13th Feb 2010, 7:45 AM: I was ready and raring to go. Pradeep had asked me to come to his room. I went hustling down, as i was already late for about 15 minutes. As i opened the door of Room Number 211, i realized that my perception of IST in EST was wrong. Indians were not the slowest in the world. I was informed that the Driver was travelling from Montreal and would be 2 hours late than the anticipated time. I went back to my room and started seeing some debate on NDTV about the recent MNIK overplayed hype. No wonder it's a good fodder for the politicians, the news channels and least to mention SRK too, because how so ever honest he is about his statements - No publicity is bad publicity.
13th Feb 2010, 9:30 AM: The mini-bus carrying about 7 people arrived to take "the 4 of us - Pradeep, Sangeetha, Savitha and Sudipto" at our Apartment doorway. Mid earth is owned by some Chinese folks, so i anticipated someone like that to come out, but that wasn't the case. The accent of the person gave us an impression that he was probably a French guy. But as it turned out, we were wrong. He was from Ukraine with a broken English accent. In the midst of things, i did not know the 7 people on board personally. But after half an hour of drive, they introduced themselves as Anuja, Asha, Harish, Madhu, Tussar, Tussar's family (wife and his kid) and Umesh. So we were on the way to Toronto, a trip in Canada driven by a Ukrainian guy working for a Chinese company with Indians on board - A world tour in it's own rights.
13th Feb 2010, 2:30 PM: After a single break in between for Canada's favorite Tim Hourtons, we reached Toronto in around this time. As the bus (i felt it was a tempo of sorts) entered Toronto, i gushed to Sangeetha that it felt as if we entered a new Country all together. Ottawa really looks like a different city. Little to my knowledge, the whole trip was pre-planned and well executed by Madhu so far. We reached a South Indian restaurant by the name of Karaikudi. Entered inside and felt that i am back in Chennai. It was chettinad food and more than half of my company were speaking in Tamil, which i was generously trying to understand. In came the waitress, she had colored her hair and looked like the face of the Indian waitresses of the 22nd century in India. None the less, i love South Indian food and we ordered for a variety of stuff. Our group was interesting. We had a Marathi Family, a Marathi girl, 2 malayalis who could speak all South Indian languages, 1 Bengali and rest all Tamil speaking people. No wonder they say that India is Countries inside a country. The Bengali was generous so he had no trouble.
13th Feb 2010, 4:00 PM: It's always a challenge to do time saving when you are in a huge group but i thought we were quite punctual - I know by this time the driver had a different opinion about us. The group was split into two - 3 on one side and rest on the other. The split was done on the basis of people who wanted to see CN towers and those who wanted to shop. I wanted to see the 3rd tallest tower in the world and hence was amongst the group of 3. So a random guide was allocated by our driver and he bought the tickets for us to go inside and above the tower. I was a bit scared of being around with two ladies, with the fear of the unknown - but they were brave and i was wrong. We set out inside the elevator, as a narrator told us that it was going up at the speed of 15 KM/hour. The lift was made out of transparent material, so we could stare outside, as i felt a bit of "stairway to heaven" kind of a feeling. The whole world started to shrink down and i could envision that the boundaries really narrowed down to a lump. We reached on top of the CN towers and it was a VIEW. We could see the entire city of Toronto from a bird's eye. They said that Niagara could be seen from there too, but it was misty. As i stared down, i felt the analogy between the proverb - "Bada ban jana" and the "height" of the tower. You look down and you see everything so symmetric, no borders, no differences - Our world (My attempt of gaining some TRP over this post).
13th Feb 2010, 6:00 PM: After our brief stay at the City Hall Toronto, we set out for our next destination - 82 miles down south, the Niagara falls. I remember the blurry memories of reading about this mammoth falls in our geography books in school. I was excited though the even dawned quietly on us.
13th Feb 2010, 9:00 PM: After resting our bags in the hotel, we had set out for the falls. It started snowing like the Christmas Carol songs. The spirits were high and there was nothing stopping us(another attempt on TRP). As we reached closer my anticipation rose. I was about to see something which had so much of hype around it. The air grew colder as we stepped closer to the falls...and here it was - The Niagara Falls. You could see Buffalo, New York on the other side of the falls - they call it the US side of it. The Canadian side looked more brighter and was outshining the US side of the story. Leaving the diplomats do their jobs, i concentrated more on the falls, i admit that i have never seen such a gigantic proportion of water falling down ever, even though about 40% of the water around the falls was frozen. People folk-ed in for the picture perfect snaps - one memory to remember forever. I was not well protected for this cold and soon realised that my hands were numb (Ironic). I ran for cover but the only place i found were my Jeans' pockets. They called it the horse shoe (probably because of the shape of the falls resembling it) which was hard for me to picture(Guess i had to be in a helicopter to visualise it).
14th Feb 1:00 AM: Realising that this trip was offering me more company than i thought of, i celebrated the dawn of the V-day in my own rights - Another year with no valentine. Well much to remember about this night than to forget. I had found out a great company in the form of Umesh. He is quite a senior folk but he never made me feel that. Our philosophies matched and we started having some good bit of conversations. We got off from Boston Pizza and followed Madhu inside the haunted house called - The house of Frankenstein. Half of the gang had left for the hotel by that time and we were 6 of us (out of which 2 were girls) getting inside a place which tried the best to "scare the hell outta us". With not much senses on the proper side i did not feel that the masked men and fake dead bodies were good enough to haunt me that night. However, it was a great experience. We walked down to the hotel and slept by 2:00 AM that night.
Rest of the story in the next post.
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