Chicago Road trip

Sue

Day 2

Day 2 started with another major attraction of Chicago-The Field Museum-One of the World’s Largest natural history Museum. As we entered, Sue-a magnificent dinosaur was there to welcome us.

Under the Ground

The museum had a lot to offer, right from remains of dinosaurs to animal artifacts. Old heritage places, wudoo power, black magic and many more. Few real mummies were there, I was thinking just in case if this Museum comes alive in night, like the movie “Night at the Museum” then that’s it- Chicago is done. Well that’s just a hypothesis but there is a place which is under the ground and it is prepared to give you a under the soil feeling and sometimes, it became scary. There were few more interesting things like gems, fossil lab but due to less time, we had to drop these places in order to enter Mission Moon.

Adler-Space Xploraration

Yes you are correct, our next adventure was Adler Planetarium. At this science station, they tell you how to search a habitable planet and I was thinking, I am not even able to find a good parking spot in Chicago and they have capacity to search for life on other planets, seriously. Adler is America’s first planetarium. All these places-Shedd, Museum and Planetorim are at walking distances, but its tough to cover em all in a single day. There is an event called as hidden wonders which is shown in a big spherical theatre. Complete roof will become space, its worth watching show, you will feel as if you are in space. They also have some big size telescopes and a place where you can walk through space and time.

Mota hogaya hu shayad

Next we headed towards John Hancock observatory, again after spending one hour in searching for a parking spot. The important thing about this skyscraper is it allows you to tilt and see Chicago, yes theres a fee for that. Rest everything is same as in Willis. I would suggest going at one skyscrapper rather than both. Now all of us were hungry and this time, we had proper dinner. It was Chicagos specialty Chicago Style Pizza from one of the 4 restaurants which sells it- The Lumanatis.

Angry Girl

Last but not the least, we visited Millennium Park. They have made a park just to celebrate Millenium, I don’t get these things, but they are surprisingly funny. Park has a lot of things to offer right from free events to exhibitions to Pavillion to marvelous Cloud Gate to a lot more things. Lets explore em one by one. Pavillion is the centerpiece of park with capacity of 4000+7000 people. You can symphony orchestra and chorus there. Next we have a cloud gate also known as Bean due to its structure is a stainless steel sculpture which provides our reflection. Next we have something called as Crown Fountain-a watery Video sculpture where they play videos of Chicago people under a water fountain. There are many other things to explore as weather permits like the Lurie garden, Ice rink, Pedestrian Bridge, wrigley Square etc.

Bean

Right after Park, we headed towards back to Minnesota. On the way there was a small incident on highway, I wish God forbids me for that. Overall journey was good. Normally I write about my crew, this time I have forgotten that, I’ll try to include it in next post, Thanks. 

Trip to The Last Shangri-la : Thimpu Visit

Kings Memorial Chhorten

The Second Last day of our Bhutan trip was to explore the Bhutans Capital aka Thimphu. We started from Paro and in about 2-3 hours reached there, had a little breakfast and soon reached the first location: King's Memorial Chhorten. This place was getting renovated so not much of a scene.

Museum

Folk Heritage Museum-Must Visit

Next we visited the library, but it was lunch time there, so instead of waiting, we continued our tour to the Museum. Now let me tell you, I have been to a few museums but this was extraordinaire, one of its kind, again salute to Bhutan for this Museum. It was established in 2001 and provides visitors and tourists with fascinating insights into the Bhutanese material culture and way of life. The Folk Heritage Museum is set inside a three storied, 19th century traditional house.

The museum gives us a glimpse of the traditional Bhutanese lifestyle, in addition to artifacts from rural households; it also displays an impressive collection of typical household objects, tools and equipment. The museum also organizes regular demonstrations of rural traditions, skills, habits and customs as well as hosting educational programs for children.

The activities of the museum follow a seasonal rhythm, just like the activities of a true rural household, offering you something new to see every time you visit the place. The museum does a remarkable job of recapturing the rural setting and ambiance of a traditional household by setting up paddy, wheat and millet fields, a traditional water-mill with mill stones more than 150 years old, traditional style kitchen gardens with vegetables that were typically grown during the past 100 years. So sad that photography is not allowed, but then we have google.

@ Library

National Library and Archives of Bhutan

Frankly speaking, im not much of a reader guy, I like to watch movies/seasons instead, so Library didn’t had much charm for me. I must add an appreciation to the point that this Library had 2 sections, one for Foreign Languages like English and other for their own Bhutanese language. Bhutanese language Library is a 5 floor building and the most amazing thing about it is that all the floor schematic is exactly same, in computer terms it’s like copy and paste one above another.

Buddha Point

Buddha Point

A place with a big Buddha’s statue, another cool place to check out.

Handicraft's Place

Handicrafts Place

Last but not the least we have handicrafts place from where you can take souvenir’s for your loved ones There are numerous shops lined up one after another, you can purchase a variety of things from there, you can bargain and select the lowest cost shop also.  Try to purchase something unique of Bhutan like we purchased hanging clothes (its incorrect name, I don’t know what they call it, but they hang these cylindrical colorful clothes in their temples.). See picture.

Trip to Bhutan: Conference Day 2

Remember with every trip you take, you become just a little wiser.

Givin Speech

On the second day of Conference, we had a session of a noble person from Brahmakumari and Ritzel (from Switzerland). Both were a little bit boring and educating, I mean everyone has their own perspective, this is mine. Then Dr. Malhotra (GERA President) was awarded with Lifetime Achievement award, the biggest award anyone can achieve in their life followed by feedback session from every country representatives and in last there was a general body meeting of GERA members, as I was a partial member, so I thought it won’t look good to join it. So I escaped from there. 

Group Pic

Also I had to attend and enjoy with Bhampi and Photographer of our crew, so the three Musketeers started our journey towards Rimpung Dzong (Paro Dzong), clicked dozens of pictures in and started ultimate trek towards the Museum, which came out to be a very hectic one. It is located on the hilltop. Actually previously it was a watch tower, so obviously it is located at huge height, slowly slowly we reached at the top by crossing lot of hurdles, plants and mountain. A surprise was waiting for us at the top. As soon as we reached at top, it was CLOSED, never the less as I always say, the journey to the top was more important than the Museum.

Playing Archery

Anyways we had a nice talk with the caretaker of Museum for like an hour and then we took rest over there for a while until we were told to move out of the area as it was dawning. We took pics there too and came down to meet rest of our crew, first we thought to have dinner, then we thought, that rest crew might not have had anything, so it’s better to ask them. So we moved towards guest house. When we met them, they were ready with bread jam and cake for us. We had our dinner and then cleared all the money accounts.

Admin Team

After this entire tiring journey, we thought that we should have sleep and get ready for the biggest adventure-Tigers Nest. So the lady department moved to their quarters and we also slipped in beds. After 5 minutes, none of us was feeling sleepy, so we again woke up and thought of having some more snacks and tea. We invited girls also, but they weren't ready to come out. That’s natural and was as expected; our photographer took the role of chef and prepared black tea as we didn't have milk. I must say, it was the scariest drink; I ever had in my life. It was so horrifying that I had stomach problems complete night.

Lifetime Achievement Award

Overall day was cool. One more crazy incident took place @ night, we had to book cab for Tigers Nest but we didn't had any Bhutanese Sim, so we started searching for people to get a mobile phone, so that we can make call (we were in another country, we didn't had local sim). There was a house in which few lights were lit, we knocked their doors in night to get a cell phone and booked our cab. It was a new thing that I had tried in my life, seriously we learn a lot from travelling.