Visit to Suwon Fortress

Suwon Fortress (Called as Hwaseong in Korean) is built by king Jeongjo of Joseon Dynasty. It was built in 18th Century. Suwon is around 30Km south of Seoul. This place has been designated as World Heritage site by UNESCO in 1997.
It is a nice place to visit in terms of day trip and walk around the wall. The wall is about 5.47Km in length. It has four main gates. This was built to protect the City and people from the enemy attacks. There is a Palace within the area covered by fortress.

Some of the pictures captured in Fortress:

Eastern Gate:

Main Entrance of the Palace:

An Ancient tree which has been saved and maintained safely at the palace entrance:

 The shadow of a needle in below picture shows the time and season:

Western Crossbow structure:

Ancient Musical instruments in preserved in palace:

In winter, it will be very cold and most of the area will be covered by Snow. As the wall includes flat and hilly terrain, it will be difficult to walk around in winter. So it is advisable to visit this site in Summer.

 Whenever you decide to go, know that, it makes for a great hike with scenic views of surrounding Suwon.

Trip to Places arround Chitradurga

Chitradurga is district place in Karnataka and is about 200KM from Bangalore.
Places to see arround Chitradurga:

• Vani Vilas Sagar
• Jogimatti reserved forest
• Aadu Malleshwara Mini Zoo.
• Chandavalli Thota

From Bangalore, head towards Pune (Take NH4 Highway) and after driving about 150KM, enter Hiriyur. From Hiriyur, take service road next to highway and drive for about 3KM in the service road till you get some arch. From the arch, take deviation from Service road (Take Left) and drive about 14-20KM to reach Vani Vilas Sagar.

Vani Vilas Sagar is also known as Maari Kanive. This dam is built by Mysor Scion.
The Dam is well built and architecture is marvellous.
Location is beautifull and good place to spend time with family.

Few of the snaps captured at the location:

There is IB mentained by governement and if we have prior booking and reservation from Irrigation department, we can stay overnight and spend day.

From Vani Vilas Sagar, head back to Hiriyur and after reaching Arch near NH4 highway, take left and head towards chitradurga. Chitradurga is abut 40-50KM from Hiriyur.


Chandavalli Toota:
It's about 4 KM from Main Chitradurga City. Take Holalkere road and after driving about 2 KM, take left and it will lead to Chandavalli Toota.

Here there is a small temple and cave. Better to carry a torch to visit the Cave and explore properly.

Chitradurga Fort:
It's in the heart of Chitradurga city and built in 15th Century. It was under Vijayanagar Empire in the beginning and later ruled by Nayaks and Hydera ali.

Better to visit Fort in the morning arround 7 AM. There are some temples and ponds inside the fort.

• Gopala Swami temple and Honda
• Akka Tangi honda
• Obavvana Kindi
• Gali Gopur (Hawa Mahal)
• Sampige Sidda Temple
• Tuppada Kola

Below picture shows the places to be seen in the fort and route map:

Some of the snaps captured inside Fort:

When we vistited Fort, the common problem observed is, people throw the bottles and plastics all arround the places (Though there are many dust bins every where).
This was comment raised by one of the Cleaning staff inside the Fort and they have to walk arround the fort and collect the plastics and bottles.

Note: As a kind request, requesting tourists to keep the environment clean. Don't throw the bottles and plastic.

Result of Flight delay and AF response (Paris CDG Terminal -2E Gate-E35)

While returning from new Jersey on 29th September 2011, the Air france flight got delayed due to bad weather. As a result of this I missed my connecting Air France flight from paris to bangalore (India).
So when we enquired Air France team about this, they doesn't have any info.
It took them about 4 hours to arrange next connecting flight and that to via singapore.
The travel time to reach Bangalore from Paris was much more than the original scheduled time from New Jersey to Bangalore.

The problem here is not flight delay (Delay was due to bad weather and it was right decision with respect to securtiy of people).

