We were planning a Hawaii trip since long but somehow we were not able to finalize anything. But one fine day, out of nowhere along with our other friends, we decided to hop on to Hawaii for a week long vacation. Leaves got approved and even the air-fare was fitting in our budget. So now we had no reason to step back and we went ahead and finalized everything.

As you know Hawaii is made up of 8 islands. But due to time constraint, we covered two islands Big Island and Maui ..

I’m sharing my complete itinerary so that you can enjoy as much as I did and also one can get a fair idea about what to do, where to stay and how to enjoy in Hawaii.I would say that one’s real experience gives better idea than reading a book on Hawaii.

Big Island:

We flew on 3rd Sep (Saturday) from San Jose to Kailua-Kona (KOA) – BIG Island. We reached BIG Island at arnd 10 AM.

About Big Island:

Big island is less scenic. As such no activities there. BIG Island has only volcano national park as the main attraction. One can plan to cover the whole of the island in two day.

From airport, Volcano park is 3 hr drive. All luxurious resorts and hotels are near airport. so one needs to decide what is the priority:

•  Luxurious stay then stay near airport but drive 3 hrs OR

• Ordinary stay but no commute then stay near volcano park

Activities we did in BIG Island:

• First day, in the evening we went to volcano national park to see glow show. After sunset, the smoke that comes out of crater looks golden. It surely was an amazing sight.

• second day – we again went to volcano park and did some hiking which takes you to the ground where lava has dried up and you actually walk on dead l. Your hiking ends with lava tube (a tunnel kind of thing which has dead lava). The hiking was of arnd 6 Mile total and the most astonishing part bout it was, it was circular hence you dont come back to the point from where you have started the hike via the same route. You start at a different route and come back to thatstarting point via a different route. So no repetition of sights. That was amzing.

• Also visited, black sand beach. Due to active Lava pouring into ocean few decades ago, the ash has turned the ocean sand into black color. Also we saw some huge turtles taking a sun-bath near the shore.

P.S: Volcano National Park has very good visitor center where some volunteers can appropriately guide you as per your timeline, schedule and interests.

Activities we did not do but recommended:

• helicopter ride to volcano (Around $175 per person – a must thing that we did not do )
• If you guys wanna do some real and tiring hike then green sand beach is the best beach out there.

Stay:

• 1st night we stayed in La’i Aloha House which is near Volcano park to avoid commute..
• 2nd night: After completing our volcano park activities, we drove 3 hrs and stayed in Sheraton Keauhou Bay Resort and Spa

Other option for stay:

• Aston Shores Waikoloa
• Hilton waikoloa – The most gorgeous but expensive

PS: Big Island is definitely not the island to relax.

Maui:

Monday 5th September, we flew from Kailuia-Kona(Big Island) to Kahului(OGG), Maui. It was a 9 seater plane just like charter. Flight time was arnd 1 hour. Unfortunately, we had to pay some extra bucks for the luggage. We were not informed about it when we first booked our tickets. So be ready to shell out few pennies if you are doing island hopping by air.

About Maui:
Maui is a definite place to relax and enjoy.Good scenic beauty, good beaches, great waterfalls.

Activities we did in Maui:

• Hana drive -  Scenic Drive with beaches, mountains, water falls. Many vista points to cover so before going there, plan which vista points to cover/stop on. A convertible car is a must to enjoy the scenic beauty and the sun of course. It will surely take one full day of your itinerary.

• Halaekala Mountain/National park: Here, we selected Haleakala Bike Company as our bike company. You have to wake up at 2 in the morning and report it to your bike company at around 3. They will take you to the crater which is like 10,000 feet above the sea-level. Then you see the mind boggling sunrise as you are standing above the clouds and as the sun is coming out, it highlights golden border of clouds. What an amazing sight that was .. It was chilling but then once the sun strted coming out, we all forgot about the cold and we were just enjoying the beautiful sight. After that you get on your cycles and come down from 6000 ft to ground. As it’s a downhill, you dont have to pedal anytime – just the brake and steering. Awesome fun. Midway, you find some restauarants fro breakfast. It was around 27 miles but it took us arnd 3 hours with breakfast break.

• Apart from these activities, we just chilled out at beaches / pools of our resort.

