Blogs from India, Asia - page 8

Journey started with my family and we decided to drive 550 kms by road from Chennai. We started off late at night, to avoid the crazy traffic that has taken over Chennai City due to Metro work. Reached Trichy in the morning around 4 am. Not a great travel though as currently the highways to Trichy from Chennai are also under renovation. City of Trichy holds some beautiful temples. Can visit the Old Jambukeshwar Temple there and the Fort Temple. Post Breakfast and temple Darshan we started heading to Kodaikanal. Journey was beautiful as the roads were good. We reached the foothills of Kodaikanal and realised that there are many people who have chosen Kodaikanal as there weekend destination. The road uphill was crowded, and there were multiple potholes in the road. Alongside there were PWD ... read more

Kolkata Durga pooja -Piprey on wheels With school holidays over, I imagined it was the perfect time to travel from London to Kolkata on empty flights and catch up on movies in the flights. Very confidently, I arrived at London Heathrow to be denied boarding because I did not have a negative RT PCR test. My option for one free change of date was also denied ( I re-confirmed later in Kolkata that I did have a free change). I paid 179 GBP penalty to fly the following weekend. London Heathrow should be renamed chaos. We were still doing security checks past the flight departure time and asked to RUN to the aircraft. We arrived late at Doha airport and 8 of us missed our connecting flights. 6 eager Bengalis stuck together, took alternative full flight ... read more

Gyaghi, Inner Seraj Valley “Throughout this life, you can never be certain of living long enough to take another breath.” Huang Po “What day is it?” asked Pooh. “It’s today,” squeaked Piglet. “My favourite day,” said Pooh. A. A Milne “You only lose what you cling to” Gautama Buddha “We were right, we were giving. That's how we kept what we gave away” Neil Young, Comes a Time. Three nights ago at around 9pm, just one km up the the road from where I stay, a tourist bus driving in the rain, and containing 17 people, missed a corner on the steep road coming down from Jalori Pass (failed brakes and failure to use gears for braking on a wet dark road in unrelentless rain) and fell into the ravine below. Seven people died there and ... read more

Lucky Lucknow -Piprey on wheels Lucknow has a royal feel. It used to be the land of etiquette, poetry and subtle behaviour. Urdu language here is at its finest so much so that two people fighting sounds like music. I had an opportunity to visit my cousin and his family; jumped at it. I was so happy to meet my cousin. The airport was small, clean and tidy. The city was small, more like Delhi but refined with architecture showing loads of arches by the river Gomti. There were fishes carved on the arches as it was considered auspicious (I thought the architect was Bengali). My cousin’s flat was spacious with lots of green plants, song birds and an old dog. After tea, we went to a lovely homely place where I tasted authentic Awash biryani ... read more

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Shimla-Manali (2004), Char-Dham (2016), Ladakh (2021) and Sikkim (2022) – A comparison For the second time in 9 months, we travelled to Himalayas – to Leh-Ladakh in August-2021 and to Sikkim-Darjeeling in May-2022. Prior to that we had been to Shimla-Manali in 2004 and ‘Chardham’ in 2016. I am comparing only these four tours (omitting South India and other States) as these four tours were in Himalayan regions. There are many things common among these four trips and many dissimilarities. All four tours were in ‘peak’ season. We had planned Shimla and Ladakh tours on our own, ie the itinerary, hotel bookings and internal travelling. Chardham – we had booked for ‘organized’ tour by ‘Radhe-Shyam’ of Ahmedabad. For Sikkim-Darjeeling tour we booked through a ‘Ajay Modi’ of Ahmedabad. I have always debated – which one is ... read more