Montreal – few early days

I may sound childish writing this, but for me things I experience for first time in life makes me feel child. There is so much to see and know. That’s why they say Life is a journey. If you are stuck at one place you are more dead than alive. Make a promise to yourself to visit a new place at least every year, but that will make only 40 new places for an average Indian life span if I start now. Doesn’t that sound small? But think in last 10 years or so how many places have you visited. Visiting 40 countries will be a good goal. Two done, 38 more to go, New Zealand I am coming Ha ha ha.

I was just watching “So you think you can Dance Canada”. Dancing is so amazing. I want to learn that too. But then I stop and think should I learn everything I see and like? No I should just do it. I don’t want to learn for whole life, I want to use what I learn sometime in life and teach others. I want to experience my learning. By saying this I am breaking the saying “You learn to live and live to learn”. Enough philosophy, now I will share Montreal as it stands for me today.

Geography: The Montreal district is an Island which is surrounded by the Saint Lawrence River. There is French and English part of Montreal the east and west. English part is rich and French is poorer in comparison. Fall is very beautiful here. Each and every leaf changes the color. This is because of the sudden fall in the temperature from summer to winter and lack of sunlight. The maple leafs turn red.

People: They are good. French are supposed to be aggressive but not here, it’s different. They seem to have lot of patience. I didn’t find any time that they were in hurry or so. While crossing even the small roads, cars will stop for you to cross even if they see that you have already stopped for the car. That’s something no one does in India. Its seems it’s in the culture here.
They hate America, its same everywhere. That why they same the more powerful you are the more people will hate you. Don’t be very powerful in life else everyone will hate you.
Crime rate is supposed to be minimum here in Quebec province. Canadians don’t require visa to travel to many countries like USA for sure, Japan, Australia, most of Europe, Belgium and many more because of their Peace loving status. There can be many reasons for this but I see that one reason could be that everyone here seems to have some hobby. So they spend their free time in pursing their hobby instead of keeping their mind empty for evil to come in. My senior engineer here drives bike (Cycles) for 100 Kms just for fun. He comes to office on it for 4 days, i.e. around 40Kms of biking two ways. And he says it takes him 45mins to do that and in car it takes 50mins. So imagine, he drives at almost 50Km an hour. Not telling other peoples else you will curse yourself. So go get some hobby for yourself. It can be as simple as running (Many of us will be thinking, don’t say that’s easy).
Everything starts very early morning. The hotel I am staying starts serving breakfast at 6 am. Just imagine. Reaching office after 8 is considered late. Average dinner time here is 6 pm. After 7 it’s late. One interesting fact, the shopping malls and other outlets close at 9 pm on weekdays and at 5 pm on weekends. Its weekend boss, you are supposed to be with your family and friends and not doing shopping etc. That’s the culture here. Weekend is very important to everyone. They will never compromise on it.
When in office they are very professional. They are not genius but they try to be specialized in one area. They are not Jack of all trades but surely near to king of their trade. I see them using technology to its best where as we use it as bare minimum for getting our job done. They assume very less and we assume almost everything, so we have fewer questions then them on anything.

