India's most spectacular Highways
An oldie, but a goldie nonetheless. When the Expressway was first thrown open to the public, we were all stunned here was India's first truly world-class express highway. No small engineering feat, the road made the trip from Mumbai to Pune an absolute breeze (although these days, it's not uncommon to encounter huge jams due to landslides or broken-down trucks).
It has it all long straights on which you can let your car loose (two-wheelers are only allowed on a limited stretch), sweeping bends and tight ghat sections where you can have some serious fun. For best results, head out really early, to beat the traffic, and try and get hold of a convertible sportscar! There are enough rest, food and fuel stops along the way (the potato vada at Kamat's restaurant in Khandala is highly recommended), and you'll arrive at your destination with a smile on your face.
A slightly off-beat road, to be sure, but a great one nonetheless. Hassan is a fairly large 'small' town about 130 km from Bangalore, and the drive there is itself rather good fun. From Hassan, there's an inside road that leads to the twin temple sites of Belur and Halebid, and it's a truly wonderful drive.
There's hardly any traffic on it, and the surface is smooth, with lots of twists and turns to keep things interesting. You're likely to get lost, because there aren't many signboards along the way, but when the road is that good, who cares? At the end of the drive, you'll have the architectural marvels in Belur and Halebid to keep you company. For more driving pleasure, continue from Halebid to the temple town of Dharmasthala, which also has a fantastic vintage car museum.
We'll be honest -- the small town of Bhiwandi, on the outskirts of Thane, near Mumbai, is the sort of place to which you would 'send your mother-in-law on holiday', to paraphrase the immortal words of Sir Ian Botham. It's dusty, grimy, full of godowns and, well, not much else but the highway from there all the way to Nashik, India's wine-capital, is fantastic. The surface has recently been re-done, adding to its allure, and with a fast, nimble car or bike, there is a great deal of fun to be had.
You have long straights combined with sweeping corners, and a really nice one-way ghat section lets you attack the tight corners with gusto. Once in Nashik, wind down with a chilled glass of Chardonnay.
The joke is that most Gujaratis won't use this express highway because they have to pay a toll. Even if that's true, it's a good thing because you have more of the road to yourself -- and it's a great road. Approximately 90 km in length, it's not exactly a world-tour, but with its smooth surface and arrow-straight nature, you can go very fast on it
It's not unheard of for the distance to be covered in considerably less than an hour, to give you an idea. Enjoy it, but with caution!
If you like hair-pin bends, prepare to be transported to heaven -- the Kalhatty ghat has 36 of them, squeezed into a mere 20 km. Setting out from the small town of Masinagudi, inside the Mudumalai wildlife sanctuary in Tamil Nadu, the road is narrow, but smooth, allowing for spirited driving, with the forest on either side.
The ghat section begins normally enough, but rapidly becomes extremely steep, and you need to be a skilled driver to not burn your clutch on the hair-pins. Buses going over the side are quite common drive with care. Once you reach Ooty, stretch out and relax in the still-pleasant hill station.
This one's slightly unusual, in that you can't actually drive on the road by yourself. The only people allowed to drive are those that own and drive the vintage Land Rovers, which ferry people to and from the village of Sandakphu, 12,000 feet up in the clouds. Maneybhanjang is near Darjeeling, and the trip from there to Sandakphu is one you won't forget in a hurry, it takes close to eight hours to drive a mere 35 km, over a terrifyingly steep, broken road that criss-crosses India and Nepal.
The views are breathtaking, though, none more so than from Sandakphu, from where you can see four of the five highest mountain peaks in the world. The route is also a paradise for trekkers.
If you're in Kaziranga, one of the loveliest national parks in the world, you can consider yourself lucky to begin with. Get hold of a sturdy car, preferably a four-wheel driven SUV, and point its nose in the direction of Tawang in Arunachal Pradesh -- this will round off the experience in no small measure. It's a two-day drive, and you'll have to break journey in a place en route, you'll cross the lovely Orchidarium near Bhalukpong.Dirang to Tawang is where it starts to get really interesting -- on the way to the snow-bound Sela Pass at 14,000 feet, you'll drive up a perilously narrow road with huge drops on either side, with black ice on it. Once through the pass, you drop back down to Tawang, at 10,000 feet, and its beautiful, 400-year old Galden Namgyal Lhatse monastery. From Tawang, there's another fabulous drive to Zemithang, on the border with Tibet the current Dalai Lama came through here when he fled to India.
All right, so this road hasn't even been formally thrown open for public use as yet and, given the political machinations in Uttar Pradesh, it could be a while before that happens. Those lucky enough to have got sneak previews say that it's manna from heaven for drivers smooth, wide and pedal-to-the-metal throughout.
