Konkan Coast - Western Ghats Trip !

My partner is a very good biker and he likes adventurous trips. So, this time I decided to accompany him on a biking trip in Independence Day Holidays. As a preparation for the trip, I bought a helmet. And forgot buying another important thing: sunscreen. Probably should have listened to sunscreen song by Baz Luhrmann.

On the first day, we started from Mumbai in the morning and reached Harihareshwar by evening, the trip's distance was about 200 Kms, which we covered on bike in one day. And we found lush-green western ghats on the way. 

We didn't manage to get a place to stay in MTDC Harihareshwar, so we stayed in Harihareshwar Beach resort instead. The beach is quite pristine and has rocks on the side, which makes it quite beautiful.

Next day, we travelled another 200 kms from Harihareshwar to Ganpatipule, which turned out to be a very hectic journey. The trick to having a good bike journey is to take frequent brakes, which I learned on this day. MTDC Ganpatipule is very good and you should always opt for AC rooms in MTDC resorts with sea view.

The beach at ganpatipule is very nice, wide and amazing. We had a great time at beaches, taking morning and evening walks at the beaches. We found lot of crabs, crows and dogs at the beaches. These beaches aren't so frequented by the crowd, being quite remote, thus you get to enjoy peaceful, clean and calm beaches.

We took Maharastra Coastal Highway, thus had a great route with green plateaus of western ghats, multiple sea coast views.

After staying for two days at Ganpatipule, we moved on to our next stop Tarkarli. The route from Ganpatipule to Tarkarli is great for bikers. We stopped and stayed at MTDC Tarkarli resort in the evening, after another 200 kms ride.

Getting any other cuisine other than Malvan sea food is a challenge here, so we spent two of our three days looking for Punajbi food in the region. 

Overall it was a good trip, but quite hectic. So, on the final day we took a bus from Malvan, placed bike in it, and reached Mumbai in the morning.

The Wolverine 2 - Sequel Review

Watching the Wolverine !

 

 

 

The movie starts on a good note with Wolverine waking up from a multi-layered dream, and living an isolated life in an Alaska-sqeue land. But suddenly Wolverine is recruited by a red-haired japanese girl to play a part in a japanese story. The japanese girl is also a mutant with an ability to sense the death of other people.

 

Now, the second nice note appears, as it turns out that Wolverine had saved the life of the girl's employer at the time of Nagasaki Bombing, which has been shown nicely. The girl reminded me of samurai girl warriors in Kill Bill.

 

Now, as soon as Wolverine meets the old acquintance who is on his death bed, the old guy who is heading a big technical company indicates that he could help Wolverine escape his life and he can pass on his 'power to heal' to someone else. The old guy wants to give the responsibility of saving his grand daughter to Wolverine.

 

Even after this creepy admission by the old guy, about ending wolverine's life, wolverine is unable to escape because he has to play the lone hero in this story and singlehandedly save the old guy's grand daughter Mariko from multiple endless goons.

 

The "suspension of disbelief" required by this movie is huge as the characters are not fleshed out, the story points are not logically connected. There is not sufficient back-story for multiple scenes and multiple characters.

 

There is a similar scene to the Matrix scene, where Wolverine ends up taking a metallic insect out of his body. The intentions of the Viper lady and what all she keeps on doing on her victims are not clear.

How did the japanese end up getting lot of admantium to prepare an exo-skeleton based armour to fight wolverine is not clear at all. There is no connection to the X-Men series at all, except for the dream appearance of Jean in Wolverine's dreams.

 

I think the only scene saving the grace is the final scene after credits which gives you a hope that "Professor X" will be back in next X-Men movie.

 

So, you can enjoy this movie if you can stay away from applying your mind and don't go with the expectation of a complex multi-layered story.