Food: I did not expect the world to be so different, at least not when it came to taste. Here almost everything tastes different. The sugar tastes different. I feel it’s not made of cane here, but the maple syrup. The onions are three times what we have in India; I feel them to be genetically modified. It can be that they grow like that here, but then I think its six months of winter here. Canada may be most of time importing food items and when they are importing it may be of good or cheapest quality. Anyway I am fed up of Onions here. They taste bad, and on top they don’t get cooked easily. It takes lot of time to fry them. Milk, I went to store that day and couldn’t count the type of milks available under same brand name, forget number of brands. They even have 0% fat Milk, which my manager calls as blue water. I took the maximum 3.5% fat one. Even it tastes more medicine then creamy milk. On good side potatoes taste very same, cauliflower tastes good. In fruits Apple are very juicy and tasty, but oranges are real bad. They say they are bad in winter. Pineapple is very same. We have local apple gardens here where one can go for apple picking. I hope to go in my last weekend.
Food here is too much commercialized. They are selling same thing under different names and are playing with the natural taste and contents. And here you are forced to buy them as you don’t have any other option. It’s much better in India. You can buy from where you want and mostly original from the farm and not the labs. People here live more on meat than vegetables. Not surprising even McDonald does not sell any veggie here.
They use or I will say waste plastic like crazy. We are supposed to keep each vegetable we buy in a separate plastic bag. And you can’t imagine the amount of paper they waste. No one uses glass here, it’s all plastic cups for everything from water to milk. But the fact is that still they are only 3 crore people in Canada so in terms of volume they are much lesser than in India. Also whatever waste it’s a bit more carefully dumped than back home.

Infrastructure: Lots of space first of all and less people. So it keeps everything simple and clean. Big roads, disciplined traffic. Almost everything is automated and hence very costly. The parking system is automated. Road crossing is automated. On the road crossing you need to push a button to tell the system that there are pedestrian and then only it will find a slot for you to cross. It’s scary to cross road here without that because the roads are so broad and vehicles are so fast, I feel I will not be able to cross the road at time. Bus service and Metro services are good. They have ticketing machine in the bus itself, when you get in put money in it and get your ticket. So you need to have change(coins) to ride a bus. Here minimum ticket costs is 2.75$ but you can use that ticket for one journey of Bus and Metro. So in the sense you can reach from one corner of city to other in 2.75$, but then it will cost you same if you wish to go just a small distance. My view is that it’s the charge for using the service and not the charge for distance you travel.
In name of security, in the building my office reside, outside the office hours we need to have a separate access card for the elevator and without that you can’t reach a floor. There are keys for Restrooms so someone from outside can’t use them. Too much I will say.
Here they don’t have Cooking gas, but they use heaters. Gas is costly for them, and they have surplus amount of electricity. Qubec state produces all electricity from hydro power plants and so they call the electricity bill as hydro bill here. For your knowledge, it seems Canada may become the second largest producer of crude oil if they get breakthrough in extracting oil from the tar sand in an efficient manner. Just search for Tar Sands of Alberta. Here the government distributes the money to each resident on some criteria if they have surplus tax collection or saving. Never imagined of this. Everything is accurate till penny. They have all cents starting from 1 cent still used today. The rates are like 1.74 $ etc. There is some 13% tax on all non essential items.

Some French words
 Bienvenue: Welcome, Bonjour: Good day, RC: Ground floor, SS: basement, Arret: Stop, Sortie: Exit

Welcome aboard and abroad

I am in Montreal now, laying on this cozy king size bed alone, but with my laptop. I am wishing to fulfill the empty time with writing for most if not the whole of this month. I will try to make it interesting though the main motivation for this is just sharing and filling my time.

The Journey

Pune – Mumbai

Very Indian. I am saying this as now I see it’s not same here. It took me 6:30 hrs to reach Mumbai airport. That’s almost double the average time by car. PTC arranged pick and drop from me and as a shock they arranged a whole innova for single person. I will never understand how business works. Or may be hiring an innova is cheaper than I am thinking, it’s a Toyota. Picked up few friends on the way and met one at Lonavala. They acted like fuel for my confidence and also helped to make the day memorable. Drive was also good with heavy rains which is pleasure to watch from inside a car. Finally I reached Bombay airport at 11:30. I was feeling if I am late, but it turned out to be still early.

The Airport

So Mumbai Airport is crowed as any other place in India, because there is one person going and 100 to see him off and same 100 to receive him.

1.   First thing you need to do is get a trolley if you have many luggages. I don’t know why I took the trolley as I had only one big bag and that to with wheels which I dragged easily on other airports.

