NOIDA Unplugged

NOIDA or New Okhla Industrial Development Authority for the geeks and nerds. Well i would prefer to call it NOIDA itself. My memories of this city go back to 1998 when i had visited this place for a family wedding. People say "Your first impression is the last impression". My first visit here really mesmerised me. I had been to other metros like Delhi and Kolkata but there was something special here. The long and wide roads here seemed to welcomed me with its open arms. Though did'nt got much chance to explore NOIDA in my first visit i didn't knew destiny had something else for me in future.

End of year 2006 and i got a job in HCL Technologies before completing my Masters in Computer Application from Kolkata. One fine evening i got a mail from the company and i was required to join HCL for the training in NOIDA. Switch to year 2007, 18th of January a cold n foggy winter welcomed us when we entered into New Delhi railway station. 2 more hours and i was standing in the verandah of the Kalibari in Sector 26. I must confess that most of my exploration of this city has been done while we were undergoing training in HCL. Hardly there was any nook or corner left in and around the atta market that we had'nt explored.

Atta or to be more precise NOIDA Sector-18 Market, the heart of this evergrowing city. Buzzing with activity whole day and totaly crowded on weekends by youngsters and working professionals who live upto the motto "Work Hard, Party Harder". And indeed there are many options to choose from. Whether it is the Sab Mall (its going to be extinct soon like the dino's...) or the CetreStage Mall or the pride of NOIDA...the GIP or the GREAT INDIA PLACE Mall. It is one of the largest mall in india in terms of area, spread over 4 floors having a food court at 4th fl0or and a multiplex screen, Big Cinemas. Also there is the Spice and Shopprix mall and the most beautiful of them all the Shipra mall. Then there is the World Of Wonder adventure theme park for the thrill seekers.

With the entry of Delhi Metro life has been quite easy for NOIDA'ites. Gone are the days of long wait and rush for buses to delhi. We are now part of a growing NCR and we checked out the new noida metro on the second day of its opening itself.

Now, its been more than 3 years that I am living in noida. This city never ends to fascinate me. With winter temperatures dipping to 2 degrees (we still gorgue on ice-creams on winter nites... ) and summer a blazing 48 degrees hot. Life has taught quite a few lessons in noida. Don't know for how longer I will be in this city but the memories will be with me for a life time. Really miss all the fun that I had with some of my closest buddies - Abhijt, Arijit, Bikash, Romit, Ayan and Avik...Hoping to write a book on the time spent with them some day :)

GMail Turns 5

February 7, 2007 Google launched its IMAP webmail service GMail to the general public with an initial storage capacity of 1GB and life has never been so easy till now.It provided a whooping around 1GB of storage space in those days, far off from its nearest compitetor's 4 MB.Google uses AJAX programming technique for the develpoment of GMail and it is based on the Google Servlet Engine GFE/1.3 running on Linux.

Today GMail is one of the most widely used EMail service available on the net, basically due to its simplicity and ease of use.Though Google has still maintained its Beta tag till today.

Google introduced GMail Labs on June 5, 2008 which allows users to use new features of GMail such as bookmarking, games, sms, chat and the list is evergrowing till date...

Gmail's spam filetering features a community-driven system: when any user marks an email as spam, this provides information to help the system identify similar future messages for all Gmail users.Some of the recent enhancements which were introduced in Gmail are : Themes, To-do-list, Offline support via Google Gears.

Gmail users all over the world, around 100 milion accounts recently suffered a outage of 2 and half hours on 24 February, 2009.But inspite of that it reatains its popularity of being the most used email service on the internet and we hope that this continiues this way...

Once again Happy Birthday GMail...

Nainital Trip

"Lets celebrate New Year in a different style".This was in our mind when we returned from our Gwalior trip.But we didn't even imagined that we would be celebrating the first day of year 2009 in Nainital.So when my friend Avik told me about Nainital plan i immediately said 'Yes! we are going!!!'

Without thinking much we booked a ticket for Kathgodam from Old Delhi railway station on Ranikhet Express which was supposed to depart at 10:30 PM but got delayed by half n hour.No big deal for Indian Railways.It was a very cold 31st night and couple of brandy sips kept us warm inside the compartment.Chilly winds,fog and dense forests on the mountain range welcomed us in the morning.Kathgodam is a really small station with only one platform and only cabbies and hotel agents present there so early in the morning.We took a cab to Nainital for Rs 200.It took around 1 hour or so to reach our hotel very near to Mall Road, the lifeline of Nainital.