Activities we did not do:

• Submarine ride
• Para sailing
• Lahaina town, Luau(Hawaiian dance) – A must that we missed out

Stay:
We stayed in Honua Kai Resort ( It was an awesome resort)

Other Options for stay:
Royal Lahaina Resort
Karappalli beach resort
There are hundreds of options to stay in Maui. So any resort with 4 start rating and a good deal would suffice your luxurious stay requirement.

PS: Maui is the place to relax and enjoy your vacation and some good company of your life partner

After completing Maui, We came back to Bay Area while our other friends went to Kauai.

Kauai:

About Kauai:
Most scenic island of the three. Less commercialized yet.

Things to do in Kauai:

• Dinner cruise to Napali coast which also included whale and dolphin watching. 

• There are many look out points, hiking trails, canyons on the way.

• You can do mountain tubing, Kayaking if time permits.

 

It was a memorable trip for all of us. We enjoyed it thoroughly. I hope you guys too have enjoyed reading my experiences.

Soham

Yipeeeeeeeeeeeee !! .. What more an ardent and avid cricket fan like me can ask for ?? .. IPL is going to commence from next week and that too in India .. Wow !! .. I’m so much excited !! .. Whether you call it “Indian Premier League” or “Indian Paisa League” or “Indian Pawar league” but it certainly has created hype and interest among the cricket lovers all over the world .. Huge money involved .. So much glamor involved but most importantly so much of thrill and excitement are involved ..

Its inauguration ceremony will be held in Navi Mumbai on Friday .. It seems that it will be grand and fabulous .. Shahrukh, Preity Zinta, Katrina Kaif etc will be sitting in the stadium and will be watching the match .. Spectators will be in huge dilemma – what to watch for : So many international cricketers on the field, Towering sixes and awesome deliveries, Film stars in the stands or ‘Hot and Beautiful’ Cheer-leaders near the boundary ropes .. It will surely be a stunning celeb-packed night .. And the most exciting part is – I MIGHT GO TO WATCH THIS MATCH !!! …

By the way, this time once again, there is no team from Ahmedabad in IPL .. So I will be cheering for Mumbai Indians because Mumbai is my work place .. It’s the city which gives me my bread and butter…My Karm-Bhoomi .. Another obvious reason is the presence of almighty himself – Sachin and Jayasurya in the team ..

So now Everyday at 8 PM after coming to office, I will stick to my TV ignoring the bunch of activities and people !! .. It is awesome to watch so many different players of different nationalities get togather and play as a unit .. I hope I will have a gala time in future ..

Yeah .. The one more thing I will be glued to is IPL Fantasy Cricket on http://fantasyipl.sportspundit.com

It’s a website where Members can create a profile and receive a Fantasy Budget to create their own ‘Fantasy Cricket Team’ of 11 players of the IPL .. This Fantasy team will then receive points based on the real life performance of the players selected .. Every member will be allowed to enter one team only .. More details about the game, you can heck out on the website that I have mentioned ..

And more importantly, there are grand prizes are also to be given .. The team with the highest total score after the league is finished will win a cash prize of $500. Second prize is $300 and third is $200. The best team each week will win an IPL cricket shirt of their choice .. Wow, I’m surely gonna rock this time ..

So for all the information about crcket world and IPL, go to:
Cricket News
Fantasy Cricket

So guys subscribe for it and have a ball out there while watching the IPL .. It sounds like a real fun ..

All the very best to Mumbai Indians and I hope they win this time ..

Soham

Hello Everyone !!

Well, I have taken 10 days Christmas vacation as most of my friends from US are coming to Ahmedabad and many of them are even getting married or getting engaged .. Hence so many events and functions to attend .. But I’m enjoying it ..

I wont be writing anything for few days nor I will be reading any blogs for time being .. So bare with me .. But I will be back next year(!!) in 2009 with full force and I will reply to all your comments as well as will post comments on your lovely posts !! .. I have got around 100+ posts to read in my google reader ..

By the way, merry christmas to all of you and have a wonderful 2009 to you !!!

Soham

Update: I’m sorry that I could not reply to the comments on my last post .. Weekdays were crazy because of the work and I was travelling during weekends .. But I promise that I will reply to your comments as soon as I’m done with this post .. You can check that out later on ..

