AA. No, not Alcholics Anonymous. Something better.
This year in June, my parents and I spent close to 25 days in the United States. Technically, we touched about 11 of the 50 states and the capital. The trip was incredible and brilliant. I had fun and I met a lot of my extended family. Okay bye.
That was the short version of that trip. For the real deal, keep reading!
I wasn’t and still am not entirely sure about how to write this post. Some of you may know, I aspire to be a travel writer someday. That’s a super exciting place for me to be at, someday, but I am as unsure of how to go about writing as I am an actual Homo sapien. But I won’t know until I give it a shot! So, this post is an attempt and it would be my first attempt - looking forward to feedback and maybe posting many different attempts soon.
Since my normal posts are humongous, I thought I’d go city by city to try doing some justice to these amazing places. [Btw, some of the links will lead you to photographs]
The first city I stayed at or visited in the States was Ann Arbor, Michigan. My brother Anand finished his Masters program at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor and currently lives there. Ann Arbor is instantly charming and I felt a strange sense of familiarity. No, Ann Arbor isn’t as populated as an Indian city - in fact, of a population of roughly 150,000, one-third would constitute a floating population of students. It is as dirty as an Indian city can be squeaky clean. My sense of familiarity would be attributed to my time spent in Chandigarh, a planned Indian city. Chandigarh doesn’t have many tall buildings, neither does Ann Arbor. In fact, in Ann Arbor, the buildings never break the tree line (except maybe, the University Hospital). Chandigarh is clean as far as Indian cities go and maybe less populated too, relatively. They’re both small cities. Ann Arbor is possibly the most beautiful city in the US that I visited.
The thing that annoyed me most was to see everyone driving on the wrong side of the road, which was technically the right side. Honestly, this was the first thing that struck me. Despite it being almost a month since I returned to India, I am disoriented with regard to what side of the road is wrong. Or left.
Through the length of the trip, the abundance of natural resources in the US, struck me the most - land being the most prominent. There was just enough and more space for any and everyone.
It was amusing to notice that the concept of “compound walls” was practically non-existent. In India, we’re only too used to seeing areas marked out with the help of a wall - specially independent houses. Lack of markers like “the compound” would ordinarily imply lack of privacy. Ironically, back in India, we’re not entirely up for the idea of privacy. News travels quick. Specially through your maid who has more social circles than Google Plus could provide for. Narayana Murthy in “What we can Learn from the West” said that in the West, people are friendly without being intimate, while in India can be intimate without being friendly. That could maybe, apply to quite some cases I guess. But at another level, I secretly love the Indian interference/intimacy. In Sociology, we study about Emile Durkheim and his work on Suicide. He believes that suicide is social, not psychological - collective, not individual. It occurs when one’s social system breaks down - be it the elementary group or secondary. And back home, the fact that you have so many people asking about you or talking or interfering with you - weirdly does imply that they care and maybe your social network will stay intact. This is just a hypothesis, I could be completely wrong for all I know! But we’re so used to seeing people around and inadvertently knowing about them, that getting depressed enough to be driven to commit suicide may be less. Enough morbid issues, though.
Oh also, the sun sets pretty late, which further means that it’s pretty bright till about 9.30 PM! Which is funny because when you’re eating dinner and back home, you’re absolutely used to it being dark outside when you eat.
Ann Arbor may not be particularly known for it - but it’s an excellent place to walk around. We stayed at a cozy inn - the Lamp Post Inn. Frommers has in fact, named the Lamp Post Inn as the best value for travel in town. And I think I’d agree! The staff there was incredibly sweet and the rooms were super comfortable - I particularly enjoyed the breakfast we got each morning. Not because it was anything exotic but pretty simple, basic. I’d have bagels with cream cheese and cherios with milk. And then Sunny D Orange juice!
Right next to the Inn was the Lamp Post Plaza - complete with a pharmacy, dry cleaners’, Roly Poly Sandwiches and the best department/grocers’ store ever - Trader Joe’s! If my parents could, they would live there. Small things like raspberries and blueberries amused us.Cinnamon scones were a favorite. And, surprise surprise, Masala Dosai! Seriously tasty! We didn’t even need a reason to go there. We’d go to Trader Joe’s and buy something even if it wasn’t required. We did our bit to push up Michigan’s economy is all I’ll say!
