Vellore is starting air services soon....(actually there are going to be two airports in Vellore)

Vellore is a city with glorious history and strong future. It is the place where the sepoy mutiny (struggle for the freedom of India) took place almost 200 years ago and the future lies in the institutions that it has built over a period of time providing employment and education in thousands.

Vellore ranks 8th among top polluted zones

I knew that Vellore is a polluted region but this is an absolute shocker. Read this articke to know more about why is it a polluted region.

Click here to read the article

Women & Child trafficking from Vellore

Many of us have heard of child and women trafficking but when have we heard of it taking place in Vellore? A Teluge daily “Eenadu” published a news article on March 4th (in their Tamilnadu edition) quoting police records. Six bus stands are quoted namely Koyambedu, Vellore, Trichy, Salem, Coimbator and Madurai from where more than 1000 women and children are abducted each year.

Why I think that Vellore will become the next auto hub of India??

If you’re as old as I am (44 to be precise), you know how much Indian automobile sector has changed. As kids, we were used seeing white ambassadors and next came Maruti 800. Gone are those days, there appears to be a new automobile coming out almost on a daily basis.

New direct train for Bengali patients coming to CMC from West Bengal

In the last Railway budget, Railway Minister Ms. Mamata Banerjee had announced a new train service called “Aurobindo Express” between Howrah Junction and Pondichery (Puduchery) via Katpadi junction and Vellore Cantonment. This will come as a huge relief to many patients that are coming to Christian Medical College (CMC), Vellore for treatment.

Vellore cantonment railway station

Most people only know Katpadi railway station as the destination to come to Vellore. Many don’t know that there’s a railway station in Vellore too. For a long time Vellore railway station was served by meter gauge trains but recently gauge conversion and electrification took place and now any broad gauge train can go there. Citizens of in Vellore need not come to Katpadi junction to catch a train.

Now there’s direct train (Electric Multiple Unit of EMU) between Vellore Cantonment to Chennai Beach and Tirupathy . Those that are coming from Chennai/ Arakkonam/ Tirupathy direction to visit the Golden Temple, need not disembark at Katpai junction but continue to travel up to Vellore cantonment whereby they can avoid major traffic congestion of the city and from cantonment one can take an auto rickshaw to go the temple. From cantonment station, Golden temple is about 7 KM and.

Glaring feature of the Vellore cantonment railway station is its parking space. Between cantonment station and Katpadi junction, there’s one station called “Vellore Town” just behind the vellore fort.

First image below is the entrance to the Vellore cantonment railway station. Second one is the station itself (note the details to resemble the station like Vellore Fort). Last image is the Vellore town railway station that is just behind the Vellore fort and located in between Katpadi junction and Vellore Cantonment station. Cllick on the images to see the details.

Havoc continues….

Yesterday was the third day in a row we had storms in the evening. Again I parked my car outside and suddenly it became cloudy so I ran and brought the car inside before it started to rain. When it did start to rain it also brought wind along with it and I had never seen wind like that.

When everything was said and done, I came out to see what had happened and it was a mess. Yard full of broken true limbs and leaves. Street in front of our house had full of tree limbs and sand strewn all over the street. This morning, as I was jogging I noticed a huge tree near our post office had fallen and blocked the traffic completely. This tree also brought the compound wall of the post office down.

Here is a picture of a tree that fell near the post office.

Once in a lifetime experience in Vellore

Yesterday (12th of May) we had the temperature soared to 111 degree F and it was just another hot and muggy day. But around 5:00 PM, sky turned cloudy and dark but it was not anything unusual. Expected rain but we didn’t expect what we saw.

I just drove in and parked my car outside the house thinking I might need to use the car again. Suddenly it started to rain and still it was not anything out of the norm to have car parked outside while raining. Suddenly I heard the sharp sounds on my window and around at the same time my wife and kids started “Hiai” “Hail”. I knew, I had to run to put my car inside. With my skin head I ran out and I was whacked with pea size hail on my head before I got into the car.

Wind was blowing so hard and also it rained hard so I was worried for my plants that I take care of everyday. Before we knew it, power went off and the surroundings turned dark outside. Storm didn’t last very long and my wife took some pictures of it. When everything was settled, I came out to see what happened and my plants looked ok but not my neighborhood. There were six places where tree limbs fell and traffic was blocked. Luckily, our local government did a good job of clearing the whole thing by the morning.

My wife was born and brought up right here in Vellore and she said that she had never seen a hale storm in her entire life in Vellore. Well….it was truly once in a life time experience to watch the hale storm in Vellore.