Odyssey 2009

The sixth edition concluded. Some of the most amazing bikers making it through the odyssey with some of the most amazing bikes that can ever assemble in one group.



The route looks pretty straight but based on my brief experience with Himalayan roads, its staright only till chandigarh, after that, completing a single KM is a big task on the hilly terrains in a car, so one can very well imagine the magnitude on a bike.

An amazing article that describes the whole experience. A few lines from the article which highlights the real spirit of the Odyssey:

They comprised professionals from various fields, with the youngest biker 22 years old and the oldest 55.

Vishnu Vardhan Kuna from Bangalore and Raja Swaminathan from Delhi, among the motorcyclists who took part in the 15-day Royal Enfield Himalayan Odyssey 2009, were moved to tears.

"Those tears were of joy because after years of only thinking of reaching there, we felt content and happy finally when we made it there. We had a sense of achievement," explained Swaminathan, a marketing professional, who had worked towards the moment for five years.

"Due to some personal and professional commitments, we couldn't make it earlier, but it's better late than never," he added.

Pilgrimage for indian bikers... it sure is!!

Picture Courtesy: http://www.royalenfield.com

Jacko..forever

never liked his dancing style but i still humm his songs every now and then.

RIP Jacko!!

BSA

What to do when you find a bike in your place's parking lot, from once the largest motorcycle producer in the world, with history going way back to world war 1 standing next to your bike which has a less than 10 years of history?
Answer:
1. hunt for that camera phone in one of your pockets
2. click some photos
3. respect and admire the creation
4. feel humbled
one of the BSA creations:




An honor to have it in the parking lot!!

the newest divide......

makes me nostalgic!!

One life...Why so serious?

Why so serious......
the joker said that.....but this time around Honda is saying that......
Honda has delivered a cracker and have raised the standard to an altogether different height.
JAZZ came out in honda showrooms this afternoon and i dropped by on my way home to have a look.
The 1198 CC SOHC i-VTEC engine is a proven technology on indian roads. City has been with it throghout.
The dashboard is very close to city/accord and gives that big feeling, unmatchable. The steering wheel is right out of city.
Boot space, is the biggest i have ever seen for a hatchback. "MaGic Seats" are really a magic. The back seat's back can come down completey, the half of the back seat can fold upwards. Front seats back can fold down.
Two glove boxes and lots of other spaces in ever corner, there is space for pretty much everything.
One couldnt ask for any more leg room than this, both in front and rear. Integrated stereo with pretty much everything one can ask for.
I was itching for a test drive but one, test drives were not available today and two, since wifey was also looking forward to it so decided to do it later.
For what this car is providing, the ex-showroom tag of 6,98,00 is justified and makes sense. But on the second thought the price looks a bit on the higher side by at least Rs. 75 thousand as if you look around you can get a Linea on around the same price. So price is a debatable factor.
I figured out an amazing fact which actually highlights the amount of space used, Jazz has a wheelbase of 2500 which is just 50 less than the City!! Width is same as the city but there is significat difference in length which obviuosly is justified as City has a lengthy back/boot.
I am sure the driving experience will be unique and amazing!!

three stooges - down memory lane

was working on some serious stuff this morning. suddenly this song popped up on my headset and it just dragged me back to those notorious days. It dragged me those high school to graduation days.
It took me back to the days when the three of us were not a single bit short of the three stooges.
I rememeber when:
- We used to take every problem by its neck and throw them in a gutter and watch it go till we enjoyed enough of its journey down the drain :)
- We used to behave like ultimate geeks and used to get that high kind of feeling after cracking an algo :)
- We used to search our pockets inside out for those precious 9-10 rupees for those blue moon special ultra yummy egg rolls..
- we used to go berserk in those dussehra matargashti...
- we used to check with each other after those crappy exams..and the check was used to be "You ok?" and not "how was the paper?" :)
- we used to hang out at "Candy's"..used to pakaofy those guys on the counter with our bakwaas...
- we used to make plans for a particular movie and most of the times ended up watching some other movie, becuase the one responsible for tickets overslept!!
- We dragged shwetank out of his hostel room and took him to lonavala with us :)
- we used to.......hmm...the list is long....but interesting!!
and yea..the song am talking about..from Dil chahhta hai - koi kahe kehta rahe.
remember the song guys?...essel world??:)
How about a reunion guys? Quite a few treats are due and quite a few bakwaas is due too.
and i still wonder..why of all places we went to mumbai for ghoomna-phirna? good question no?:)
and Sharad ..is vada pao still your favorite?? :P
.....................Time!!!...it flies for sure on Mach 3!

