Niagara Falls Trip

My long weekend was put to good use … we went to the Niagara Falls by Chinatown bus from New York. ‘We’ stands here for yours truly along with Love Goel and Aditya Kanitkar … and three others in another bus … all colleagues of Bloomberg. The sight of Niagara Falls is spectacular … huge amount of water flowing down at shooting speed that the view becomes unique and magnificent. Nature doesn’t seem to be in the habit of creating such visual masterpieces often … the only bigger falls in the world I think are Angel Falls in South America and Victoria Falls in Africa.

Pics: http://saurabhaditya.dotphoto.com/CPViewAlbum.asp?AID=5499402
Vids: (Will upload soon!)

Niagara Falls has child falls. We visited American Falls and Horseshoe Falls on the American side and took a boat ride called the Maid of The Mist.
We started from Chinatown where everything is written in Chinese as well, even over the McDonald’s :) and stopped at Corning Glass Museum on our way to the Falls. When we reached Chinatown at 89 Bowery it was hard finding the right bus. Firstly we were late because of F train not servicing on Sat from Roosevelt Island and then 5 threw us out! Only when Eric (to be our tour guide in the bus) called me when I learned which bus is ours. I am actually glad that they were somewhat late. Because there are no extra seats left they fill the whole bus. If you miss your bus I don’t think they can put you in the next one going there! Lex and Eric were our guides, both Chinese. Lex did the commentary.

Along the journey don’t forget to take out your camera when the bus crosses a couple of bridges to catch a beautiful sunset scene! It is a long journey of eight hours each way, though watching movies (once again with Chinese subtitles :), napping and creating puns on Love’s name ;) passed time. And don’t worry the bus stops every two hours for you to rest or eat or just take a break.

In Corning Glass Museum they will create glass in front of you from hot and molten something and magically and very artistically and yet manually render beautiful shape to it. That was a brilliant show I hadn’t seen that before. One interesting thing to note was there was a repeater in Chinese for the show who got a clap at his first translation from the Chinese audience … that was sweet … I could only guess he must have done a good job! Rest of the stuff in the museum was to feed your lurking learner spirit with information on how glass stuffs are created and how they work and several glass stories like TripleX used in windshield glass of cars, or scientific story of fiber optics of how just the exact amount of titanium proved lucky for the world to get the information loss less than 10 decibels per km so I could type and upload this blog within no time!!

Lex spoke everything twice, the second time in Chinese! However, Lex never said any word that sounded like Niagara in his Chinese commentary, I listened again attentively, I guess there may be a Chinese translation for Niagara which doesn’t sound like Niagara … can they do that with proper nouns?

The first view of Niagara was night view. Most night view pictures are useless from my camera, click there if you have a great lens to shoot. After the dinner at Food Court we were escorted to IMAX Movie named Niagara Legend of Adventure. The movie show had a big screen and covered several adventures including Lelawala’s story: Legend of the Maid of the Mist http://www.infoniagara.com/attractions/legend.html
The daring adventures of people like the schoolteacher Annie Taylor falling down the Falls and barely surviving and about every one in three jumpers dying was sufficient enough reason to understand why going into the water is banned now. We were taken by another about half hour long bus ride to hotel Ramada after that.

Next day’s first view was from the top. Best place to take good bright pictures with rainbow even without rain! The mist was so widespread that it created a rainbow about a semicircle length. After this we left for Maid of The Mist which had the kind of queues I like to call Fractal Queues which are self-revealing. That is, the moment you think “aah .. the wait is over .. I am finally on the boat”; the queue reveals itself and tells you “there is always more to me than you think darling ;) ”. Another such queue was at Empire State building for sunset view.

Maid of the Mist is a ride in a big boat very close to the Falls. The mist was so strong near the falls that we had to wear raincoats, it was initially drizzle but as we got closer it was like heavy rain … of course at the very end it would have been … well … end of all of us! So the boat returned from the mist though I did try to get glimpses of probable maids of the mist ;)

I enjoyed chatting with myriad kinds of people from kids to grandpas, to travelers from Nepal and London and of course Indians and Chinese. Gomteng Singh and Bandana from Nepal shared their stories of Lahurabir and Gaudolia and Ghats of Varanasi (place I went for high school) with me … and compared Pokhra and Kathmandu to tourist places in US. Gwen from London and her friend were doing NY now and were to do SF and Vegas next. Kapil & his cute toddler kid Devarsh, consultant Bo Feng and the self-appointed traffic commentator a ten year old kid sitting behind me: Jennifer and of course Eric and Lex: the guides. I hope after the trip Jennifer got to see Two and A Half Men as she missed Simpsons at 9 anyways. And of course Gomteng, Pokhra stands out ... there is nothing like the mighty Himalayas!

Now that is where I think where a bus ride scores over taking your car and drive to Niagara. Another thing not possible in a car is getting to watch National Treasure, It Happens Only in Vegas and Mr. Bean’s Holiday all during the total 16 odd hour long trip!!

All in all the trip was wonderful and I would recommend a lot. Except for the cold that I got for taking off raincoat hood to enjoy the shower from the Niagara. And just get used to long queues … which you will if you stay in NYC long enough :)