Trip to Illayaraja Concert with GlobalScholar Gang - March 2013

I was very excited about the Illayaraja's concert because he is one of the music geniuses of my time and I grew up with his music most of my life.  Even today, I prefer to listen to his music than listening to anybody else's music.  He normally  doesn't give any live performances and this is his first time to USA in the last 40+years of his stardom in the field.  We were planning to drive down to SFO for the concert when it he originally scheduled to perform in November but it was cancelled at the last minute due to bad weather in the East Coast.  We were glad that we didn't book the plane tickets at that time.  The rescheduled event was on March 1, 2013 and the ticket prices were reasonable to fly so we (Arun, Dandy, Mani, Mani's wife, Raj and I) booked the ticket to fly out almost at the same time on March 1st in the morning. 

After picking up Mani's family @5 am, picked up Arun/Raj to head out to Bellevue to get Dandy.  No problem at the airport despite all of the Hoopla about the whole USA going to be in a mess because of the "Sequestor".  Went to the Groupon offices, after getting the rental car, to harass Vik and get his hotel room keys..;-)  On the way to the hotel, picked up some beer and snacks.  We were at the "Menu" restaurant after having a couple of beers in the hotel room and the lunch buffet at the restaurant was very good.  After having a glass of wine at the restaurant, Dandy was out and given a choice he would have slept in the restaurant.  Despite his state of mind, Dany found a bone piece in the vegetarian dal dish and we decided keep it quiet so that the other vegetarians could enjoy their "vegetarian" buffet..;-)

When we reached the hotel room, the room cleaning service was taking care of all the mess that Vikki made there ;-) and Dandy was pissed off with Vikki for giving so much work to the crew (really he's pissed that he couldn't go to bed).  To kill time, we decided to head out to get some snacks to enjoy at the concert and after driving while Dandy was snoring, we went to the Indian Cash&Carry place to some food for group.  The price of Indian things in this place almost half of what is being sold for in Seattle, couldn't believe that the fresh Chapatti cost only 30 cents where we are paying more than 60 cents in Seattle.  As in any place we go, everyone started talking about how great the weather is, how good the Indian food is, how less expensive the Indian stuff is, etc. and everyone wanted to move to SFO at that moment, I am sure that no one will move out of Seattle for now..;-)

While waiting for Vikki to show up from work, talked to Sharadaa to meet up in her work place around 430 pm and took a short nap.  Headed out to meet Sharadaa around 415 pm even though the traffic was not that bad, it took us more than 30 minutes to get to a place which is just 8 miles away.   After dropping me in the parking lot the gang left to the concert place.

Sharadaa and I were just talking about our kids and the difficulty of dropping pounds ;-)  I need to check out about "Chi" running and need to see whether it is going to make any difference.  It's very frustrating not to lose any weight after riding bike for 200 miles, running a marathon and climbing (almost) Kilimanjaro..;-(  At Sharadaa's home, talked to Raghu about different hikes he could do around Seattle area and tried to convince him to make a trip to Seattle.  Raghu was dropping us in the the concert hall, on the way to the conert hall I was telling Maya about how think her mom was and using Vikki jokes on her about how she was not allowed to travel in the convertible car.  Talked about Nadhu's kids and how the time flies.  

The concert had the whole tamilian and telugu gangs from the bay area there.  Parking and checking in was well organized, also the food in the concert hall was very good.  Got a glass of beer once got into the concert hall after saying adios to Sharadaa, headed to the seating section.  It is farther from the stage but even after the concert started a lot of seats were empty.  For the first 60 to 90 minutes of the concert, the audio system was not good, either it's too loud or too soft.  After some time, they figured out what to do with the buttons to control the audio and Hariharan sang about 4-5 songs, he was really amazing.  If Illayarja was the foundation for the whole concert (Illayaraja doesn't want it to be called a show and he said that he's not showman…more on this later), the main pillar was SPB.  SPB was incredible and we were gifted to see the performance of the musical magicians at work.

Illayaraja was as usual getting upset with the crowd for making too much noise and advising them to be quiet to enjoy the music, the message didn't get to the crowd because they were still shouting ;-)  His point of just sitting and enjoying the music is not the way most of us enjoy the music unless otherwise the music concert is mainly Carnatic but here the crowd was to there to appreciate the great talent and show how they enjoy the music.  SPB and Illayaraja were giving some background story about some of the songs.  With both Telugu and Tamil crowd in one place and trying to satisfy both the groups was tough, and at some time I was bored ;-(  Once a couple of hours into concerts, couple of us went to occupy better seats closer to the stage.

