Hi everybody,
I hope all of you had a very enjoyable christmas season, because i really did enjoy mine..i had a truly amazing time this christmas and i`m hoping to share some of my experiences isn the following pages.
But before that, i`d like to Thank all of you for the lovely Cards and mails you have all been sending. It feels great to know that all of you care. I would have liked to reply to each of your mails and i have been doing so as and when i find the time,but this time you must all excuse meand accept the common wishes i have been sending out with the knowledge that they come with the same wishes and regard as a personal message would have. I will of course mail you personally when i have a little more time on my hands.
My Christmas adventures began with the choice to stop working and begin enjoying for a week....I headed over to Wales, to join my cousins and relatives. Wales is a nation of mountains and valleys,blessed with awe-inspiring landscapes . Covering 20,764 square kilometres, Wales is situated on the west side of the UK, in between England and Ireland which is just across the Celtic Sea.
Snow is comparatively rare near sea level in Wales, but much more frequent over the hills...and since we were planning a trek over to the hills , i was eagerly awaiting my first experience of snow.
The journey began with my first rail travel in U.K , and throughout the trip i was thoughtful, comparing the railway systems of India and that of britain.....while that here works with clock like precision , the one in India seems to work with an organized chaos....the more i saw of it the more i began to realise why we in India cannot acheive the high standards of the European countries....yes we have poverty and corruption...and of course sheer irresponsibility and disorder,not to mention politics, but as i sat thinking, i ve realized that the root cause of all these is our population size...we could easily implement the best working systems in the world in our country, but it would breakdown just because we have to deal with the innumerous masses of people...and to add to that, they are`nt just a homogenous mass of people, who could be dealt with uniformly, they happen to be spread across a wide variety of cultures, languages , social status, traditions and religions, each having its own compulsions, and necessities ...on second thought,while indeed the state of railways in india can be improved, i salute the Indian railways for what it has acheived against all odds. However it would do well to have thinking people, capable of real planning, with a knowledge of how things work abroad.
Our first adventure after i reached wales was a trip to the Ogwen valley. the Ogwen valley is a classic glacial trough, complete with ribbon lake. It is situated in the Snowdonia national park. Snowdonia is a region of north Wales and a National Park, of area 2170 square kilometres (838 square miles). It was the first to be designated of the three National Parks of Wales, in 1951. The area is renowned for its spectacular mountainous scenery and is popular with tourists, and Charles Darwin was a regular visitor here. For those of you who are intetrested, do check out this link, to a live webcam of the area. (open link in a new window)
http://www.bbc.co.uk/wales/northwest/sites/webcams/pages/ogwen.shtml
Our journey turned out to be exciting, as we picked the worst weather for the trek, what began as a light rain soon turned into hail.! Big peices of ice..but we were lucky to be heading in the same direction in which the winds were blowing rather than against it....or we would have had our faces pelted with ice....It did finally stop hailing and the effect it left was spectacular, with the surrounding hills being instantly turned from brown to white...there was hail all over on the grass...and we were left arguing over whether it was ice or snow.
While we were there i did try to scale a peak and get some amazing photographs but the weather played spoilsport to mess up the snaps. click onthe snap and try spotting me ..
That night was christmas eve and we attended the midnight mass at the church...and spend the rest of the night making merry and chatting and slept at 5 in the morning...when we finally did wake up on christmas day, it was to the excited cries of “its snowingâ€..indeed it was and i managed to replace some of my sleepiness with the excitement of seeing my first snow, to get a picture. We were in for a white christmas after all....
what followed was a real christmas atmosphere....christmas dinner with roast turkey, champagne and chritmas pudding, some fun and games and unwrapping christmas presents...whew.....While i do miss spending christmas at home, i ve always imagined how a real christmas celebration in the english way would be...i geuss this is as close as it gets....its turned out to be my best christmas...thankyou Thommu and Shalini for having me over.
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