Curious Tourist

A Heaven for Gourmet Foodies The food festival called Palate Fest was organised on a grand scale in the green environs of Nehru Park from 28 th to 30 th November. It is for the very first time that Delhi has witnessed a lavish celebration of food with so much vigour and excitement. The festival brought together some of India’s best chefs, passionate produce growers and entertainers much to the delight of the locals and tourists alike. It covered more than a third of the park and was categorized in six different zones for simplicity and ease of access. There were bakeries offering delicious delicacies ranging from freshly baked strawberry and cream waffles to melt-in-mouth cheese cakes and crispy cookies. Besides the bakery stalls, there were outlets in the Market Zone selling organic fruits, home-made jams and pickles, potato and corn chips with freshly made dips and much more. All other stalls away from the Market Zone were set up by some of the best restaurants in town w

Excitement in the Lion city I was aboard an overnight flight to Singapore with my family when my eyes fell on the brightly illuminated cargo ships below me which seemed like little stars shining in the darkness of the night. There must have been hundreds of vessels waiting patiently in queue trying to gain entry into Singapore port apparently to offload, reload or even refuel before continuing on their long journey. I had no idea whatsoever about the fate of those ships but I could tell without doubt that our destination was near. Only moments later, the plane accelerated its rate of descent and eventually touched down at Changi Airport which is not very far away from the city centre. By the time we completed our immigration formalities and stepped out into the open, it was no longer dark and we could feel the cool early morning breeze carrying with it a hint of moisture, reminding us that we had just landed on an Island. We wasted no time in boarding a cab which took us to

View from Leh Palace View from Shanti Stupa Shanti Stupa Kargil Hall of Fame Magnetic Hill Confluence of the Indus and the Zanskar A Green valley surrounded by rocky mountains The Bakso Palace The Likir Monastery Horses grazing in green meadows Little Bactrian camels at Hunder in Nubra valley Tara Devi Buddha at Diksit Monastery In the backdrop is an entire hill full of colourful prayer flags A Ladakhi Marmot near his burrow Black woolly Yaks busy grazing in green pastures The majestic Pangong Lake Day 1 Touring the City I was sitting right in the middle of my sisters when my eyes fell on the handsome mountains covered with a blanket of snow on their tops. I began to jump and almost sat over my sister (who was next to the window) to capture the fascinating scene with my camera. The heavenly scenes were ever changing as the plane moved closer to Leh (headquarters of Ladakh district). The green and liv

Memorable Moments My College I cannot pin point a single day from my life at campus that was the most awesome as almost every day was as memorable and beautiful as any other. Every day that I spent in college with my friends now feels like a beautifully written page from an exciting novel(fiction of course). I may not remember the exact sequence of events on any particular day just like one doesn't remember all the nuances printed on a page but I can still feel that warmth of companionship and bonding that kept bringing me closer to my friends, as I continued to turn those magical pages. Now the book is coming to an end with barely a chapter to go. In a month's time, I will be thrown out of my sweet little home with nothing but cheerful memories floating in my mind. There are plenty of memories as there are many memorable moments worth cherishing. I loved hanging out with my buddies- eating, watching new releases at G3S nearby, lazying in the sun at the OAT during winte

A Philosophy of Life Hundreds of years before Christ, ancient Greeks practiced Paganism worshipping Gods like Zeus and Poseidon. Besides the Greeks, ancient Romans as well as Egyptians had several Gods and Goddesses who are now mere cult figures of ancient mythology finding place only in bedtime stories, fairy tales and glitzy Hollywood movies. Around sixth century BC when Hellenistic period was also at its peak, early Greek Philosophers made their presence felt by  giving birth to a concept of boundless thinking that involved dialogues, debates and discussions. Topics from all walks of life including astronomy, physics, biology, arithmetic, geometry and countless others were discussed as a part of a vast field of reason and knowledge which later came to be known as Philosophy. Philosophy went against the norms of traditional pagan worship and asked interested men and women to be free thinkers and be governed by their own sense of reason and logic. Early philosophers of the Roman

Brace For Impact British Airways crash at Heathrow in 2008 Some time back in the 1980’s, a Delta Airlines flight bound to Los Angeles from Fort Lauderdale experienced inexplicably weird turbulence while it was descending to land at Dallas(a stopover). The plane couldn’t hold on and crashed just a few metres from the runway at Fortworth Airport. The mystery of its crash remained unsolved for a long time until a meteorologist made a remarkable discovery. He proposed the theory of microburst which is an unpredictable and the most poorly understood weather phenomenon even to this day. High temperature and humidity is a perfect recipe for thunderstorms which may give rise to a microburst. However, the microburst cannot be seen on weather radars or convection current monitors. Unlike other phenomena, it is a very narrow region of extreme gusts of wind pushing vertically downwards and remains active only for a few seconds. Delta Airlines flight just happened to be too unfortunate

Brace For Explosion Mangled cockpit of Pan Am flight 103 after explosion In the 1980’s, there was a conspicuous absence of strict security procedures at all major airports around the world. It was partly due to a lack of sophisticated technology and partly a fallout of the gross ignorance of intelligence officials at that time. In 1985, the flagship passenger plane of Air India named Emperor Kanishka, a Boeing 747 jumbo jet, was travelling from Montreal to New Delhi when it blasted in the Irish air space, killing all 329 people on board. At the same time, there was a bomb blast at Narita Airport in Tokyo when the bag that was carrying that bomb was being loaded on board another Air India flight to Bangkok. The terrorists had audacious plans of bringing down both planes at the same time. Criminal investigation was under way in Japan which revealed that the bombs were timer triggered and were housed in a radio tuner device. As the scope of investigation was widened to include