Dubai Visit - Introduction The Gulf Countries invoke an image of oil-rich, arid, desert countries populated by traditional, Muslim people. Mostly this image is true, but Dubai is an exception. It is NOT oil-rich and the society is the most cosmopolitan that I have seen, and the desert is enlivened not only by the short date palms but also by tall, chrome-and-glass skyscraper buildings which are tantamount to Prosperity. (Dubai is clean but not very green. I could not find a single tree more that 20 feet in height, whereas in India, trees more that 50-60 feet high are fairl [View Full Entry]

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No bus to Vesuvius This is not a regular travelblog of mine, but I was reminded of our experience of Italian taxi-drivers when I read Shaheema Shaw's blog "Madam, Only Rs.40 to Nowhere" about a Chennai auto-driver. This was way back in the summer of1989 when we had taken a Eurail tour. We had planned to visit Vesuvius that day and had arrived at the Ercolano Scavi station from Naples. It was about 2:15 PM and I had read from Fodor's that there are regular buses to the top of Vesuvius every 2 hours. (No widespread Internet usage in India in [View Full Entry]

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Seoul Tour We were travelling from Los Angeles to Mumbai by Korean Airlines in March 2006 and had to spend something like 12 hours at the airport. Fortunately, Incheon airport is one place where you can find a decent place to sleep and rest. However, you cannot sleep at an airport for a very long time, so we decided to take a 6-hour city tour. At the Incheon airport, once you book the city tour, you can get a temporary 'transit visa'. The Tour bus company also gives jackets to wear to the tourists. However, we had our own heavy-duty [View Full Entry]

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Egypt We went to Egypt some 3-4 years back. This was the only 'conducted' tour that we have taken so far. Otherwise, we always preferred to travel on our own. After the massacre of tourists at Deir-al-Bahri in 1997, Egypt was not thought to be safe. So, we wanted to travel in a group. More recent bombings at Hurghada has done nothing to assure travellers on the point of safety. However, Egypt is such a magnet for tourists, that they still come in large numbers. Egypt must be the most 'written about' country in the world. If somebody just collects [View Full Entry]

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Palitana Curiosity is what drives me. I hope it does not kill me some day like it did the cat. That is why we were ascending the Shatrunjay hill near Palitana in the state of Gujrat, in the morning sunlight and getting tired, thirsty and footsore. Devotion was not driving us because we are Hindus and the shrines at Palitana are Jain. (When I visited Badrinath and Kedarnath in the Himalayas, which are Hindu shrines, there also the driving force was curiosity rather than devotion. Somehow, devotion is lacking in my makeup in Toto, though Avi is somew [View Full Entry]

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Ramoji Film City - Day 2 By our second day in Ramoji Film City, we had learnt to thump every structure, statue and pillar to find out whether they were real or ‘fake’. If they sounded hollow, then they were ‘fake’. Otherwise, just by sight or touch, you could not tell them apart. (By ‘fake’ I mean made of fiberglass, plywood or Plaster of Paris.) Some structures in the Ramoji Film City are ‘real’. Hawa Mahal is solid granite stone. Thinking that it must be made of wood, I had thumped it rather forcefully and later my palm tingled with [View Full Entry]

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Ramoji Film City - Day 1 Let me say right in the beginning that we thoroughly enjoyed our 2-day stay in the Ramoji Film City and I am all admiration for the founder of the City and the people who manage it. The first day, we just took the ‘Ramoji City Tour’ and familiarized ourselves with its layout and location of the attractions. We also attended the highly hilarious ‘Wild West Show’ The tour stops at only two places -- at the set of an airport in which there also a small plane and at the man-made ‘Kripalu caves’ with [View Full Entry]

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Hyderabad Our Hyderabad trip was jinxed. We first booked it in September 2006 and then had to postpone it three times before we could make it. Ultimately, it materialized just after my VRS. “This is your Retirement Present.” Avi told me. So we took an early morning flight to Hyderabad on 14th Feb. 2007 and went to the Salarjung Museum the same day in the morning and to Char Minar in the evening. Salarjung Museum is positively a store-house of Art. Of particular interest to me were the halls of porcelain and sculpture. Somehow, oil-paintings do not impress me much. [View Full Entry]

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Peru - Introduction No, please do not misunderstand me. When I am writing about ‘Nasca Peru’ or ‘Cuzco Peru’, I am not writing about a rotten guava. (in Marathi or in Konkani.) We had taken a tour of Peru in November 2006. Cuzco was the capital of the Inca empire and Nazca (or Nasca, because nowadays, there is a movement in Peru to change the spellings of these words, which were spelled by the Spaniards and in Spanish language, Z is pronounced as S.) is the place where those mysterious ‘Nazca Lines’ are etched into the desert on a very [View Full Entry]

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Lima Our first stop in Peru was Lima. Lima is by seashore, but does not have any natural sea shore, because it is situated on a sheer cliff 154 meters high. (i.e. 500 feet). The city of Lima has now created an artificial strip of sandy shore along the base of the cliff, which few people use. After all it is not easy to climb down 500 feet just to go to the beach and then climb 500 feet up again. Needless to say that normal tourist does not go to see the Lima harbor. Follow the link below to [View Full Entry]

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