By the time we reached our hotel, it was 30 minutes after mid-night.  Chatted for a while before going to the bed.

Checked with the hotel front desk about the CalTrains to catch the Bart, I was told there're trains every 15 minutes, it might be true for the weekdays but for the weekends the train service is every hour.  I am totally impressed with number of people taking the CalTrain and the train was almost more than 50% full.  But it took forever to reach Raj's place, to be exact, it took me more than 3 hours to reach his place.  Waited in the California Road station for more than 45 minutes and it took an hour to reach Melbrae where I had to transfer to the Bart.  By the time, I reached Bay Point, it was 1245 pm, I could have easily reached Seattle in that time ;-)

New Orleans - Mardi Gras - 2013

Formation of the Organization

This is the trip with seven friends of mine from my Wal*Mart days (early 1990 time frame) to New Orleans.  We were the first group of people of Indian origin joined Wal*Mart in early 1990 when Wal*Mart was slowly expanding into Mexico and setting the goal of crossing $100 billion revenue mark (current revenue of Wal*Mart is more than $400 billion).  During the dot com boom most of the early Bentonville settlers moved towards west and settled in Seattle.  We started meeting monthly for beers and in one of those beer summits the idea to form the group "Men without Borders" and having an off-site meeting somewhere fun ;-)

Plan Development

After looking at the time frame when every one of us could travel for a couple of days and places of interest, New Orleans Mardi Gras was selected as the off-site summit location winner.  Within a next couple of days, the tickets were booked before anyone could change their mind.  There were five of us confirmed to go from Seattle and invited a few more people who were settled in Mid-west.  Couldn't believe what kind of excuses people gave not to leave their family at home and go for the "Men without Borders" summit:  The dishonest excuse is "I have to study for my MBA classes" and the honest one is "my wife will not like this".    Three other friends from the mid-west also decided to go to New Orleans and bought their tickets.  We all decided to land in Baton Rouge and decided to drive from there because the ticket prices to New Orleans were pretty expensive during the Mardi Gras time.  The Seattle gang and the mid-western gang were landing almost the same time in Baton Rouge.

Since there were eight people, we decided to book two cars.  The Seattle gang had more than 5 hour lay over in the Atlanta airport and we suggested to a friend ours from Wal*Mart (Velu) that we could visit their Atlanta home during the lay over.  Without knowing what he's getting into and with the excitement of seeing all of his old friends, Velu invited to his home.  For this mistake, he and his wife (Vasanthi) paid very dearly by coming to the airport @ 6 am to pick us up, cooking a great southern breakfast (south Indian of course) and dropping us in the air port after that.

Booking a car in Baton Rouge is not a problem but booking a hotel in New Orleans was a shocking experience.  We wanted to stay where the main actions were happening to avoid parking and driving drunk at night.  We couldn't find any hotels in the city center areas that're less than $350 per night, but we were able to find Residence Inn that was able to accommodate 4 adults in one room.  There're very few hotels that allowed more than 2 adults in a room and we were lucky to find one that could accommodate four adults.

To Do List

Just a couple of days before the departure, Ravi, from Dallas, developed a draft plan for our activities in New Orleans and it is:

Saturday

1.       Purchase your beads!!

2.       Bourbon St will have the most people on this day.  The best time to walk Bourbon St. is the late afternoon until around 9PM.  After 9PM there are so many people on the street that it is best to be on the balconies.  There are several clubs were you can get access to the balconies:

a.       Bourbon Heat (711 Bourbon St. It should be free to get in.  Last year they had 3 for 1 beers on the 1^st floor as you walk in)

b.      Cat’s Meow(Next to Bourbon Heat.  There might be a charge to get to the balcony)

c.       Voo Doo Blues??(I don’t have the address or the exact name, but it is close to the Royal Sonesta Hotel which at 300 Bourbon St. Last year, they had 3 for 1 drinks on the second floor)

3.       Go to the Endymion Parade.  It passes near the Marriott(Canal and St Charles Intersection)

Sunday

1.       It is a great day to be out in the French Quarters.  The crowds are smaller, and a lot of the college kids leave town.  It is a great day to walk on Bourbon St and go on the balconies. 

