This Place is Taken: trip
Showing posts with label trip. Show all posts
Showing posts with label trip. Show all posts

Wednesday, July 10, 2019

Best museum visit ever !

Today I learnt a lot. Because today, I went to the museum. I felt like a kid again, and boy, was it fun. This would be my best museum trip ever. I visited the Melbourne Museum in Carlton, just because I had a day off and didn't kmow what else to do. A day well spent.

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First off, I have always had dual relationships with museums. The name is supposed to spark curiosity, and fun, and questions. But the museums in India are so poorly done, the only question it invokes is "Why is this place still open ?". They don't have that many speciemens, due to …well, lack of funding. They focus on near history, our recent past only, and no address what we know in the long term. And they also don't bother about the future. They put up paintings and sculptures on their walls, but they don't spark curiosity.

But I have had better museum visits outside India. The natural history museum in Helsinki had dinosaurs. The one in Austria focussed on European flaura and fauna. Also..Vikings ! These guys really know their stuff. So I had high hopes when I walked into the largest museum in the southern hemisphere , in Melbourne.

The dinosaur walk was front and center. And they talked at length on the earth, meteorites, and a little too much about crystals and stones. Nothing fancy about that. One or two collections would have been enough. But upstairs, they talked about evolution, and the principle minds that worked behind that idea. And a room full of taxidermied animals ! And more bees and butterflies !  Some of Darwin's and Owens' original specimens are also on display, you have to squint to spot them ! The focus was on animals found in Victoria, but they also added a polar bear and a panda. The whole arrangement, lighing, and occasinal sound effects were all perfect.  Just enough information to answer your queries, without a long monotnous speech. Sadly, I missed the marine room.

The outdoor installation of Forest history is very cleverly done. I doubt anybody else would have thought about that. They already had giant trees in the back, and they built underground installations to show the birds and animals of such a forest.

Wonders never cease. They have spent a good portion of their space to talk about Victoria, and Melbourne's own little history. Through detailed research and hundreds of actual historical pieces, they have told a continous story of this city from its colonial past. The original natives of this place is mentioned, and without sugercoating, they have also detailed the cruelty these people had to suffer at the hands of 'white-men'. After the gold rush, and a huge influx of migrants, the city planners really had to work overtime to get back to a planned, livable city.

This is where the history of Melbourne differed from a place like..well, an Indian city. Through planning , and efficient government, they built the most livable city in the world, out of slums and closed mines. They go through both the world wars, and were able to successfully move to modernizatin. There are separate exhibits of objects used in all these various time-capsules. The first electrical appliances, the first cable driven trams, old movies, and radios, and then music and footy..the time travel was instantaneous ! I specially adored the pieces designed for their maritime history, with scale models of wooden clippers, and large luxury liners, even a navy ship. They have these little photo albums placed at various points, with real photos taken by people living in here, in various points of time. Thanks to photography, we can now glimpse how they lived , more than 120 years ago. No question, they put on their best clothes while posing for the cameras !

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So, in closing, this is how a museum should be designed. There is no way a place can cover 4 billion years of history in a day. The key is to show snippets, and answer questions that really matter. If you have a spare day, spend it at the museum, you feel like a kid again. You won't be dissappointed.


Wednesday, October 17, 2018

Portarlington Trip

 

Have you heard of Portarlington ? Its a little coastal township in the Port of Phillip Bay, right at the entrance to the sea.  A short ferry ride away from Docklands, Melbourne, the place has amazing views of the bay, and is the perfect place for a short holiday. It reminded me of those picturesque British coastlines often seen in movies. A village by the sea. And thats where we went for a holiday during a long weekend.

 

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Hiked the 1.3 km Rambler’s walk. Best part is that all the attractions are within walking distance of the port, and we saw a lot of visitors walking and cycling across the coasts. What continues to surprise me is that these idyllic holiday points are within a few hours travel from the city, yet the place itself is like stuck in time. It looks and feels as if one has gone back in time to a quieter , calmer time.