Apart from its practical considerations (vastly reducing the driving time from Delhi to Agra), the road is bound to see plenty of exotic machinery being blasted up and down. You can too get a sneak preview, if you know right people.
A true test of grit and character this route is the stuff of legend, and if you haven't done it at least once, you cannot claim to be a true road-tripper. Plans are apparently afoot to construct a proper highway, which will ruin the experience, so get there quick.
Taking along a bike is the best way to fully experience the mind-boggling landscapes (and near-moonscapes) that you'll come across, and you'll have to be prepared for all manner of hardships -- breakdowns in the middle of nowhere, freezing temperatures, rain, landslides and mountain sickness, to name but a few. Once you enter the town of Leh, though, the sense of achievement you'll feel will be worth it. The other route, from Srinagar to Leh via Kargil, is just as spectacular!
This is another classic road. A lot of people driving to Goa now take the Mumbai-Pune-Kolhapur-Sawantwadi route, which is longer, better surfaced but a bit boring; NH17 still has more character. It's best done during the monsoon, when the surroundings are an impossible shade of green. The road is a dual carriageway, so overtaking must be done with care, but the right car or bike in the right hands will provide plenty of thrills.
Any number of roadside eateries will keep you refreshed, and for a bit of added adventure, you can veer off NH17 into one of the smaller roads, which tend to be great to drive on as well. Or you can drive straight down to where the road ends -- Kanyakumari
Biggest Tech Failures in History
Microsoft Windows Me
The "mistake" edition
Backtracking on plans to make Windows 98 the last OS before switching to NT builds, Microsoft shipped two more 9x-based platforms: Windows 98 SE (April '99) and Windows Me (September '00). The former was a revamped version of Win98, while the latter was an awkward interim release that arrived shortly after the venerable Windows 2000. Me was unstable and had fewer features than 98 and 2k, making it a tough sell and a horrible OS experience out of the box.Sega Dreamcast
The game console that could, but wasn't
With radical new features including a modem and a VMU memory card, the Dreamcast was successful when it launched in 1998 and 1999. Sadly, that momentum promptly stalled with intense competition from the PlayStation 2 and Xbox, which, among other advantages, used DVDs for games instead of a proprietary format. Some two years later, a tattered Sega ceased production of its innovative console.
Microsoft's Tablet PC
The right idea, the wrong approach
Bill Gates, at the time CEO of Microsoft, presented the Tablet PC in 2001 as the next major evolution of the personal computer. Microsoft's approach was to offer a Windows XP-based slate or convertible laptop that added pen input, handwriting and voice recognition functionality. Needless to say, this didn't work very well and as a result didn't sell either. The Tablet PC was too bulky, the input was unintuitive, and the software lacked refinement, even to this day.
Nokia N-Gage
Ahead of its time or blatantly poor execution?
In 2003, Nokia fused a lackluster gaming platform with a cumbersome cellphone and set its crosshairs on the Game Boy Advance. The N-Gage's vertical screen was cramped, swapping games meant removing the battery and its cellphone was oriented sideways. Perhaps even more discouraging, it had fewer games than Nintendo's handheld while costing over double at $300. In its first weeks, the device was outsold 100 to 1 by the GBA.
HD-DVD
Casualty of the high-def format war
Streaming is the present and future of video, but for a while if you wanted to watch proper high-resolution media, you had to place your bets on either next-generation format: Blu-ray or HD-DVD. Eventually, the former came on top and HD-DVD quickly faded into oblivion (launched in 2006, died in 2008), leaving behind about a million obsolete players, including the popular Xbox 360 add-on unit.
UMPCs
Small form factor of fail
Ultra-mobile PCs saw a few different iterations, from Sony's sexy but impractical VAIO U to the equally impressive but yet awkward OQO UMPCs. Trumpeted as the next-generation pocketable Windows devices, UMPCs never received mainstream adoption -- not least because of their use of Vista. A few years later, the iPhone would prove smartphones were the true future of mobile.
Palm Foleo
Palm almost beat Asus to the netbook
The Foleo was a mini-notebook in development at Palm for a few months before being cancelled. It had a lot in common with the first commercially successful netbook (Asus Eee): small footprint, low price, as well as decent battery life and connectivity. On the other hand, the Foleo's pending doom was written on the wall. For example, it would have depended on a Treo smartphone to fully function (a la Blackberry Playbook, meaning total failure). Despite those shortcomings, we believe Palm missed out big should they have polished their short-lived project further. Netbooks were widely successful Asus sold hundreds of thousands of units in no time.
Windows Vista
Six flavors of fail
After repeated setbacks, Windows Vista finally launched with a confusing array of six editions during the slow PC sales month of January. Ironically, part of the final delay was used to "crank up" Vista's security and uptight security became one of critics' main complaints. There were also numerous software incompatibilities, various performance issues (gaming/file transfers/battery life), and it failed to deliver promised features such as WinFS.