2.   Second you need to find out the gate for your airline. It’s written in front of each gate. There are four entry gates in Mumbai A, B, C and D. This is not the gate where your plane will stand but the gate for your check in and boarding pass. Keep your passport, tickets, insurance and invitation letter or the necessary documents handy. Enter the gate.

3.   Next step is screening. Here you need to get your check in bags screened. If they find something suspecting they will ask you to open it. If all is fine they will tag your bag as screened. This is important for check in.

4.   Now is the check in and boarding pass. It’s usually the same counter. Go to your airline counter and wait for your turn. Here you need to tell them that you want to do a through check in if you have a connecting flight to take. So they will check in your baggage from Bombay to your final destination. They will give you the boarding pass for all your flights including the connecting flights. Check the Plane no and other stuff and if in doubt ask them. In my case I had booked from Lufthansa airline but the connecting flight was operated by Air Canada. On my e-ticket it was saying Lufthansa flight no, but boarding pass had different no. I asked and they told that it’s a shared coach and Lufthansa has some reservation in it.

5.   After it’s done you need to proceed for immigration. Here as you are leaving form country of your residence they will not ask anything or only few straight things. They will stamp your passport and that’s it.

6.   Now is the final step security. Here they will check your cabin bag. They will throw anything that they feel is not as per regulations. Don’t keep any liquid/gel, knife etc in your cabin bag. That’s it.

7.   Now follow to the Gate written on your boarding pass for your flight. This is the Gate where your plane will connect. Wait and relax till boarding for your plane starts, even sleep if you wish. It’s the airlines responsibility now that you board the airline. They will wake you up if are sleeping.

It took me less than one hour for this whole process. And if it’s your first time then you now know everything. On the connecting flight you again need to find the Gate where your plane will connect, give the boarding pass and answer few question related to your travel. Go through security check again and that’s it. On your final destination you will need to go through only customs. After that claim your baggage and exit (Sortie in French).

Montreal Airport (YUL) to office to hotel

Here nothing to mention other than that everything is so much automated. The first thing I noted was not a single Horn on my whole drive till office. By the way its almost 3 days now and I have heard horn only once. For 20 minutes of parking they charged something like 12$. My manager (who came to pick me up) said if he had parked very near to airport it would had charged 35$. Anyway where he parked was also very near for me. Reached office and had introduction with everyone. Also got to know things how to reach office.  Then to hotel. All was very smooth and quick.

Airlines

From Bombay to Frankfurt I had Lufthansa Boeing 747, and from Frankfurt to Montreal it was Boeing 777.

Now I took window seat as it was my first time. But frankly its useless if its night time. And even in day time its good only for take off and landing. Rest of time you can’t see anything. There are more disadvantages of window seat then advantages.

1.   First usually the seating arrangement in airlines are 3-4-3. So you will be disturbing at least 2 persons if you wish to go anywhere. I was lucky on both the flights. In Bombay to Frankfurt I had seat beside me empty, so had to disturb only one guy, and from Frankfurt to Montreal I had all 3 mine J.

2.   Flights offer finest liquor for free. So if you are at window seat you hardly get to see the names and so hard to decide. Anyway you should get the names of few good wines for sure and ask them. Most of time they have the famous ones.

3.   And the worst part is that as you are on window seat you cant talk or flirt with  air hostesses.

The snacks were good but nothing great. Air Canada was better than Lufthansa in terms of snacks but then they were no competition when it comes to air hostesses. Lufthansa had best of them, wow German babes. Trying to adjust with what they call Jet Lag, I did not sleep whole night. But even after 3 days I feel a bit of jet lag as I am sleeping early and getting early then I usually do. They say human body can adjust 1 hr per day for the time difference, so may be it will take me 8-9 days to fully over come it.

The distance from Bombay to Frankfurt is 6565 Km. We were flying at some 867Km/hr and at a height of 35,000 feet (some 11 km).