Hardly wasting any time we finished our breakfast and went on our mission i.e. to explore the beauty of Nainital.Naini lake was just around the corner of our hotel,buzzing with tourists.Some of them were enjoying the lake on boats.But we headed straight for the Snow View point.It is at an altitude of 2270 m and gives an incredible view of the snow laden himalayas.

From there we moved on to Naina Peak or China Peak located at an altitude of 2611 m and is the highest peak of the town.To reach it we had to go for a horse ride of around 20 mins.It was really a thrilling experience riding a horse on a steep mountain range amid dense pine trees.

Enroute we also visited Tiffin Top or Dorothy's Seat.It is a terrace hill top at an altitude of 7520 ft.Now it is a famous picturesque picnic spot.Our last point on horse was Land's End at an altitude of 2118 m.It gives a panaromic view of the mountains and also the Khurpatal Lake.From there we moved back to Nainital town and decided to explore it on foot.The first option available was Naini Lake.It was chilly moving through the lake water on a boat but we were enjoying it.After a hot cup of tea we visited the local Tibetian Market,Bara Bazaar and Naina Devi Temple.The night was spent around The Mall Road enjoying the beauty of the lake in night.

2nd January 2009, it was time to move on.We took our cab for Ranikhet.Ranikhet is at 1829 m above sea level 65 km from Nainital.It took around 2 hours to reach there.Ranikhet is the Head Quarter of the reknowned Kumaon Regiment of the Indian Army.In Ranikhet we visited the Chaubatia Orchards famous for its apples,peaches, plums and apricot,Jhula Devi temple with hundreds of bells hung around it.

By evening we returned back to Nainital.We visited Eco Cave Garden which has 6 deep caves and a musical fountain.Our last spot was Hanumangarhi which provides an excellent view of the sunset.Night was falling and we tried our hands on golfing on a small 9 hole golf club.It was realy enjoying palying golf in the freezing night.We took our dinner in the restaurant and retired to our hotel rooms as we had to get up very early to catch a train for Delhi.

It was really one of the most memorable New Year celebration for me.Wish to visit Nanital once again and recommend those who have not visited yet don't miss this paradise.

Jhansi-Orcha Trip

After an eventful and exciting excursion in the jungle it was time to move on.We packed our bags and took a bus for Jhansi which is around 103 km from Gwalior by bus.It took around 3 hours to reach Jhansi as the road was pretty bad.Also a lot of time was wasted while looking for a good hotel room.It was pretty disheartening to see the condition of tourism in MP.

But nothing was going to stop us.We hired a auto and headed straight for Jhansi Fort.It was built by Raja Bir Singh Deo in 1613.Spread over a 15 acre area with 4 entrances and 10 gates.The eastern side of the fort was built by the british.There are many important constructions inside the fort namely Ganesh Mandir,Shahar Darwaza,Gulam Gaus Khan's grave,Execution Tower,Kal Kothri and Panch Mahal.It is a living testimonial to the valor and heroism of Rani Lakshmi Bai.

From Jhansi fort we visited the State Museum which was established in 1978.It has a vast collection of artifacts from early Gupta period to modern era.There was not much to see in Jhansi so we moved on to Orcha which is just 22 km from Jhansi.

Orcha is the erstwhile capital city of Bundela kings.It is renowned for the world famous mural paintings.The different attractions in Orcha are Jehangir Mahal,Raja Mahal,Rani Mahal,Chatris,Laxmi Narayan Temple.Though there are many other attractions we could not visit each of them as we had very little time and most of them were getting closed down by 5 PM.We had some evening snacks on one of the converted restaurants there and returned back to Jhansi.

We had our return tickets from Gwalior but it was impossible to reach Gwalior in time so we decided to board the train from Jhansi itself.Thus ended our momentful journey which started from Gwalior to Jungle safari in Shivpuri to old city of Jahnsi and Orcha.It was time to say good bye and hoping to come back here someday to find some more hidden attractions.