Mapped: Photos from Chandigarh, India, Jan 2006

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This post about my trip to northern India in 2005-2006 is preceded by photos from New Delhi and Agra.

On 2 January 2006, Megha and her family took me to the Rock Garden in Chandigarh, just to the north of their home in Ambala.

The audacious background of the Rock Garden was just as interesting as the sculptures and the architecture. The Rock Garden is a pile of junk. Nek Chand, the force and vision behind the project, created the garden -- a 40-acre spread of sculptures, waterfalls, towers, and courtyards -- from scrap and waste. Discarded wires, porcelain, industrial materials, broken bangles, pieces of glass bottles -- all pieces of rubbish individually, but part of something whole and substantial when brought together; it is much more than a pile of junk.

The most striking aspect of the Rock Garden, to me, is the dedication -- I mean obsession -- that must have driven Nek Chand to continue working on it. It's not that hard to initiate something small, a few sculptures that can be hidden away with no effort, but to work in secret for nearly 20 years, creating an enormous work of art out of the forest... I can't even imagine it. I can only wonder if, somewhere, in the back of his head, he had an idea that he knew was so incredible that he had to follow through with it. Or maybe he was just passing time, keeping his hands busy and the art created itself.

If you're ever passing through northern India, through Punjab, I highly recommend that you stop at the Rock Garden for a long stroll through Nek Chand's masterpiece. And while you're there, take your time, wander. As a bonus during my trip there, we met Nek Chand for a few minutes in his studio, which is located in the garden itself.

• Rock Garden [wikipedia.org]


• Nek Chand Foundation [nekchand.com]

Have a look at the camera icons on the map below, which shows where the photos were snapped. Can't see everything in this window? Open it as a larger map.




If you use Google Earth, you can download the network link file for this trip to your My Places. Your placemarks will automatically be updated when I add photos to the rest of this trip, including Dak Patthar, Ambala, Allahabad, and Kolkata.

Photos from Agra, Dec 2005

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Listen. The Taj Mahal is awesome in the true sense of the word: inspiring awe. The pictures you've seen before, and that you see in this set of photos, are just a taste of what it is like in person. I mean, it looks big and majestic in images, but when you walk in the gate from the south and the Taj Mahal swings into view -- amazing.

Three of us -- Megha, her cousin, and I -- started from New Delhi at four in the morning, taking the bus to Sikandra, just on the outskirts of Agra. (The bus ride to and from Agra is another story altogether -- both the outrageous video game-like ramble down to Agra and the broken down bus in the night on the way back to Delhi. Oh yes, you must wait for the book, Train Cancellation Party.) In Sikandra we visited the mausoleum of Akbar the Great [wikipedia.org].

Next -- and maybe I'm too simple, blame it all on my roots or whatever -- was an auto ride to the Taj Mahal. It's like nothing else I had ever seen.



Then: the Taj Mahal [unesco.org]. I'm not going to try to describe it anymore. See the pictures here, and sometime in your life see it in person. From the Taj Mahal we traveled to Agra Fort [unesco.org], capital of the Mughal empire.

Photos from Agra
The map below displays the photos were they were taken in Agra. Click on the camera icons to open a display for each picture. Alternatively, you could view the photos in: Picasa; Flickr; or Panoramio.

(If it's hard to see the photos in the window below -- and don't forget to click the icons to see them... -- open it in a larger map)



As always, if you use Google Earth and download the network link file for this trip to your My Places, your placemarks will automatically be updated when I add photos to the rest of the trip.

This is set #2 of my photos from India in 2005-2006; the other sets are: (1) New Delhi; (2) Agra; (3) Chandigarh; (4) Allahabad; (5) Kolkata; (6) Ambala.

If you don't want to wait, you can see the placemarks and the photos in separate states:

• Most of my photos from India are in a Picasa web album.


• Map placemarks are posted on my wiki.

Photos from New Delhi, Dec 2005

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I visited India for three weeks in December 2005 and January 2006. The time I spent there was outstanding -- it was my first opportunity to spend an appreciable amount of time with Megha, and her family were very excellent hosts. (Granted, she and I weren't an item then, and I don't think I would have visited like that if we were, but that's a song from a different opera.) Also, further down the tracks, I met some friends that I had known online only, and I also met with one of my classmates from Illinois -- Palash Basu -- and his family.

One day, when I finish writing it, you should read the book about my trip (Train Cancellation Party). In the meantime, I'm going to do what I like to do: post the photos on a map that shows where they were taken. It takes some time to merge the two elements -- the Google Earth placemarks and the photos -- so I'm going to do it in batches: (1) New Delhi; (2) Agra; (3) Chandigarh; (4) Allahabad; (5) Kolkata; (6) Ambala.

If you're impatient and want to see the placemarks and the photos in separate states:

• Most of my photos from India are in a Picasa web album.


• Map placemarks are posted on my wiki.

Photos from the Red Fort in New Delhi
If it's hard to see the photos in the window below -- and don't forget to click the icons to see them... -- open it in a larger map




As always, if you use Google Earth and download the network link file for this trip to your My Places, your placemarks will automatically be updated when I add photos to the rest of the trip.

Phoenix, May 2007

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I'm long, long, long overdue on making a post about my wonderful girlfriend, Megha. But, to be fair, I was trying to give her anonymity as long as I could; just because I like to write in public doesn't mean everyone else wants to be dragged along for the ride. So, we'll see how this goes...

Back in May 2007, the project I was working on for Orbital Sciences Corporation was primarily based at the facility in Chandler, Arizona, just south of Phoenix. During one of the weekends I was there, I flew Megha from Florida to Arizona for a visit. I'm a bit of a desert rat, so it was an interesting opportunity to show her something new to her, and something that I enjoyed. (And let's not overlook that fact that it's just nice to see her, in general.)

