Book lists

2017-18:
The Mistborn Trilogy - Brandon Sanderson
The Gene: An Intimate History - Siddhartha Mukherjee
The Mars Trilogy - Kim Stanley Robinson
The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O. - Neal Stephenson and Nicole Galland
The Dagger and the Coin series - Daniel Abraham
The Three-Body Problem trilogy - Cixin Liu
Snowpiercer (The Escape, Explorers and Terminus) - Jacques Lob, Benjamin Legrand and Jean-Marc Rochette

2015
The Satanic Verses - Salman Rushdie
The Mission Song -  John le Carré
The Master of Go - Yasunari Kawabata
Regeneration - Pat Barker
The Wise man's Fear - Patrick Rothfuss
The Name of the Wind - Patrick Rothfuss
One Hundred Years of Solitude -  Gabriel García Márquez
The First Promise - Ashapurna Devi
American Gods - Neil Gaiman
The Dispossessed - An Ambiguous Utopia - Ursula Le Guin
Who Do You Think You Are - Alice Munro
Something I've Been Meaning to Tell You - Alice Munro
Dance of the Happy Shades - Alice Munro
The Emperor of All Maladies - Siddhartha Mukherjee

2014
Re: Colonised Planet 5, Shikasta - Doris Lessing
Homecoming - C. P. Snow
Master and Margarita - Mikhail Bulgakov
A Country Doctor's Notebook - Mikhail Bulgakov
The Fatal Eggs - Mikhail Bulgakov
Gentleman Bastard series (first 3 books) - Scott Lynch
Pilgrim - Timothy Findley
----- post-sahana days from this point above -----
The Inheritance of Loss - Kiran Desai
Monsignor Quixote - Graham Greene
The Grass Is Singing - Doris Lessing
Inferno - Dan Brown
In the Light of What We know - Zia Haider Rahman
The Cairo Trilogy - Naguib Mahfouz
Lady Chatterley's Lover - D. H. Lawrence
The Enchantress of Florence - Salman Rushdie
A Perfect Spy - John le Carré
The God of Small Things - Arundhati Roy
Joseph Anton: A Memoir - Salman Rushdie
White Mughals - William Dalrymple
Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
The impossible dead - Ian Rankin

2013
The land of the painted caves - Jean M. Auel
Cousin Bette - Honoré de Balzac
Father Goriot - Honoré de Balzac 
Siddhartha - Hermann Hesse
Mistress - Anita Nair
Far from the madding crowd - Thomas Hardy
A flag on the island - V. S. Naipaul
The First Circle -  Alexander Solzhenitsyn
Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
The Emigrants (Utvandrarna) - Vilhelm Moberg
The sea, the sea - Iris Murdoch
Under the Net - Iris Murdoch
The Mandarins (Les Mandarins) - Simone de Beauvoir
War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
The Woman Destroyed (La Femme Rompue)- Simone de Beauvoir
The Brothers Karamazov - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Bring up the bodies - Hilary Mantel
India: A History - John Keay

The dice man - Luke Rhinehart

The Theban plays (Oedipus the king, Oedipus at Colonus and Antigone) - Sophocoles

2012

Mrs. Dalloway - Virginia Woolf
The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald
Three men in a boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog)- Jerome K. Jerome
A tale of two cities - Charles Dickens
David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
The Russia House - John le Carré
The hunger games series - Suzanne Collins
Wolf hall - Hilary Mantel
Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
A passage to India - E M Forster
The man who knew infinity: A life of the genius Ramanujam - Robert Kanigel
 The Song of Troy - Colleen McCullough
The book thief - Markus Zusak
The War of the end of the world - Mario Vargas Llosa
The long ships - Frans G Bensrsson
Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, Nero's Heirs - Allan Massie
Mary - Vladimir Nabokov
Ponniyin Selvan - Kalki: ongoing (yes, in tamil!)
Quicksilver - The Baroque Cycle - Neal Stephenson


