May-end, 2004. Group Size: 12 Pictures Here
Soon after my end semester examination in mid-May, I found the opportunity to visit one of many wonders of nature in form of my visit to Niagara Falls. My friend, Harshvardhan Sharma, from IIM Ahmedabad was working in Merrill-Lynch New York for his summer internship and invited me to join the get-together of IITB 2003 batch in Niagara Falls, which I gladly accepted. After all I am more eager of visiting places here due to variety of reasons. One is my financial independence and second is my (possibly) brief stay in United States. And a wonderful company of about ten people is always a welcoming proposition with me since I am of view that fun can be had in groups only!
I boarded good-old Chinatown bus from Boston to New York where I joined Harsh in his really posh company-provided hotel suit. After brief banter and little dinner, we were joined by couple of his other friends, whose names unfortunately I cannot recount now. I was, I admit, a little outlandish with these fellows since they were resident of same hostels in IITB while I was meeting them first time. As the chat continued, which inevitably included reminiscence of hostel-specific jokes and leg pulling, we boarded train to Princeton. It was only one hour-long pleasant journey. Actually you feel everything pleasant when you are in company of your friends. Everything can be turned into a joke and you are unabashed to be noticed as a group of yuppies laughing hysterically and chatting in Hindi on New York streets. Of course, I was soon at ease because of North-Indian-ness of their characters and communications.
We landed in Princeton at about 11 PM in the night where we headed for yet another set of their friends who were student at Princeton University. And what followed was what could be best expected at such gathering and still sought after eagerly. Couple of more friends who had driven to Princeton met us and about ten people cramped in one small room and started narrating their experiences. I want to digress a little here. One thing I noticed in this gathering, as well as the group which I have been part of during my stay at IITM, that there are certain definite positions which necessarily exists between group of friends.
I think few characteristic individuals are necessary for the cohesion of group. There would always be one person dominating the group, who usually will have dominating physique or voice. There must be a scapegoat who will always be subject of humorous leg pulling, and most of the jokes will be directed towards him. This person is key and easily noticeable figure in the group and must be very patient or else he could be losing his anger every five minutes. There are other, less important yet still necessary, characters like one reticent observer, one who takes more than reasonable time to understand things and few who are always deep in planning pranks. Okay back to my trip.
Cars for driving to Niagara Falls were arranged already and the preparations were ready for departure. Yahoo maps come handy, and are even necessary, in these situations, which makes me wonder how could people plan their itinerary in India in absence of these valuable resources. After careful selection of two drivers and two navigators we headed for our very long drive to Niagara Falls at about 1 AM in night.
The adventure beings! Soon we the realized that journey was not as smooth as it appears. Of course, neither it was bad enough to be disrupting our plans, specially, as I said, when you are with your friends. First thing to be noticed was haziness of the front glass of one of the car, in which I sat. After more than an hour of ingenuous thinking about what to do at that unearthly hour and resultant rubbing with scraps of paper, it was just manageable improvement. On the top of that the rain gave us slow start.
There was more to come. Neither of our drivers was well experienced on American freeways to drive straight. After lots of missed exists and ramps, and consequently getting lost and recovering, multiple break for resting, an emergency exit for nature’s call on my side, few breaks for little nap for our one and only pair of drivers, some breakfast at Dunkin’ Donuts in the morning, lots of asking around in Niagara city we finally arrived at our destination at about 11 AM on next day morning. Totaling about ten hours of not so continuous driving for about 450 miles, in which luckily passengers (including me) at least had an opportunity to nap while poor drivers and his navigator didn’t slept except one or two breaks. Never mind about Yahoo maps. They just claim that it was only six hours travel!
Our count was further strengthened at Niagara Falls when one more carload of passengers joined us. After initial greetings – which in this case comprised of lots of hugging, shouting and patting of backs – and coupled of snaps later we proceeded towards the fall. A park was developed around the area, which sported among other things the tourist information center, a memoir shop, a couple of restaurants and tourists waiting room. Soon we found ourselves witnessing the highest waterfall in the world!
Hundreds of tourists flocked the railings that separated us from the ravine having the fall in efforts of getting a “closer” look. Thousands of tons of water falling from height of about hundred meter presented wonderful view. To be precise, 150,000 US gallons per second, from height of 176 ft (http://www.niagarafallslive.com/). After lots of camera clicks later we headed for a boat journey to nearly below fall, Maid of the Mist. After paying hefty sum of $13 per person we were presented blue polythene to protect ourselves from water mist that we were about to be thrown into. A boat filled of tourists and enthusiasts like us soon departed on its short voyage towards bottom of the Niagara Fall. Zooming in view of mass of water and cooling water sprinkles soon elated our spirits to seven heavens. People were struggling to balance themselves on the shaky boat while protecting their cameras from water droplets and at the same time taking close pictures of the fall. Some of us practically did not bother to keep our bodies dry since fun was in getting wet after all!
We got this opportunity soon again, and in much better sense, when we decided to visit Caves of the Winds. As scientific as the name may sound, it was nothing but a walk up to bottom of smallest of the three falls of Niagara. But yes, literally bottom of it! Here again we were provided with yellow polythene cover and plastic sleepers in return of $10 and transported to near bottom of the fall – still dry area – through a lift running in lift shaft carved hundreds of year earlier in rock by hands! We were guided to a wooden staircase structure which curved into a platform that was just five meter below the fall. Of course, just below was impossible for it would have been washed away instantaneously. However with so close a situation chilling cold water was drenching us from top to bottom. It was the most wonderful part of the whole trip for it was highly exciting and refreshing and reminded me of similar experience of bathing in river Ganges. All of us kept shouting all the time, as were other tourists and an implicit challenge was being fought of staying longest under water. After about fifteen minutes our guide came and, to our disappointment, started pushing us out. Oh, who would have wanted to leave that amazing sensation running through the spine, though we were little worried about catching cold in the process. Nevertheless, we had to budge giving way to next bunch of tourists. I have to admit that American knows how to make money. For just standing below the waterfall they were charging hefty fee while in India we have all most of the rivers banks and fall free for public.
That was all to it. More than half wet we came back to one of the Indian street-side stall that we noticed while going in and had some lunch of rice, chapatti and curry. At this point let me tell you that Niagara Falls had more than half of its tourists share of Indians on that day, which is usual phenomenon as later confirmed by other visitors to the fall. I could not understand that of all tourists’ places Niagara Falls is so flocked by Indians. Americans were, literally, in minority!
About 6 PM on the evening we departed from Niagara city to Amherst in three cars. After staying a night with one of their friends in University of Massachusetts in Amherst – which included wonderful Indian dinner and bread-pakodas for breakfast the next day, thanks to one lady friend of them – we drove to Boston in two of the cars while third one destined for New York. Starting at 9 AM in morning, I was dropped on Sunday about noon at Boston. A great journey just ended.