Day 11: Diaries from Summer Vacation 2019

We took an awesome and memorable 10 day road trip (17th May 2019 - 27th May 2019) from Chandigarh to Amritsar via Himachal Pradesh. These are the notes taken every night from that vacation. I will publish them one day at a time for the next 10 days

PS: Just realised it was a 11 day trip and not 10. 
 27th May 2019 Day 11

I write this on day 11 (edit 12) as I simply was too tired to write it yesterday. We got up in Amritsar and I was very very tired. So I decided to stay in the hotel, while Richa and Reyansh wanted to go inside the golden temple. We couldn't enter inside the temple the day before as it was too crowded. Before leaving for the temple we did the majority of packing. 

Richa and Reyansh left and I decided to catch on some sleep in the hotel. Around 20 minutes later, Richa called and told me that we didn't go inside the Jalianwala Bagh yesterday. I wanted to go in for sure. So I took a quick shower and asked Richa to meet me near Jalianwala Bagh in a bit. I finished packing, put the bags in the car and rushed to Jalianwala Bagh. Richa and Reyansh again found a huge queue and decided to not enter the temple and came near the Jalianwala. 

We also saw a Digambar Jain temple in the same lane as Jalianwala and had a quick visit over there.

  

This happens to be 100 year anniversary of the tragedy in which so many innocent people were killed by General Diar. The entrance to Jalianwala is as narrow as it was a 100 year ago, it is even marked that this was the way from which Diar entered the Bagh. There are a couple of brick walls one can still see marks of bullets which were fired at the time. A total of 1650 rounds were fired by the troops. One can also see the well in which most people had  jumped to save themselves. A total of 120 bodies were taken out of the well. The well is very concealed though. The crowd in the Bagh is too much and you hardly get any sense of nostalgia or sympathy inside the park. 

After visiting the park we went back to hotel, and then to return the car to zoom car. A cab to Amritsar airport, flight back to Bangalore and a cab back to home followed. 

An awesome vacation comes to an end. A few of the highlights for me were : 

1) Unplanned road trips are fun. 

2) People are throwing plastic bottles all over the beautiful landscapes of our country. We need to clean it up soon or else we will lose all the natural beauty we have. 

3)  Himalayas are majestic and we should visit more often. 

Signing off Day 11.

Day 10: Diaries from Summer Vacation 2019

We took an awesome and memorable 10 day road trip (17th May 2019 - 27th May 2019) from Chandigarh to Amritsar via Himachal Pradesh. These are the notes taken every night from that vacation. I will publish them one day at a time for the next 10 days

26th May 2019 Day 10 

Last night we stayed in Raja Ka Bagh @Nurpur which is a boutique hotel. The hotel also hosts live music on Saturday nights. Party and music went on till 3.00 am which made it difficult to sleep in time. We somehow managed to get some sleep. 

As we got up, we had to figure out the plan of the day. I wanted to visit the partition museum in Amritsar in addition to our plans of catching the Beating Retreat ceremony at Atari Wagah border and visiting the golden temple. As we checked various places on the map we realised that partition museum is closed on Mondays, which meant we had to visit it today. We also had to attend the ceremony at Wagah today, given that it happens around sunset time. So we decided to skip Nurpur Fort and drive to Amritsar post breakfast. The restaurant at the hotel looked pretty slow so we rushed out and got some breakfast at a dhaba on the way. We then drove non-stop to a coffee day in Amritsar. After having a green tea, we parked our car in a public car parking next to partition museum. 

This museum is 2 years old and tells the story of our independence specially focusing on partition. It covers a few years post partition and how it affected the politics and lives of the people of both Pakistan and India. It captures the story of the biggest migration in the history of the world and it is the first museum in India which I felt is done beautifully and was badly needed.

We could have spent half a day at the museum, however as we had to go to Wagah border we had to rush through the museum. We decided to take a cab to Atari as we thought it would make it easier for us to attend the ceremony instead of trying to find parking. We took a cab for Rs. 1150. There was heavy traffic and we were a bit late. We anyhow managed to reach the border at around 4.45. The crowd and the queues were humongous. They separated the men from women for the security and there was no way to figure out how to meet after the security. The BSF people were not allowing us to stand and wait and moving wasn’t really an option. Phones were not working and if we had moved then there was no way for Richa to know that we have moved to the stadium. Once we found Richa back we had to jostle through the crowd to enter the stadium. There was no easy way to get in and people were pushing all around. After a while we managed to enter the stadium and there was no place to sit. The ceremony was good. They played some songs, made people dance on the road inside the arena. There was a lot of slogan shouting. And the BSF did an orchestrated show of aggression and brought the flag down.  On the way back we were stuck inside the parking for 1.5 hours.

The ceremony felt a lot longer then what it is as we had to stand all through and had to carry Reyansh on my shoulder for around an hour.