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Tourists, mostly families visit the place in groups, yet they are mindful of the cleanliness of the place. There is no rubbish on the ground, and no crowds rushing in a hurry. The vehicles drive slowly, giving way to hikers and cyclists, and children have a blast in the children’s park. There are public grilling areas free for use, people can bring in the foods they want to cook and eat. And everyone is expected to clean up afterwards. There are affordable eateries across the street, nothing is over priced.It is a historic town, and they do have their own museums and churches to show. But there is no graffitti defacing public property.  The free restrooms are clean, and there are fountains providing drinking water.

 

We in India still have centuries to go before we can reach this level of maturity. And love for nature, things old and new.

Saturday, August 16, 2014

Coorg Trip

 

Just back , and exhausted from a two day trip to Coorg.This week we had an rare long weekend in our favour, Independence day, a mandatory holiday here , fell on a Friday. My current project follows an Agile delivery model, we have a release every Friday night, and testing on Saturday morning. But this time, I had very few changes going in. So, I could afford to take the weekend off, and we began making last minute arrangements for a quick and short weekend trip. We found out the hard way that it was raining in most of the places of our first choice. The monsoons are still strong in South India, so most of the destinations in Karnataka, Kerala , and even Goa, was soaking wet. Then I did a weather search for Coorg, and it came out dry. Wait, what ? Coorg it was.

After making quick reservations at one of the few hotels still available in Madikeri, we booked the last two seats on a private bus from Bangalore to Madikeri. We stayed at the now-dilapidated Hotel Hilltown in Madikeri. And had a two day itinerary planned to visit the most popular destinations around the Coorg.

Tip : Don’t book Private buses from Bangalore to Coorg. The Private buses are rare and not in good condition. KSRTC is much more active on this route, you can get good bookings all day and all night round, for a little less money.

Tip : If you have Payback points from your credit card you wish to redeem, book hotels via makemytrip. They let you pay via payback points, we were able to cover half of our hotel charges this way.

 

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Day 1:

  1. Abbey Falls
  2. Bhagamandala
  3. Talakaaveri & Brahmagiri
  4. Madikeri Fort  (not worth it :-( )
  5. Rajas’s seat

Day 2:

  1. Dubare Elephant Camp
  2. Kaveri Nisagardhama
  3. Tibet Monastery

Over the years, many of my acquaintances had visited Coorg, and most of them told me it was not as good as Ooty.. Well, maybe I had not taken a trip in many months, but the whole trip to Coorg was …AWESOME ! The picture below was taken on top of Brahmagiri hill near Talakaaveri. No, the camera is not faulty, the whole place was covered in dense fog when we arrived there. It was 1pm, when the sun was right above you. Mist and rain had covered the hilltop, and the winds blowing where also strong. We were drenched to our bones in the cold rain. I don’t remember the last time I had a similar experience.

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My best part about the trip was the Abbey falls, and the Brahmagiri hill above Talakaaveri. These where the places truly Coorg, cool and hilly areas covered in fog. The places on our Day2 of our trip where all down flatlands. If you are planning to visit Coorg, try to book and stay at a homestay in the hills instead of the city around it.

Madikeri, the main town of Coorg, turned out hard to navigate, it is definitely not as clean as Ooty or Kodaikanal Eventhough Coorg has been made a plastic free zone, there was lot of plastic and garbage on the road side. If you are taking your own vehicle, be prepared to drive everywhere in first gear, because the little town is all topsy turvy, most of the roads are at 30 degree angles to each other. Our cab driver Zafar (+919945303537) knew all the shortcuts and the quickest way to get there. They charge 1300 for a 1 day site seeing travel in Coorg. And maybe because we travelled on a long weekend, every site we visited in Coorg was crowded !

This turned out to be a much needed break for me and my wife. The place not only cooled our heads, it also gave us a lot of things to talk about. We could not get enough of the hills and waterfalls. My wife specially enjoyed the Dubare elephant camp, there were two baby elephants , she was around them the whole day. She was able to ask and find the names of all the elephants there, …I only remember a Gopi elephant, and a Rama elephant. Anything to keep her happy  !