2011
Masters of Rome series - Colleen McCullough
Conqueror series - Conn Iggulden
The Chronicles of the Imaginarium Geographica series - James A Owen
Never let me go - Kazuo Ishiguro
Waiting for the barbarians - J M Coetzee
The Finkler question - Howard Jacobson
A place of greater safety - Hilary Mantel
some crazy books by Donna Leon, just before we went to Venice :)
Sea of poppies - Amitav Ghosh
River of smoke - Amitav Ghosh
The Prague Cemetery - Umberto Eco
The Lacuna - Barbara Kingsolver
A song of ice and fire series - the first 3 books - George RR Martin
The once and future king - T H White
I, Claudius - Robert Graves
The Constant Princess, and The Other Boleyn Girl - Philippa Gregory
Shame - Salman Rushdie
Three soldiers - John Dos Passos
Cats cradle - Kurt Vonnegut

A land of Ice and Fire.

Mountains, waterfalls, hot springs, geysers, glaciers, volcanoes, caves, ice lagoons... Nature does not seem to scrimp on any wonder in this beautiful country. We spent 10 days in Iceland, staying in Reykjavik and traveling around the southern part of the country, trying to sample a little bit of everything.

All the photos are here:

Volcano hike

Ice lagoon

Vatnajökull glacier

Thingvellir National Park

Gulfoss

Geysir

Reykjavik and around

Eyjafjallajökull volcano hike:

We hiked up to the top of the notorious volcano Eyjafjallajökull, which erupted in 2010 causing weeks of chaos to all air traffic across the Atlantic.Volcanic ash is still strewn for many hundreds of kilometers to the south and east. We actually walked all the way to the still-warm crater, where the lava is still smoldering from the 2010 eruption, and steam is coming out of vents in the ground. We climbed around 1100 meters to reach this point, walking on a mountain pass called Fimmvörðuháls in between 2 glaciers, and from there, came downhill for the next 6 hours through the steepest, craziest slopes that even goats would think twice about. Thank god for the few chains and ropes on our way, but nevertheless, I am amazed that we're still alive to tell the story :)

Vatnajökull - Europe's largest glacier (!!):

We climbed a section of Vatnajökull, using special crampons on our shoes and ice axes to pierce through the ice. We inspected some beautiful ice tunnels and caves carved by water, and felt quite overwhelmed knowing that we were walking on ice that was formed thousands and thousands of years ago (the last ice age even!). Apparently (according to our guide), nearly a 100 meters thick snow would have to be compressed to less than 1 cm thickness to form the kind of ice we were on. And imagine the force needed to accomplish that compression - there had to be that much snow over it to weigh it down as much. And this ice was about 200 meters thick on average, even at the edge of the glacier where we were walking (some above and a lot below the ground). On the way to this ice, we were walking on brown soil like material, but on going closer we realized that this was quite shaky ground since there was ice beneath it! And you heard parts breaking away and falling down as you were walking! It was surreal, to say the least.

Jökulsárlón ice lagoon:

We went boating in the ice lagoon which was just spectacular. Huge icebergs of different colors and shapes just floating about in a blue lagoon. Ice with different stories to tell. It was really like living in a dream. The lagoon is a mix of fresh water from the melting glaciers and sea water, which prevents it from freezing even in winter. But apparently, the James bond folks didn't like that when they came to inspect the site for shooting 'Die another day'. They wanted the lagoon completely frozen for the exciting car chase sequence in the movie. So they spent a month there, building a new embankment to prevent the sea water from entering the lagoon, waited for a few weeks until  the lagoon completely froze, and did their shooting. And finally, this part in the movie which was eagerly anticipated by the Icelanders for all the trouble they had been put through, lasted 30 seconds. 30 bloody seconds!

Gulfoss and Geysir:

This day's visit was to Gulfoss (the golden fall), and a geyser called Strokkur which went off magnificently every 5 minutes or so to a height of about 25-30 metres! This Strokkur was located right by the side of the great 'geysir', the original phenomenon that lent this Icelandic word to describing all other geysers in the world. 

Thingvellir national park:

This is a Unesco world heritage sight, as it was the seat of the first Icelandic parliament called alÞingi established in the year 930 when the first settlers came to Iceland. But for me, the fascinating thing about this place is that this is where the Eurasian and American continental plates meet. There are many rifts and a valley filled with a lake here, on one side of which is technically America and the other side Europe. And as these two continental plates are pulling further and further apart, this valley is sinking every year by a few centimeters! We were technically standing on newly forming, uncharted, no man's land, when we were there.