Trip to dapoli/harnai

Outing to Harnai/Dapoli

After long time of yes and no we were finally able to convince 6 of us to do this outing.
Six of us in ascending order of weight rainging from 55 - 105KG : Chilly, me, Maloo, Bacchan, Kattu and Raj.

We decided to go on bike as we all agreed that it will be more fun and freedom biking. We took 3 bikes from three different staples. Bajaj Pulsar, Honda Unicorn and HeroHonda CBZ Extreme.

Some details of the trip got from my friends
1. Via Tamhini Ghat (200 Km) Road map: Pune - Chandani Chauk - Paud - Mulshi - Dongarwadi - Tamhini Ghat - Vile - Nijampur - Mangaon - Lonere Phata - Goregaon - Ambet - Mhapral - Shenale - Mandangad - Dapoli

2. Via Bhor (185 Km) Road map: Pune - Khed Shivapur Bhor Varandha Ghat Latwan Dapoli Pune --- Pune Bangalore Highway --- Khed Shivapur Turn right just ahead of Khed Shivapur at Bhor Phata Bhor --- Varandha Ghat --- Cross NH 17 at Hotel Sagar just outside Mahad --- Latwan. • Follow sign boards towards Dapoli. (Road map via Bhor: Pune - Khed Shivapur – Bhor – Varandha Ghat – Latwan – Dapoli)

3. Pune-Wai-Poladpur-Bharne Phata-Khed-Dapoli. (225 Km)

4. Pune: Dapoli (Via Khopoli-Pen) Good Condition Road Pune-Lonaval-Khopoli-Pen-Nagothane-Wakan-Indapur- Mangaon - Lonere Phata - Goregaon - Ambet - Mhapral - Shenale - Mandangad - Dapoli




















We took the Route 2 while going and Route 1 while coming back. Both are eqaully bad and good but the Route 2 is smaller and must be taken for more scenery and time saving. But Route 1 is more often used so you will find more vehicles on it and is helpful in case of emergencies. Choice is yours.




Journey till destination

We started at 5:50 in morning almost on time as per our plan. Nature was cool with us and provided a pleasant ride. We took the path via Bhor. Ride till Bhor was cool. Stopped there for breakfast which was usual one with samosa, bhaji and tea.

We must find some good ideas of carrying luggage on bike. pillion carry the backpack is a pain. And what we tried turned out to be a mess. I tied the carry bag carrying sandals and few snacks to the rear of bike. It was working fine till we stopped at Bhor for a break, it slipped and came over to silencer and then fumes........ Raj bhai's 1 day old new sandals suffered serious burns (ha ha ha). Only thing for consolation was that they still looked usable at least. We couldn't stop laughing and stare at Raj's confused face. The snacks got baked again.

After Bhor our ordeal of bike ride started. Road looked made only for trucks. It was feeling like there was no suspension in bike. Walking felt easier than riding. But landscape were cool. Very nice weather with sun light doing wonders on mountains, clouds and water.
Reached Mangoan intersection and from there on ride was smooth though we have few more ghats. Maloo doing his part of driving through ghat and he may have frustrated at least few drivers with his driving skills and experience. We saw one such case where a sumo driver finally accepted defeat and didn't try to overtake Maloo after some 15-20 tries. Each time sumo tried to overtake, Maloo will come in the line as if reading the mind of sumo driver.

Anyway the ride ended safely. Reached Harnai by 1:30

Stay Day 1: Tiredness

We had lost our butts by the time we landed in Harnai. Everyone was looking for cushion. On top of this when we reached there we were almost crying that its going to be a big flop. It no where looked like farmhouse resorts or rental houses. Its was a fish market smelling fish and very bad looking hotels. It was almost certain we cannot stay here. So after much inquiry we got to know that we must go to Murud (not Murud Janjira this is different) some 10 Km from Harnai. It was along the same coastline. And reaching there we were so relaxed. It was what we wanted. Then we finalized on one rental house. It was simple with basic amenities at 500 Rs per day, a bit costly to say. We took two rooms. We had garden in front of house for our late night folklores. Had lunch and in a snap every was sleeping. In evening went to beach and it satisfied our expectations. Good beach, good waves, not very crowed. Enjoyed time in water.