DRM on PC Games
No one benefits from restrictive DRM
DRM has been cooking for years but 2008 brought with it many controversial examples -- most notably Spore, which used a modified version of SecuROM for online authentication and limited users to three installs. After being slammed with thousands of one-star Amazon reviews and two class-action suits, EA released a SecuROM-free copy on Steam in December '08, but not before Spore became the most pirated game of the year.
MySpace
Just because Facebook is now worth $1000b
Until 2008, Facebook was the second largest player in social networking, trailing behind MySpace by a considerable margin. A year after being acquired by News Corp. in 2005, the service was in such privileged position that it beat Google as the most visited website in the US. Thanks to a combination of poor decision-making, horrible design and user experience, and a lack of focus on core social components, MySpace failed to capitalize on its position, leaving Facebook to attract a wider user demographic in the long haul.
Sony PSP Go
No 99 cents games for you
In 2009, Sony set out to explore the uncharted waters of digital distribution. Unfortunately, existing PSP owners didn't want to "upgrade" and ditch their UMD collections, newcomers were discouraged by the PSN's weak catalog and neither wanted to part with $250 for a handheld. Factor in the rapid adoption of smartphones with their infinite sea of 99-cent games and the PSP Go's voyage was arguably doomed from the outset. Only time will tell if the PS Vita shares the same fate.
Google Wave and Google Buzz
The web's giant lack of social skills
Google is arguably the most powerful force on the web, but with Facebook as well as other social and mobile newcomers threatening its dominance, the company has repeatedly tried to become a top social destination. Before Google+ there was Buzz which failed to gain momentum despite having close ties to Gmail. Google Wave also caused a stir initially, but it failed in its attempt to create a clever communication tool that had the potential of replacing IM and email.
Android Tablets, HP TouchPad, Blackberry Playbook
Until they are able to make a dent on iPad's market share
Google has arguably done a great job with Android and those efforts have paid off on the smartphone front. On the tablet side however, not so much. Even with great partners and multiple hardware iterations, somehow it feels like Android keeps lagging behind Apple's iPad. The recent delays in getting Android 4.0 ICS to all outgoing tablets makes matters even more visible. But at least they are trying to make a dent on iPad's sales. Meanwhile, HP's TouchPad and the Blackberry Playbook were a complete disaster, from lacking basic functionality, to their complete mismanagement and premature cancellation.
The "mistake" edition
Backtracking on plans to make Windows 98 the last OS before switching to NT builds, Microsoft shipped two more 9x-based platforms: Windows 98 SE (April '99) and Windows Me (September '00). The former was a revamped version of Win98, while the latter was an awkward interim release that arrived shortly after the venerable Windows 2000. Me was unstable and had fewer features than 98 and 2k, making it a tough sell and a horrible OS experience out of the box.Sega DreamcastThe game console that could, but wasn't
With radical new features including a modem and a VMU memory card, the Dreamcast was successful when it launched in 1998 and 1999. Sadly, that momentum promptly stalled with intense competition from the PlayStation 2 and Xbox, which, among other advantages, used DVDs for games instead of a proprietary format. Some two years later, a tattered Sega ceased production of its innovative console.
Microsoft's Tablet PC
The right idea, the wrong approach
Bill Gates, at the time CEO of Microsoft, presented the Tablet PC in 2001 as the next major evolution of the personal computer. Microsoft's approach was to offer a Windows XP-based slate or convertible laptop that added pen input, handwriting and voice recognition functionality. Needless to say, this didn't work very well and as a result didn't sell either. The Tablet PC was too bulky, the input was unintuitive, and the software lacked refinement, even to this day.
Nokia N-Gage
Ahead of its time or blatantly poor execution?
In 2003, Nokia fused a lackluster gaming platform with a cumbersome cellphone and set its crosshairs on the Game Boy Advance. The N-Gage's vertical screen was cramped, swapping games meant removing the battery and its cellphone was oriented sideways. Perhaps even more discouraging, it had fewer games than Nintendo's handheld while costing over double at $300. In its first weeks, the device was outsold 100 to 1 by the GBA.
HD-DVD
Casualty of the high-def format war
Streaming is the present and future of video, but for a while if you wanted to watch proper high-resolution media, you had to place your bets on either next-generation format: Blu-ray or HD-DVD. Eventually, the former came on top and HD-DVD quickly faded into oblivion (launched in 2006, died in 2008), leaving behind about a million obsolete players, including the popular Xbox 360 add-on unit.