But wait. Depending on how screwed up you are, the coolest thing of the day was yet to happen to us. We were quite bored with our big tour group, and just wandered off by ourselves when everyone else was crowding up at a cafe. What did we meet? We ran into a 'game of thrones' shooting set!!! We heard that they were filming at several different locations in Iceland this summer. We didn't meet any Lannisters or Starks since the area was obviously cordoned off, but apparently, Arya and the Hound were in the set that day. We came back home and checked that it was real. Here are photos taken in the spot on the same day we were there: http://winteriscoming.net/2013/07/day-19-photos-from-the-thingvellir-shoot/ 

and a video interview with Chris Newman: http://www.visir.is/section/MEDIA99&fileid=CLP19996

Lava caves:

Just a little west of Reykjavik, we went caving underground, into a lava cave, and had a small adventure there since we (along with our guide) got lost and suddenly had to crawl out (and round and round eventually) much more seriously than on our way in. We somehow managed to come out after an hour of wondering whether a new volcano had altered the cave after we went in. It's not unusual to expect that in Iceland when they tell you that they have 130 volcanoes and some kind of eruption happens every second or third year.

Reykjavik area:

And last but not the least, Reykjavik is a charming little city. Cozy cafes, cute streets lined with little shops and crazy colored roofs, a beautiful harbor, the lush green gardens around the pond Tjornin and a really tall and pretty church.

We spent the rainy days playing chess in cafes and reading the famous Icelandic sagas at the local bookstore. It's a strange feeling to just get out a few kilometers from Reykjavik, and see the road winding through acres and acres of just lava fields. Solid lava where some moss is growing in patches here and there. Less than 10% of all of iceland is covered in trees, and It's no wonder that this is described as a lunar landscape, where even a patch of green grass after the desolateness of lava seems very fertile. We saw some geothermal power stations, and apparently all the hot water in Iceland is just directly out of the hot springs. Water is not heated using any energy, and in fact this hot water is what is used to heat up the homes too.

We also went out to the sea one day to do some bird and whale watching. We saw a lot of arctic terns, northern gannets and the most special thing of all - puffins. We saw lots and lots of shy-free, friendly dolphins but no luck with the whales.

All in all, it was just spectacular scenery, and we couldn't get enough of it.

Kungsleden - Abisko-Nikkaluokta - June 2013

So this summer of 2013, we set out to the north of sweden to do a 7 day hiking trip through the arctic wilderness. We have actually never stayed out in the wild, on foot, out of civilization, without electricity/internet/running water (in that order) etc etc for this long a time ever before! 

We walked on a trail known as the Kungsleden (swedish word that means the King's way, when translated). We started at Abisko and ended at Nikkaluokta, a distance of a little more than 100 km (I think we walked about 120 km in all). Here is a map of our journey: STF trail map Kungsleden Abisko 

All the pictures are here:

Photos at the train station

From Abisko

Day 1: Abisko to Abiskojaure

Day 2: Abiskojaure to Alesjaure

Day 3: Alesjaure to Tjäktja

Day 4: Tjäktja to Sälka

Day 5: Sälka to Singi

Day 6: Singi to Kebnekaise

Day 7: Kebnekaise to Nikkaluokta

We stayed at STF huts all along the way, which meant we didn't need to carry tents/sleeping bags. It also meant that we didn't need to carry cooking utensils or food for all 7-8 days, since there were some supplies at some of the STF huts along the way. But being vegetarian, and kind of finicky about food, I insisted we should carry enough and more supplies of food for the whole way. These huts were super nice, almost bordering on cozy, given where they were located and the wilderness through which we traveled everyday. Here is a description of our trip - the pictures tell the story that's too long for words.

