DDK72

After 18 months of no vacation and stuck at home in Pune, India, we (make that as I !) really wanted to travel. Perhaps it was revenge travel but I was hell bent on going to nearby beaches, even though the weather was not perfect and neither the roads. Had booked a simple home stay in Dapoli for a July trip but due to incessant rains this year, had to put that on hold. When the weather opened up a bit in September, made concrete plans. It helped the the kid's school also gave a long weekend for Ganesh Chaturthi. The weather again became bad and the forecast on the planned days was all wet and rainy days. But we didn't want to postpone and went ahead. We took the Mulshi-Tamini Ghat route after weighing other ... read more

Just returned from an incredible trip to Switzerland and Italy. Trip that seemed impossible due to doing it at short notice and that too first time with kids and in peak summer! Anyways went ahead with hardly 2 weeks planning. First booking hotels that were available and then deciding on the itinerary. EU rail pass came in handy to provide some flexibility and not enforcing a firm schedule. Once hotels and tickets booked, a rough itinerary after finding distances between the cities, what to cover, who might like what, expected weather etc. etc. - an algorithm that even AI analytics can’t help with ! Oh did I mention, coincidently Kavita and I celebrated our 10th anniversary during this visit! Bern was the base location in Switzerland and all day trips undertaken from there. Bern itself is ... read more

As I have mentioned before, I am enamored by France perhaps since it was the first country that I lived outside India. Or because I believe it kind of represents values that I believe in - liberty, diversity, pride ! Anyways when we relocated to Frankfurt in Aug 2018, it took some time to settle in. I always knew in my heart of hearts that Paris will be first city we will have a vacation in. I really wanted them to feel what I felt when I visited it first time and a couple of more times. It was Christmas holidays and somehow managed to get the bookings done. I even booked the same hotel that I had lived in 20 years back. Even if it meant, the hotel was in Sevres, a suburb on the ... read more

To start off with… First of all, JULEY Well, that’s ‘Welcome’ in Ladakhi. Actually it can be any greeting - hi , bye, good morning, evening, anything really ! BTW La-Dakh means ‘Land of Passes’. Ladakh is a desert mountain with arid terrain in summer and snow during rest of the year. You will find some green or yellow patches of shrubs only in the valleys probably along with some beautiful flowers. The idea for the Ladakh trip was proposed by Nilesh in Dec’06 and I was game for the same, though I was much clueless as to what I was getting into. He was going to do it on his bike and I on a hired Qualis, along with a bunch of guys mostly from Delhi. For much of the 9 months since the idea ... read more