Hell No .. I have not turned into an atheist .. I can never be an atheist .. I love GOD .. I have got full faith in GOD .. From some of my previous posts, you might have known that I am very spiritual if not hard-core religious .. I do depend on GOD for the welfare of myself irrespective of how much hardwork I put in or how much self-proclaimed intelligent I am and I do blame GOD when something bad or unwanted happens to me irrespective of my own mistakesor blunders sometime .. At least I have someone to abuse during my sorrows, someone to demand so that my wishes can be fulfilled or someone there to share my happiness .. But I love atheist people and I love their ideology and thoughts .. I find it always entertaining and interesting to debate with them and argue about all the beliefs and non-beliefs ..

Recently I had a forwarded email which comprised of top atheist quotes .. I had fun reading them .. I wont regret admitting that some of the quotes really made me thinking and threatened my faith, my trust, my belief towards almighty .. They almost put me in the atheist category .. But somehow I survived ..

Following quotes are ofcourse not my creation .. They are copied-pasted from the email I have got recently .. I am not at all responsible if your faith or beliefe takes a hostile turn after reading those .. Read it at your own risk ..

P.S: Most of the quotes are from Western world .. So they would refer GOD as Jesus and Worship place as Church .. You should interchange Jesus and Church according to your religion and then think in that manner ..

1) Religion easily has the best bullshit story of all time. Think about it. Religion has convinced people that there’s an invisible man…living in the sky. Who watches everything you do every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a list of ten specific things he doesn’t want you to do. And if you do any of these things, he will send you to a special place, of burning and fire and smoke and torture and anguish for you to live forever, and suffer, and burn, and scream, until the end of time. But he loves you. He loves you. He loves you and he needs money.

2) I’m completely in favor of the separation of Church and State. My idea is that these two institutions screw us up enough on their own, so both of them together is certain death.

3) Which is it, is man one of God’s blunders or is God one of man’s?

4) Faith means not wanting to know what is true.

5) The most henious and the must cruel crimes of which history has record have been committed under the cover of religion or equally noble motives.

6) It ain’t those parts of the Bible that I can’t understand that bother me, it is the parts that I do understand.

7) A man is accepted into a church for what he believes and he is turned out for what he knows.

Lighthouses are more helpful than churches.

9) Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.

10) The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one.

11) Men never commit evil so fully and joyfully as when they do it for religious convictions.

12) You’re basically killing each other to see who’s got the better imaginary friend. ( ahhaaa .. This makes sense today in the world of terrorism, riots and fanatism)

13) With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.

14) Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful.

15) Our ignorance is God; what we know is science.

16) Where knowledge ends, religion begins.

17) The opposite of the religious fanatic is not the fanatical atheist but the gentle cynic who cares not whether there is a god or not.

18) I think flying planes into a building was a faith-based initiative. I think religion is a neurological disorder.

19) There’s a phrase we live by in America: “In God We Trust”. It’s right there where Jesus would want it: on our money.

20) If I thought the Jews killed God, I’d worship the Jews.

21) One of the great tragedies of mankind is that morality has been hijacked by religion.

And the ‘Best Atheist Quote’ award goes to :

22) Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day; Teach a man to fish and he will eat for a lifetime; Give a man religion and he will die praying for a fish.

I had same amount of fun writing them here as I had while reading them .. They are awesome .. They do take us out from the fantasy world in which we are living but for a while .. By the way, Microsoft word states that the synonym for atheist is agnostic .. So whoever believes that he/she is agnostic but not an atheist, is quite wrong and mistaken .. Both are the same side of the coin .. Both point in one direction only .. Microsoft cannot be wrong .. Word also states that the antonym for religious is secular .. That’s not true .. One can be religious but he can be secular too (read : Me) .. Microsoft can be wrong sometimes .. LOL !!

Some of the famous Atheists:
Einsteen
Amartya Sen
Bhagat Singh
Jawahar Lal Nehru
Ram Gopal verma
Kamal Hassan
Karl Marx
Mark Twain
Stephen Hawking
Benjamin Franklin
Charles Darwin
Warren Buffet

I guess the analysis and research carried out by one of the prime London universities that the more IQ you have or the more intelligent you are, the less you belive in GOD is spot on .. But I dont agree !!!!!!

Soham

Hey hey hey .. Finally the day has arrived .. 15th August ..

HAPPY INDEPENDENCE TO ALL OF MY FELLOW INDIANS !! ..

Let us celebrate it with a great joy and zust .. Have fun ..

Soham