Avinash Unplugged

Yellowstone is a huge national park of around 3500 sq miles and is located in 3 states; Montana, Idaho and Wyoming. This was the first official national park of US and has lots of history associated with it. The main highlight of yellowstone is its geothermal features, basically the geysers which are present because of it. The park is in the shape of number eight (8), so planning would be very simple for any tourists. We were staying in a cabin just outside the west gate of yellowstone. This is exactly on the left middle of the map, once we enter the forest we could go to lower half or the upper half. We had 2 complete days to cover the park, so we decided to cover the lower half on the first day and the upper half on the second day. Although it looked very simple to have targets of lower half on first day and upper half on the second day it was pretty difficult to allocate time for places considering traffic. First Day: On the first day we star...

It was in the month of April when me and Rahul discussed about going somewhere for july 4th long weekend, initially we were thinking about going outside US but with lots of variants we had to stick to some plan limiting to 3 days. With that base constraint we started considering yellowstone. Initially it was me, Rahul, Shweta and Ruturaj, however Rahul was actively talking to Gaurav and Achal also. Later Achal backed out and Gaurav-Anuja confirmed. So it was 6 of us. We started working on the schedule, logistics and other necessities for the trip. The plan was to fly to SLC, Utah on wednesday night and stay the night there, the next day was to drive to Yellowstone. Allocating almost 3 days is a good enough to cover yellowstone on a high level. Once we had the higher level plan the next thing was to work on the details. We booked an AirBnb in SLC to stay the night we arrived, it was a beautiful townhome but only in the photos. When we actually opened the door and entered the house lo...

Its been long time since I wanted to do a road trip coast to coast. I thought to doing it when I was moving from Chicago to SF, but couldn't. Since then this was always in the to-do list. During Christmas last year me and my brother decided to drive to east coast from SF, a total distance of 2476 miles that's like 3985 kms, almost like driving from Kanyakumari to Srinagar in J&K and coming back to Punjab border. Once decided there were lots of things to plan out, number of days we can spare, pit stops, things to carry, places to visit en-route, daily target etc etc. Before doing any of these things I was always thinking about car to drive and booked a rental car, it was Mustang GT and convertible; the American muscle car. The next thing was the planning. Plan: 4 days, 12/22 - 12/25, 9 states en-route : California -> Arizona -> New Mexico -> Texas -> Oklahoma -> Arkansas -> Mississippi -> Alabama -> Georgia. mainly on i-40 highway Daily targets ...

Finally, today I experienced mud bath in Calistoga, I have been thinking about this since the first time I saw in ‘Suits’ a television series. I kept on researching where is it around me and found few places but the best one amongst them was in Calistoga. It is like 110 miles from my place. There is a spa named Roman Spa in Calistoga where they offer mud bath. It has so many packages which includes mud bath, mineral bath and normal massages. I chose mud bath package which is like 25 min in mud bath, 25 min mineral bath followed by cooling session of 10-15 minutes. The setup is basically for couples. It has 2 mud bath tubs and 2 mineral bath tubs and 2 shower areas in a private room. The mud bath tubs and mineral bath tubs are opposite to each other and all these are in a single private room. Mud is basically volcanic ash along with natural peat and mixed with geothermal mineral water. A big tub would be filled with this mud, appropriately heated and ...

----This is purely my analysis and opinion ---- In human beings, there are broadly 2 types of people, hardworking and successful. These 2 are mutually independent, meaning successful people might be successful or might not be successful. Let me start with defining what I mean by success and hard work. Both terms are relative. Success : It could be earning more money than peers, being in higher designation, having more reportees under him, or making more profit than peers. It is purely relative and a comparable with peers. Hardworking : It is the amount of effort a person put in his field of work. If a person is a jewelry merchant and works very hard in writing novels, it is not considered as hard work. The effort should be in the direction of person’s primary field of work.   Based on the permutation and combination there are basically 4 categories any person can belong to and can be represented in a quadrant diagram So, people can belong to one of the qua...

As soon as I landed and freshened up in Rio, I headed to Copacabana beach. It is one of the must visit beach in Rio and a top tourist attraction there in Rio. Since I went with Ines, we went in local public transportation which was a plus point for me to experience Brazil as a local. We took metro till centro and from there we took a beach to Copacabana. It was around 40 min commute overall. Copacabana beach is a white sand beach and is very beautiful, when I visited it was a Sunday afternoon and hence it was little crowded but not as crowded as any of Cali beaches. We took a beach chair there and spent an hour in the beach, the water is little colder than normal temperature, but it was pleasant. There were so many beach venders there selling t-shirts, bikinis etc. After spending an hour or so in Copacabana we walked the entire stress on the beach side and reached Ipanema beach. Ipanema beach is just adjacent to Copacabana but not as commercial as Copacabana.  It is as much...