kenya safari - Day 2

Yesterday we went to a bag shop in the morning... where you can pick out the bag that you like, and they will put the lining, zip, handle how you want it. You can imagine how my mother went besserk! :) All bags are made of jute and such lovely colours! I got two for myself and my mother got one. We also bought a few for gifts for people back home.

Lunch was at 'Kumbakonam Court', a name christened by jagan uncle, for the apartment complex we stay in. It has a lot of South Indians, so the name. They had all made one dish each and invited us to lunch. The food was so YUM! All home made and so tasty... Thought of my anna the entire time when I ate bisibela bath. The spread was so much, I could hardly do justice to everything on it. I'm sure I'm going to put on about ten kilos by the time I get home! Eat eat all day and do nothing else productive. And I don't even sweat in this weather!

Post lunch, we went to a place called round about, a small market for curios etc... They had some interesting things. Nice to look at but quite expensive. Its quite scary in places like that, I would never go alone there! So many locals and after hearing such horrible stories I feel like its unsafe to go alone.

While we were there, it started pouring cats and dogs... and we had to wait a while till it died down before we could even walk back to the car. We spent the entire evening yakking and ate aalu bhujiyas for dinner. Thats in between bhajji n french fries.... was quite tasty along with the salsa dip they gave.

Kenya Safari - the list goes on

Continuing where I left off about my Nairobi experience...

- Nobody honks while driving, though the traffic is just terrible. Its worse than bangalore during office hours, school hours and lunch.

- i've heard more stories of break-in thefts, people held at gun point, and I wonder how these people can live in a constant fear of their lives!

Kenya Safari - Things you might not know

Here are a few facts that I found out about Nairobi and Kenya...

- There is no public mode of transport in Nairobi... no buses, no trains. The only way to travel is a privately run bus service ( a name starting with 'm' that i dont remember now :) ) The minimum rate is 20 shillings ( 1 rs = 1.6 shillings ) and people spend upto a hundred shillings ( one way ) to get to work. Moreover, these fares are not fixed, they apparently charge more on rainy days.
This makes me wonder how much people actually save off their salary.

- I dont think there is a concept of saving here... you splurge what you earn and have a good time.

- Locals don't have an opinion that marriage is the ultimate. They have many boy friends and multiple partners. If it doesn't work out, people just go around with other people. This has resulted such a high rate of HIV+ and people dying of aids.
Curiously, people are not very worried or petrified of getting aids or others in their family being prone to it. It just seems to be a part of their lives. A sample case is of a 14 year old girl pregnant, the father of her child abandoning her for reasons unknown. Another of a lady dying of aids leaving her ten year ols son in her sister's care.

- A country with such a similar history to ours, colonised by the british and subjected to the same issues years ago, has turned out so differently than ours. It has its rich people, a lot foreigners who came for work, but also has such a huge population below the poverty line.

Kenyan Safari - Part 2 Tour Of Nairobi

As I landed, I was greeted by smiling faces and very helpful locals who guided us to the immigration and baggage claim counters.

Stepping out of the airport, The first words I heard were "Karibu" ( Welcome) and "Jambo!" ( hello!) in Swahili. Through the rest of the trip I hope to pick up a few more words so that I can find my way around if I ever need to.

My first impressions of the city of Nairobi....
CLEAN...
GREEN...
buzzling with activity early in the morning... people leave for work at seven am!
brilliant weather... such a relief after 43 degrees of Chennai.

I spent the day looking around the city, at the old colonial style buildings, government offices and ofcourse, did a bit of shopping. :)

The most suprising part is the civilized and curteous way the people treat you. Unlike the notions I had in my head of the locals, the seem very happy to help whenever they can.
This contradicts the stories I've heard of people being held at gun point for money and jewellery being stolen.

Kenyan Safari - Part I

On May 29, I woke up all packed and ready to leave for my kenyan safari.... I trip we had all been discussing and planning for over a year, only to hear at ten a.m. that my international flight on Air India from Bombay to Nairobi had been cancelled! Imagine my disbelief... An INTERNATIONAL FLIGHT... reduced to the state of Air Deccan! After a long process, finally my flight was routed through Kenya Airways. All this happened in a span of four hours and instead of leaving at midnight I had to leave at six p.m.

When we left home and ten mins from the airport I got a call warning me about a potential bomb scare in Bombay Airport. After so much confusion there was no turning back. So I proceeded to Bombay, still a little tense about how the day was going to turn out.

I landed at Bombay at eleven p.m. at the domestic terminal and had to carry my baggage to the international terminal. On the bus from one terminal to another, we took a route through the "backstage" of teh airport. I watched amazed at the intracies of the functioning of the airport. The amount of work that goes into making sure each and every passenger has a safe and comfortable journey.

Then I boarded the flight to Kenya, and after a long and uneventful ( thankfully! ) flight I landed at Nairobi International Airport at six thirty am local time...

selling my paintings

Take a look at the paintings i've made so far...
I want to sell it...to various segments-
corporates
interior designers
architects
ppl in the constn. business


so if any of u no ppl in that field pl let me no!!!