never expected that I could have reach at top with this ease. I am too lucky to the best group to trek with, who had the same enthusiasm that I had.
The snaps can be viewed here.