I am back !!!

If anyone has visited this blog, I would be seriously surprised.

I really, really want to be back and I plan to spend some time writing stuff soon.

One of the reasons I am back is I wanted to put something on my Orkut profile as my homepage.

Let's start off with my visit to the Luray Caverns in Virginia. These caverns are located underground in the Shananodoah River valley. Fans of the song "Country Roads" by John Denver will know about this river.

Well, it is an unbelievably beuatiful place, and I could really understand why he yearns to go back home.

Then we went to the caverns and that was a surreal experience. I had heard about stalactites and stalagmites, those wonderful rock formations formed over millions of years by water dripping from the ceilings of these caverns.

I never imagined that they would look so nice. The lighting of the caverns accented their natural colours and they looked wonderful.



These particular caverns are so big that the lowest point in the caverns in well over 100 feet underground (Think of it as 10 floors below the ground and you will get the picture) and the whole tour through the caverns covered a path of over a mile.

At one point there was a small lake, but the water was so still that the ceiling was reflected perfectly and it was difficult to make out that there was really no rock formation on and below the ground.

One of the things that was probably unique to these caverns is that there is a musical instrument that they have constructed using the rock formations. Some of these rock formations are hollow and when struck with a small hammer oscillate at a particular frequency generating a musical note.

They have everything automated and they even played a small piece of music for us.

Fantastic trip.