2.       I heard Harrah’s Casino has a good Champagne Brunch.  Hotel Intercontinental has a nice brunch as well.

3.       Go to the Bacchus Parade.  This parade will pass right in front of the Marriott. 

Atlanta Lay Over

The flight from Seattle to Atlanta was red eye flight and I was able to get some decent sleep and ready for the southern hospitality at Velu's home.  One of the guys in the Seattle gang, Girish, could not travel because of work and planned to take the flight next day directly to New Orleans.  Since none of us checked in any bags for this three day trip, we just got out of the flight @ 530 am and picked up by Velu to his home.  After chatting over the coffee for a while, we took a tour of his basement that's: cricket/baseball/tennis training area with ball machine, music training room and golf training area.  It is very impressive how he has optimized the basement to suit his ever-changing interests from cricket to baseball to tennis to music to golf.  The breakfast was very good and if not for Mardi Gras, we would have stayed there for lunch too.  We had Idly, Pongal, Vada, Coconut chutney, tomato chutney, sambar and Gulab Jamon.  Despite it being 5 am at Seattle, the delicious food made us forget about the jet lag and enjoy the food.  For whoever reading it and I will be sending this blog to my other friends who may be inviting us, this is the bar that Vasanthi set and I'll see whether anyone can cross it ;-)

Drive to New Orleans

The schedule for our flight from Atlanta was changed to land one hour after the flight from Dallas that our mid-west friends were taking.  The day before departure, one of the mid-western friends Ramesh asked Suresh, who is from Dallas, and me whether to bring any formal shirts/pants for New Orleans.  Without even talking to each other, Suresh and I jokingly told him not to bring any shirts and we'd be walking around without shirts ;-)  Even after looking at the weather in New Orleans and believed what we said, he just brought some T-shirts but didn't bring any jackets.  So the mid-western guys, instead of waiting for us in the airport, went to a close by mall to buy a jacket for Ramesh and he went through hell for believing in us.

As we got closer to the down New Orleans, the traffic came to a sudden stop and we were just 5 miles from our hotel but it took us more than 90 minutes to reach the hotel.  After checking into the hotel we left to see the parade but before walking out of the we wanted to have drinks but the Residence Inn does not have bar ;-(

Cultural Immersion - Day One

Once we getting closer to the St. Charles Street, we could feel the party atmosphere and the Tucks parade was still going on.  The sidewalks were completely packed with people and started walking towards the canal street while looking for a nice location to watch the parade.  We had seen the effective use of the ladders as the gallery stand to watch the parade ;-)   We bought some hurricane from the roadside stall and dipped into the party atmosphere.  Near intersection of the Canal and St. Charles, we parked ourselves to enjoy the parade and to catch some beads.  As soon as the parade ended, we started the cultural exploration in the Bourbon street and it was packed with fun.

Bourbon Street Entry

We were ready for next round of drinks and decided to have it in the Pat Obriens because we had been instructed by one of Ravi's friends that it's the place to have hurricane, also it's part of the to do list ;-)  It was madhouse to get in to drink there and started to look for a place to eat both the vegetarian food as well as sea food with the condition of nice seating.  All this conditions ended in a disaster and we ended up getting the food from a gyro place to sit on the sidewalk to have our dinner - Pat Obriens helped us to ignore the surrounding ;-)

Walking down in the Bourbon street, watching and learning the art of how to earn the beads from the people in balconies.  I and another friend of mine (can't disclose the name according to Men without Borders Article II ;-) ) started screaming to encourage the people to give as well as to collect beads.  For my part, I was able to gather some beads.

One great thing about that place is that there're people partying as well as some religious people standing with placards stating everyone who drinks going to hell and preaching about following god.  This co-existence without hurting each other was great and not sure whether it is case any other parts of the world.

Mental Wall

Once we reached the gay/lesbian section of the Bourbon street, one of guys in the gang, didn't want go to that section of the street.  It looked like there was a wall built there.  Leaving him behind, a few of us got into that section but there's not much activity going on in that section and as the crowd was thinning down we turned back.

Sleepy Heads

Some of the guys in the Seattle gang couldn't sleep in the red eye flight was feeling sleepy, so insisting that we go back to the hotel.  One of the other guys in the gang was cursing the guys who wanted to go back, instead of splitting, we all decided to go back to the room with the guarantee or promise from the sleepy heads that the next day we'd stay 'til 2 am..;-)  Not sure how many drinks that we all had when this episode was going on and to be honest, we didn't have many drinks today.