Downtown Ann Arbor is pretty much the same area as the location of the Central Campus of the University of Michigan. As most Downtown areas are known to be, this was a happening part of the city and bustling with people and activity. Two theaters - State Theater and Michigan Theater are located here. Tons of restaurants, cafes are located here - the variety of cuisines available were excellent! In fact, if you’re ever at Ann Arbor - please do visit Suvai. It’s an excellent Indian restaurant - hands down, the best dahi vada I’ve ever tasted in my life! Apart from there, Ethiopian food at The Blue Nile was an amazing experience. I’m not saying I’m a huge fan of the cuisine but interesting (and it’s the good interesting) wala experience. You can draw parallels with south-Indian food - dosas and south-Indian sabjis! Mexican food is, as everyone would say, closest to Indian food. Of course, Starbucks is present - my cousin Archita and I believe it’s possible to draw a map of the US with Starbucks outlets alone!
Coming to natural sights - Nichols Arboretum is this huge green area just a few blocks away from the Central Campus. The River Huron flows across it! It’s the most gorgeous trail I’ve ever been on - the green! Wow. And then to climb down and find a river flowing by. I’m really not describing it right but then, I guess you’ve gotta go visit. Something similar to the Arb would be the Matthaei Botanical Gardens - both of which are managed by the UofM. Together, they consist of over 700 acres of gardens and research areas.
There’s another park - Gallup Park - that has the River Huron flow through it. We went paddle boating on the Huron river there - the more adventurous would opt for canoe-ing though! Walking through the Park and seeing the sun set or almost set or just the cloud formation is unbelievably worth it. Yes, I took quite some pictures but camera can’t do justice to experiencing beauty first-hand. You don’t want to speak but just stare away for as long as possible and wonder how on certain days, nature can be that beautiful.
Did I say Gallup Park made you wonder if nature could be that beautiful? The Argo Dam area will make you wonder that and about how lucky some people get. Let me define lucky by explaining a scenario : You wake up in the morning, get out to your balcony or even just the window and you look out at a beautiful mini … lake formed by the Argo Dam on the River Huron. It’s just out there, any time you want to look at it, it’s like your back yard! We went there around 7 PM and wow, was it stunning!
Ann Arbor is home to a bunch of museums but we managed to visit only the University of Michigan Museum of Art. It had a good collection - but then, my parents and I don’t exactly visit museums of art much, we couldn’t entirely appreciate it.
Of course, this entire trip wouldn’t have been as memorable and as enjoyable or even as… extensive maybe, had it not been for Lalitha Aunty and Nattu Uncle. Their enthusiasm to show us around was heartening. And each day, one after the other, the places they took us to, only got better!
In terms of time spent, we spent the most time at Ann Arbor - about 10 days. Superbly relaxing.
That was the short version of that trip. For the real deal, keep reading!
I wasn’t and still am not entirely sure about how to write this post. Some of you may know, I aspire to be a travel writer someday. That’s a super exciting place for me to be at, someday, but I am as unsure of how to go about writing as I am an actual Homo sapien. But I won’t know until I give it a shot! So, this post is an attempt and it would be my first attempt - looking forward to feedback and maybe posting many different attempts soon.
Since my normal posts are humongous, I thought I’d go city by city to try doing some justice to these amazing places. [Btw, some of the links will lead you to photographs]
The first city I stayed at or visited in the States was Ann Arbor, Michigan. My brother Anand finished his Masters program at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor and currently lives there. Ann Arbor is instantly charming and I felt a strange sense of familiarity. No, Ann Arbor isn’t as populated as an Indian city - in fact, of a population of roughly 150,000, one-third would constitute a floating population of students. It is as dirty as an Indian city can be squeaky clean. My sense of familiarity would be attributed to my time spent in Chandigarh, a planned Indian city. Chandigarh doesn’t have many tall buildings, neither does Ann Arbor. In fact, in Ann Arbor, the buildings never break the tree line (except maybe, the University Hospital). Chandigarh is clean as far as Indian cities go and maybe less populated too, relatively. They’re both small cities. Ann Arbor is possibly the most beautiful city in the US that I visited.
The thing that annoyed me most was to see everyone driving on the wrong side of the road, which was technically the right side. Honestly, this was the first thing that struck me. Despite it being almost a month since I returned to India, I am disoriented with regard to what side of the road is wrong. Or left.
Through the length of the trip, the abundance of natural resources in the US, struck me the most - land being the most prominent. There was just enough and more space for any and everyone.
