Niagara Falls

The orientation of our MBA program gave the students a clear idea of the amount of work involved to do well in the program. We soon realised that there would be little or no time to experience the sights and sounds of the USA once the program started. Therefore, a bunch of us (Indians) decided that we would take advantage of the weekend in the middle of the orientation program, to visit the famous Niagara Falls on the US-Canada border.

The five of us – NK, Avinash, Roneet, Vivek and I – decided to rent a car and drive to Niagara Falls, as that would be the cheapest means of transport. NK, having lived in the US for a couple of years, had experience in driving in the US, and that solved the minor problem of finding a driver for us. Of course, I was raring to have a go at it, but NK was quite strict in not allowing me to drive. Since I fancy myself as quite a good driver, this did hurt my ego. But in hindsight I needed the experience of being a passenger on those roads before venturing a drive.

The five of us hardly knew each other and this was as good an opportunity as any to learn more about each other. Until then, the only things common to us was that we were there to do an MBA and that we were from India, fate having thrown us at the same spot on the other side of earth. Consequently, coordination was a bit of a problem. Nobody had any telephone, at least none that the others knew of. Some of us did not know our own addresses. And some of us who had written down the addresses forgot to bring it with them, which resulted in a huge delay in searching for Vivek’s flat. Quite creatively, we guessed his address and started searching for it. The search then turned into a door-to-door search of the street. We even barged into a fellow Indian’s home and asked him to allow us to use the Internet to search for the address. To his credit, he complied and even joined us in our search for Vivek’s flat. I am sure he had been having a particularly dull morning for him to go off searching for somebody he did not know, living in an address he had no clue about, with a bunch of strangers who were as familiar with Columbus as an Eskimo would be with the rainforests.

I don’t quite remember how it ended, but maybe somebody had the very bright idea of getting the address from home. We soon found Vivek and were off. The only problem was that it was already lunchtime and we had a ten-hour drive ahead of us. Budding leaders and managers that we were, we immediately decided that going ahead on an empty stomach was as sinful as hell, and promptly decided that we had to stop and have lunch. A minor detail – we were still very much within city limits. The lunch took about one hour and all decided that the time was well spent. We finally departed Columbus four hours later than our original planned departure time.
We had taken the precaution of mapping out our route to and from Niagara with the backup of multiple copies of the printouts. As an added advantage, NK had his very handy map of the US highway system. We did not fancy ourselves getting lost in this strange land.

As our journey proceeded on the excellent highway towards Cleveland, it was our first look at the American Midwest countryside. And it was nothing to write home about. Acres and acres of endless flat fields got quite boring after some time. NK our driver too must have been utterly bored because at one time, he started switching lanes just for the heck of it, even when there was no traffic to get around. Slowly, our attentions turned from outside our car windows to the people within the car and I learnt what a wonderful variety we had, just between the five of us.

Vivek was a sailor, and as with all sailors, he was extremely well endowed with the choicest swear words. The sheer scope of his knowledge in that area took my breath away. He was the best travelled among us all, having been to most continents that hosted human beings.

Roneet was the accountant from Bombay. He was the most known guy in class already (in the sense that most people already knew who he was), having talked to everybody in his zeal for “networking”.

Avinash was the intellectual type former investment manager, also from Bombay. He had this very far away look in his eyes when explaining things about markets and investments that we could never understand.

NK was a software engineer at TCS, having lived in the US since a couple of years on assignments for them. He too was from Bombay and was the no-nonsense type that you got to see among gangsters in “Satya”. In fact, he even spoke like those characters in the film.

And there was the narrator, another software engineer from Bangalore. The person, who observes a lot, speaks little and makes fun of other people in his essays.

That was a curious bunch. A sailor from Jaipur, a Bengali accountant from Bombay, a Sindhi investments guy, and two software engineers – one a Marathi and the other a Kannadiga. And at the risk of using a cliché, that was India for me. And it felt great.

We travelled north to Cleveland and upon reaching this big city on the shores of one of the great lakes, we turned east towards Pennsylvania and New York. The landscape was a lot greener in this part of our journey, and it was not all that boring. We stopped at various places on the way to relieve and refresh ourselves. One thing that impressed me more than the quality of the road itself was the facilities made available to the users of the highways. There are clean and affordable places to eat and stay all along the highways and that makes the journey far more pleasant than just a good road. Some sections of the highway were not as good as others and these were most evident at the borders between states. Does that sound familiar?

We finally reached our destination – a motel about fifteen miles from the falls. Thanks to the wonders of the Internet, we already had a room booked and we just had to walk in and take the keys to the room. We dumped our luggage in the room and decided that we had to see the falls under lights. It was already ten and we still hadn’t had dinner. It was decided that we would do both at the site of the falls.

It was quite cold when we bundled into the car to go to our final destination. The entire way was marked with numerous signs telling us the direction of the falls. We finally reached Niagara Falls, and if we had not watched out, we would have driven straight over the bridge into Canada! In the darkness, it was quite easy to miss the fact that one had to turn left to make sure that one did not end up in Canada. Somebody should do something about that, as I am sure a lot of people who end up getting arrested as illegal immigrants might have committed the same mistake that we were about to!