On the way back to the hotel, we saw the few last floats of the Endymion parade and could see the piles of trash on the streets.  By the time we reached the hotel, Girish from Seattle also arrived and we decided to sit around to talk about the day with some beer.  Ramesh and I walked to a small grocery store that's a couple of blocks away to get some beer and snacks. After the beer and snacks, we went to bed around 1 am with the idea of meeting for breakfast at 9 am in the hotel.  It sucked so much in the hotel to have the breakfast from 630 am to 930 am even during the Mardi Gras time.  My review of the hotel and comments can be found here.

Day Two

All of us were awake by 930 am to have our breakfast in the hotel and there's no breakfast meeting take place because the people in one of the rooms got up very early (because of their old age ;-) ) and finished their breakfast even before the other group woke up.  Just to be clear that I was in the second group ;-)  Girish mentioned that there was a shooting in the Bourbon street where we were hanging around and four people were taken to the hospital.

Bloody Mary

When we were ready to go to the River Walk, we were stopped near the intersection for more than 20 minutes for the parade tractors, buses and limo to go.  After having a bloody mary and nachos at the River Walk, some of us were interested in going for the swamp tour to kill some time before going to Bourbon street and after paying for the tour we had a tough time finding the location where we were supposed to catch the shuttle.  The direction that Suresh got was that it's in front of the Harrah's hotel entrance but there're five different entrance were there for Harrah..;-)

The ride to the boating dock for the swamp tour took more than 90 minutes and the boat tour was nothing impressive.  The tour was for about 90 minutes and we could see a couple of alligators.  My review of the boat can be read here.

Awful Lunch

The shuttle bus dropped us near the Roosevelt hotel, walked a couple blocks to the St. Charles street to see the parade going on and by the time we reached the St. Charles street, the last float of the parade was passing us.  All of us were hungry and started to look for a place that serves good Cajun dinner and we didn't want to go to the Bourbon street for dinner.  Girish googled, found Daisy Dukes, which was close by and had a good selection for both vegetarian and meat lovers, on top of it, they were serving unlimited hurricane.

The waiter at the restaurant seemed to be a new and he was struggling to take our orders and when he was delivering drinks it was a mess too.  The vegetarians got their food quickly but the guys who ordered meat dishes were waiting for a while and the waiter indicated that a certain dish that Gopi ordered was not available so he had to change his order.  Joe, who ordered the jambalaya got his dish, but it was cold when he sent back the dish to the kitchen, someone from the kitchen came over to apologize and told us that there's a problem in the kitchen.  The overall dinner experience for the meat eaters was not good and the omelets that the vegetarians had been good, the review of that place is here.

Staking a Spot 

We started to look for a nice spot to park ourselves to watch the biggest of the Mardi Gras parade but looks like people just lay claim to the prime spots from the noon.  After walking a couple blocks, we were able to find a place close enough to the road, may be the second row seating ;-)  While waiting there for an hour before the parade cross our section, witnessed a fight for the seating location in the first row and a cop had to interfere to resolve the dispute but all ended up fine.  The guy who was standing in front of us seemed to be a professional bean collector and very aggressive about not allowing anyone to cross his standing area.  That guy started to have an argument with Ravi because Ravi move the patio chair that was there and we decided to ignore him.


We could have avoided the head ache of claiming a spot on the road side by purchasing the ticket for $40 per person in a grand stand, yes ...you are reading correctly, the space in a stand to see the parade cost $40.

The Bacchus parade was really grand and all of the floats were very well decorated.  It was disgusting that a couple of people were smoking while watching the parade and Sridhar was getting the head ache with the smoke.  After watching the parade for some time, Sridhar, Girish and Suresh left because of the cigarette smoke, and others were watching parade 'til the end.

Bourbon Street - Re-Visit

Once the parade was over, we had coffee in a close by coffee shop before heading out to the Bourbon street.  Despite the next day being a weekday, the Bourbon street was more crowded than the previous day and there's hardly any space to walk around.  After screaming, watching, taking pictures with some interesting characters and collecting beans for some time, we had hand grenade in the Tropical Isle (recommended by Ravi's friend).  It was really awesome to meet too many random people and becoming friends with them.  Even before the hand grenade, it was really difficult to stay as a group and we ended up waiting for one person or the other every 15 minutes.  I can't even remember how we spent three hours in the Bourbon Street that night.

