Lothal and Beyond

Oct 2 : I have been observing, with some curiosity, the many ways in which tea is served here in Gujarat. There is the kaat(half) chai and the full tea. Full tea, at eight rupees, is quite expensive. However, if you consider the percentage of milk in it, then it is good value for money. The Gujaratis like their food and drink, and will pay for them too! The full tea is not considered full until the tea overflows from the cup into the saucer, and a significant amount at that. Many hotels stock more saucers than cups. The reason? The more popular half tea is served directly in saucers. This annoys me since the tea cools off fast. Not a problem for the locals who seem to rin through their tea fast.

A quick update

I had keyed in a long story, which was lost due to a typing error. Ouch - more than an hour's worth of effort wasted. I've seen Lothal's excavations and have seen greenery, parched lands, and salt fields.

I am now in Palitana, near the Jain piligrimage place of Shatrunjaya. It's been extremely hot here all along the route. I had an hour's yesterday evening. Suprisingly I woke up close to dehydration. It is clear I'll need to change my plans. But by how much I dont know yet. If Gujarat is this hot, I cannot think how bad Rajasthan could be 🙁 Some tell me the temperatures are high due to less rains, but not others. Anyway, I am here now, and I have to deal with it...

Will rewirte and post stories later. Today is a semi rest day !

I’m on my way

Yesterday was a hectic day - both at office and home. KP helped me pack the bike into the box(thanks BOTS for that), and we also ensured that the panniers were OK. A stitch in time is supposed to save nine. I had only one bag to save. But stitch I did.

Harsha dropped me and the bike to the airport. But before that I said goodbyes to my sister, brother and aunts, and most importantly, to KP. As I was shaking hands with him, I realized that this would be the last I would see of him for quite some time. KP is moving to Singapore. At that moment, it dawned on me that I would miss him much. I shed a few tears unseen by the rest of the folks, much like I had when I bid goodbye to roommates during my engineering days. Who says men don't cry. We do, but we are experts at hiding them too...

More WordMobi Plans

First things first : I fixed a bug in my geo-blogging code yesterday. I had a busy loop in python - that's fixed now. This turned out to be the reason why I wasn't able to take snapshots of the new dialog using ScreenShot. I've uploaded the changed posts.py too. Plus, WordPress Geo Mashup released their version 1.2.8 today, which includes a fix for the issue I had reported yesterday. Thumbs up to them ! I'll update my previous post with this information.

Also, I realized yesterday that I could do a little more with WordMobi than just posting coordinates. For instance, that I can post KML files - thus plotting my route on the blog! The file attached to this post has a path that shows the appropriate area of my tour (experimenting right now with this - it's supposed to show up on the map on top - doesn't seem to be working!). Need to add this functionality to WordMobi - and need to figure out how as well... Update: This doesn't seem to be possible with the current Geo Mashup. Perhaps I should try 1.3alpha...

Plans for Geo Blogging

I have plans to switch to Geo Blogging this time. Simply put, this means that all my posts will have a geographical location. These will then get plotted on a map, where you can an overall picture of everything. There will be an overview map on the main page that will show my trail.