It was amusing to notice that the concept of “compound walls” was practically non-existent. In India, we’re only too used to seeing areas marked out with the help of a wall - specially independent houses. Lack of markers like “the compound” would ordinarily imply lack of privacy. Ironically, back in India, we’re not entirely up for the idea of privacy. News travels quick. Specially through your maid who has more social circles than Google Plus could provide for. Narayana Murthy in “What we can Learn from the West” said that in the West, people are friendly without being intimate, while in India can be intimate without being friendly. That could maybe, apply to quite some cases I guess. But at another level, I secretly love the Indian interference/intimacy. In Sociology, we study about Emile Durkheim and his work on Suicide. He believes that suicide is social, not psychological - collective, not individual. It occurs when one’s social system breaks down - be it the elementary group or secondary. And back home, the fact that you have so many people asking about you or talking or interfering with you - weirdly does imply that they care and maybe your social network will stay intact. This is just a hypothesis, I could be completely wrong for all I know! But we’re so used to seeing people around and inadvertently knowing about them, that getting depressed enough to be driven to commit suicide may be less. Enough morbid issues, though.
Oh also, the sun sets pretty late, which further means that it’s pretty bright till about 9.30 PM! Which is funny because when you’re eating dinner and back home, you’re absolutely used to it being dark outside when you eat.
Ann Arbor may not be particularly known for it - but it’s an excellent place to walk around. We stayed at a cozy inn - the Lamp Post Inn. Frommers has in fact, named the Lamp Post Inn as the best value for travel in town. And I think I’d agree! The staff there was incredibly sweet and the rooms were super comfortable - I particularly enjoyed the breakfast we got each morning. Not because it was anything exotic but pretty simple, basic. I’d have bagels with cream cheese and cherios with milk. And then Sunny D Orange juice!
Right next to the Inn was the Lamp Post Plaza - complete with a pharmacy, dry cleaners’, Roly Poly Sandwiches and the best department/grocers’ store ever - Trader Joe’s! If my parents could, they would live there. Small things like raspberries and blueberries amused us.Cinnamon scones were a favorite. And, surprise surprise, Masala Dosai! Seriously tasty! We didn’t even need a reason to go there. We’d go to Trader Joe’s and buy something even if it wasn’t required. We did our bit to push up Michigan’s economy is all I’ll say!
Downtown Ann Arbor is pretty much the same area as the location of the Central Campus of the University of Michigan. As most Downtown areas are known to be, this was a happening part of the city and bustling with people and activity. Two theaters - State Theater and Michigan Theater are located here. Tons of restaurants, cafes are located here - the variety of cuisines available were excellent! In fact, if you’re ever at Ann Arbor - please do visit Suvai. It’s an excellent Indian restaurant - hands down, the best dahi vada I’ve ever tasted in my life! Apart from there, Ethiopian food at The Blue Nile was an amazing experience. I’m not saying I’m a huge fan of the cuisine but interesting (and it’s the good interesting) wala experience. You can draw parallels with south-Indian food - dosas and south-Indian sabjis! Mexican food is, as everyone would say, closest to Indian food. Of course, Starbucks is present - my cousin Archita and I believe it’s possible to draw a map of the US with Starbucks outlets alone!
Coming to natural sights - Nichols Arboretum is this huge green area just a few blocks away from the Central Campus. The River Huron flows across it! It’s the most gorgeous trail I’ve ever been on - the green! Wow. And then to climb down and find a river flowing by. I’m really not describing it right but then, I guess you’ve gotta go visit. Something similar to the Arb would be the Matthaei Botanical Gardens - both of which are managed by the UofM. Together, they consist of over 700 acres of gardens and research areas.
There’s another park - Gallup Park - that has the River Huron flow through it. We went paddle boating on the Huron river there - the more adventurous would opt for canoe-ing though! Walking through the Park and seeing the sun set or almost set or just the cloud formation is unbelievably worth it. Yes, I took quite some pictures but camera can’t do justice to experiencing beauty first-hand. You don’t want to speak but just stare away for as long as possible and wonder how on certain days, nature can be that beautiful.
Did I say Gallup Park made you wonder if nature could be that beautiful? The Argo Dam area will make you wonder that and about how lucky some people get. Let me define lucky by explaining a scenario : You wake up in the morning, get out to your balcony or even just the window and you look out at a beautiful mini … lake formed by the Argo Dam on the River Huron. It’s just out there, any time you want to look at it, it’s like your back yard! We went there around 7 PM and wow, was it stunning!
Ann Arbor is home to a bunch of museums but we managed to visit only the University of Michigan Museum of Art. It had a good collection - but then, my parents and I don’t exactly visit museums of art much, we couldn’t entirely appreciate it.
Of course, this entire trip wouldn’t have been as memorable and as enjoyable or even as… extensive maybe, had it not been for Lalitha Aunty and Nattu Uncle. Their enthusiasm to show us around was heartening. And each day, one after the other, the places they took us to, only got better!
In terms of time spent, we spent the most time at Ann Arbor - about 10 days. Superbly relaxing.
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