We left home on the midsummer day, and took a train from Uppsala to Abisko, it took us about 16 hours to get there. Abisko is a small village located in northern sweden (about 300 km north of the arctic circle), and to me this was the top of the world! It is the starting (or ending) point of Kungsleden, and symbolically located just south of a big lake called the Torneträsk. The lake makes one feel like it's the end of the world, and I was sure this was the remains of some ancient glacier. (Of course, this is not the end of the world, we were just at 68 degrees N latitude, and had a long way to go until land ended). We spent the night there, and started our hike the next morning.

Day1: Abisko to Abiskojaure (about 14 km) (Day 1 pictures)

This first day was the easiest of all the days, it was like taking a stroll through a park. Well, almost. We were walking through marshy, swampy, rainy forests, and along the Abisko river almost all the way, and this area was the Abisko national park. On this day, we realized that the Kungsleden trail marking was going to be really easy to follow, we made friends with some people who had left on the same day, and were doing more or less the same thing we were planning to do. We also realized that there was a walking trail and skiing trail on kungsleden, and the big red crosses which we originally thought was what we should follow often led to the middle of some crazy rocks or ended in water. (apparently, these big red crosses were the ski trail). We saw a LOT of mosquitoes, which were bigger than any I have ever seen before in my life (that is a BIG thing, coming from an someone who has braved many a south indian summer. or winter, it does not matter.) We also saw about a million (at least a million!) tiny, yellow-green worms. They were everywhere, on the rocks and stones, on the wet ground, on the trees, leaves, hanging down from branches, and if we stopped anywhere for more than a minute, in our shoes and bags as well. So they helped us keep a good pace, and we later learnt that these were actually caterpillars that were killing the forest, because of their unchecked population (the swedish winter temperature has to apparently be below -30C for 3 successive days to kill the eggs, because each of these caterpillars would become a butterfly in autumn that would then lay about a 100 eggs!) This was the first time I had heard a butterfly being associated with something so destructive. 

We left at about 10.30 in the morning, and we had reached Abiskojaure at about 16.00. Once we had passed the wormy place, we took lots of breaks and enjoyed the sunshine (never sure how long it would last), and so this was at a very easy pace.

Day 2: Abiskojaure to Alesjaure (Day 2 pictures)

This was the longest, hardest day of the whole trip. It was about 24 km to walk, and we set off at about 8 AM. We reached about 10 hours later. The first section was a good climb on very stony sections, and then we walked on flatland for a long long time (this was the best section of the walk, since we were blanketed by distant snow-covered mountains, we had the sun on our faces and we were walking along a river). No more yellow worms or marshy land, there were many a good rock to sit on and enjoy the sereneness of where we were, and we did that quite often. And then, Shyam twisted his ankle pretty badly on a stone. After this, the going was much much slower, and he did remarkably well, given how much pain he was in, but still, every km now felt like a distant milestone. At this point, we also encountered our first river crossing. (without a bridge). We did several more of these over the next days and were quite used to them by the end of the trip, but this was our first, and also one of the biggest crossings. Water was flowing quite fast and you had to place your feet on the right stones which were perched rather precariously under the water. We didn't have any water shoes and we didn't want to walk barefoot, for fear of sharp stones that could hurt our feet, and shyam's ankle was rather bad. And after this, the ground was so swampy and boggy that it was a nightmare crossing this area. We finally came to a sign that said the Alesjaure huts were just 3 km away. 3 km! We were very very pleased, but that day was a lesson on how different 3 km is, on a stony patch of ups and downs where you had to choose carefully where to put every foot. We finally made it, and taped up shyam's swollen ankle, spent a good long time in the sauna (yes, sauna!), ate well and rested. 

Day 3: Alesjaure to Tjäktja (Day 3 pictures)

Only some 14 km to walk today, and shyam was doing much better. We had the choice of going straight to Sälka today, without staying in Tjäktja for the night - a distance of almost 25 km but it would have meant that we had an extra day which we could use to go up Kebnekaise (this is the highest mountain in sweden. It's not very high, just a little over 1000 m, but with the mountain being permanently covered in glaciers and this part of the world being renowned for crazy, unpredictable weather, we heard that going up this mountain is not like going up any other). But we chose to do the smarter thing. Walk only up to Tjäktja, and let the ankle recover, and enjoy what we were doing without any stress.

