Little Bar in a small corner of Zermatt

Travel introduces us to many new sights, some that we may be familiar with and some that we come across unexpectedly. While its fun to experience the things that are known, I believe that it’s the sights and situations that we unexpectedly stumble upon that adds to the adventure of the holiday.

On our first night in Zermatt, despite the weather and the cold, we decided to head out and explore the Zermatt night life. We visited a few bars that were recommended to us, but they all opened much later in the evening. Hence we decided to enter this small bar that was in a basement and all we could we see from the road was the sign that said “Little Bar”.

The signage of Little Bar

Dune Bashing in Dubai

No trip to Dubai can be complete without experiencing the actual sun and sand of this desert city. And the tourists in us decided to do just that with the famous and ultra touristy  half day Dubai Desert Safari tour. Well, some may say that it’s just a touristy gimmick and not worth wasting time and money, but I felt that this was something that you should try at least once, as it gives you a small flavor of the old desert life. These tours come as a package that includes – pick and drop from Dubai, dune bashing, camel riding, dance performances in a desert camp, sheesha smoking, arabic coffee and dinner. Now there are numerous tour operators who conduct these tours here, but a word of caution – do check the quality of these before booking, as there are quite a few quality issues and complaints concerning these tours too.

Sand Dunes, Outskirts of Dubai

A big thanks for all the blog awards…. 2

Continuing from my earlier post – The Blog Awards 1, this post continues with thanking all the other fellow bloggers who have nominated me for these various awards and given me a chance to spread the cheer during this festive season. So here we go –

One Lovely Blog Award – I would like to thank Dre at Grackle & Sun,  Celena, Anil Cm and Shantaya for nominating me for this award and honor.

You can follow their blogs at –

1.         Dre at Grackle & Sun – http://grackleandsun.wordpress.com/

2.         Celena – http://myunexcusedlife.wordpress.com/

3.         Anil Cm – http://exxtracts.wordpress.com/

4.         Shantaya – http://thepinkexpat.com/

A Big Thanks for the Blog Awards… Part 1

It makes me giddy (with elation),

It makes me laugh (with happiness),

Because you want my autograph (for all these awards).

 These numerous blog awards have done this to me, wherein I am reminded of this childhood jingle that we used to sing at receiving any awards for our academic accomplishments. Today, I am super happy and elated that my blog (which is less than a year old) has received so much appreciation, recognition and a variety of blog awards. In this short time span, blogging has come to mean the world to me wherein I have made new friends, shared my travel stories with other bloggers, had new adventures while reading posts of other bloggers and most of all writing in my own way. So here’s a big thank you to all of you who have been following, reading, commenting, nominating and visiting this small space of mine…

 For simplicity, I have compiled a list of all the awards that I have received in the last 9 months and will write 2 blog posts to thank all the bloggers who have nominated me and to nominate other blogs for these awards. So here we go –

 The Kreativ Blogger Award – I would like to thank TheBurntMap for this award and honor, in April 2012 (when I was hardly 4 months old). You should visit his blog at http://trippinonlife.wordpress.com/the-burnt-what-2/  to follow his travel chronicles all over India.

2012, the year that went by and 2013, the year to come

December, for some inexplicable reason, always ends up becoming a month of stock taking (of how the year went by) and planning for the brand new coming year (which is exciting). While I have long ago given up the whole resolution business (couldn’t keep any single one anyways) , I still like the chance to prepare for things to done in the new year, holidays to be taken and personal goals to be achieved. I guess this gives the control freak in me another chance to plan for things and be prepared in my own ways. 🙂

So when I has planned for the year 2012, I had decided to set up something for writing on my travels / sharing travel stories (though I hadn’t decided on a blog then), visit at least 2 new places in India and 2 new places internationally in and improve my photography skills.

So how did 2012 finally turn out? Well, 2012 was not a good year personally but it was otherwise a great year and I ended up doing a lot of new things. After reading an article on blogging, I set up this travel blog in late January 2012. I am super happy with it as in less than a year I have 92 posts, support of 950+ followers, 1200 comments, learnt of so many new places (through other blogs) and I have discovered a whole new world of blogging friends. On the travel front – for a long time it seemed I will not be able to visit the 4 new places, as all plans kept getting cancelled for various reasons. But luckily a few plans did work out and I am happy to say that in the end I managed to achieve these travel targets. I ended up travelling internationally to Thailand, Cambodia and Dubai and in India to Delhi, Pushkar and Bundi. Is this enough? Definitely not but I learnt a lot about better planning of holidays, managing more in limited time, improving my photohgraphy skills and discovering the joy in visiting those off beat simple places.