Dancing in the French Quarter

We headed towards the French Quarters around mid-night with the goal of enjoying some Jazz music and even though the it was about half a mile away, we felt pretty safe - on the way we were meeting a number new friends and giving away our beads.  We found a club where the action was still going on with manageable crowd and settled down after ordering some drinks.  While most of the gang was sitting and enjoying the drinks, a few of us were dancing.  There was an old lady, may be 75+ years old, came into the club with her son (I guess) and we made her dance with us ;-)  We didn't allow any one close to us to sit and enjoy the music, we literally forced everyone to dance with us and the good part is that everyone became friends.  When we were ready to leave, they were asking us to stay for more time (and it was 3 am) and a lot of hugs before leaving the club.

Ravi's Breakfast Treat

From the Jazz club we walked to the Cafe De Monde for breakfast and the French Quarter in the morning fog was very beautiful.  In the restaurant, Ravi wanted to make sure that everyone liked the breakfast by asking us whether we liked the breakfast a number of times ;-)  Looked like the guys we had more drinks behaved sensibly than the guys who had little ;-)  The coffee and the beignets were really good and after enjoying those, we headed toward the hotel around 4 am.

Adieu

The original plan was to have brunch somewhere and to buy some Cajun spices before heading to the airport but by the time everyone got ready there's little time to follow the plan.  After settling the hotel bill and saying good-bye, the Seattle gang left the hotel 11 am to catch the 2 pm flight to Atlanta.  Most of the way the drive was good but in only for a short amount of time, we had to drive through the heavy rain and we stopped to have lunch closer to Baton Rouge.  Arrived on time to return the rental car and catch the flight, since the Baton Rouge airport was small, there's no long queue to go through the TSA check.  There are no surprises or shocks on our return trip from Baton Rouge to Seattle except a 15 minutes delay in Baton Rouge.

Conclusion

The Men without Borders summit was a great summit that enabled unleashing spirit (after having "spirit") within each one of the members of the organization ;-)  There was no other better location or occasion other than Mardi Gras for the very first summit and we are all looking forward for the second summit.  While looking for the location for the second summit, I came to the realization that there's no better place other than New Orleans, so we need to tone down our expectations for the next one unless we get some sponsors to fly us to Mardi Gras in Brazil or La Tomatina in Italy ;-)

Tanzanian Safari 2012-13

Introduction
After our Kilimanjaro climb, we wanted to go on a safari for few days.  I was not sure about the number of days that we should spend on the safari.  Looking through the Trip Adviser and going through the opinions of a number of other travelers, I got more confused than I got the answer.  There are people who just go into a park and get out in two or three days, and also there are some who spend about ten to fourteen days in the safari. I wanted to cover most of the national parks in Tanzania because this may be my first and last trip to Tanzania (because there are other places to cover in the world).  Decided to spend seven days in safari to cover the main parks with less time spent on driving around, so decided to visits the parks with the following schedule:

• One day Tarangire National Park
• Two days Ndutu Conservation Area
• Two days Serengeti National Park
• One day Ngorongoro 
• One day Lake Manyara and drive back to Arusha to get the flight back home.

I have added some of the videos from the trip and click on the links to see the videos.

Day One - Tarangire NP 

Woke up very early in the morning to pack away things that we used for Kilimanjaro climbing in one single bag and left that bag at the hotel left baggage lounge.  The driver was supposed to show up at 8 am, but showed up around 845 am.  On the way to Tarangire, when the driver stopped over in a super market to get bottled water, I got some beer, coke and juice.  There was no ice box in the jeep and looking at most of the vehicles that are on the road, I didn't expect them to have anything other than basic necessities.  The road to the park is a paved road and our vehicle got pulled over a number of times by the police for "validating the paper work" but the drive indicated that it's all part of getting some money from the tourist vehicle.  At one of the stops, the cop was threatening to charge fine because I was not wearing the seat belt (the passenger seat belt was not functional in the vehicle).

Validating the national park permit and paper work seems to take a lot of time in every national part that we visited.  We were waiting for about 30 minutes for our driver to get the permit validated at the Tarangire park, while waiting we saw the Velvet monkeys at the entrance and a monkey got into a parked vehicle through the open window to get some goodies.  It was funny to see the reaction from the people inside the vehicle as well as the monkey.

It was so exciting getting into the park, the overall scenery is completely different from what I imagined and it's greenery every where.  The first sight of dozen or so impalas very close to the road was awesome and got us ready for the safari.  Tarangire is famous for their elephants and within a few minutes into the park, we spotted a family of elephants and a lion on a tree.  It is amazing to see a bunch of elephants and a pack of lions staying very close by, when watched this in a movie or program, it is hard to believe that it is possible.  Always thought that the lions can attack the elephants and the elephants are scared of the lions, but does not look that way when watching them.  Our guide indicated that the lions normally don't attack/kill an adult elephant.