Day 4: Tjäktja to Sälka (Day 4 pictures)

About 12 km - another easy day. By now, we were doing river crossings like pros! We also saw some reindeers today - they were running around a lake but unfortunately, they were very far away for our simple point and shoot camera to capture.

Day5: Sälka to Singi (Day 5 pictures)

About 13 km - shyam was completely fine by now, and while walking, I wondered how it would feel to walk on soft non-stony ground again...

Day 6: Singi to Kebnekaise (Day 6 pictures)

About 15 km. We had been very lucky with the weather until today. Apart from an occasional shower, we had had sun every day. Today, our way was so foggy that we could not more than a few metres ahead. It was horrible, rain was just beating down our faces, and we walked in rain and cold and thick fog for about 4 hours. It was a pity because the valley near Singi is supposed to be one of the most scenic parts of our whole hike, and we didn't even get a glimpse of it. Finally, after a long time, it kind of cleared, when we came close to Kebnekaise, but not much.

Day 7: Kebnekaise to Nikkaluokta (Day 7 pictures)

I was happy that we were not going to climb the mountain. The weather had been so bad for the last day or so, that despite staying right at the mountain station, and having spent a whole day walking towards this mountain and the next whole day walking away from it, we never once got a glimpse of the top. As we left Kebnekaise, the weather got better and better, and we walked about 14 km, and then took a boat for some way, and then walked some more kilometres. But this walk was really easy, and after the boat trip, we were once again in lush green soft-earthed land, with flowers and song birds. This was quite different from our quiet time in the swedish lapland (mountains), where we almost never heard anything other than the sound of flowing water for a whole week.

Day 8:

We stayed at Nikkaluokta Sarri for the night, took a bus to Kiruna the next morning and a train home from there. On our way, we met some fellow travelers that we shared some very nice cabin time with - a Dutch couple, a French couple, a father and son from Scotland now living in Stockholm, a Swedish couple, 2 Swedish girls, 2 Dutch men, 2 sisters from the US and some solo travelers from Germany. A few of them came with us from Abisko all the way to Nikkaluokta, and most others part of the way. We met in the huts every night, shared a kitchen and sauna and often our bunk beds were in the same room, traded stories, played cards(we learnt several new games!) and read our books by the fire until about midnight every day. After all the walking and alone time in the mountains every day, we enjoyed this small society every night. 

I think we should get away like this at least once a year. 

My first attempt at photographing the milky way (From death valley)

The sky was just stunning and the photos obviously do no justice.. But it was still encouraging that at least a small fraction of the stars we saw could be captured in the photograph, and there is a mild fuzz showing the milky way..

And then I tried to photoshop a few pictures using a very basic tutorial listed here: http://digital-photography-school.com/how-to-shoot-the-night-sky-introduction-to-astrophotography

And these were the results:

I don't like them that much - I wish the results were subtler edits of the originals, and didn't have this 'redness' in the photos. But I guess that this at least means that I will start taking more pictures.

Egg less, fat free chocolate brownies!

Well, not literally fat-free, but butter-free. I found this recipe on http://allrecipes.co.uk/recipe/6036/vegan-brownies.aspx, but modified it a little bit to be less sweeter and use less oil. This is how it goes:

Ingredients:
250 g - flour,

250 g - brown sugar

60 g - cocoa powder

250 ml water

100 ml - vegetable oil (or olive oil)

1 tsp salt, 1 tsp baking powder

1 tsp vanilla extract

Mix all the dry ingredients in a bowl - the flour, salt, baking powder, sugar and cocoa powder. Then add the oil , vanilla extract and water to this and just mix into a smooth mixture with your hand. Pour it into a 9 inch baking dish and put it in the oven (preheated at 356F or 180C) for about 30 minutes. The insides will be a little wet and gooey, like the original recipe describes. If you prefer it dryer, keep in for some additional minutes.

This was awesome since it didn't need to be blended, or sifted or use any complicated baking ingredients. With a dollop of vanilla or chocolate ice cream, it is an easy shortcut to dessert heaven! We had our friends Lotta, Ty and little Erik over, to watch the track and field OS events with us, and the brownies, ice cream and some peppermint tea kept us quite happy. 

