Calfornia - Episode Three

On the 25th, we got to test both the car and Paakhe' s GPS to their true potential. The car was expensive, but a breeze to drive. Large, so that one had to watch both corners of the front end, especially in narrow lanes, when parallel parking and during turns, but the V8 engine did provide enough power for all grades of slopes. Too bad that we did not get to drive it up Lombard street in San Fransisco, but we did drive the car for over a thousand miles.

After the initial hangup, in typical Microsoft fashion, the Garmin GPS held up to its promise. The first full use that we made was to drive up to the Hollywood sign in LA. The sign can be seen from virtually anywhere in LA. It's up in a hill in a nice location, and a lot of people come to hike, exercise and have a picnic. If I ever end up going there next time, I'll remember to pack a picnic lunch.

We decided to time our drive to Las Vegas so that we'd reach the place in the evening. So we still would have a couple of hours to kill and decided to try and head to the famous LA beaches. This time Golay handled the GPS. Golay remained the chief navigator for the rest of the trip. (He would later come to refer the GPS as "my precious" and would not let anyone touch it, and he lost his weight and changed his appearance remaining attached to it. He let go of the unit only after a fight and plans to get it back as soon as he can. Read more about it here. :D)

I think Ahmed's cousin had recommended Santa Monica Beach so we decided to go there. Of course we drove through the famous Beverly Hills to get there (if you're my age you'd certainly remember Beverly Hills 90210, I wonder if that place exists or is a figment of imagination created somewhere in the Universal Studios). I was reminded of a song that I once heard over the radio and goes something like,

Beverly Hills,

That's where I wanna be,

Livin' on Beverly Hills

The beach is much wider and the water much warm compared to those on the East Coast. I wanted to go into the water, but considering that no-one was in, I dropped the idea. The rest, boardwalk, eateries, little shops was the same as one would find in innumerable beaches all around. We walked along the pier to the end and there was this guy with a guitar singing songs. Average voice and all, but he was in front of the deep blue ocean and he sang a familiar song, "The Desperado". Sentimental bastards that we are, we had to stop and sat in front of the stairs and listen to the whole song. I did drop in a couple of bucks :D My good deed for the day, but we enjoyed the song. You can see Golay on silhouette, on top of the stairs.

We did take some photographs with Preety and her Palm trees. And then we were ready to hit the highways. The GPS showed us a route to get to Las Vegas (LV from now on) and would recalculate as we missed a turn. After a couple of tries we finally felt a little comfortable with her, Ahmed christened her "Basanti" after Hema Malini in Sholay, who would later grow to be Basanti Raadi. She's an eccentric device to say the least and has a personality of her own, as Gols points out.

The drive itself was uneventful. Ahmed took over somewhere in between and the road into LV was pretty jam-packed. As we neared, we'd get excited and should "Las-Vegas!!" only to realize it to be some outlying hotel-casino-resort on the outskirts of the main maal. We'd reserved a hotel on line on LV too, and after the experience at LA we were expecting something of the same sort. And considering that we were paying less than LA, there was no way that we could expect something better.

But the hotel itself turned out to be intimidating. No less intimidating than LV itself. We had booked a hotel in the South Strip and apparently the Strip is the happening place in LV. The Strip is distinctly divided into North, Center and South. The Center Strip has more famous hotels like the Bellagio, and Caesars Palace and the Eiffel Tower. The South Strip also has a number of extraordinary hotels from New York, New York (where NY is replicated with all the famous landmarks) to the Pyramid to the Fairy Tale Castle.

I had printed out the hotel confirmation slips before leaving home, but it was intimidating to enter the hotel on my own, so I asked Golay to tag along, just in case they laughed and did not let me enter (this truly happened to us in India where they would not let us enter a hotel in town even when we said would pay to enter, they apparently did not like our skin or something. Somehow we South-Asians are racist to our own kind, so we should be careful when crying racism on part of others). But the hotel was right and the room was on the sixteenth floor. I believe this was the first time that I got into the sixteenth floor of any building. (going red on the face: well what'd you expect from someone from a third world country!! Just kidding, just kidding for you apologists!)

So we freshened up, Preety would take ages to dress up, so we left her in the room and hit the bar. We'd gotten some comments while checking is, drinks were cheaper than the airlines. But I now kind-of understood why the rooms were so cheap. The hotels make money off gambling (that's obvious) but also from food, drink and other services.

Preety joined us in a while. Sudhir-Bro called a few minutes later and joined us in the hotel. We took off sightseeing shortly after that. Gols and Ahmed decided to explore the city on their own leaving us couples to go our own way. Hehehe I wonder why? Don't get your hopes too high, nothing like that happened. I will leave that story for Gols to write if he wishes.

The city itself is a sight to see. The hotels are spectacular. One thing that is ubiquitous is the prostitution industry. It is everywhere. Nevada is the only state in the union with legalized prostitution. More about that here. You'd see these men standing in the street giving out cards with semi-nude photographs (of porn stars I presume) with phone numbers and listed as "escort services". The article that I have posted the link to says that these guys mostly are "day-labourers", and handing out cards is their part-time work. Moreover, scores of these cards are left on pavements for anyone interested to pick up. It's a surreal world. And maybe the most "in-your-face" form of advertisement of prostitution that we saw was those painted on the sides of trucks.

Walking through the Center strip, we got tired and decided to head back to the hotel after a couple of drinks (I think on a place called Flamingo). Preety had high heels on, so walking was difficult for her. We decided to take a taxi and head back. I was little tipsy by then and the taxi driver was a talkative guy. That made an explosive mix, a lot of fireworks. People on the back were probably bored out of their minds.

Anyhoo, the driver of course wanted to know where we were from, and of course I have a ready-made answer for that - "New Hampshire, up in Northeast, you know, where it snows a lot".

But this guy was persistent, he asked, "Yeah, yeah, but where are you originally from"

"Guess", I said.

"India?", of course we seem the type

"No"

"Pakistan"

"No"

And Sudhirji quips in from the back - "Actually we're from a place called Nepal, ever heard of it"

Now, the polite answer in this situation is "Yes of course, I know. But where exactly is Nepal? I'm sure I've read about it somewhere but I forgot at the moment"

But to our eternal surprise, the guy goes - "Kathmandu?"

We are all speechless, never expected anyone in Nevada to know that we existed as a nation, least of all a cab-driver. And he goes on - "yeah! my son is an Israeli citizen, he went mountain climbing there. He loved the place" and so on.

Of course, we used to have a lot of Israeli tourists some time ago. We might still have some. I suppose they're probably the only ones with enough balls and military training to venture into Mao controlled areas these days.

We talk for a while and arrive at the hotel.

We get off and since we had talked for a while, I had to tip him heavily. Ouch! my pocket said, but what the heck! we're on a vacation. He shook my hands, but before I had a chance to get out of the cab, he started off again - "Hey, wait a minute. I wanted to ask a question, have you ever heard of this song - Ichaka dana, bichaka dana nananan?"

Now that's a big surprise, because it's a Hindi song from a very old movie to begin with. And very few people, if at all, of my age would ever have heard that song. I say "Yes!! I know that song"

And the cab driver smiles, and says - "Back in my days in my home town, Raj Kapoor and Nargis were huge. And I remember watching that movie. I don't remember all the details though"

I should have asked him where he was from and so on, but considering it was his business time, and there were a line of cars behind us, I did not persist. But what a guy, you never know who you're gonna meet walking down the street.

We called it a night and went to sleep. The next day would be along one. I had hoped that I'd be able to tag Hoover Dam on this posting too, but that would make this article too long. So until episode four, so long!