धबाबा तोय आदळे -- शिवथरघळीचे वर्णन समर्थांच्या वाणीत

गिरीचे मस्तकी गंगा तेथुनी चालली बळे 
धबाबा लोटती धारा धबाबा तोय आदळे ||१|| 

गर्जता मेघ तो सिंधू ध्वनी कल्होळ उठिला
कड्याशी आदळे धारा वात आवर्त होत असे ||२|| 

तुषार उठती रेणू दुसरे रज मातले वात 
मिश्रित ते रेणू सीत मिश्रित धुकटे ||३|| 

दराच तुटला मोठा झाड खंडे परोपरी  
निबिड दाटती छाया त्यामधी वोघ वाहती ||४|| 

गर्जती श्वापदे पक्षी नाना स्वरे भयकरे  
गडत होतसे रात्री ध्वनी कल्होळ उठती ||५|| 

कर्दमु निवडे नातो मानसी साकडे पडे  
विशाळ लोटती धारा ती खाले रम्य विवरे ||६||  

विश्रांती वाटते तेथे जावया पुण्य पाहिजे 
कथा निरुपणे चर्चा सार्थके काळ जातसे ||७||

Shivakalyan Raja

निश्चयाचा महामेरु, बहुत जनांसी आधारु
अखंडस्थितीचा निर्धारु, श्रीमंत योगी

नरपती, हयपती, गजपती, गडपती, भूपती, जळपती
पुरंदर आणि शक्ती, पृष्ठभागी

यशवंत, किर्तीवंत, सामर्थ्यवंत, वरदवंत
पुण्यवंत, नीतीवंत, जाणता राजा

आचार शील, विचारशील, दानशील, धर्मशील
सर्वज्ञपणे सुशील, सकळांठायी

धीर उदार गंभीर, शूर क्रियेसी तत्पर
सावधपणे नृपवर, तुच्छ केले

देव धर्म गोब्राम्हण, करावया संरक्षण
हृदयस्थ झाला नारायण, प्रेरणा केली

या भूमंडळाचे ठायी, धर्मरक्षी ऐसा नाही
महाराष्ट्र धर्म राहिला काही, तुम्हा कारणे

कित्येक दुष्ट संहारिला, कित्येकांसी धाक सुटला
कित्येकांस आश्रय जाहला, शिवकल्याण राजा

Sakal Uth Tube Article, March 14, 2011

January 5-7, 2011... Swimming with Dolphins at Akaroa and coming back to US

January 5, 2011 was totally packed for me. While Hyomin and Joseph preferred to stay back on this rainy day, I booked a tour to go to Akaroa, a harbor about 75 km away from Christchurch. On my way there, I saw some of the most beautiful, scenic landscapes and loads of sheep.

On my way, I met an enthusiastic German couple. They had been backpacking around the South Island of New Zealand for a week and were looking forward to the highlight of their trip: Swimming with Dolphins. So, as I learnt that, they provide you with a comfortable wet suit etc., I decided to change my Harbor Wildlife Cruise to a Swim with Dolphins experience. In the end, I think the money was worth it. We got to swim with the world's smallest, rarest and friendliest dolphins: Hector dolphins. You are supposed to entertain them, and not touch them or challenge them in their territories. So, while we were swimming in the cold water, we were supposed to make some nice sounds with our snorkeling mask, hands etc. They were swift and shy with us. In our half an hour in water, we had about 5-6 dolphins swimming about 8-10 ft away from us.. But, I heard some nice stories from the German couple. The lady was on the boat and was trying to sing to the dolphins. They did listen to her songs and came close to those swimmers once or twice.

This was a brilliant day, but extremely tiring.. On our way back I bought some cherries. These were the best, sweetest cherries I had so far.. I got together with Hyomin and Joseph for dinner. We had the best kiwi fruits (of course!) Joseph bought us.

The next day early morning, we were at the airport to catch our flight to Auckland and then from there to US. The flights till US were uneventful, except I could not sleep much in the long flight. I did not have a chance to look at the night sky while I was in southern hemisphere. In Antarctica it was 24 hour sunlight. So I could only see the sun and sometimes the moon. In Christchurch, we just had one clear night and that was the night we arrived when I was extremely tired because of the travel and had to sleep early.. :( So, my only chance was on this flight from Auckland to LA. As I didn't have a window seat, I tried to gaze through the 20 sq cm window of the emergency doors. I saw Pegasus, Scorpio, the Southern cross and loads of stars which I could not identify..

On January 6 morning, braving the immigration line, customs and the full body scan-security, I reached the gate and waited there for my flight only to know that my flight was cancelled because of some mechanical problems. Joseph had an earlier flight to Atlanta and it was full. So, here I was stuck at LA airport, desperately wanting to get back to Blacksburg. Mandar finally decided that I needed some rest before I break down of the travel stress and a red eye flight with 10 hours halt was definitely not what I want. January 6 was probably the longest day of my life.. (46 hours as I crossed the date line too.. :o ) So, he negotiated a stay in LA and a next day early morning flight for me. After this eventful journey, I finally reached home on January 7, 2011 just to see a gloomy night with a white blanket all over! In any case, I was glad to be back.. Back home. :)

January 3-4, 2011... South Pole to Christchurch

The day we were planned to leave South Pole, January 3rd, 2011 was the worst day I had seen so far in terms of weather. It was overcast and really you could not make out the difference between the land (snow) and the sky.. Horizon was totally missing.. I was kind of skeptical if we would even get out. Anyway, after the ARO visit, a hasty lunch and loads of quick bye-byes, I came to my room to wrap up the bedding and keep it outside for cleaning. Every person needs to clean the room and make it ready for the next one. I had done my job nicely the previous night in spite of all the packed schedule.