Week 31, 2012

Highlights from the week that passed:
Got back to work after a wonderful vacation,
read Dickens' David Copperfield,
watched Le mépris (contempt in English) and Master and Commander - the far side of the world,
cooked a traditional vadai-payasam lunch for Avani Avittam,
learnt the kriti ChUtAmurAre (Arabi, Thyagaraja) and started to learn MahAlakshmi (Shankarabharanam, Papanasam Sivan),
tried out a new chocolate brownie recipe,
and the week ended with the track and field events of Super Saturday OS on TV.

Rome: July 2012

Venice, Prague, Budapest, Oslo, Helsinki.. these trips are already going out of my memory. So I better write down Rome, before I forget.

We stayed at La Piccola Masion for the first 4 days, and then at Alex Inn, for the last 2 days.

Day 1: We reached Rome on separate flights, me through Zurich and Shyam through Amsterdam, at ~ 7 PM. Took a taxi to our hotel, checked in etc, and got out at around 9 PM. It was nice and cool, and very crowded. Walked past the backside of the Quirinal palace, and stopped by the Trevi fountain first (from Piazza Barberini, where we stayed). Had some lovely Minestrone soup for dinner, and walked down to the Spanish steps next. Sat by the steps for sometime, and tried in vain to identify some stars (the sky was not dark enough, and there were anyway too many lights around us). Headed back to our hotel at 11.30 or so.

Day 2: Started with a spinach and mozarella tramezini in a cafe, and walked up the Quirinal and Viminal hills, to the Piazza della republica. Saw the baths of Diocletian and the Santa Maria degli Angeli dei Martiri (basilica of St. Mary of Angels and Martyrs). Saw an exhibition dedicated to Galileo, with lots of space dedicated to proving that Galileo actually believed in god, and was not an atheist. Also a huge bronze statue of him from China. There was also a sundial, that was built along the 12.5 degree E meridian in the 1700s, such that at noon each day, the sun would shine at different points along this meridian, depending on the time of the year. The varying positions of stars during the year, were also plotted on this meridian. I think they used to make some actual astronomical calculations from this church.

Piazza della republica, with the Santa Maria degli Angeli and Diocletian baths in the background

Anyway, after that, we walked up the Esquiline hill, to the Santa Maria Maggiore. It was huge.. its one of the 4 major basilicas of Rome, one of the 5 patriarchal basilicas (representing Antioch), built in the 5th century etc. I don't remember much of the inside. We came out, and it was mid-day, and burning hot! We sat by a fountain outside, and cooled down with a gelato each.

Santa Maria Maggiore

And then walked on to our next destination, the Lateran church (yes, this was a church day, but you can't really help that in Rome i guess). This was impressive. It's the oldest church in Rome, and the first among all others, since this is the seat of the Bishop of Rome (the Pope I mean). In front of this church, is the largest obelisk in the world, brought to Rome from Thebes in the 4th century. We saw some paintings such as Constantine getting baptized, a huge statue of Charlemagne etc. 

Lateran church

The big obelisk in front of the church

Now, thoroughly tired and quite overwhelmed, we stopped for lunch and headed back to the hotel for some rest. It was just too hot to remain sane. Found a small Srilankan (can you believe it!) place, selling fried rice with potato curry and pappadam. I was delighted :)

Set out at 6ish in the evening, and went to the Pantheon first. This just gave me goosebumps. "M·AGRIPPA·L·F·COS·TERTIVM·FECIT" is still there, saying Agrippa built it in his third consulship. This was built by Agrippa, right after the battle of Actium in 31 BC! Well, everything other than that facade was supposed to have been destroyed and rebuilt by various people, and completed by Hadrian, sometime in the 2nd century. Some 400-500 years later, it was made a church. I was somewhat disappointed that it had been christianized, but then that was probably the only reason it has been preserved through the years. Inside, we saw Raphael's tomb, and also those of kings Vittorio Emanuelle  II and Umberto I. Outside, there were horse carriages, people dressed up as gladiators and a beautiful fountain at the Piazza della rotonda. We sat there for sometime.
                         

