The Niagara Falls (FT)

When there were talks of me going on an official trip to Canada, the first thought that sprang was – will I get time to go to Niagara falls. Along with Grand Canyon, Niagara falls was there on my list of ‘must-see’ in US. The scheduled date of travel was somewhere in January and there was a consensus that Niagara might be frozen during that time. Eventually a lot of things happened and my travel got pushed to June. Not only that, the travel destination changed from Canada to Andover. Still the falls was not out of plan as there was a US side of it – 7 hrs drive from where I was put up.

Two more colleagues (Bhanu and Parthiban) expressed their wish to go and the plan was made. We started at 5.15 in the morning and reached by 1.30 P.M after stopping for mini breakfast and lunch. On the way GPS cranked and we had to do some debugging on it to get going.

The first falls was rather a small affair but the horse shoe falls was amight one and was more like the photos and videos we have come to see of the Niagara. There were a couple of rides – Cave of the Woods and Maid of the mist. The first one takes you to below the falls and you can even stand right under the falls and get some water splashed on you. The water hits you after falling on a rock and the speed and pressure considerably reduced. Even so, the force is unimaginable. It was great fun. The maid of the mist is a boat ride which takes you quite close to the horse shoe falls and you are drenched in the mist of the falls. That is another amazing experience.

The only sour point was that we paid 10$ on a ‘Niagara Falls’ parking which turned out to be a ‘False’ parking set up by some local guys to lure the newbies (mostly desis fall trap to this) to pay 10$ rather than a free or subsidized parking elsewhere. We saw a few more of these ‘Falls Parking’ on the way.