As we reached back towards golden temple, we checked in to hotel City Park. We can now say that we changed 9 hotels in 9 nights in this vacation. After check in we decided to have dinner, however on the way to dhaba we decided to visit golden temple instead. It felt crowded on the heritage street (street around temple). As we entered the temple complex we decided to not go inside the temple owing to the crowd. As we moved towards the langar it had the same kind crowd to get food. We decided to not have langar either.

After a round inside the temple complex we had chole kulcha on a shop next to the temple. The chole tasted nice. In the past 9 days We have had too much junk and no work out :(. After dinner we came back to hotel via our car parking. 

Richa went for some quick shopping while me and Reyansh took all our stuff from car to the room. We need to pack everything we have in 3 bags tomorrow morning. 

Richa may try to visit the temple from inside  tomorrow however I only intend to return the car to zoomcar and then fly back home.

Signing off Day 10

Day 9 : Diaries from Summer Vacation 2019

We took an awesome and memorable 10 day road trip (17th May 2019 - 27th May 2019) from Chandigarh to Amritsar via Himachal Pradesh. These are the notes taken every night from that vacation. I will publish them one day at a time for the next 10 days

25th May 2019 Day 9

We woke up in Dalhousie today and the weather was pretty cold. We had late breakfast and then got out for sight seeing. 

The traffic in Dalhousie is very dense and given that the city is situated in the mountains driving is very difficult. There is nothing to see in Dalhousie.  It's mostly about the awesome weather in the town because of the altitude it is at. There happens to be a church which we couldn't go to as there was no parking nearby. We then went to Saptdhara which is nothing again ..however there was a small waterfall next to it with activities like zip-line and river crossing happening. We sat on the fall and had a tea while Reyansh dip his legs in the cold water and had some fun. 

We walked back to car park. The number of sales people bothering tourists  with offer to buy Kesar, Shilajit and herbs to grow hair is very high and its irritating to keep saying no to them. These vendors just won't give up and catch you near everywhere. 

We were also offered with 5 items for 10000 Rs. Sale. This is the same sale which we had ended up buying a carpet, chingu and a few more items, 11 years ago in Shimla. Nothing has changed in 11 years :). We anyways declined to buy and started driving towards Khajjiar. 

Khajjiar is a small town almost an hour's drive from Dalhousie. The drive is pretty tricky as it has narrow road in the mountains and the traffic makes it almost impossible to enjoy the route. We reached Khajjiar and it is called Mini Switzerland for a reason. There is a large meadow and a lake in the middle of huge trees and it looks and feels great. The lunch was at a non descript restaurant facing the lake and the service was very poor.

Reyansh wanted to ride a horse so Richa took him for a ride on a white horse named Shera. I sat near the lake where they had many 'adventure activities' going on. Zorbing slope gradient was pretty low as compared to what I have seen in Bangalore. The most funny thing was a paragliding kind of ride. A team of almost 10 people will run with a parachute and make the kid airborne for approximately 10-15 seconds. How far up the kid goes depends on the height and weight of the kid. While the kid comes down a couple of people will focus on catching her to ensure that she doesn't fall on the ground too badly. Some kids weren't even sitting properly on the seat and it was mockery of a gliding. It was very unsafe and not sure why parents were risking something like this with their kids. 

After spending a good 3.5 hours near the lake we decided to drive towards Nurpur where we are staying for the night. 

I write this from Nurpur which is our last night halt in Himachal. tomorrow we will drive to Amritsar and it's a pretty flat drive. We are back to planes now and the drive should become simpler. We have driven almost a 1000 kms in Himachal Pradesh and thank god for no major incident in the drive :)

Signing Off Day 9.

Day 8 : Diaries from Summer Vacation 2019

We took an awesome and memorable 10 day road trip (17th May 2019 - 27th May 2019) from Chandigarh to Amritsar via Himachal Pradesh. These are the notes taken every night from that vacation. I will publish them one day at a time for the next 10 days

24th May 2019 Day 8 

This holiday has been long and busy. The memories of the days are already merging together. I write this blog from Dalhousie where we just checked in to a hotel. 

I couldn't sleep well yesterday night. The moon and stars were visible from the wall size window of the room we had checked in to and it just kept me uneasy for some reason. As we woke up on Mcleodganj this morning, it was already raining. The weather was cold and we had a dull begining of the day. The tiredness was now catching up. We somehow managed to go for breakfast at around 9.15 am. The breakfast was usual chola bhatura and poha. After the breakfast we pushed ourselves to mobe and checked out by 11.00. 

The first stop was Bhagsu nag temple and waterfall. Reyansh loved the fall and walked all the way up and down to earn the binoculars he wanted to buy. On the way back he even raced with a traveller from USA. At the end of Bhagsu Nag I had to buy him a well earned binoculars. 