The next step was Piazza Navonna. We sat for a bit, by Bernini's fountain of the 4 rivers, saw Domitian's obelisk, went to a bookshop at the Piazza, and then walked down to the Tiber. We saw the St. Peters' dome and Castel St.Angelo from across the river, from one of the bridges, and the sun setting behind them.

                     

Piazza Navonna

The four fountains

The view from a bridge on the Tiber

         Then we turned around and went to Augustus' Mausoleum. It was really in ruins, with many areas cordoned off for excavations. This was so ironical, that Diocletian's and Caracalla's and Vespasian's buildings are standing and crowded by visitors, while Augustus's mausoleum, the man who said "I found Rome a city of brick and left it a city of marble" was crumbling and completely deserted. We skirted around for a bit, hoping there was some kind of entrance to it and we could go in, but no, it was really not open to the public.

Augustus Mausoleum

We walked back from there, through some trendy shopping streets, to have dinner at Ristorante Ciro, recommended by our host Giorgio. Excellent bruschetta, and good pasta. Oh, the lovely Roma tomatoes!

Day 3: This was a big day - We had tickets to the Vatican. We took a metro to Vatican city, and went to the Vatican museums. We spent more than 6 hours at the Vatican museum + Sistine chapel. There was too much to see and way too much to write about. So I am just skipping any descriptions here. Oh, I bought a jigsaw of the 'School of Athens' painting here. Once we came out, I was so tired of it, that I didn't want to go to St. Peters' right away. So we just went back for our usual afternoon siesta.

No, the photo does not do any justice.

This evening, we walked past the Quirinal palace and gardens, to the Piazza Venezia - the Vittorio Emanuelle monument, palazzo venezia and palazzo Bonaparte (where Napoleon's mother was granted asylum after his death) were some of the sights. By the side of this square was the huge Trajan's market and the forum romanum. In the fading light, these riuns were just beautiful, and for a change, not crowded. I think we enjoyed these evening strolls much much more than the daytime business in the heat and crowd. We just picked up the map and wandered in some general direction each day, with no itinerary in mind. Back to the Trevi fountain area for another late dinner, I couldn't resist fresh vegetable soup once again - the vegetables were just so fresh and smelling and tasting awesome. I think the background is that Swedish vegetables leave much to be desired :(

Trajan's market

Day 4: The forum romanum and palatine hill and the colosseum. All these are covered by one ticket. We hadnt bought our tickets online, but a useful tip we got off the internet was to NOT go to the colosseum first, since that's where the queues are longest. This was absolutely true. We got in to the forum in less than 10 minutes! Clearly the oldest part of rome, there were the Temple of Saturn, the arch of Septimius Severus, the Curia Julia, the temple and complex of the Vestal Virgins, the basilica Aemelia, the basilica Maxentii /Constantinii, the Arch of Titus etc. Again, it just felt unrealistic to even stand there. The only real thing was the heat of course. By now, we were washing our faces, hands and legs as frequently as possible in the fountains and then just filling our bottles to pour water on our heads. That the water from the fountains were actually cold felt like a miracle.

Thought he was just being nice, but he charged 10 euro for this ridiculousness!

Next, was the palatine hill. Here, we saw ruins of the Augustus palace, Livia's house, Flavian palace, Domitian's hippodrome and other things I can't remember anymore. Next stop was lunch before we went to the Colosseum. This was the Flavian Amphitheater, started by Vespasian and finished by Titus (or maybe Domitian, i don't know). It was a good idea to read the Allan Massie books just before/during the Rome trip, so that these names and places made some sense to me. Very huge, very impressive and very hot. After this, we went to the Circus Maximus, only to see that there's almost nothing left standing there. It was just another huge, cordoned off area.

 

Domitian's stadium

This evening, we set out towards the termini, in search of an Indian Restaurant that I had read excellent reviews about. We saw the Marcus Aurelius column on our way. It was a small dhaba like place, but what unbelievably tasty food! Easily, the best Indian food I have had in the last two years in Europe. And really cheap as well. We were still very tired after the day's visit to old Rome. So we took it easy that night.




