The August 1st long weekend in Switzerland we decided to head South, as south as possible, to the border of Switzerland - Italy - France. We did part of Grand Combins tour and TMB. Route - Zurich HB - Brig - Lausanne - Martigny - Fionnay (slightly cheaper and longer than way through Bern) La Fouley - http://www.wanderland.ch/en/routes/etappe-01535.html Day 1: The trip started from Fionnay (instead of Mauvoisin due to fear of snow on the way), and day 1 was long train ride from Zurich + gaining 1200m to get to the Panossiere hut. The hut is situated right next to big glacier of Grand Combins. It was almost like the Blue Glacier I had seen before. The view is dominated by 2 huge set of mountains. The hike up is usual grueling straight up climb, ... read more

Day 3 - Bezirgan - Saribelen - Gokceoren Today we decided to get up early and then take a break during afternoon when its really hot. Still we got up around 6:00 and left around 7:00. After a short downhill walk we reached Bezirgan We were hoping to get some breakfast here but the town looked closed. We did not really want to get off the trail, so did not really go into the village. We though we will have food at the next village Serebalen which was about 7km away. Little did we know that its 7km of up and down and up again. After Bezirgan, the there is a steep climb for about 20min, and then it took us to a nice wide slightly uphill road. I thought this is good, we are finally ... read more

A short 3hr flight from Zurich and we were in Istanbul. Taking the visa on entry was easy. If you have a valid US or Schengen visa / resident card, Indians can get it on the spot by paying a $20 fee. When we arrived, the visa lines were mostly empty and it took us under 30 min to complete the process going from one window to other. We exchanged some currency there, not recommended due to high fee and bad rates. As we will find there are much better places to do this outside near Aksaray. From there we went to the metro station where we were suppose to meet our couchsurfing host. He got busy and was not there, so we bought a 32TL phone card of some unknown company, another mistake. We called ... read more

Varanasi or Banaras or Kashi is heart of Indian religious culture and also one of oldest cities in the world, right along with Damascus, Jerusalem, Luxor etc. The city is on banks of Holy river Ganga, and is a unique place where Ganga flows east - west. The city is one of major centers of Hindu religion, and also has one of the major Buddhist centers Sarnath nearby. Day 1 We reached Mughal Sarai station by an overnight train from Kolkata. Surprisingly the train was on time. Its about an hour drive from Varanasi city and Banaras Hindu University where we were staying. First item of day was breakfast. We were there to attend a conference, so the breakfast was arranged there. It was a completely yummy typical Indian breakfast of aalu puri. I loved it! ... read more

We got up early to get ready for snorkel boat. I thought we should call our agent as afterall we booked everything with him. He proposed the same boat trip for Rs 1000 as he had 3 other folks going to the beach. Fine by us, we wanted to share anyway. Then we had really nice dosa breakfast there. On the way to Elephant beach, we saw some people Kayak, and thought perhaps we should also Kayak. Elephant beach was nice, it was small and we were there early, so there was some peace. We immediately got into water. Both of us were anxious to try our new found swimming skills, and they helped. Then the guide said he will take us snorkel one by one because he was actually going to hold our hand and ... read more