UMPCs
Small form factor of fail
Ultra-mobile PCs saw a few different iterations, from Sony's sexy but impractical VAIO U to the equally impressive but yet awkward OQO UMPCs. Trumpeted as the next-generation pocketable Windows devices, UMPCs never received mainstream adoption -- not least because of their use of Vista. A few years later, the iPhone would prove smartphones were the true future of mobile.
Palm Foleo
Palm almost beat Asus to the netbook
The Foleo was a mini-notebook in development at Palm for a few months before being cancelled. It had a lot in common with the first commercially successful netbook (Asus Eee): small footprint, low price, as well as decent battery life and connectivity. On the other hand, the Foleo's pending doom was written on the wall. For example, it would have depended on a Treo smartphone to fully function (a la Blackberry Playbook, meaning total failure). Despite those shortcomings, we believe Palm missed out big should they have polished their short-lived project further. Netbooks were widely successful Asus sold hundreds of thousands of units in no time.
Windows Vista
Six flavors of fail
After repeated setbacks, Windows Vista finally launched with a confusing array of six editions during the slow PC sales month of January. Ironically, part of the final delay was used to "crank up" Vista's security and uptight security became one of critics' main complaints. There were also numerous software incompatibilities, various performance issues (gaming/file transfers/battery life), and it failed to deliver promised features such as WinFS.
DRM on PC Games
No one benefits from restrictive DRM
DRM has been cooking for years but 2008 brought with it many controversial examples -- most notably Spore, which used a modified version of SecuROM for online authentication and limited users to three installs. After being slammed with thousands of one-star Amazon reviews and two class-action suits, EA released a SecuROM-free copy on Steam in December '08, but not before Spore became the most pirated game of the year.
MySpace
Just because Facebook is now worth $1000b
Until 2008, Facebook was the second largest player in social networking, trailing behind MySpace by a considerable margin. A year after being acquired by News Corp. in 2005, the service was in such privileged position that it beat Google as the most visited website in the US. Thanks to a combination of poor decision-making, horrible design and user experience, and a lack of focus on core social components, MySpace failed to capitalize on its position, leaving Facebook to attract a wider user demographic in the long haul.
Sony PSP Go
No 99 cents games for you
In 2009, Sony set out to explore the uncharted waters of digital distribution. Unfortunately, existing PSP owners didn't want to "upgrade" and ditch their UMD collections, newcomers were discouraged by the PSN's weak catalog and neither wanted to part with $250 for a handheld. Factor in the rapid adoption of smartphones with their infinite sea of 99-cent games and the PSP Go's voyage was arguably doomed from the outset. Only time will tell if the PS Vita shares the same fate.
Google Wave and Google Buzz
The web's giant lack of social skills
Google is arguably the most powerful force on the web, but with Facebook as well as other social and mobile newcomers threatening its dominance, the company has repeatedly tried to become a top social destination. Before Google+ there was Buzz which failed to gain momentum despite having close ties to Gmail. Google Wave also caused a stir initially, but it failed in its attempt to create a clever communication tool that had the potential of replacing IM and email.
Android Tablets, HP TouchPad, Blackberry Playbook
Until they are able to make a dent on iPad's market share
Google has arguably done a great job with Android and those efforts have paid off on the smartphone front. On the tablet side however, not so much. Even with great partners and multiple hardware iterations, somehow it feels like Android keeps lagging behind Apple's iPad. The recent delays in getting Android 4.0 ICS to all outgoing tablets makes matters even more visible. But at least they are trying to make a dent on iPad's sales. Meanwhile, HP's TouchPad and the Blackberry Playbook were a complete disaster, from lacking basic functionality, to their complete mismanagement and premature cancellation.
Top 10 Most Beautiful Train Stations
These are some of the most incredible train stations in the world. Some of them look like museums while others are modern and beautiful. If you missed your train these incredible train stations would probably make your wait more bearable.
10. Dunedin Train Station
Dunedin, New Zealand
9. Central Railway Station
Helsinki, Finland
8. São Bento Station
Porto, Portugal
7. Gare du Nord
Paris, France
6. Grand Central Station
New York City, New York
5. Union Station
Los Angeles, California
4. King’s Cross Station
London, England
3. Sirkeci Station
Istanbul, Turkey
2. Rossio Station
Lisbon, Portugal
1. Atocha Train Station
Madrid, Spain
Dunedin, New Zealand
9. Central Railway Station
Helsinki, Finland
8. São Bento Station
Porto, Portugal
7. Gare du Nord
Paris, France
6. Grand Central Station
New York City, New York
5. Union Station
Los Angeles, California
4. King’s Cross Station
London, England
3. Sirkeci Station
Istanbul, Turkey
2. Rossio Station
Lisbon, Portugal
1. Atocha Train Station
Madrid, Spain