So, the map you see below is three things:

1. Some of the places I went with Megha -- restaurants in the Phoenix metro area; a weekend trip to the red rock region near Sedona


2. Business-type placemarks, such as where Orbital is located in Chandler


3. A few placemarks that show where I met Aaron (of protoforge.org) in Phoenix, plus old university friends in Las Vegas for Chris's bachelor party

View Larger Map

The original files are located on my wiki:

• The static file, which is nice if you want to view the placemarks in Google Maps: link


• The network link file, for Google Earth users (this will be updated automatically when I update the static file): link

Sneak Preview: Map of 2005 Mojave trip

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Slowly over the last two years, I have been writing a book about the time I spent driving to, living in, and leaving Mojave, California in Spring 2005. The prospective title for this project has always been Mojave Road in the Sky, inspired by this photo I snapped in Death Valley National Park.

Quite a few of my memories from this time period are still quite fresh. Every week a few frames of the trip will slip into my consciousness: while driving I'll think of the road from Van Horn to Guadalupe Mountains National Park; while running I'll think of the hike to Lost Palms Oasis; while doing nothing at all I'll think of the vast green sea of North Dakota.

One trick I've always had up my sleeve is my ability to learn things by associating them with a location. I'm not sure what this is called -- it's sort of like photographic memory, I think. Maybe not. You tell me. I used to clean up in my aerodynamics courses in university because I could remember flow characteristics and equations by remembering where these things were located on the textbook page. Translate that to a larger scale, and I remember roads traveled, music heard, people met by placing these things on a mental map of an area. It's not a wildly useful skill; perhaps this will also give you some insight into why I don't own a TV because this feed of memories and places is often playing in the theater of my mind.

Anyway. I'm getting away from the point.

Slowly, I've been transforming memories from this 2005 trip into placemarks in Google Earth. This has opened up a flood of forgotten memories. Sure, most are useless ones -- I remember the name of the gas station where I stopped outside of dark and sinister Phoenix (Toor's Chevron) -- but it has been very useful in pulling thoughts and memories and insights from forgotten, unconnected dots.

If you like, you can have a look at the map as I'm creating it. It's a mess now -- but it's a work-in-progress.

Illinois to California

View Larger Map

California to Illinois

View Larger Map

The original .kmz files are stored on my wiki:

• Illinois to California


• California to Illinois

Also note that if you go to the links above, you can download a network link file for each -- download that to your My Places in Google Earth and it will be automatically updated whenever I update the source files on the wiki. It's magic.

There's not a lot of context associated with these points on the map; why should you care that I stopped at Brake Masters in Las Vegas? I don't feel pressured to move quickly yet since I have only 8 subscribers to this blog, according to Feedburner. Eventually I'll include pictures (if you're impatient see http://picasaweb.google.com/kirk.kittell) and other notes from this trip.

My secret, narcissistic hope is that someone -- be it a stranger or, more likely, Mom -- might see something they like or don't like, and tell me about it. Interaction would be a wonderful motivator. I'm planning one more update to these maps before the end of March. If you've actually played with the maps above, is there anything in particular you would like to see updated? Anything you would like to see augmented with photos or notes?

Rose Bowl preparation

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Here's the blahblahblah: Joe and I and others were going to watch Illinois play in Orlando at the Capital One Bowl since it was (1) on the same side of the country as us and (2) it seemed more likely that we would qualify for the Capital One Bowl than the prestigious Rose Bowl in Pasadena. If Illinois qualified for the Rose Bowl... too far, too expensive, etc. In fact, with good luck and good wins, Illinois did qualify for the Rose Bowl -- first time since 1984. So we thought again and too far/expensive was thrown out of the window. New Years in southern California with former university friends and roommates sounds good to me.

Look for me in the crowd. Ha.

The cool thing about this is that I was also able to get two tickets for my parents. They get to see the Rose Bowl and the Rose Parade (I suspect I'll still be sleeping during the parade) on 1 January, and then I'm going to take them on a shotgun tour of the Mojave on 2 January: over the San Gabriel Mountains; through Mojave, California City ("home"), and Trona; into Death Valley; and back to Las Vegas for their early morning 3 January flight home. I thought it would be cool to show them our playground from spring 2005.

If you would like to see more about the trip, I am putting notes together on my personal wiki and have created a map in Google Earth, which you can see below.


View larger map

I will be doing my part to pollute as I drive in a huge loop across the desert, but I tell myself that every trip I take to the desert -- my last was a side trip during a business excursion to Vandenberg Air Force Base -- is research for a book that I am sometimes writing (usually not) about our spring in Mojave. It's hard to believe that was nearly three years ago.

Act surprised: delayed O'Hare flight

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I'm sure that Cincinnati is a nice city. However, I was hoping to go all the way from Washington-Dulles to Cincinnati to Chicago-O'Hare to Bloomington with no problems. It's through O'Hare in the winter in busy season, so I'm neither surprised nor upset that part of the chain is broken. United -- whose people have been nice -- say to expect to leave here to Chicago at 11:30 instead of 7:30... That nixes any flights to central Illinois today.

The issue is, still: how do I get where I'm going? Peoria, Bloomington, or Springfield would all be good -- or drive overnight from Chicago? How long is the drive from Cincy to Springfield?

Meh.

ATL to BMI

The Beauty of Lies has moved to KirkKittell.com (Subscribe to the RSS feed). This post has been copied to http://kirkkittell.com/2007/12/14/atl-to-bmi.