Travels introduce everyone to new places, people, food, culture and many more aspects. But if you are lucky and in the right place at the right time, you end-up getting a unique glimpse of local traditions, festivals, weddings that help you experience the local culture in a totally new way. Last year, I was lucky enough to be in The Netherlands on the second Saturday of November, to witness the annual arrival of Sinterklaas (St. Nicholas), patron saint for children, in a Dutch city from Spain.
While planning our trip to Turkey, our main aim was to include as many diverse activities and places as we could cover in the limited time we had. There were so many options to choose from that we were spoilt for choice and could not decide what to include in the current trip and what to keep for our next trip. Ultimately, we decided to make Ephesus (the most well preserved Roman ruin in the world) as the starting point of the trip; as we had not been to any Roman ruin yet.
Library of Celsus, Ephesus, Selcuk, Turkey
We are just back from a week-long trip to Turkey and loved everything about this country and its diversity – from the epic and diverse landscapes, to the delicious vegetarian food, the beautiful mosques, so much ancient history and the awesome urban culture. While one week is definitely not enough to visit even the main sites here, we had limited leaves and decided to cover as much as we could in this time. And as always, left the rest for our next trip here 🙂
Hot Air Balloon at sunrise, Goreme, Cappadocia, Turkey
Africa. A continent I had been meaning to visit for as long as I can remember. But somehow all my plans were shelved during the planning stages itself after seeing the initial estimates of costs related to the trip. You are right, it just seemed very expensive. Stories from friends and online articles showed such large numbers that Africa seemed beyond my reach for a very long time. However when my wedding date was confirmed for the end of May, I felt that a new beginning deserved visiting a new continent and decided to seriously try and figure out ways to visit Kenya on a budget. And here’s how you can visit it too without emptying your bank account.
A Lion at the Maasai Mara, Kenya, AfricaI stumbled upon this awesome book quite by chance. Off late I have been trying to read more of lesser known Indian authors or lessor known books on India and came across this book on Kindle Unlimited. Intrigued by the setting of the book and the authors love for the living root bridges, I decided to give it a try.
Pic courtesy – Amazon and Kindle Unlimited
“Imagine walking along a meandering path with very many twinkling fairy lights moving all around you in pitch darkness. Inspiring an innocent wonder, adding a bit of magic to the air and bringing out the child in you in trying chase these lights.” – To sum it up in a few words this was my experience at my first sight of thousands of fireflies at the recent Fireflies Festival in Purushwadi with Grassroutes.
Festival of Million Fireflies at Purushwadi. Pic courtesy Sunny Lamba
In the last few months my travel plans seem to have a mind of their own and I have travelled to majority of the places that I had not originally envisaged. Changes have been galore and several airlines have made a lot of money on my cancellations. Thankfully though via another unexpected change in plans I found myself in Jhira Bagh Palace in Dhar, Madhya Pradesh for a long 4 day weekend trip. And I am so glad that my earlier plans did not work out.
Jhira Bagh Palace, Dhar, Madhya Pradesh
Nearing the Sheikh Zayed Mosque on our drive, my sister said lookout for a huge gleaming white mosque – that’s the Grand Mosque. I did and can only describe my first sight of it as truly special – a magnificent structure in white with domes in multiple sizes and beautiful minarets against the setting sun, green palms and white sands. Quite unforgettable.
Sheikh Zayed Mosque / Grand Mosque, Abu Dhabi
Jageshwar, a beautiful temple town amidst dense deodar forests in Uttarakhand, was a last-minute by-chance addition to our itinerary. We had earlier planned to drive directly from Kathgodham to Pithoragarh and stay there for the night. But this drive would have been very long and late into the night (it is not advisable to drive in the hills in the dark), so our cab service advised that we stay at Jageshwar instead. We reached Kathgodham by train, found our car for the trip and after slightly unwanted issues with car quality commenced our long , winding and beautiful drive in the hills. The entire drive in the Himalayas is mystical, with winding roads and blind turns, pine and deodar forests, a river racing along and paying hide and seek, small villages making occasional appearances, beautiful green terrace farms donning the mountain sides and numerous birds either flying solo or in beautiful symmetry.
Views on the drive to Jageshwar, Uttarakhand, India
Nostalgia is a good reason to travel; nostalgia coupled with Himalayas is a mighty combination. In this instance the nostalgia was of my parents for a place called Pithoragarh in the Kumaon hills of Uttarakhand. Both my grandparents worked in Uttar Pradesh (then included Uttarakhand) and at different points in time were posted in Pithoragarh for a brief period. Amongst all of their postings, this was my parents’ favorite place growing up. As kids we too had heard numerous stories from my parents about the place and have always wanted to visit it and see it for ourselves. My mom achieved a significant milestone in age this year and as part of the celebrations we decided to travel to Pithoragarh to revisit a favorite piece from my parent’s childhood.
The Panchuli Range, Kumaon Hills, Himalayas, Munsyari, Uttarakhand, India
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