Afterwards we went to Namgyal monastery. It is the monastery near which Dalai Lama lives. The monastery wasn't as peaceful as we had seen near Kullu or in Bir but is significant as it hosts Dalai Lama. The market in Mcleodganj was very crowded and all we wanted to do was run away from this place due to congestion on the roads. Richa did some shopping and then we were off to Dalhousie around 5.00 PM. As we neared Dalhousie we realised that sun sets around 7.50 pm in this part of our vast country. The sky looked beautiful with various shades of blue as the night settled in. 

We reached Dalhousie at around 9.10 pm. It's a cantonment area followed by a tourist city. The cantonment was probably established as Lord Dalhousie was a Governer General of India and had established this city. 

All the hotels were full as it was a Friday. We somehow managed to get a room in Clarks inn and crashed for the night. Reyansh fell asleep at around 5 in the car and looks like he will sleep through the night. 

Tomorrow we would visit a local church and Khajjiar. We are still not sure if we want to stay in Dalhousie tomorrow night or sleep in Nurpur, which is on the way to Amritsar and has a small fort. 

Will decide tomorrow...

Signing off Day 8

Day 7 : Diaries from Summer Vacation 2019

We took an awesome and memorable 10 day road trip (17th May 2019 - 27th May 2019) from Chandigarh to Amritsar via Himachal Pradesh. These are the notes taken every night from that vacation. I will publish them one day at a time for the next 10 days

23rd May 2019 Day 7 

As we woke up in Bir today, both me and Richa were looking forward to paragliding experience. We had asked the Oyo Holiday Inn (the hotel we stayed overnight), Bir to make a booking for us. We had asked for 8.30 and they were at our door at 8.15 AM. Earlier plan was that Richa would go first as I wanted to sleep more and then I would follow, however they had given us a 600 Rs. discount thinking that both of us would go together and they can save 600Rs. on the cab charges. 

So on midst of all the confusion I decided to go first. The plan was that I would then drive Richa to take off site in our rental car and this way they still save 600 on the cab.

As we (The driver, pilot and me) drove to Billing, which is around 18 km from Bir and is the take off site at 8000-9000 ft above sea level, the anticipation made me a bit nervous.  

I was fairly confident but waiting made the hands sweat. I decided to have a word with my pilot and driver. The name of the pilot was Happy and he had been flying since last 12 years. He has a wife and a 4 year old son. He did take off and land 3-4 times a day and I was fairly confident in his abilities now. I thought that what is a one off for me is a routine for him, so it can't be as dangerous or difficult. As we reached the top Happy explained how he needs wind for take off. The wind was quite low, we had to change our take off spot once and finally we had wind support. I was asked if I want to take a video, the charges were 500 Rs. I politely declined as I am not the one who would ever watch that video again. Happy tied the harnesses to the seat and told me that I should run till the pressure from wind pushes me back and makes the seat like a basket to hold me. He said I shouldn't worry and just keep running. We were at the edge of the cliff and I asked him that how far can I really run as we might fall off. He said that it's enough distance. I was probably 20 strides away from where I would fall off. Anyways he held me and asked me to run, I ran for like a few seconds and were in the air. 

We had Dhauladhar range covered in snow on our right and we could see the landing site on our right as well. We could see the wheat fields below and Happy told me that they would now sow the next crop. We could also see the XUV parked near our hotel. As we flew on the glider Happy told me that we could see Palpung Monastery as well. I wasn't sure where it was but I just agreed with him. Suddenly I saw a glider rolling down very fast, I thought it's an accident, but it was a passenger asking for aerobatic flying to his pilot. Happy offered to do that for me as well, however I declined politely. He did it once anyways and it was a bit scary due to the sound it makes and I felt dizzy very quickly. 

We landed in Bir soon and it was time for Richa to go for her flight. It took a total of 1 hour 20 minutes from Hotel to landing and it was an awesome experience. 

Richa went for her flight in a cab. We decided to pay extra for her cab as it will save Reyansh from going up to Billing. The drive is quite rough and has too many curves which could have  triggered his motion sickness. In the meantime, me and Reyansh checked out and Reyansh had his brunch. We then went to landing site to pick Richa up.

As we reached the site, Richa had already landed. She decided to make a video as well. After we settled the accounts , we decided to visit a cafe nearby for Richa to have her brunch. 

At the cafe I found that they also teach paragliding and one can fly his first solo from Billing to Bir within 7 days. I am excited about it and it may go to my bucket list. You can find more info on www.paragliding.guru .

Once we were done with snacks it was already raining. Our agent had hurried us up in the morning citing weather conditions being bad in the later part of the day and we were now thankful as it saved us from missing this experience. 

