Romeil Sandhu dot com

Hey everyone, I just got back stateside a few days back and am in process of trying to regroup, organize, and catchup on all the little things that I missed!  To say the least, my trip to Israel gave me an insight to an area that I thought I would never really get to explore in its fullest.  While I may never reach all parts of the Middle East, this was definitely a start and a fun one too!  Since there’s a lot of information to cover from cool spots I traveled to as well as people I met, I thought I would divide one large post into two or three relatively smaller posts.

The purpose of my trip was one motivated by a guest invitation to give a lecture about my on-going research in 3D visual tracking.  Of course, like traveling to conferences, it was also a time to meet fellow colleagues in the field and get a chance to visit an exotic place.  For now, I’ll just start summarizing the trip here and I’ll write a little more in-depth about the places we visited including pictures and opinions in the next post.

Day 1:

Jumping right in, my friend and colleague Shawn Lankton and I landed in Tel Aviv in the afternoon.  To our dismay, we didn’t realize how early the sun sets and how quickly it gets dark.  By the time we exited the airport, it felt like it was 9 PM (it was actually only 5 PM).  Nevertheless, we quickly rented our small and compact car, and were on our way to Haifa.  Being the “navigator” of the trip, I pulled out the maps and got familiar with the highway systems.  Here’s a quick google map look at the path we took all over Israel including the exact highways, toll roads, and places we visited during our stay.

View Larger Map

Becase we didn’t travel to all of these locations in one day, I’ll break up the trip by days beginning with our arrival in Tel Aviv. But before I do that, here’s a legend and short description of the places traveled (listed in order):

A:  Israel Airport. This is where we started. On the way back, we visisted Tel Aviv via highway 2.

B:  Haifa. This was where we were staying.  The Technion is located on the hills of Haifa, and it also allowed us to have a somewhat central position for visiting several places.  Each night except one night, we stayed in Haifa so a lot of the paths take us back here.

C:  Rosh HaNikra. This is the border between Lebanon and Israel where the Grottoes are located.

D:  Safed (Tsfat). This is a old city where Kabbalah originated from.

E:  Mt. Khermon. This is the tallest mountain in Israel and it happens to border Israel and Syria.  Interesting area since the U.N does not recognize this terrority as Israel, but is under Israeli control

F:  Tiberus and Sea of Galilee. These are historic areas that are attractive from both a tourist spot as well as historical biblical happenings.

G:  Jerusalem. Well, as our tour guide would put it, its the holiest of the … holies when it comes to cities.

H:  Ein Gedi and Masada. This was where we decided to float in the Dead Sea as well as hike up an old historic and relgious site of the Jewish people, which also happens to be located in the desert.  Absolutely beautiful.

I:  Haifa. This was where we were staying.

J:  Israel Airport. It was time to leave…

Not Listed.

Acre.  This is located on highway 4 going north to Rosh HaNikra.

Ceasera. This is located on highway 2 going south to Tel Aviv

Tel Aviv. We visited here on the way back to the airport.  Attraction as the biggest city in Israel.

Border Travels through Palestine. I was not the navigator here, but we followed our advisor through borders between Israel and Palestine.  We also passed through the area of where Amargeddon is suppose to happen (it was a peaceful agriculture field).  A bit hard to show on the map as these were smaller roads.

One thing that I will note here is that if you have ever traveled to Israel, it is quite fascinating how small the distances are from each of the major cities and even those cities that are located within Palestine.  Watching news, you sometimes get the feel that the areas are separated far apart, but in actuality, they are really close!  So close, that you can run from one city that is in Palestine to another located in Israel in less than 20 min (assuming there is no border patrol).  This was interesting for me since a major part of world conflict has to do with the state of Israel and Palestine.  Moreover, here we were driving on a highway and by using the naked eye, you could see the cities with relative ease as with neighbors in a suburb.

At any rate, since this was day 1, we finally reached the Technion and the local guesthouse.  Here’s a picture of the view from our balcony.

Day 2:

Waking up early from the mix of jet lag and with an early sun rise, Shawn and I explored the Technion.  Like that of Haifa, the university itself is built in levels on the mountainside.  The day consisted of working and meeting people and of course, we gave our lectures on the research projects that both Shawn and I are working on.  I have provided a preview here of my presentation as well as a downloadable link for those who are interested.  The main topic that I discuss is the framework of coupling 2D image segmentation and 3D pose estimation in a unified setting for the task of visual tracking.  Note:  Videos not included.

Download Link: Guest_Lecture_Presentation

Preview:

After the lectures, we ended walking by the beaches on the boardwalk of Haifa.  These beaches for me were one of the most relaxing and beautiful beaches that I went to, but perhaps this opinion is more slanted since I actually liked the city as a whole more so than others.  At any rate, let me conclude here.  In my next post, I’ll give a description of the places that we got to see and my novice travel tips for those that might be interested in visiting Israel soon!