Coke Studio

Was listening to some archived songs from strings and heard this particular song that strings actually reperformed at the Coke studio.

Coke studio is actually a pakistani TV show where top notch pakistani artists perform their songs which are generally fusioned with different kinds of music cultures. Ali zafar, atif aslam, Josh, Strings and many more.
The song i got hold of was "sar kiye yeh pahar" and it was recreated with some typical eastern flavor mixed with strings special rock. The song easily made it to the list of my all time favorite remixes/recreations. I have heard the original song before, actually i had a strings audio cassette sometime back with that song. :)



Coming back to Coke studio, i liked the concept and am wondering why this show havent made the debut in india yet. It reminds of MTV unplugged, which i used to watch regularly but it somehow vanished from MTV india.

A & D

Was listening to the soundtrack of Angels and Demons and it actually turned out to be a typical hans zimmer product.

Hans hit the bulls eye with Chaveliers de sangreal in Da vinci code and he has done it again with 503 in this one.

I have already seen some glimpses of the movie (thanks to widespread piracy :)!!) but its gonna be worth watching when it hits the theaters (hopefully!!) on May 29th in india.

Wifey has read the book and says that if its anywhere near the book..its going to be a hell of a movie.



About reading books...i remember reading The Bourne Legacy a while ago (Yea..!!I actually read a book!!) and i have heard that the next bourne movie is due in 2010...lets see how close that turns out. Going by last three movies...they were never close to the book but turned out amazing.

Pretentions indeed!!

I wasnt that sure about Ritz after a huge disappointment from A-Star but still dropped by the MS showroom on saturday on our way.
The car:
- The quick intital look at all 4 sides suggests nothing new. The headlights are getting bigger and deeper and feels like a design idea being pushed to its limits and its about time when it will get discarded by everyone.
- The rear looks like someone actually trimmed it using a chainsaw. I opened the rear door and top of my head was actually touching the top half of the opened door. Boot space? even i10 has a slighly bigger space.
- Cockpit/dashboard looks raw, very raw. Looks like assembled in hurry and without any thought behind it.
- Driver's seat, has same amount of seating and leg space as that of i10. I felt nothing new in the very short-inside campus-low speed-test drive, but did give the paddle a very short boost and the response was nothing extraordinary.
Eventually I got the answer to one of my questions:
Question: why so aggresive pricing?
Answer: its not aggresively priced, its actually worth that much only.
Nothing special, nothing at all!!
And that pops another question for me:
Question: whats the sense of having this car in market where a swift revamp would have been a better option?
Back home drive in my i10 and wifey says: for the first time after a test drive i feel my car being more spacious!!

Ritz!!...the Pretentious one?!!

Pretentious display is the dictionary meaning of Ritz.
Ritz is the name of the newest A-2 segment hatchback which is getting launched on 15th.
Only after having a look it can be decided whether the displays are indeed pretentious or not :)


The car anyways has a first ever attached to it. It will be the first car in india with BS-IV compliance.
The diesel variant has the super-successful 1.3 litre, 16-valve DDiS, 75PS Diesel engine and the petrol one has the new K-series 1.2 litre, four-cylinder, 85PS Petrol engine.
Its the 7th horse in the stable for MSIL in the A-2 segment which has competition from i10,i20,fabia,palio,indica vista and fusion.
Dont know why it got renamed to Ritz from its original concept Splash.
It better not have a boot like A - Star and the rear windows better be ummm....larger!

Democratizing the life-cycle

Jason Zander, general manager of Visual Studio, Developer Division, Microsoft Corp. claims so for "Rosario" (code name for VS 2010).
Well..Visual Studio 2010 TS is going to cover modeling, testing and collaboration while levereging the power of .NET Framework 4.0. As MS says, VS 2010 will help in developing next gen of next gen applications.
Got a bit of glimpse of its capabilities and user interface in one of the Microsoft Webcasts.
Well...the moment developers start getting hold of one product, there is already another in market making the other obsolete. VS 2005 is already forgotten!! :)
Parallel computing/programming is one area which still confuses me and am yet to recover from shock of hearing jargons like cloud development!!
The VS 2010 Page.