We then visited Palpung Monastery. This is the second time Google maps confused us due to wrong map and we learnt our lesson by heart to not trust the map completely in Himalayas. The monastery is located at a very quiet scenic hill near Bir. We are now becoming quite comfortable in asking about Buddhist traditions and monasteries in general to the monks and we have found them eager to help us. They had a 3 hour prayer going on in the temple and Richa sat in it for almost 10 minutes enjoying the traditional Pooja. 

After that we had a quick visit to Baijnath temple and then started towards  Mcleodganj. The GPS again took us to a bad road which I chose to turn back from (after a km or so) and then we took the main highway to Dharamshala and then to Mcleodganj. On the way we had Palampur where we saw some tea gardens a d even had a tea of Wah brand, right in front of their gardens. 

The whole drive had Dhauladhar range running on the right and we loved the snow capped mountains all through. 

Signing Off Day 7

Day 6 : Diaries from Summer Vacation 2019

We took an awesome and memorable 10 day road trip (17th May 2019 - 27th May 2019) from Chandigarh to Amritsar via Himachal Pradesh. These are the notes taken every night from that vacation. I will publish them one day at a time for the next 10 days. 

22nd May 2019 Day 6 : (Written today)

I missed taking any notes on Day 6 and I realise this today as I was tracking my emails to check out my notes. 

From what I remember we woke up in Kulu today and most of the day was spent driving towards Bir. We had 2 options, to drive to Bir via shortest path or drive via Pandoh dam. We were told by locals that Pandoh dam is just a bridge from where you can see water and doesn't have much, however we chose that route anyways as it was a national highway. 

Over our drive we saw a lot of tunnels being constructed through the mountains, and one can only imagine the economic impact the faster connectivity will bring to this part of India. The drives which are through the mountainous route of 30 km today may end up becoming a straight tunnel of approximately 10-12 kms in a few years. The construction work going on in all of Himachal forces you to keep the windows of your car closed as the fine dirt can cause real problem for your health. 

We had lunch on the way and we were near Bir by 4.00 PM. We had a lot of time on hand so decided to take a detour to Barot. It had beautiful valleys and is still has less tourists going over there. Halfway through Barot we realised that we should go back Bir as we might be too late otherwise, so we headed back and made it to Bir by 9.30 PM. We had quick dinner, asked the Oyo Holiday Inn reception to arrange paragliding for us. We wanted to do that first thing in the morning after. 

Signing off Day 6 

Day 5 : Diaries from Summer Vacation 2019

We took an awesome and memorable 10 day road trip (17th May 2019 - 27th May 2019) from Chandigarh to Amritsar via Himachal Pradesh. These are the notes taken every night from that vacation. I will publish them one day at a time for the next 10 days. 

21st May 2019 Day 5 : 

As we woke up in Manali, we knew that way to Rohtang pass and even Marhi is closed. So the place we can go is Gulaba tourist spot and Solang Valley.

After breakfast we decided to go to Gulaba first. The google maps shows a Gulaba viewpoint and Gulaba tourist spot separately. It was confusing so we decided that we will keep driving till we hit the barrier where they check permits for Marhi and Rohtang pass. We were told that the barrier will be closed today as it's a tuesday and Border Roads Organization will be doing weekly maintenance work on the road.

We got out of Manali and there are stores on both sides of highway giving away dress and boots to play in the snow. We chose to not take it as we were told by hotel reception that there is no snow in Gulaba.

As we drove to Gulaba the views on both sides were spectacular. The traffic was sparse, which was confusing, as Mall road was jam packed yesterday night. We were wondering as to where are all the tourists, that we saw in Manali the last night.

After a couple of stops near waterfalls and To see the snow capped mountains, we reached Gulaba tourist spot. The drive was fairly easy and we went at luxurious pace soaking in the beauty.

Richa and Reyansh took a horse ride to the spot which was 1.5 km away while I chose to walk. The horse owner said there is still a bit of snow. Once we reached the spot, we realised that the snow was almost ice and very very dirty. Reyansh touched the snow but we couldn’t go in as we didn’t have shoes to negotiate icy snow and honestly it was just too dirty. We came back to our car and drove till the barrier. Finally at the barrier there was clarity that the permits to Rohtang are issued on hpkullu.nic.in. So if anyone ever wants to take a self drive, that's the place to get permit from.

We had a few Maggie noodles on a shop for which we were the only customers. The views were breathtaking and the air was fresh. 

After that we decided to visit Solang valley. Reyansh had to take medicine for motion sickness, and he fell asleep. Once we entered the valley we realised its a mess as all the tourists from Manali were there. They have activities like paragliding, all terrain vehicles, cable cars etc. Reyansh was asleep and we were not interested in joining such a huge crowd so we drive right back and moved towards Kullu. 