Stay Day 2: Dolphin/Fish market

Next day we got up at around 8. Had poha for breakfast. Was good.

Then somehow got ourself ready to go to the beach. There we decided to go for Dolphin watching. We didn't believe there will be dolphins here. But more enjoyable was the boat ride than the dolphins. As we start from the beach the boat has hard time getting over the huge waves formed near the beach. The boat was swinging almost 40% up and down on each wave and we were feeling this time it will fall on its head. But it continued see-saw for some 10 mins and then reached deeper into sea and the waves also were smoother now. We wished the boater took us from beach to sea few more times. We felt even if we don't get to see dolphins, ride was worth taking.

After some 5 Km of travel into sea we finally got the dolphins to show up them self. And then there were 3-4 of them. Boat engine was stopped so we can be as near as possible. We were there for around half hour. Enjoyed each time they come up. But they were big ones and we were told if there was any young one it will do the total jump as we see it in movies. Whatever we saw was quite breathtaking for us. Heart escaped breath at the look of water around. None of us could swim.

On way back to beach we missed the waves as the boater was smart enough to align the boat with one wave and we were carried to beach in a single wave and that too in a snapshot. One thing to note was the propeller of the boat. It was too small from our expectation.

After lunch and some rest we went to the fish market at Harnai. For me I saw many new fishes, lobsters. It was a bit crowed. Saw fish auction, but I felt the people pulling the price up belonged to the same group and were doing intentionally, fishy. Bought some fish for dinner (gave it to landlord to cook). Then from there we went to light house a working one. View was good from there. Spent sometime and then back to the beach. Got a rubber ball and played catching in the sea. Was good fun and very demanding thing to do in water. Now I know why swimming is rated as best exercise.

Stay Day 3: Most disappointing one

We decided to visit the caves and hot water spring. As per our map it was some 20Km from dapoli so effectively 35Km from our place. But in the end when we reached back we had traveled 120Km too and fro. We took the wrong route on way to hot water spring (Unhavare). The road looked endless and we kept riding on and on. The route was through almost jungle. I dont think anyone dared to travel at night there. Nothing only deep valleys and trees. We enjoyed some wild fruit (kali maina in hindi) though. They were almost double the size we get in pune. Enjoyed few mangoes. Hot water spring turned out to be a big disappointment. We had imagined something like real spring. Hot water coming out of some rocks etc and forming a small river or lake. But what we saw looks as in below image. Water was boiling hot though, but i don't its was worth coming so long for this. In winter season also you cannot enjoy this as its too small and not suitable for taking bath in a group. We had carried clothes to have a bath and now we were having prank on each other about it.

The caves were good, but needed some torch etc to see inside. It was very dark inside. And as we were running out of time we didn't try anything. Cave lovers can visit there for caves.

Journey back home: Toughest bike ride

Unexpected was waiting to happen still and it happened as bike puncture. Chilly's bike got punctured just 5 Km from our place. It was early morning and nothing we can do. With the help from a boy at a near by dhaba we were able to dismantle the tire and carry it to Dapoli. Where had time finding an open workshop, then the tube needed replacement and no tube shop open. Somehow tube was patched and we used it for next 30Km, thanks to god for not testing us again. At khed we changed the tube.

This time sun was at its hottest and ride was very uncomfortable. Had lunch at Mangoan intersection and then took different route back via Mangoan. We had thought this will be better but longer, but it turned out to be worse and longer. We took many breaks and after each break we felt Pune was moving farther instead. In the end managed to reach back home by 7:30 8pm. So total of 12hr on road on way back.

Retrospect

Trip was good and well managed. No difference in views and no fighting on stupid things.
Learned to take out bike tire.
Few learnings for long bike riding.