Abhaneri, Rajasthan – A Sunday Drive from Jaipur…
Step wells (Baoris) are fascinating. In the days past, not only were they sources of water; they were also used as rest houses by weary travelers, as temples and as community centers. Gujarat and Rajasthan have some of the best step wells in India. We had seen some amazing ones at Adalaj, Patan and Modhera [...]
IIMA Campus – Nature Walk.
On Sunday I went to the old campus for some bird watching… and saw quite a few of em.. Birds of the feathered kind I mean. Honest! It started with a mail… ” Prakriti – The Nature Club of IIMA is organising a nature walk to observe and appreciate the beauty of flora and fauna [...]
Gurramkonda, Vontimitta, Siddhavatam, Brahmamgari matam.
Another ‘Blast from the past’ from my archives. This trip is quite recent though, from November 08. The main purpose of the trip was to attend my relative’s wedding in AP. Since we were driving into the interiors, we thought of visiting some lesser known places which are somewhat off the beaten track. Route taken: [...]
Brahmagiri , Irpu falls – A trip and trek.
The trip/trek was done on the 8th Feb 09. Brahmagiri is a hill in the Western Ghats (1608 mts). It is situated in the Brahmagiri wildlife sanctuary on the border between Wayanad District of Kerala and Kodagu district of Karnataka. The Brahmagiri wildlife sanctuary is a restricted area, featuring a rich variety of wildlife including [...]
A weekend trek to Mukurthi Peak near Ooty.
Ooty seems to be the flavor of the season and this was a trek through the Mukurthi national park which is very close to Ooty. This was done over the weekend of 28th & 29th Nov 09. The park is named after the distinctive looking Mukurthi peak, which at 8,379ft is the fourth highest peak [...]
Chembra Peak, Meenmutty waterfalls, Himavad Gopalaswamy betta.
This is a trip from March 1st & 2nd 2008, which I dug up from the archives. Infact the main reason why I started to write these travelogues is that within a few months of a trip, the memories slowly begin to fade and the story behind each pic gets fuzzier and fuzzier. I also [...]
The Elephant & the Tiger – Hathi Bhata & Ranthambore trip.
It was the 19th of December 2011. We had just come back from the big trip around Rajasthan. Vani & Aish had taken the flight back to Bangalore the previous evening. Sangeetha & me still had a few more days of vacations left and we scanned through our list of ‘must see places in Rajasthan’. [...]
Pranlal Bhogilal Vintage Car Museum – Autoworld
Trrrrriiiinnngg… Trrrriiinnnggg… Doc: Hello SG: Hello Doc, I was thinking of visiting the Pranlal Bhogilal vintage car collection tomorrow morning (Saturday 10th July 2010)… Doc: Hmmm… I too was planning to go there sometime. I drove past this place a few days ago when I was going somewhere, it is around 30 – 40 minutes [...]
Chamundi hills, the big Nandi and Lalitha mahal palace
This is a trip from the 9th of Feb, 2008. It was just another lazy weekend when we decided to head out towards Lokaruchi for a leisurely lunch. During lunch we were discussing about Chamundi hills and the big Nandi… on a whim, we decided to drive up to Mysore post lunch. There wasn’t much [...]
Search for the perfect sand dune – Osiyan, Khimsar and Nagaur trip.
Till we actually moved to Jaipur and explored Rajasthan, any thoughts of Rajasthan would evoke visions of Camels, Sand dunes, Forts and Palaces. While finding Camels, Forts and Palaces is quite easy, finding a Sand dune is not so easy. Especially dunes that look like the ‘perfect’ ones shown in movies… While researching on [...]
Trekking in the Chinnar Wildlife Sanctuary, Thoovanam Waterfalls.
One fine morning, opened my inbox to see our old friend Chandrashekar’s mail proposing a weekend trek for the 4th & 5th of July 09. This time the destination was the Chinnar Wildlife Sanctuary (CWS). Fired up the browser to check out what Chinnar was all about… I had heard about Chinnar sometime in the [...]
Kotilingeshwara – A quick little trip.
On the 30th of March 2008, we were returning back to Bangalore from a family trip to Chittoor. Since we had started our return journey quite early in the morning, we were quite ahead of schedule and were driving back at a very liesurely pace. On a couple of earlier trips along this route, we [...]
Newcastle, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Highforce waterfalls.
These are a few photos from a trip to the UK in 2004. I was in Newcastle for a couple of months with my team, working on a P&G project. We did manage to get some time off from our hectic schedule to do some sightseeing in and around Newcastle. Unfortunately this was a trip [...]
A Tra’Village’ – Farmhouse visit.
This is not a full-fledged travelogue, but a small collection of photos from a weekend trip. Put up to capture some memories from a recent village visit. Last Sunday (24th Jan 2010) we visited a farm-house owned by a relative of one of Sangeetha’s colleagues. We were accompanied by another colleague of her’s from the [...]
My brush with the ‘Yamdoot’ :-)
There are bikes that I love, there are bikes that I hate… and then there is a bike that I respect – The Yamaha RD350 aka the Rajdoot RD350; or the ‘Yamdoot’ as it was nicknamed in India. The RD350 is not something that you can buy off the shelf, it is a part of [...]
Adalaj, Modhera, Patan & Sidhpur – Vav, vav – Wow!
* Vav = ‘Step-well’ in Gujarati. Once upon a time, when Doordarshan was the only channel on TV, I had seen a Gujarati movie on a Sunday afternoon. It was Ketan Mehta’s "Bhavni Bhavai"- starring Naseeruddin Shah & Smita Patil. Based on a Gujarati folk tale, some significant scenes from the movie were shot in [...]
Chandragiri – Relics of the fallen empire.
In south India, tales of Vijayanagara – Hampi and Krishnadevaraya are part and parcel of our cultural initiation. Be it through stories narrated by our grandparents, through our history text books or through Chandamama & Amar Chitra Katha. What we normally get to hear or read about are just some glimpses from history, a high-level [...]
Andaman & Nicobar, Port Blair & Havelock Island – 2009 Big trip – Part I
This is Part I of the 2009 Big trip – covering Andaman & Nicobar, Port Blair & the Havelock Island trip Part II of the 2009 Big trip where we covered the Temples of Tamilnadu is at this link It was time for one of our annual holidays and the planning started from the first [...]
A DIY (Damp It Yourself) story: DynaMat, FonoMat…Yoga-Mat ????
Normally I listen to music in my car with the volume set at ‘sane’ levels. But once in a while I get this urge to crank up the volume towards the ‘are you deaf?’ mark for a song or two. I don’t use a sub-woofer, but with a custom amp set-up and good speaker boxes, [...]
Tirumala, Tiruchanoor, Vellore and Sripuram.
Parkinson’s Law goes something like "Work expands to fill up all available time" and so it had been for the last couple of months. With work often spilling over into the weekends, we had not gone out for any serious long drive after our Hoysala Temple trip in March 09. It was also around two [...]