Day 5: We moved to alex inn this morning. And then headed off to St. Peters. After majorly bulbing in the vatican, I had done lots of wiki'ing before going there, so that we would know what to look out for, both in the square and in the church. So I pointed out several things to Shyam (very proudly :) ) and then we took the metro and went to the same Indian restaurant as the previous day for lunch.

St. Peters Basilica

Michelangelo's Pieta

Queen Christina of Sweden!

That obelisk that was brought to Rome from Egypt by Caligula. It used to be in the Circus Maximus, where it is supposed to have witnessed the martyrdom of St. Peter. So now it's in the St. Peters square :|

In the evening, we went to the Borghese gardens (I think we saw some sections of the Aurelian walls on the way). The gardens were lovely, and surprisingly cool. We walked around quite a bit, and sat under the trees and just chilled for sometime. Incidentally, it was here that I was thinking that if I don't start writing down all this stuff, I would soon not remember any of it.

Then off to Piazza del Popolo we went. On the northern side, we saw the gate leading to Via Flaminia, the road to Ariminum (which will mean a lot if you've played Rome total war). Also saw an Obelisk of Ramesses II, brought by Augustus and as usual, lots of fountains. Then walked by the via del corso once again, and ate our first disappointing dinner in Rome. Food was bad, portions were ridiculously small, and it was expensive. But by then, I was more disturbed about something else - my upper lip had started swelling up sometime in the afternoon, and by now, it was the size of a small balloon - I could barely eat or speak. So we just walked back to the hotel, thinking it's probably some food allergy or an insect bite, and hoping I'd be fine by the morning if the toxin left my blood.

Day 6: Oh, this was the most eventful day of our trip. The day started at 3 am, when I woke up, seeing that my whole upper jaw had swollen up to the size of a tennis ball! (no pictures unfortunately :D)Startled, I woke Shyam and we took a taxi at 4 Am to go to the nearest 'Pronto Soccorso' - emergency! It took 8-9 hours for the swelling to subside - yes it had been an allergy. A very late lunch and we retired to the hotel, quite shaken up. The hospital was scarily like a government hospital in India - actually, in all fairness, i have never been to one in India and I should refrain from saying that. The doctors were efficient (well, whatever they
did for me worked), but there were flies buzzing about in the emergency room, where people were waiting for surgery, and a dysfunctional toilet, to say the least. Anyway, we were thinking of either going to the Appian way catacombs, or taking a train to Tivoli on sunday or just shopping, and none of all that happened. So that night, afraid to eat at any restaurant, we bought some fruits, bread and cereal from the local mercato, and ate in our room. I was touching my face every 5 minutes or so, since I couldn't believe that I was alright :) Our entertainment was some scenes of La Dolce Vita, kung fu panda 2 and an old Barcelona-Real Madrid El Clasico.

That night, I finally had sometime to look up at the Italian night sky. Having started star gazing only in Sweden, I hadn't had a chance to see a number of stars from so far south. Plus of course, there is no night sky in Sweden in summer. So, with the fourmilab software and compass on my iphone, our 6th floor balcony was quite a good spot (since we were above most of the lights). Starting in the South, saw sagittarius and Scorpio for the first time. Couldn't see Libra really, but then saw Virgo in the W. I have seen Ophiucus during early mornings in the Swedish winter, low in the eastern sky, but it was good to see it nice and high in the southwestern sky now, at ~ 10-11 PM. Bootes was highest and Arcturus was the brightest, and the summer triangle of Deneb-Vega-Altair were nicely visible right on top. The usual suspects - Ursa major, minor, Cassiopeia, Cygnus, Lyra and Cepheus were easy to see, and I also saw Aquila fully for the first time. The Corona Borealis was also easy to make out. We had buildings behind us in the North. So couldn't easy much more in that direction.

Day 7: We left Rome in the morning and took a train to Pescara. We saw some sections of the Servian wall from the train. Beautiful mountains, old castles, some ruins here and there, little Italian villages and green countryside, a good book to read, and nice company - the 4+ hours just rolled by easily. Pescara felt much cooler than Rome. Our hotel was just by the beach, and there was a nice sea breeze that had already set in, late in the afternoon. I spent 4-5 days there, and returned home. I was happy to eat thayir sadam before going to bed :)