Flying in the Air like a Gibbon

Whenever I travel to any new place, I always like to do a few hidden / not as known things / or things that you normally don’t associate with that place. So in Bangkok, apart from all the shopping and temples, a trip to the Khao San road and other touristy stuff we went for a flying fox eco adventure atop the rainforest.

Now the story of how we found out about this place is also very interesting. A friend of ours had researched quite a bit for her trip to Bangkok but for some reason had not been able to make it. So she had forgotten a lot of details but asked us to do the walk in the trees in Bangkok. I hunted all over the internet but was just not able to find any reference to any walk on the trees. Then by sheer luck / chance I was chatting just with a colleague who had just returned from Bangkok and happened to mention this and he told me that it’s called the “Flight of the Gibbon” and its super fun.

The Flight of the Gibbon, Bangkok

Swensen’s Ice Cream

Ice cream is my major weakness and I just can’t resist it whenever I travel. There is just some kind of an in built mechanism in me that just has to try coffee and ice creams in all new places that I travel to. So when we were going to Bangkok, my friend who had recently returned from there asked us to try the Swensen’s ice cream.

Swensen’s is actually an American ice cream chain that started in Thailand about 24 years ago and this has been a major success here.

Swensen Ice Cream Parlor. Photo courtesy -http://youdefineyou.blogspot.in/2012/10/hello-thailand-2-swensens-ice-cream.html

A Lunch date with May Kaidee

Anyone who is following my blog since a while, will now know that I keep hunting for vegetarian / vegan food wherever and whenever I travel. So when we were planning to visit Bangkok, some friends recommended the May Kaidee’s place to us as a must visit.

Initially we were quite skeptical because vegetarian food in Thailand is quite tricky (in some places that we visited they said that fish and shrimp paste is also vegetarian) but for some reason we decided to go and give this a try. And I am so glad we did.

May Kaidee’s is an institution in itself where vegan Thai food is concerned in Thailand and May’s story is a complete Cinderella story. This place was set up 20 years ago by May (pronounced as Mai), an extremely poor young girl who loved food but couldn’t follow her dream due to the family circumstances.  But after getting an opportunity to move to Bangkok to help her aunt cook in her vegetarian restaurant, May began to create her own tasty traditional Thai dishes that substituted meat with vegetables. And this was a huge success. Today the food at May Kaidee is some of the best vegetarian Thai food you’ll ever find in Bangkok.

When should you inform your boss that you are going on leave???

With my increasing urge to travel all year round, I have found myself always  pondering over the question – What is the right time to inform your boss that you plan to go on leave?

In an ideal world, the process would be fairly simple – drop in a leave application to the boss and viola its done. But unfortunately this world is not ideal and the leave application process does not work this way. In my case even with the latest technological systems (that provide for less human interface and more automated mechanisms) i.e. you can just send an auto request to the million bytes of codes and they auto approve the request – has not worked. 😦

Living many lives in Melbourne

Ever since I have been bitten by the travel bug, Australia has been amongst the top 3 travel destinations in my bucket list. And this love has only grown after religiously watching Masterchef Australia (every season) and the latest “visit Australia” ads. But since I am a budget traveler stuck in debt, this visit had to be put on a back burner till I had my finances sorted. Hence imagine my happiness when I saw that Indiblogger (www.indiblogger.in) and Tourism Victoria have come up with the ‘…it’s your time to visit Melbourne NOW!’ contest. I have been on cloud 9 ever since trying to short list on what are the exact experiences that I want to bring back from a visit to this city that has something for everyone.

Melbourne is a city that I think can be best described as young, vibrant, chic and sophisticated with a few hidden aces up its sleeves. It is a city that has something for everyone – families, solo travelers (even women), couples, friends, etc with a chance to live all kinds of lives – you could be a foodie, a cultural enthusiast, an ardent sports fan, a nature lover, a shopper etc etc. No matter what you want to be, this city gives you an ample opportunity and company to be just that…