One of the highlights of our Las Vegas vacation was a trip to the Grand Canyon. Special enough to get its own post.
The Grand Canyon is one of the great natural wonders on the planet. It was formed by the Colorado river cutting through the surrounding terrain, over the course of millions of years. Located at a short few hours drive from Las Vegas, this is a must see sight if you are traveling to that area.
One added bonus en route is the Hoover dam, one of the marvels of modern engineering. When completed in 1935, it was the largest concrete structure ever built. At its base, the dam is 200m thick. That’s two football fields of solid concrete.
Anyway, we decided to cut short the travel time. We took a helicopter trip offered by papilon helicopters. They would fly us to the canyon in about 45 minutes, land on the canyon floor(!), and get us back. We would get to see the Hoover dam as well, and all this would be done in about 4 hours. You could call it a time saver. You could also call it a wallet buster.
This was the Ecostar helicopter that flew us from Boulder city to the canyon.
We took a trip three months back recently to a city called Las Vegas. Here’s my little travelogue.
Just in case you didn’t know, Las Vegas is a city famous for certain establishments called casinos, where innocent people empty their wallets in the belief that they can actually make money just playing games. Smarter people know that everybody loses to the casino.
Fun Fact #1: It’s estimated that every day Las Vegas casinos give away $3 million of freebies (more than $1 billion per year) just to get customers through their doors.Another matter that those billion dollar freebies result in many multiples of that in revenue.
Grand would be understating these casinos. They are huge. The nicer ones are pictures of opulence where the super rich gamble away their hardly earned dollars. Many of these casinos are based on elaborate themes to model famous cities such as New york, Paris, even Venice.
Here’s the Luxor which is built to look like an Egyptian pyramid.
July 4th. The American Independence day. A day for barbeques, picnics, family get-togethers, and fireworks!
The Macy’s ‘spectacular‘ has been a Newyork tradition for the past 32 years. This year we decided to watch it from Roosevelt Island, which supposedly offers the best views of the show.
Here’s a video of Steve Jobs delivering the commencement speech at Stanford in 2005. He talks about his life, its ups and downs, and how he got to become one of the greatest men of our generation.
In the middle of East river between Manhattan and Queens lies a little island called Roosevelt Island. One way to reach this island from Manhattan is a tramway, one of the few in the US.
Here’s a brief account of our trip to this nice getaway. All pictures were taken by me…feel free to compliment me on my photography skills.
South point on the island gave me something that i havent encountered often in Newyork – Silence. Its like a little oasis of desolation right in the middle of one of the noisiest cities in the world.
I also shot a video on the way back. Watch out for the shiny Newyork lights, traffic on FDR Drive, the nicely lit Queensboro bridge, and loudly talking Newyorkers. Alas, i didnt make any noise so you wont catch me there
How to get there: Tram Station on E60th street and 3rd avenue. Your metro card gets you a ride.
The Indian cultural export continues. What happens when you mix Michael Jackson and Bhangra? One of Britain’s most talented performing teams.
This one’s wicked…not quite the same league as Kashif Menon though
This Michael Jackson/Daler Mahendi pairing finished second in Firangi Land’s version of America’s got talent. In case you were curious MJ (Suleman Mirza) has got a youtube page of his own.
Videos of their later performances:
Final – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7zHQiy3ZLxE
You might see a new page on this site. I realised that i need a page dedicated to the really cool videos i keep finding with such regularity. Will keep adding new stuff on that page. So go ahead, have a dekko, and keep writing in.
Shree Ganesh of the page with a video promo on the Incredible India theme.
Youtube is turning out to be a modern day Pandora’s box. Check this out.
This video is a clipping of traffic at some intersection somewhere in India. (Any guesses what city this is?) The video is supposed to show just how bad traffic in India is. Now, frankly i thought this was pretty tame. I have seen much worse traffic.
I normally wouldn’t have given this video a second thought, but then i noticed this:
Honors for This Video:
#10 – Most Viewed (All Time) – Autos & Vehicles
#56 – Top Rated (All Time) – Autos & Vehicles
#2 – Most Discussed (All Time) – Autos & Vehicles
#6 – Top Favorites (All Time) – Autos & Vehicles
American girls sing Vande Mataram to Siva Mani’s beats at the conclusion of the Incredible India festivities in Newyork.
Call it symbolic, call it hyperbole, call it whatever, but we were Impressed. We had the worst seats in the house, so the video isn’t much to look at. But it’s meant to be heard more than seen!
By now everybody knows the series of events.
India made 157/5.
Pakistan started the chase badly..and it looked like India were all set.
But then Misbah started doing his thing, and brought Pakistan so agonizingly close to the trophy.
But then he got ambitious, and that cheeky shot doubled the heartbeats of a billion (give or take a few) people around the world.
(Misbah down repenting that rash shot. Check out the umpire looking at him. The Indians too busy celebrating)
India are the winners of the cricket twenty20 world cup!
A major championship win after a long long time – in fact, the first one that we at americandesi have witnessed! Rare day for Indian cricket..and hopefully the harbinger of a new beginning for India. A country that went into mourning not too many months back following the ODI world cup debacle is rooting for those 11 odd heroes again.
A four day event called Incredible India! kicked off in Newyork today. This event is an attempt to showcase India to America, and will comprise several business meets, panel discussions, and cultural events.
If you missed today’s events, there’s still three days to go, and plenty going on. We were there to cover the action, and sure liked what we saw. Here’s our account of the opening day of the event.
There were a host of events today including some high profile ones involving among other things, entry by invitation only. Unfortunately, we are not yet important enough to be invited to events involving union ministers and CEOs. So we settled for the public events.
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