Drives and Rides

Three of my finest trips:

Jaipur 2008:



Jaipur 2009:



Kullu 2009:



Camera work Courtesy: some of the finest shooters i know!!

12..nice one..

Good ad. Clear message. No nonsense!!

Heard about the 2009 editions pulsars lately. Increased power, increased wheelbase..technical patches and a bit of cosmetic. Worth a test i would say!!

LM's worst nightmare

Well..the IPL boss never thought that this can happen..and in this way.
This Blog has already create sensation and has almost 20K hits in within April itself.
Couldn't help noticing the number of comments on each post.
Guess who actually owns the Blog!!??
Hilarious posts though!! :)

WTF

What the hell bajaj was thinking!!??
They totally killed the free biking tempo they created earlier!!

1000 KMs - Gurgaon - Delhi - Chandigarh - Kullu - manali ...and back

A long drive happens everytime we screw up some other plan. same happened again...the plan got messed up and we ended up with another long drive.
This time it was much longer.

we had a delayed start and were heading out of delhi by noon. Getting out of Delhi took around 2 hrs itself considering the huge amount of traffic on highway borders. A more than smooth cruise was required after that to have any chance of reaching manali the same day. Well...easy guess..it didnt happen :)

We reached chandigarh at around 5 and managed to head out of mohali by 5.30-6, but chandigarh is just half way through. So, it was already 6hrs till chandigarh and we were in for another 6 hrs, at least that what our calculation suggested.

Now, the event of the day, a 25 km off-course drive. We actually went straight were we needed to turn right, thanks to absence of proper signs. Well..an hour wasted.

Now after that turn, we realized something, its not just 5hrs remaining, its gonnna be much more than that, reason being "me driving on proper hilly highways for the first time..that also in night". Well..it took 10 hrs on the hills itself and our time of arrival in kullu was 2 AM of next day!!

A 16 hr drive, not what we expected but anyways it was a memorable experience when we fianlly saw the ice caps shining bright in full moon. The guidance from the guy from the resort in kullu was extremely valuable.



The resort's most amazing part was the view from it. It was facing the river beas and icecapped mountains.

Next three days included whitewater rafting in river beas, visit to the snow point in manali, a bit of shopping in kullu, a bit of local delicacies (siddu rocks!!), visit to a local art meuseum, a roll in the zorb ball, and a visit to the hadimba temple in manali. Rohtang pass was closed, which was a bit disappointing.

Return journey, well this time it was done in 13 hrs :) no wonder i can still feel the steering wheel in my hands!!

Anybody in urgent need of some adventure sport, try driving to kullu in one go and start from delhi around 11AM :)

Pics to follow soon!!

4th One

Another one.....

cars..lots of cars!!:)

And i found out today that wifey is a big fan of VD :)

The Mania Arrives

In approximately 10 hours from now.....


I can feel the media frenzy already!! :)

Roadies..Down Under!!

finally MTV roadies in its 6th season has hit Australia as the new second leg destination.
this also marks hero honda karizma's debut on Autralian roads. Good to see that actually. Its a fine bike.
Coming back to the action: the faces changed dramatically in two episodes in australia and the whole bunch is packed with returning roadies.
Sufi showed some heart in the wrestling challenge and missed the finish line by just 5 seconds. I'll put my bet on him unless he pulls out injured with that ligament fracture.
Palak...well..in every season we get to see one such character and the character goes on to top 3-4 stage to get kicked out. She is that only, and i wont be surprised if she makes it to top 3 besides that she has received that warning also.
samraat also look good to make it forward. He is riding well on his luck.
Paulomi...what the hell shes doing there ?...and how the hell she is surviving ? Roadies.... throw her out!!
This season has quite a long way to go...my bet remains on sufi.

Up next...Rhinos and Crocs :P

Jai Ho..dolled up!!

and A.R.R gets suited up!!

not bad!! :)