As one drives towards Kullu the highway is in parallel to BEAS river and one can sign up for zip lines across beas, or for water rafting on the spot. We decided against rafting as they won’t allow Reyansh on the raft due to his age. They had paragliding going on as well, but we wanted to do paragliding in Bir. So, We went to Dhakpo Shedrupling Monastery. 

After the monastery we decided to visit Kullu market as we had taken a bypass from Kullu on the way to Manali. Once in Kullu we decided to get the car cleaned as all the dust from highways had made the cabin unbelievable by dirty. Richa visited Tibetan market but it wasn’t as good. Me and Reyansh got the car cleaned. There was a walnut tree in the yard and Reyansh plucked a couple of them.

We then had dinner and decided to sleep in Kullu for the night. We need to now drive to Bir tomorrow morning and hope to be there in time to visit the local monastery and also do the paragliding.

Signing off Day 5.

Day 4 : Diaries from Summer Vacation 2019

We took an awesome and memorable 10 day road trip (17th May 2019 - 27th May 2019) from Chandigarh to Amritsar via Himachal Pradesh. These are the notes taken every night from that vacation. I will publish them one day at a time for the next 10 days. 

20th May 2019 Day 4 : 

We woke up to a cold morning 10 kms before Manali, at least cold by Indian standards in May. We had a nice breakfast at the hotel and then started our drive towards Manali. The jam which we avoided yesterday was still there , however we were well rested so didn't mind it as much. As we waited in a long queue of vehicles, it was frustrating to see private cars and sometimes even cabs running past us on the right lane, which has to be used by vehicles from the other side. It is frustrating to see how everyone across India has 2 qualities which are same. First is that we are in a hurry on the road and second, we are always late for any appointment :). The wait was made bearable by the river flowing along the highway on the right and some waterfalls on the left. 

After negotiating the jam which was caused by a  landslide(Nature trumps engineering after all), we reached Manali. The weather got a bit bad and it started drizzling. Manali is a small town which has grown because of tourists however walking on the congested roads, one is inhaling more kerosene and diesel fumes and less of the fresh air one wants to inhale, while visiting mountains. 

There is hardly any landmark worth visiting. We visited Hadimba (She was Bheema's wife from Mahabharata) temple but it was really a temple which is a tourist spot because there is no other spots.

We wanted to visit Rohtang pass but it is open only till Marhi and that too couldn't be visited today as we were late to arrive. Tomorrow is Tuesday and Rohtang is closed for maintenance. We are told that we may be able to go till Gulaba tomorrow. People believe we can drive till Gulaba in the XUV we have rented and there is no need to take a local cab. We will try that tomorrow.

We checked in to hotel Sringeri Regency early evening and after a quick tea walked towards Mall road. The drizzle was gone and it was a good 10 degrees ... Perfect weather for a stroll. Richa did some shopping from Mall road. Reyansh enjoyed strawberry and  cherries which are abundantly available. He missed mangos so we asked a juice shop to cut a couple of mangos for him. He may have enjoyed that more than the berries . At 8.30 pm we decided to return to the hotel. The auto Walas in Manali are no better as compared to Bangalore auto wallas and they wanted 100 Rs. For 1.5 kms. After walking a while we found one who agreed for 70 Rs. 

We came back and took a glass of milk before hitting the bed. 

Tomorrow if all goes well , we plan to visit Gulaba and Solang and sleep in Bhuntar. Before heading to Bir ...

Signing off Day 4

Day 3 : Diaries from Summer Vacation 2019

We took an awesome and memorable 10 day road trip (17th May 2019 - 27th May 2019) from Chandigarh to Amritsar via Himachal Pradesh. These are the notes taken every night from that vacation. I will publish them one day at a time for the next 10 days. 

19th May 2019 Day 3 :

We got up a bit late and hungry . So after finishing 3 parathas and a sandwich, we started for Kullu via Prashar lake.

However, Reyansh had a thorn in his feet, and we wanted to buy a forcep to get rid of the thorn. However today was Loksabha voting day in this region so most medical stores were closed. as we drove past a few closed stores, we saw a hospital and decided to visit the emergency room. The doctor and the staff were very helpful and removed the thorn. Jury is still out on if the doctor managed to remove the thorn or not. I believe he did and Richa says that she can still see the thorn. Reyansh is not complaining of pain. So we need to recheck tomorrow. 

We started our drive towards Prashar lake. As we were driving, the fact that Himalaya is a range of mountains dawned upon me, once gain after 11 years. For Richa and Reyansh it was a first experience, where you climb a mountain ... Get down and then climb the next one. Or just when you thought that we are on the peak of a tall mountain...the taller one emerges on the next turn. Himalayas are beautiful and one needs to be focus to avoid any mishaps while driving. 

As we closed in towards the peak of the mountain which hosts Prashar lake, Reyansh had symptoms of motion sickness. Our trip to Yercaud had surfaced this for the first time and we were thankfully better prepared. We gave him medicine and stopped for a quick break which turned out to be lunch break. We had some jeera rice and dal. All 3 of us were full in one portion.   