After driving around the park 'til 430 pm, we were headed out to our camp site that's outside the park.  Reaching out camp site was an adventure by itself because there's no directions anywhere and we were driving in a muddy road, I was hoping that the driver knew what he's doing.  We almost got stuck in a mud a couple of time but the driver was able to get the vehicle out of the mud pretty good.  

The camp site was middle of nowhere and when we reached there, we were well received by a group Masai, given juice and advised on the formalities of the tent camping.  We were supposed to go for the night safari that night, but the camp manager advised that because of the road conditions we won't be able to do that and gave us the option of going for walking safari around the camp area.  But looking around camp area does not seem interesting, so told the driver that we're not interested and told him to arrange for the Masai village for the money that we already paid.

The dinner was good and we were entertained by Masai dance before the dinner.  The stay at the tent was very comfortable, it is as good as staying in a hotel with the only difference of availability of running water.  We started taking malaria pills but we didn't see a lot of mosquitoes and after some time we even stopped using the mosquito repellents.  Compared to the mosquito problems in India, it is almost nothing (at least where we traveled and when we were there).

Day Two - Ndutu

Got up at 6 am and the camp people were ready with hot water for our shower outside the tent.  You have to prearrange the timing when you want to have the hot water for shower need to be filled the previous night.  Taking shower with 20 liters of water was not bad at all and it's enough water to take good shower.  The people who filled the hot water stayed at the back of the tent, pour the hot water in a water bag and pull that bag higher.  Didn't know whether the people outside could see inside the tent so I went out to see whether someone can peep inside and found out that it's not possible (at least not very easily).

Breakfast is omelet, bread, cheese and juice, and if you are meat eater, you could have had a bacon.  Drive from the camp site to highway was challenge, we stuck in the mud a couple of times and one time the driver was not able to get the vehicle off.  We had to haul rocks from a distance to put under the tires to create traction before we get the vehicle out.

On the way to the Ndutu, we stopped to get the SIM card for the phone at Karatu and the driver wanted us to shop for the handicrafts, which I firmly said that not interested.  We reached the Ngorongoro conservation area entrance at around noon, when we entered the park after the check-in formalities, it started to rain heavily and the jeep started to leak from the top.  We started to accept the fun of travelling in Tanzania and it was just the start and the vehicle troubles, vehicle roof collapse would follow..;-)  When the rain stopped, we decided to visit the Masai village, after the welcome song and dance, we were given the tour of their village, home and school.  Overall, the Masai tour took about 30 minutes and we were ready to see the real Africa but I can say that it is complete waste of $50 for Masai tour. 

One great thing about Ndutu game drive is that off-road driving and during the game drive we saw thousands of wilder beasts and zebras grazing.  The highlight of the day way was watching the thousands of wilder beasts crossing the river.  After spent some time with a pack of lions just less than 10 feet away, headed back to our tent around 530 pm.  This camp site had a lot more people than the previous camp site.  I really think that the hype about it's the busy season and you won't be able to find place to stay is just to get you committed early, if you are flexible, you should be able to find a place to stay.

Day Three - Ndutu

At the breakfast, the camp operators were talking about a pack of lions crossing our campsite around 3 am and when our guide arrived, he also indicated about five lions near his camping site.  Couple of interesting things like giraffe's private moment with its partner, hundreds of wilder beast running down a slope and pack of six lions relaxing.  Also, saw a group of cheetahs very close to a number of giraffes and we were hoping to see a kill, but the cheetahs were not in a hurry.  The cheetahs will go towards the giraffes and the giraffes will move away, this was going on for more than 90 minutes and after that we stopped following the cheetahs.  We saw a more number of lions today and our guide was able to park the vehicle very close to the lions but the lions do not seem to be bothered about us.

We were staying in a hotel tonight and we started heading back to the hotel around 330 pm and on the way we had flat tire near a river bank.  When the driver got out to change the tires, I wanted to give him a helping hand even though I was scared to get out of the vehicle, I got out of the vehicle and kept my passenger side door open (in case if see a lion or cheetah, wanted to get in fast ;-) ).  I was helping the guide to secure the vehicle by collecting rocks from close by areas to put it under the wheels and removing the tire stored in the back of the vehicle.  You won't believe how I was looking around whenever I was doing something (in fear) and asked Sharada to take a video of anything interesting that may happen but luckily there's nothing interesting happened.  