Please read below about the problems and response from Air france:

As the Air France flight to Singapore was @ midnight arround 11:25PM and we waited almost 12 hrs in Paris CDG airport.
The Air france provided food coupon (Snack coupon), but this allows us to buy 1 soft/hot drink and 1 sandwitch.

How can they think a person can sustain 12 hours only on 1 sandwitch and 1 bottle of water. They doesnt even bother to check whether food requested was vegetarian or not.

Instead of this round trip, they could have allowed us to take flight to Delhi/Mumbai and then from their to Bangalore. This was also not happened.




The Air france response was totally bad in this situation.

So finally I could get some people who were having the same problem and travelling to bangalore. With all these people some how we passed 12 hours in CDG Terminal 2E-G35.

Agricultural Land turning into Sand mines:

Chikkakuravatti: A small village in Ranibennur Taluk and it's on the bank of Tungabhadra River. The main business was farming. But now the Sand mining has become prominent and farmers have become sand mine owners.
Almost 20-25 years back, there used to be a heap of Sand on the bank of Tungabhadra River. I used to be astonished by seeing the amount of sand on the bank of River. It was very huge and we used to play in the sand.
But now the situation is totally different. If we go and see, there is no sand on the bank of River. Instead of Sand we just see some small stones. The sand has been totally emptied as it has been contracted to a person to export it for a period of 20 years. The contract is renewed again and still the sand mining is going on.
As the sand on the River bank is completely removed/emptied, now they have started to extract the sand from the Riverbed (From the middle of the river) using mechanized boats. This is causing degradation of the River and affecting the water quality.
The government has started giving permission to extract the sand from the river bed. So by taking the advantage of this rule and also by seeing the amount of money involved in the sand mining business, farmers who have agricultural land near the river have started the sand mining business and stopped cultivation/farming.
Eventually this has lead to the conversion of fertile land into Road and Storage area.
The fertile agriculture land is being used as a Road to make way for the Trucks and Tractors to transport the sand from the river bank to towns/cities. Also the land is being used to store the Sand extracted from the riverbed.
Now most of the farmers in my village have stopped farming and converted their fertile land as Road.

The extraction of sand from the riverbed using mechanized bed leads to the following problems:
1) Creates deep holes under the water.
2) Animal/cattle deaths which go to drink water and get trapped in the deep hole. Similar case applies to the human beings also, if a person doesn’t know swimming and enters river without knowing the depth of the water.
3) Oil spillage (Diesel/Greece etc from Merchandised boats) into the water.
4) Killing Aquatic life.


Of-Course this sand mining business is giving quick and higher money when compared to Agricultural crops. But in the long run, the if we see the side effects of the Sand mining activity, the River will be degraded and one day it will be completely vanished also possible that River may change its flow direction.
The sand mining is not a sustainable business, so in my opinion, its better to continue with agriculture and find new methods in farming (i.e. Organic farming).

An experience in Bank PKO Polski (Warszawa)

Today I thought of writing down my experience about Money (TC or USD) conversion in Bank PKO polski (Warszawa, One near Pizza Hut in Centrum). Here in warszawa its easy to convert USD to PLN (Zoltey), but if you have TC's then you have difficult time to convert them to PLN or USD. As I know, the only bank that does TC's to USD or PLN conversion is Bank PKO Polski. The first problem which you will face is the communication problem. As there is no sign board written in english, it will be tough to find the counter where the TC's can be exchanged. Even after much struggle, we could find out counter (It was Counter-8, may get change). Once you are in the appropriate counter, then you have to wait for atleast 30-45 minutes to get your TC's converted. The process of converiosn is very slow and the young people can speak little better english, so you have to somehow manage with that. First they will verify your TC's and prepare 3 forms in thich you need to sign. Once the TC's are verified and forms are signed, you will be asked to move to another counter where you will be issued USD or PLN. Again in that counter you have to wait for your turn, this may again take another 10-15 minutes and you have to sign another 2 forms over here.
Overall the process of TC conversion takes an hour, by this time the Queue behind you would have grown like anything and people would have frustrated.