Finally we were at Prashar lake. It's really a beautiful lake with a temple of Prashar muni and is frequented by the locals who use it as a picnic spot. 

We had a stroll around the lake and then started our drive to Kullu at 2.30 pm. Reyansh fell asleep immediately and we drove in mountains. It was a narrow and curvy road. So we were slow and steady. 

Finally we reached near Kullu by 5.30 PM. we decided to have snacks which turned out to be dinner for me. Richa spoke to the kind lady on  reception who told us that there isn't much to do in Kullu except shopping, rafting and visiting sarabai monastery. We immediately went to Sarabai monastery. We reached there around 6.45 and closing prayers for the day were going on. I spoke to a kid monk, who told us that he is studying in class 5. He wasn't participating in the prayers as it was his year of service. He is supposed to serve all the monks who are praying with tea, snacks etc. for the whole year. He came from Manali to study there. The monastery teaches them sanskrit, english, Hindi and Tibetan . They teach students till class 8th post which he wasn't sure what they do. But be wants to become a big man once he grows up. He visits his parents on his own...whenever he wished ..though he needed to apply leave for it. 

After visiting the monastery we decided to drive to Manali as we felt we still had energy. The road to Manali from Kullu is as good as you get in the plains, you don't feel that you are driving in Himalayas (though you are) and engineers have done a good job on design. However, 10km before Manali we were stuck in a huge Jam. It was adding at least 40 mins of delay. After waiting for 20 mins We decided to make a U turn. Having no plan turned a blessing. We found a hotel 1.5 km behind us. Richa negotiated a 25% discount and we checked in to crash for the night.  

Signing off Day 3

Day 2 : Diaries from Summer Vacation 2019

We took an awesome and memorable 10 day road trip (17th May 2019 - 27th May 2019) from Chandigarh to Amritsar via Himachal Pradesh. These are the notes taken every night from that vacation. I will publish them one day at a time for the next 10 days. 

18th May 2019 Day 2 : 

The hotel we stayed over last night had a huge window and it opened towards a government school. As I was mentioned yesterday the infrastructure at Chandigarh is amazing. Here is a picture of that school. 

I haven't seen such open spaces   in some of the privately funded schools of Bangalore, which charge a high fee. The first and the only planned city of India is something to be proud of and needs to be emulated across. 

The objective for today was to visit Rock Garden and then reach Mandi before sunset. That would have given us ample rest before we drive to Kulu via Prashar Lake. After breakfast we landed in Rock Garden and it is one of the most amazing places we have seen in India. It was very clean and has amazing collection of things made from rocks. It is one man's creation (Nek Chand) and I can only imagine what would have happened to him had he not found some support from a city like Chandigarh. The garden is world class. It could be a bit more well maintained (the signs and audio guides are missing.) And has the potential of becoming a much more popular tourist spot. 

After rock garden, we decided against visiting the lake in Chandigarh and drove towards Kirtarpur Sahib. Pradeep (our zoomcar ground executive) had suggested that if we drive towards Mandi then that's the city from which we should cross over to Himachal, as we would easily spot the RTO office of Himachal where we will have to pay the road tax.

On the way to Kirtarpur Sahib it was almost time for lunch. We did Google around a bit and figured that there are a lot of Gurudwaras in Anandpur Sahib. It adds a bit of drive for us but then we can see a nice Gurudwara, have Prasad in Langar. We also saw that there is a highly reviewed and rated museum called Virasat-e-Khalsa. We visited Gurudwara Kila Sri Anandgarh Sahib and had our lunch over in langar. Post that we visited Virasat-e-Khalsa which is an amazing museum. The entry is free and the structure is clean and has an imposing presence. The exhibits inside were very well maintained and planned. We ended up spending a good amount of time in these 2 places. And that meant we were going to be driving late. 

We started from this place around 4.15 PM and the question in our head was, do we want to visit Bhakra dam as it could be a life time experience. We decided against it as it would have added a couple of hours of drive time and another hour of visiting time.We wouldn't have made there during the sunny hours and visit would have been out of question.

We started to drive towards Mandi. On the way we had dinner around 7 pm. It was good chapati (got them after 2 days as all we got in Chandigarh was tandoori rotis) with dal and Potatoes. 

We kept driving and finally halted for night in a Oyo around 10 kms before Mandi. 

We want to visit Prashar Lake and land in Kulu by sunset tomorrow. Let's see how it pans out. 

Signing off day 2

Day 1 : Diaries from Summer Vacation 2019

We took an awesome and memorable 10 day road trip (17th May 2019 - 27th May 2019) from Chandigarh to Amritsar via Himachal Pradesh. These are the notes taken every night from that vacation. I will publish them one day at a time for the next 10 days. 