In the dark, the falls were not very impressive. In fact, I seriously wondered whether we had wasted money to see such a poor spectacle. We then had dinner at an Indian restaurant before heading back to the motel.

After a very refreshing sleep, we woke up in the morning to a wonderful day – bright sunshine, but slightly nippy. Having spent some more time in negotiating the awakening of members of the tour party, we were finally ready to go. Of course, there had to be the slight problem of breakfast. We had a hearty breakfast at a Denny’s (a chain of restaurant’s similar to McDonald’s) restaurant and headed for the falls.

The falls itself is a national park and there are a lot of attractions in the confines of the park. A very well maintained garden surrounds the areas that the tourists visit. There is a shuttle bus that ferries tourists between the attractions. There are also balloon and helicopter rides for people to get a better view of the falls.

We bought tickets for ourselves and got on to the observation deck to watch the falls. The Niagara Falls have two parts to it - the American falls and the Horseshoe falls. The Horseshoe is the more famous of the two and this is the one that straddles the US-Canada border.

Unfortunately, both the falls are located predominantly on the American side of the Niagara gorge, and hence, you have to be on the Canadian side to get the best view. How do you see the splendour of a waterfall while looking from the side or from the lip? You need to be able to see the “big picture”. Nevertheless, the Americans have made the best of what they have. To compensate for the lack of a good view, they have built an observation deck that gives a view of the falls from the middle of the gorge, high above the water. This deck provides an excellent view of the falls, but I am sure that it is not as good as the one from the Canadian side. Having taken our fill of photos on the deck, we proceeded to the highlight of the trip – the trip on the Maid of the Mist to the base of the falls.

An elevator took us down to the bottom of the observation deck where we were given the classic blue ponchos (plastic raincoats) to wear over our clothes. Having done that, we were herded onto the boat, which slowly made its way towards the base of the falls. As the boat got closer to the falls, the water became increasingly turbulent, and the “mist” that was visible from the top turned out to be heavy droplets of ice-cold water pummelling our faces and exposed body parts. But it was a great experience. The rocking of the boat, the roar of the falls, the spray of the mist, everything was fantastic. In fact, the whole experience of the boat ride was for that alone. It was not for the view of the falls from the bottom as it was next to impossible to see the falls because of the heavy spray.

The boat got back safely to dock and I could finally brag that I had ridden the Maid of the Mist – the boat having become as much a part of the Niagara Falls experience as the falls itself. The bunch of us, grinning and wet, dried ourselves as best as we could and set about for the other attractions that the Americans had conjured up in the absence of “the view”.

We next went to a platform built on the side of the American falls, half way up the gorge face. Here again, the experience was the closeness of the falls than the view of it. The next one, and almost as exciting as the boat ride, was the Cave of the Winds. We had to descend in an elevator through the rock to emerge at the bottom of the gorge. There, a guide took us to the base of the American Falls. A wooden platform was built just where the water hit the rocks and it was the most violent experience with water that I have ever had. The roar and the spray were so overwhelming that I could not even hear myself think. Quite wisely, the park authorities had given us lockers to put our shoes and electronics in. We were given sandals and ponchos to protect ourselves from the water. One strange thing was that these sandals were for keeps. We could take them home with us. I was surprised with this since I assumed it would be quite expensive to give away a pair of sandals to every person who went to the Cave of the Winds, even if everybody had paid for the tickets. Then I saw on the sandals the ubiquitous sign “Made in China”. Ah, no wonder they could afford it.

There were a few other minor attractions around the park. A few lovely walkways were the best of them. Also quite interesting were, a small museum on the history of the falls, and an aquarium with performing seals. With that, we finished our tour of Niagara and decided that we had to leave immediately if we were to reach Columbus at an earthly hour. We then had lunch at the best Indian restaurant in the US I have experienced so far, and headed back.

One observation of the Niagara Falls that I have to share with you is the number of Indians who visit that place. Almost half the people who were visiting were Indians, as were almost half the restaurants in the area were Indian. I think a visit to the Niagara is becoming something of a ritual, a rite of passage so to say, for Indians visiting the USA. Come to think of it, which is the most popular natural attraction in the USA? The Niagara Falls. And I guess that is why we too had made our way to the place. Maybe in our sub-conscious, a visit to the USA is not complete without a visit to the Niagara Falls.

This trip taught me a lot of things about the way we have to exploit what we have been blessed with. Canada has the natural advantage of having the best view of the falls. The US does not have it. But, instead of sitting back and saying “What do we do? Nature and geography have not been kind to us”, they went ahead and designed other things that enhanced the Niagara experience for tourists. Imagine, would there be that many tourists if the only attraction on the American side of the falls were the view from its lip? I don’t think so. But look at the whole package – the boat ride, the walkways, the park, the visits to the base of the falls and the view itself – and it suddenly looks much more attractive than just what nature has provided.

There is a lesson in this for India in the way we manage our resources and tourist spots. Nothing is ever worth just its face value. Value comes from what you want it to be.