aadil's VirtualTourist Home Page

Hi! You are visiting Aadil's World!!! Come on in and have a look. You will find pictures of places I've visited and more. Some of the places I've seen and experienced are Moscow, St. Petersburg, London, New York, Chicago, Washington D.C., Niagara Falls, Buffalo, Bruges, Gent, Lier, Leuven, Antwerp, Brussels, Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Middelburg, Rome, Milan, Venice, Vatican City, Pisa, Genoa, Florence, Naples, Pompeii, Herculaneum, Livingstone City, St. Ives, Penzance, Liverpool, Cardiff, Caernarfon, Edinburgh, Plymouth, Teheran, Esfahan, Shiraz, Persepolis, Al Khobar, Dammam, Geneva, Chamonix Mont Blanc, Nairobi, Kathmandu, Patan, Bhaktapur, Namo Buddha, Dhulikhel, Nagarkot, Pokhara, Chitwan National Park, Lumbini, Sonauli, Panauti, Lhasa, Tingri, Gyantse, Shigatse, Nyalam, (I've purposely not mentioned the Indian cities!!!) and lots of others yet to be seen like Cairo, Petra, Paris, Versailles, Nice, Warsaw, Madrid, Barcelona, Sevilla, Fuengirola, Malaga, Lisbon, Vienna, Prague, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Tallinn, Antarctica and thousands of others!!!

So come on in and enjoy! Most of the pages are not yet complete as I'm still scanning my images at a cyber-cafe or resizing them and it's a very time consuming process!! But if you are patient, you will enjoy the fruits of my work!! BTW, if you want to see what I look like then click on my picture on the left top!!! It is taken by my very good friend Danielle (irisbe@VT) on our trip to visit Lier in Belgium and modified by my friend Scott (herzog63@VT) who stays in Alaska!!! (Just wanted to give credit where it is due!!!).

Living on Earth may be expensive ..... but it includes an annual trip around the Sun ..... for free!!! So enjoy it while you can!!!

Something about my religion:
When I do good, I feel good;
When I do bad, I feel bad.
That's my religion.
..... Abraham Lincoln.
And mine too!!!

"I'm searching for a wife to fill the space in my life. Someone to share my universe. Must have looks that are out of this world!!!" Just wanted to share this funny one about an advertisement by an astronomer in the matrimonial columns of a daily newspaper!!! HAHAHA!!!

Not all who wander are lost!!! - Anon

And here's wishing you a Merry Christmas and a very Happy New Year 2008!!! Also wishing you all happy and safe travels with lots of love, fun, joy, peace, happiness and goodwill to all in the years to come!!!

It's about five years since I joined this lovely Virtual Tourist community and I'm thankful to all the staff for their timely help and support as well as for all the friends I have made here and for their beautiful friendship!!! I've reaped a lot of benefits by way of information, good friends and a beautiful way to get across to everybody on the net with a similar interest in travelling as a hobby. May the tribe increase!!!

Cheers,
Aadil.

Viewpoint through a different angle:
Two men look out through the same window: one sees the mud and one the stars!!!

Sorry!!! No wife and no other love either!!! Well, you got fooled?!!! Right?!!! My wife is astronomy and my other love is aircraft scale modelling and aviation!!! HAHAHA!!! That's my life!!! And I'm enjoying it!!!

I am an amateur astronomer and love observing the night sky and all things astronomical besides making spacecraft models, sundials and telescopes. I also enjoy astrophotography and try to take as many (good) pictures of astronomical events and objects like solar & lunar eclipses, comets, the sun, meteor showers, deep sky objects and galaxies. I also love sketching astronomical objects at the eyepiece of my telescope. Some of my pictures are also published by astronomical journals and websites and viewable also on my external homepage (click on the link on the top of the page). I try to attend as many astronomy meetings and meet amateurs from all over the world during my travels. So if you are an amateur astronomer from any part of the world and would like to meet up someday then let me know.

I am an aircraft service engineer with Air India and based at the Mumbai International Airport. My job is to maintain the Air India aircraft as well as some of the other foreign carriers too. So you may catch me at the airport if you are lucky. HAHAHA!!!

I love making scale models of aircraft, spacecraft and ships. Mostly built out of assembled kits but my first love is scratchbuilt models out of paper card, plastic and wood. Takes more time to make and a lot of effort in making the models this way, but gives more pleasure too. I generally prefer to build aircraft of the WWI and WWII besides the more modern and recent aircraft in the popular scales of 1/72, 1/48 and 1/32 and some very big aircraft in 1/144 too. I don't build commercial (civil aviation) airplanes as I see them all the time and work on them all the time too. HAHAHA!!!

Lest I forget to mention my other loves, they are photography, art, history, architecture, listening to all kinds of music (western classical, rock, pop, country, oldies and Indian instrumental classical), travel and last but not the least, Virtual Tourist to which I am addicted!!!

And finally an update that is bound to make this title seem a bit untrue as well as true ...... I am getting married to my new found love and the big day is in January 2008!!!

I BELIEVE I CAN FLY!!!

I believe I can fly
I believe I can touch the sky
I think about it every night and day
Spread my wings and fly away
I believe I can soar
I see me running through that open door
I believe I can fly!!!
--- R. Kelly.

This is what I love doing most ...... sharing my love for astronomy among youngsters and anyone interested in the subject. For me it is a passion and I just love helping out people who want to take a closer look at the celestial bodies with my Russian Intes MK63 (150mm diameter, 1500mm focal length, f/10) Maksutov Cassegrain tracking telescope.

It is a great feeling to see the planets ....... especially the beautiful ringed Saturn, the giant Jupiter with it's four Galilean Moons (satellites), Mars with it's polar icecaps and dust storms, Venus and Mercury with their Moon like phases, a few bright comets and dim asteroids (periodically) and ofcourse the very bright Moon and last but not the least, our daytime star ....... the Sun, with a protective filter. Many other celestial wonders like galaxies, star clusters, nebulae, supernovae and other exotic objects are also worth looking at if you are in places with dark skies on a clear new moon night, away from city lights and pollution.

If the sky is clear and I am at home you can call me and drop in for a live sky show. Or ask me to come over with my telescope for a night out under the stars. It is a heavenly experience, I can assure you. You will definitely see stars in your eyes!!! HAHAHA!!!

Click on the image to see it in it's full glory!!!

This beautiful picture of Earthlights is a composite image from a series of pictures taken from space by different satellites.

I hope it inspires every one to live together as one and in peace and harmony with each other without the tensions of war and annihilation due to nuclear threats.

So far as I can see there are no boundaries on this image and I don't understand why there should be any in the day time. Can we not strive to keep it this way as it was meant to be? Think about it. Maybe my dream will come true, someday, if not today or tomorrow. One should never lose hope, I guess!!!

IMAGINE!!!

Imagine there's no heaven
It's easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today...

Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace...

You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will be as one

Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world...

You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will live as one

Courtesy: The Beatles.

May Peace Prevail On Planet Earth!!!

Image Courtesy: NASA, Astronomy Picture of the Day.