17th May 2019 Day 1 : 

This is our second summer vacation with Reyansh. Last year we had gone to Singapore however this year we decided to keep it within India. Whilst planning this vacation all we could agree on was that we land on Chandigarh and take off from Amritsar. We could never agree or deliberate on what to do for the days in between. 

As we kept postponing to plan the plan, the date to take off came very near, and so we decided to make the best use of this unplanned trip. We decided to make it an impromptu road trip where we will decide the night halt and next days plan on the go. 

Here starts the day 1 of this trip.  

We took a cab from our home to Bangalore airport. The cab was booked through MakeMyTrip and the cost of Rs. 789 is a steal for us. Halfway through we realised that Reyansh is feeling sick. Is it due to motion sickness ?(happened in our last trip to Yercaud and Maheshwar) or is it because of some bad food he had ? We still don't have the answer. But we are worried as we do have a rough idea that we will go to Himachal on between Chandigarh and Amritsar. We have approximately 10 days!!!.

As we reached airport, the flight or Chandigarh is a non stop air Asia flight. Reyansh slept for an hour in between while me and Richa couldn't. The funny part was that Reyansh had a couple of glasses of water before he went to sleep, he got up as the cabin was being prepared for touchdown. As soon he got up he wanted to pee and cabin crew refused to allow us to leave seats due to turbulence and aircraft was preparing to land. This is the first time he could control his urge to pee, successfully for 15 mins, and he went to restroom as soon as we landed. I was prepared mentally, to clean up the seats after he wets his pants but it never came to it :). 

After we landed in Chandigarh we took a cab to pick our rental car from Chandigarh railway station. We had booked a Ford EcoSport as it's a new model and were looking forward to take it for our trip. However as soon as we landed in Chandigarh , Zoomcar executives called us to inform that they don't have the EcoSport available as it needs some maintenance and they can offer a scorpio or a swift hatchback. We chose scorpio as it sounded like an upgrade. However once we reached the pickup site we realised it was an old scorpio which was already driven for more then 85000 kms and the driving experience was not the best. As we prepared to accept our fate, Richa saw an EcoSport and asked the onsite Zoomcar executive as to why we aren't offered that as we had booked an EcoSport. The exec on ground asked us to call the call centre. When we called them they couldn't offer it as it was booked by 3-4  people in next 7 days and they didn't want to apologise to all of them. I asked them if they could offer something else, I can also see some XUVs there . Finally they offered us with XUV W5 version. It had closed 908 kms before we took it. 

It was a good upgrade for us. 

We then drove to international dolls museum which was established in 1985. The museum has dolls which look like brides from various states in India, they also have dolls which represent culture of different countries. However the museum needs upkeep and a way to make the tour interesting. The souvenir shop didn't have any dolls on offer, which is surprising.

Next we went to Zakir Hussain Rose Garden which is spread over 40 acres and has almost 800+ variety of roses. The roses weren't blooming but Reyansh enjoyed running in open spaces. 

In the evening we roamed around in the city and had dinner at a pure veg restaurant (Sindhi Sweets) in sector 17. The food was good and Richa also did some shopping . 

I loved Chandigarh city, it's planned and can compete with any city in the world in terms of infrastructure. Can't understand why we can't simply copy the best practices from a city like this and make whole of India like this. 

With this ...signing off from day 1. Tomorrow we go and sleep in Mandi . And need to visit Rock garden before we leave ....

Signing off day 1.

Connecting to Cloud Foundry Kafka Service from your localhost using Kafkacat

So we are developing a cloud foundry application  and one of the backing services we use is a Kafka Service. Our backing service uses SASL for authentication and uses a self signed certificate issued by the owner of the backing service.

Now we all know that while deploying and debugging  the application on localhost while connecting with Cloudfoundry backing is sometimes a necessary evil and depending on your network setup it could sometimes be tricky.

I managed to make Kafkacat (https://github.com/edenhill/kafkacat) connect to the backing service from my local macbook. Here is how you can achieve it.

Here is how my service looked like in the VCAP_SERVICES variable.


Now there are a couple of challenges for me to work with service using Kafkacat.

• The username and password given in the VCAP_SERVICES variable don't work directly with Kafkacat. We have to generate a Token using the token services URL given in the json and then provide that authentication token as password to the utility. 
• The broker IPs and the zookeeper IPs (10.254 series of IPs in the json) are unreachable from my local machine.
• The SSL communication between kafkacat and kafka service is encrypted by a certificate which is issued by the rootCA which is available on  https://kafka-service-broker.example.com/certs/rootCA.crt

Let's solve these issues one by one. 

