[This article has many photos]

Rang De Basanti! -Click to Zoom

I love convertible… -Click to Zoom

Click here for the entire photo album of my Smoky Mountain visit

www.flickr.com sheshagiri’s Smoky Mountains -Thanksgiving 2006 photoset

This was a Thanksgiving I’ll remember for a long time.

I went to Smoky Mountains with my roomie Rahul. We had booked a cabin in Gatlinburg, the most famous town in Smokies. Man, the cabin was amazing. It had a really large TV, DVD player Playstaion, x-box……billiards table, foosball, jacuzzi. It was a truely amazing wooden cabin. We were joined by Rahul’s friends and their friends in Gatlinburg. Our gang was made of 18 colorful people!

We started the first day with Jacuzzi and beer. We later played poker till late night. Poker can be a very interesting game with lot of people around. The next day we went around for long drive around in the smokies. The traffic was real slow in the mountains. Along the drive we stopped for our Rang De Basanti. We had real fun while driving. Rahul’s car was top down most of the time. We were going on with full music. That day evening we had good food in a restaurant and then we had the highlight of the day. We went for bull ride. Even though it’s not exactly a real bull, the ride can be pretty tough! It’s a machine which looks like a bull. We are supposed to sit on it with only one hand on the rope. This bull shakes us off and believe me it’ll throw you off in 30 seconds!

The last day we went around for go carting and other games. We ended the day with Horse riding. We were a bit late and we had to ride the horse on the mountain track in darkness. Nevertheless, it was a wonderful experience.

The best part of our holiday was that the weather was great on all the four days. It was sunny thoughout.

The cabin where we stayed  - click to zoom

[This article has many photos]

Night view of Basantpur…

With Sadhus at Pashupati temple…

Click here for the entire photo album of my Nepal Visit

www.flickr.com sheshagiri’s Nepal Sep 2006 photoset

I had never really planned this visit.

Ravi and I had nice time in Goa and we headed to Pune in the Goa express. The journey was awesome. Lot of people from our Osho camp were with us in the train. And not to mention the track of the train was amazing. We get a water falls on the track & the train goes through the hills and forests of the wonderful Western Ghats!

We landed in Pune & took up a room at Popular Heights near Osho Commune. We stayed in Pune for 5 days. The experience at the commune was nice. The pyramid meditation room was as out of the world as it could be. It’s definitely one of the best man made structures on this planet. This is my second visit to the commune. Some how it was not as interesting as my first visit. I started to get a little bored this time. May be because there were very less people around in the commune this time.

At the right time I met Ma Rachana from Nepal in the commune. She said it’s a good time to visit Nepal and invited me to Katmandu. Again started my journey. I bought the train ticket to Delhi and started my journey without a confirmed seat. And guess what I spent my birthday on that train without a booked seat! Couldn’t sleep whole night! But I made friends in the train. There was a Kashmiri girl in the train who helped me sit through the tough journey.

Finally we reached Delhi.My KREC friend Neelesh was there to help us. We stayed at his place in Katwaria Sarai just behind IIT, Delhi. From Delhi Ravi left to Haridwar to learn Yoga from Ramdev & I left for Katmandu in a bus. Well, my intension was to fly to Nepal but a recent rule which has made it mandatory to have either passport or election id with us to fly to Nepal prevented me to take the air route. I met a travel agent who said it just takes 24 hours to go to Katmandu by bus. It was only I started my bus journey that I realized that I had been taken for a ride. As a matter of fact for a long ride They bus journey turned out to be one of the most difficult in my life. It was a 44 hour journey in a bus in which people had been loaded like cattle. I was the only Indian in that bus, rest were all Nepalis! God knows how I came out of that bus journey alive!!

I stayed at Osho tapoban in Katmandu. It was a nice experience over there. Tapoban is located on a slope of a mountain right in the middle of the Himalayas. Even here there was not much crowd as Sw. Anand Arun was out of the country. Usually there’ll be lot of people here when mediation camps are being conducted. I got a nice driver who stays near to Tapoban. He reminded me of the driver Salman Khan gets in the movie Saajan. This driver was having a 1978 Nissan & man that car was in a great condition! He took me all around Katmandu. I also met Ma Rachana who showed me places around. She is a popular personality in the Nepal entertainment world. She used to be the news reader on the national channel few years back. Now she is a producer, actress,…..She was the only friend I had there and she did make my Nepal visit a memorable experience.

The most amazing and unexpected fact about Nepal that I discovered was that the Nepali girls/women are extremely beautiful. Also, it is said that there are lot more women in Nepal than men. At least that’s how it looked to me. Women in Nepal are not conservative like in India. They have taken up all kinds of profession which is more visible than in India.

Overall it was a great experience in Nepal.

Finally I got a certificate from Indian embassy which allowed me to take the air route back home.

Buddha at the Pune Osho commune

Nepali woman

Read complete story

[This article has many photos]

Night view of the Nanu resort

Click here for the photo album of Goa Visit of Sep 2006

www.flickr.com sheshagiri’s Goa Sep 2006 photoset

I had the pleasure of visiting Goa again this year! After all I started this year in Goa

There was a Osho camp being conducted in Goa by Bagmar swamiji of Osho Arihant Dhyan Kendra, Pune. That was an awesome news for me and my frined Ravi. We just started our journey heading towards Goa. The camp was held in a wonderful beach resort - Nanu Resort at Betalbatim in Goa. We got good accomodation, nice swimming pool, g8 food, awesome beach & of course the meditation camp. The crowd was mostly from Maharashtra in and around Pune. They were very friendly and I had great time with them.

After the camp we went around Goa for a day & we then left for Pune in Goa express. Man the track was awesome, I have photos from the train, checkout the full article!

White Robe Meditation

cruise boat

Read complete story