Right after lunch, we got a call to be ready at the runway for the flight. We took our bags and set out. The flight was on time. LC130 was waiting for us.

I was so drained out that I instantly fell asleep right after we took off, even though it was crazy noisy inside.

We reached McMurdo. The thought of eating peacefully going to our rooms and dozing off happily kept us going through all that waiting at the Pegasus "terminal" and that slow and long "Terra" bus ride from the Pegasus runway to the McMurdo station.

It was 6.00 pm by the time we reached McMurdo. We had to rush for dinner. Just when were were leisurely walking back to the store to do some final shopping, one of us found out that we had to take our bags "bag drag" right then (it was 7.00 pm already and we just had another hour) for a flight that early morning. We were moved a day earlier to fly out to Christchurch. Sure enough our emails said so. Then there was no time to relax, we had to pack our left over things at McMurdo, get everything ready at the check in bag drop place, all we were left with were our carry on luggage. A bigger bummer was that we had to be at that place again at 2.00 am, provided the flight leaves on time from Christchurch. Which means, we had to keep checking the status online till 11.30 pm and then, if things look right, come back prepared, all layered up at 2.00 am. We did fly off at 5.30 am. I don't want to recall our bus travel from McMurdo to the runway and then the wait time.. It was pretty bad considering, we were all so terribly drained out. The flight was smooth and I again slept like a baby.. C17 soon (5 hrs) brought us to Christchurch and we were back on the Earth!

The rest of the day we just relaxed in our hotel rooms, ate Thai food for lunch and a pizza (classic pepperoni flavored for Joseph and Tandoori Chicken flavored for me) for dinner. :)

January 3, 2011... Heading back after two mesmerizing weeks.

I was trying to get the most of the last few hours at the South Pole, especially since we did not have much free time to see the other science done at this end of the world. There is a lot of astronomy done around here; there is a 10 meter radio telescope, the South Pole Telescope to study the cosmic microwave background, the world's largest neutrino observatory, Icecube etc. The extreme engineering used in many of these instruments are simply mind boggling. In fact,

the new South Pole station is itself an engineering marvel. More details can be seen at

http://www.nsf.gov/news/special_reports/livingsouthpole/intro.jsp.

I got an opportunity to visit the Icecube which is a net of 86 -- 2.5 km deep cores drilled in the ice and having 60/well photomultiplier tubes a 1 km below the surface in an area of 1 cubic km (hence the name) to detect neutrinos.. phew.. that's a mouthful, isn't it? They had a very graphical display of the neutrinos being detected almost in real time (half an hour delay because of filtering etc. processes) at the main control building. I also could peep into one of the open wells. The drilling in the ice is done by gushing highly pressurized boiling hot water into a small cylindrical area. It was just thrilling to digest the fact that I was standing on the world's largest detector in ice.

The Icecube visit was right after midnight (remember it is a 24 hour day down there?!).. Early morning, I got up and got ready to visit the Atmospheric Research Observatory (ARO). Surprisingly, it was overcast and there was no difference to be seen between the sky and the snow. The horizon was just not visible. I hiked to the ARO building (just 5-10 minutes from the station). Looked at the different instruments and their research on the Antarctic air. It was nice to finally learn why does the ozone hole exist over this continent especially since there are no human colonies to produce the Chloroflurocarbon (CFC) from the refrigerants. As we know, CFC acts as a catalyst to disintegrate ozone. Well, it is a year round process that creates this ozone hole over Antarctica. CFC from around the world is channeled to the South polar cap with the complicated air flows over the winter. Over the summer, there is enough heat due to the sun to initiate the disintegration of ozone gas with the trapped CFC playing the major role. I learnt that there has to be someone year round to take daily measurements from different instruments, calibrate them, take field measurements of carbon dioxide from the clean air sector. This brings me to the final exciting thing. There is a conical area emerging from the South Pole which is called as the "Clean Air Sector", where for hundreds of miles, no pollution is allowed: no vehicle, plane allowed, no combustion thus no power plants are allowed, not even a soul person is allowed to venture out in that area. Furthermore, it is towards the north side which is plateau side and is towards a higher altitude that South Pole, thus, the air/wind always blows from that region down to the station. In short, the air is not contaminated by anything in that designated area that makes it the area with cleanest air on the Earth. So, I got to fill up my own bottle of the cleanest air sample and seal it to receive probably one of the best souvenirs from the South Pole.

January 2, 2011... South Pole: The day before leaving the Pole

After the new year celebration, the station was lazying out on Sunday. We had a late brunch, grabbed our "Race around the world" T-shirts (although we really didn't participate in the race, we did go around the world at the Pole. So, it was fair enough for everyone at the Station anyway). It was time to finish up our remaining work. That was probably the chilliest day so far (Check out the galley temperature scroll) and we also were all drained out with continuous physical exertion.

Well, we did finish our job for the day, came back to the station to pack things up, see as many things around the station as possible (as that was the only chance we would probably get in this trip), and bid a farewell to everybody around..

I have an interesting little fun to share with you all. I met loads of interesting people at the station. May it be because of my outgoing nature or may it be because I was one of the very few Indians, probably the only girl, the ladies at the station have seen, they had been requesting me to show and possibly draw some henna tatoos. During my endeavors in the Arts and Crafts room for the New Year poster and while fixing my damaged gloves, to my pleasant surprise, I came across a henna tatoo set in the stuff there. Those ladies were lucky.. :) We managed to get together that night, and had a henna party with some nice Bollywood music. :D