1. In order to create the token to be provided to the kafka service as a password you can use the following script. The envrionment variables USERNAME and PASSWORD are set to the values which you found in the VCAP_SERVICES. The output of this command can be set in another environment variable TOKEN which we will use in the final steps.    
2. You should store all the BROKERS in an environment variable called BROKERS. 
3. In order to make the kafkacat work, we need to make sure that we are able to reach the 3 broker IPs given in the environment variables from the localhost. We will do this with the help of virtual interfaces and ssh tunnels on the macbook. I didn't manage to find the right way to do it using bash so I am listing down the steps you need to take from UI (with screenshots). 
• Open the network option in your System Preferences and from the bottom wheel select "Manage Virtual Interfaces" .  
  
• In the next dialog select Add VLAN option to add a VLAN. 
  
• Give the VLAN the name vlan0 and select an interface. (You need to select the interface you are connected to else it doesn't work). 
  
• Press create->done and ensure that VLAN appears in the network dialog, as shown below. 
  
• Now go ahead and change the Configure IPv4 from DHCP to manually and assign one of the IP address which we had in the VCAP_SERVICES to this vlan interface. 
  
• After this go ahead and duplicate vlan0 2 times. The option is available as shown below. 
  
• Make sure that you enter the other 2 IPs in the duplicated interfaces. After this step my dialog looks like the following. Please note that IP is different for all 3 interfaces. For me vlan0 => 10.254.33.21, vlan1 => 10.254.33.22, vlan2 => 10.254.33.23 now. 
  
4. After the above step, the macbook now starts responding to all the 3 broker IPs. Now we need to ensure that any request on these interfaces is tunneled to the real Kafka brokers hosted in Cloud Foundry. To do that I establish 3 SSH tunnels with the commands below. 
5. In order to provide the rootCA.crt to kafkacat, I download the certificate to the local machine in a folder from where I intend to use kafkacat. I use curl  to do this. 
6. You can install kafkacat on mac using brew
7. Now you can start using kafkacat with its normal commands, however since it's a SASL setup, you need to provide some parameters to make it work. Here is how I use kafkacat to list all topics.  You can use the same format to execute any other kafkacat commands you are interested in. You can also use your java application running your localhost to now start connecting to the remote kafka service on cloudfoundry. 

Happy coding

!Abhishek

Ubuntu with a desktop and RDP on Azure

Often while working on various projects, we need VMs with the OS which is different then the one available on local laptop. 
More often then not I need Ubuntu which I don't have on my mac and I end up creating a VM on Azure, RDP into it from my local mac machine. 

In order to do this, one can create a VM on Azure (I chose Ubuntu 18.04 LTS image on Azure). Once created SSH into machine and follow the below instructions to ensure that you are able to RDP into this machine. 

Use the following script to achieve it. 

You can now go ahead and RDP into the machine. 

Deploy your own UAA in Cloudfoundry

One of the interesting backing service in the cloudfoundry landscape is a UAA. In most cloudfoundry editions (e.g. Pivotal or SAP and probably in others too) one gets UAA as a backing service. However from time to time one wants to run their own UAA to see how things are really working or just for the high of having their own UAA :). 
Recently I had a requirement to host a UAA of my own as I was trying to understand how the JWTs are really getting issued by UAA and how exactly are they signed etc. 
As I turned to web to ensure that I can host my own UAA, it turned out that most articles do not have enough instructions to host a UAA in PCF as an app. Thus came the idea to document all I had to do to deploy my own UAA. 
Note that below instructions can be followed to get a just about working UAA and are in no way enough to install the UAA for production purposes. 

Here are the basic tools you would need to finish this exercise.I have a mac so most commands assume at least bash

1) git CLI
2) uaac (gem install cf-uaac) 
3) cf cli with access to a CF space where you can deploy an application 


Once you are set with these command line utilities, here are the steps to follow 

1) Go ahead and clone the repository https://github.com/cloudfoundry/uaa.git 
2) once cloned you need to make a few changes in some files. 

In the file uaa/src/main/resources/uaa.yml go ahead and add the following lines in the begining of the file 


Next go ahead and uncomment the section jwt and cors in the same file. It looks like the following 

Then go ahead and open the file uaa/src/main.webapp/WEB0INF/spring/saml-idp.xml and add a keyManager for the bean idpMetadataManager. After this addition the bean definition looks like 


Lastly we need to change the memory and timeout for the deployment descriptor found in uaa/src/test/resources/sample-manifests/uaa-cf-application.yml 


3) Once these changes are done go ahead, build and deploy the application using the following commands 

4) Now that you have deployed the UAA. It's time to login to the UAA using uaac

You can probably change this secret in /uaa/src/main/webapp/WEB-INF/spring/oauth-clients.xml (I haven't tried this bit though) 

5) You can even create a new client credential on UAA by using the commands below. You can use these commands to list the JWTs issued by UAA as well. 

Happy Coding :) 

~Abhishek