Only when we were having dinner at the Ndutu lodge, we realized that it's new year eve ;-)  The dinner at the lodge was good (especially for the meat eaters) and special surprise gifts for everyone at the table also arranged by the lodge.  Even thought it's a lodge, there were zebras grazing at the back of the lodge.  We took long and hot showers and spent some time talking to fellow travelers in the lodge lobby whom Sharada/Shabina friended while climbing Kilimanjaro.

Vehicle Issues

While driving off road today, the roof of the vehicle came down because of the vibrations and luckily no one was standing..it would have killed us if we were standing.  At that point, we decided not to trust the vehicle and decided not to stand up while the vehicle was moving.

The vehicle supposed to have two spare tires but we started our safari with one bad tire and with the flat today, we didn't have any spares. The guide was planning to fix the tires in Serengeti and I was hoping that we won't have any problem with the tires while going off road the next day.

Day 4 - Drive to Serengeti

Awesome breakfast at the lodge while enjoying the scenery of giraffe and wilder beast grazing closer to the lodge.  We started driving off road toward Serengeti and on the way, we saw a Masai walking alone and it was strange scene.  As we were getting closer to the Serengeti park, the number of animal population was thinning down because most of them migrated to south (Ndutu area) and after crossing the park entrance, we didn't see any animals for about an hour.  The Serengeti landscape is unbelievably beautiful, the guide indicated that it's once lake and when the volcano erupted the whole lake got filled up to become the plains.  

Few mile into the park, our guide spotted a leopard sleeping and at that time his wife called him to say that she got malaria.  After that our guide seemed to be worried and I was not sure how to react, asked him whether Achmed would send someone to take care so that he could go to take care of his wife.  He indicated that his mother was with his wife, there is no reason to worry about her but for the next two days he seemed to be worried and constantly texting, guessing that the recipient was his wife.  After some time, I was irritated because he was not interested in spotting the animals but just texting and interested in getting back to tent soon, but we didn't say anything other than we said that we prayed for his wife to get better.

We spotted a few lions, leopards and baboons but not a large group of any giraffes or wilder beasts, and the whole park seemed to empty without the thousands of giraffes and wilder beasts.  Reached our campsite before dark, the campsite is semi-mobile campsite and very nicely located.  We told our guide that we wanted to start the drive the next day early at 7 am so that we could come back to the campsite for lunch and nap in the afternoon.

Day 5  - Serengeti

One thing that we didn't like about Serengeti is that no off road driving allowed and which made us watch the animals from far away.  Within 10 minutes away from our campsite we saw a male lion resting near side of the road, after some time it started to walk in front of our vehicle and we followed the lion for about 20 minutes before going to look for other animals.   It started rain heavily within a few minutes afterwards, the drive itself became an adventue that we were driving in the mud roads flowing with lot of water.  At one section of the road, the guide spotted a small baby crocodile on the road resting in the water puddle.  Returned to the campsite for the lunch after seeing a lot of elephants close by and no luck seeing buffaloes close by. 

On the way back to the campsite, the guide fixed the tires in mechanical shed near the visitor center.  After lunch and shower, we went to the hypo pool and it's strange to see a lot of hypos as well as crocodiles in the same place.  The guide indicated that the crocodiles don't eat the hypos, not sure why.  On the way back to the campsite, we spotted a turtle on roadside as well as a number of baboons.

Day 6 - Ngorongoro

We wanted to spend as much time as we could in the Ngorongoro crater so left the campsite early but we spent sometime try to help a tourist vehicle that was stuck in the mud near Serengeti entrance.  After spending about 30 minutes we were not able to pull them out, so we left.  The tourist was stuck in that place for more than two hours and finally, one of the tourists in that vehicle hitch hiked to the entrance to get a rope to pull the vehicle off the mud.

One thing about all of the tourist vehicle drivers is that they are very patient and help each other.

Gorge and the Vehicle in the Ditch

Before Ngorongo, we had to stop in the Olduvai Gorge, to see and learn about our ancestors' known home.  The tour of the Olduvai Gorge was very informative and the museum is not anything great but fine.  Also, we were in a hurry to reach the Ngorongoro crater so not much interest in learning anything at that point.  Within a few minutes after leaving Olduvai Gorge, our vehicle start to have problem, could not climb the slope and stopped.  When the driver tried to let the vehicle roll down the slope to start the vehicle, we ended up in the ditch at the side of the road.  When another tourist vehicle tried to help us to get out of the ditch by pushing the vehicle from the back, it didn't work and by that time another Basecamp tourist vehicle going toward Serengeti stopped to help us.

