Once you start traveling around, if you stay without at least a weekend getaway for 3-4 weeks, you start craving to go to some place the next week. I had barely traveled out of Bangalore until my 2nd or 3rd year in college when my relationship with travel started (I had infrequently visited a few places but nothing major). After that it has just grown and grown. So, what do you do if you are bored and need a change in scenery ? Pick a nearby tourist spot which you have been waiting to visit and just go there (even if you are 2 or 3 folks). In my case, this resulted in visiting the unique Lonar (Crater) Lake in Maharashtra. A few months back, I and Vivek had registered for a trip with one of ... read more

As it had been a while since my last outing with office folks, I and my ever-ready trek buddy, Vivek planned a weekend getaway to Rajmachi in Maharashtra through the Hyderabad Trekking Club (HTC). This time, our old trip pal, Aditya Vaish (recently married) was very zealous to come with us as he had finally obtained the permission to go for a short weekend trek. Along with him, Sulbha and Anuvrat joined us in their usual style taking more than a month to decide how many among their friends would come along, the final count being 0. This again as always led to us calling our trek organizer umpteen number of times before finalizing the exact number. Ankur, Nishchay and Firoza were the newcomers in our trekking group while Nikhil too decided to join probably as ... read more

Out of the blue, Mayank sent out a mail saying Sharat approved a plan for a Kerala trip and cheap flight tickets were available for the same. As with most people by the time everyone was done adding people into the mail thread and looking at Rahu and Ketu Kala for deciding whether to go on the trip or not, the tickets disappeared and it was thought that the plan was cancelled. But due to persistence of a few, the sparks reignited and the plan was back on track. Sulbha had found Sonam to give her company and Anuvrat had also decided to join us for the trip. I, Abhishek, Mayank and Sharat made the rest of the trippers. We reached Cochin by flight. With our Malayalam speaking Sharat leading the way, Sharat's family (that was ... read more

How can anyone say no to a trek which involves the beautiful Kerala during just after monsoons and a heart shaped lake ? So we did not and proceeded to book our ride with GHAC (Great Hyderabad Adventure Club) for the trek. We promptly reached the Cyber towers in Hyderabad at around 7 - 7 30 pm assuming everyone would be there on time. Big mistake! The bus was late by almost 2 hours or more and we spent the time there in bonding session and roaming around Shilparamam. We met the organizers Gautham, Tejaswini and Santhosh who coerced some fellow trekkers into buying raincoats in case it rained during our trek (Rain surprisingly never materialized for the whole of our trek and those who had bought the raincoats ended up cursing them). Finally the bus ... read more

A final hurrah using his final LTC before his retirement. And so the plan was made for our Sikkim trip to celebrate my dad's retirement the next year (Darjeeling included but I didn't like it that much so I have no issue leaving it out of the title). This time my dad's friend GP Nagarajan and his wife Shashikala also decided to join us. The planning phase started and we had a look at all the popular tourist attractions in Sikkim. Initially my mom was doubtful whether to choose Gurudongmar lake and Yumthang valley as Gurudongmar Lake is at 17,800 ft altitude and hence, it is generally warned that low oxygen levels might cause issues. I saw its pics and reviews and tried my best to convince her that it was not that dangerous. Finally she ... read more