The tourist from the other vehicle and all of us pushed the vehicle to get out of the ditch, and the other driver helped to figure out the starting problem of our vehicle.  The problem seemed to related to starter and from that point onwards, our vehicle needed a push to start.  Luckily, we found vehicles and people to push our vehicle where ever and when ever it stopped..;-)

Garden of Eden

If you have only one day to do the safari, the only place you should go is the Ngorongoro crater and it is entirely a different world.  Seeing a pack of 12 lions in one place very close to the vehicle is unbelievable and couldn't believe a cheetah being taunted by a group of wilder beasts.  We thought that we would see a kill by the cheetah but that didn't happen.  We were looking to see the rhinos close by but could spot about three of them very far, with the dwindling number of rhinos (the total population in the crater is about 25), it is difficult to see any close by.  The let down of the the trip is not able to see thousands of pink flamingos at the close range.

Left the crater very late and checked into the Sopa Lodge that is very well located near the entrance to the crater and a luxurious place to stay.  It is the fanciest place that we stayed in the trip, five star hotel in the middle of nowhere.  After taking showers, both Sharada and Shabina wanted to use the Internet and went to the lounge.  When I came down to the lounge to reconfirm the flight tickets, they were socializing with an Indian family from London.  After sharing our travel stories, we had a nice Indian meal for dinner. 

Day 7

We left early from the Sopa lodge and started the game drive in the Lake Manyara before noon.  This is the only day, I wish I had applied sun screen and all other previous days were cooler that we didn't need sun screen.  We saw a huge family of elephants and they were walking inches away from our vehicle and it was so scary that I closed my window fearing that it could pull me away from the vehicle.   The guide said that as long as we don't make any noise, we should be fine, but even by accident if an elephant moved its butt, the vehicle would have gone into a ditch...;-)  We spent the whole morning looking for the tree climbing lions, we were able to spot the lions but saw a number of bird species.  Looks like it's hard to spot lions in December and looked like it is the month of birds.

There's a picnic area in the park where everyone park their vehicle to have lunch without the worries of lion could make visit there, not sure why they are so confident that lions won't come to a place where there are a lot of vehicles or people.  Few minutes later, a few forest rangers showed up with guns to that area but didn't look like they were watching out for any animals.   We drove around for another 3 hours looking for lions but no luck in finding them.  This is the first day where we didn't spot a lion in the whole trip..;-(  None of the other travelers have spotted any lions either, so we decided to get back to the camp.  Our vehicle needed to be pushed a couple of times in the park after lunch and after few breaks near a lake where there're a few hippos.  We could see flamingos very far away and been told that when there is a lot of water in the lake we could see the flamingos very close by.

The camp site is a permanent site in a close by town, it is more like a cabin type of accommodation and we noted a guest from Turkey signed up in the guest register.  So at the dinner time, we asked the host to identify the Turks for Shabina to practice her Turkish.  The couple from Turkey is from the same city where Shabina spent two months in Turkey and I was totally impressed with the way Shabina could remember her Turkey to communicate with them.

Day 8

I had paid for the Lake Manyara morning safari for today, but it was not listed in the guide's manifest that means that he didn't have the permit or money for the permit to get into the park and because of the lack of permit we won't be able to get into park before 830 am.  We were not really interested in going to Lake Manyara either, so talked to the tour operator about refunding us the park entrance fee and he agreed.  We reached the Basecamp office around 1030 am to collect our $100 park fee and to thank Achmed, after that dropped Sharada at the Oasis hotel for the shuttle to pick up.  When we reached the Kilimanjaro airport, there was huge shock was waiting for us and the flight that's supposed to take us to Dar es Salaam was not flying anymore because of the bankruptcy.  You can read that story by clicking here.

Final Thoughts

Always thought why spend too much money to see the animals in the wild while I could see them in the zoo but the overall safari experience is great.  No reason to spend a lot of money but with a reasonable budget, you should be able to enjoy the safari if you plan well and flexible.  Vehicle problems and breakdowns are common, so take it easy and enjoy.  Always plan for your vehicle or plans being unreliable and things may not run smoothly but at the all work out for better.