We were on a 4-day road trip in Karnataka. After an exhilarating Bangalore to Jog Falls road trip, we continued our journey on a spiritual and architectural trail through the Western Ghats – from Kollur to Sringeri and Halebeedu, before concluding in Mysuru. The falls were in their full glory and we really enjoyed the views. You can read about it in detail in the earlier blog.
This part of the trip was all about temples, ghats, and history – a perfect blend of serenity, devotion, and scenic drives.
Our day began at the homestay. Parth found another kid to play the ball with. While he enjoyed the yard, we packed our things, had piping hot idlis and poha for breakfast and started.
Morning play time!
Our first stop was within 10 minutes – the other side of the main viewpoint that we saw yesterday. A hidden Jog Falls viewpoint was near the Circuit House, which offered a unique side-angle view of the four cascades – Raja, Rani, Roarer, and Rocket. We were closer to the mist and got a side view of the waterfalls.
Side view of the falls
Here was the biggest catch. The previous day, it seemed like all 4 falls were in the same line when seen from the other side. This side showed that they were all at different depths – like when you discover a different perspective while seeing the front-view and side-view in 3D. We were quite early and there were hardly any other people.
It was Parth’s fourth birthday. My parents were coming over to celebrate with us. They wanted to go on a short road trip from Bangalore – the plan was to cover Jog Falls and Sringeri. I hadn’t been to either of them and I invited myself to the plan. Nam had a workshop to attend (which couldn’t be rescheduled) – so it was my parents, Parth and me. We started prepping for the first leg of our Bangalore to Jog Falls road trip.
I sent a message to a friend who I believed would have good recommendations for our route – and he came through! Using his inputs, we planned the Bangalore to Jog Falls road trip itinerary.
Day 1: Bengaluru – Tumakuru – Chitradurga – Shivamogga – Jog Falls (420 km)
Day 2: Jog Falls – Kollur – Sringeri (200 km)
Day 3: Sringeri – Chikkamagaluru – Halebeedu – Hassan – Mysuru (300 km)
Day 4: Mysuru – Bengaluru (160 km)
Our route map for the trip
A total of 1025 km in 4 days. We were going in my dad’s new car – a Honda Elevate. He wanted to test out the car as well – it was the first time he had got an automatic car. They would be going to Kochi via Coimbatore after Mysuru – a total of 1300 km in 5 days.
After visiting Casela Nature Park, the next part of our journey took us to the mountains as we drove towards Grand Bassin – home to the Mauritiuseswarnath Jyotirlinga (yup, it is actually called that!). There are temples dedicated to Lord Shiva and Durga next to the Ganga Talao – a volcanic crater lake. We were greeted by a sight of the giant statues of Durga and Shiva as we got closer to the temples. The Durga statue here is the tallest statue of the goddess in the world. We stopped, offered prayers and continued on our way.
The temples in Grand Bassin
Where to go for lunch?
We started driving towards Bois Cheri for lunch. It was in the opposite direction of our next destination – Chamarel. So we ditched it mid-way and decided to go straight to Chamarel instead. The route to Chamarel was through the Black River Gorges National Park. At the junction where we had to turn towards our route, we could see cars making U-turns and coming out.
Apparently the road was blocked and no vehicles could go through. However, there were cars coming out of the same road – it looked like it was operating as a one-way. We hoped this was not a regular phenomenon as we were planning to pass through this National Park over the next few days as well.
Our next plans were suddenly thrown in the air. We stopped and checked the map – the road to Chamouny was open. This route would go through Bel Ombre and then turn inwards to reach Chamarel. We could still get there in time for a late lunch. What should have been a 28 mins drive ended up being a 1 hour drive. We drove through small towns, got some beautiful views of the ocean from the hill and even saw a beach with waves crashing near it – there are very few such beaches in Mauritius.
Keep reading for the best photos and moments from the trip.
After a couple of relaxed days, we had an early start at 5 am. We packed up and said goodbye to our lovely room. We had a couple of unique places planned for the day. The first one was a 45 minute drive away near the town of Flic en Flac. The road took us back to Port Louis and we drove through and crossed the city – it was early morning on a Sunday and the roads were empty.
We reached Casela Nature Park at 7:15 am, well before our reporting time. The park had not opened to the public yet and we were among the first people to reach. We had booked a special excursion – breakfast with giraffes! This was a package they offered based on advance online bookings with limited slots – we were lucky to get this!
Rushing to see the giraffes!
Breakfast with Giraffes
A bus took us to the giraffe feeding deck. It was a raised wooden platform with two giraffes on one side. The other corner of the deck had a table with food for the humans. Overall, there were around 6 families. Each group took turns to walk up to the giraffes to feed them. As we waited for our turn, other visitors arrived to greet us. A couple of zebras walked by and a peacock flew up to join us on the deck. It walked from table to table hoping that someone would feed it – with bad luck.
We had a slow start on day 2 – catching up on the missed sleep from the previous day. (The links to the entire series are at the bottom of this blog) There was a cafe called Flynbos Meeting Place we had identified for breakfast. The eggs benedict, pancakes and breakfast spread was just too good! Perfect way to begin the day!
A fly repellant
The agenda for the day was to visit Ile Aux Cerfs – an island to the east of the mainland. It was 1 hour and 15 mins away and we had to pass through a bunch of small towns to get there.
The road to Ile aux Cerfs
As we got closer, Nam warned us to disregard any street signs which pointed to the public ferry port and just follow the map. This was much needed – the signs were made exactly like the official signboards to trick tourists and lead them to a port where they were overcharged.
The best way to get to Ile aux Cerfs
How to avoid this scam? Well, you’re at the right place to learn that! Look for a place called “Point Maurice” on the map – it is very close to the Shangri-La hotel. As you keep going along that road (it looks like a private road), you will reach a gate with a barrier. Just make an entry on the register there and mention the name of your hotel. This leads you to a dedicated parking area.
It was an early start from Bangalore. Our flight was at 4 am from Kempegowda International T2 and was a direct one to Mauritius. Thanks to Indigo, a lot of international routes have opened up from Bangalore – very convenient instead of taking long layover flights via Mumbai, Delhi or another country.
Quick side tip: 4 am flights mean hardly any sleep which usually translates to acidity and discomfort for me. After many such flights, I made sure I was prepared this time – eat light the previous day, pack luggage one day in advance with checklists and sleep at 8pm to get 2 hours of deep sleep.
4 am flights also mean beautiful sunrise views from 35000 feet
Journey and arrival – first sights
The flight was almost 6 hours long – that’s a long sitting for an Indigo flight with its hard seats, no entertainment system and no food. The good part was the weather – we got beautiful sunrise views and there was no turbulence throughout the journey. As we reached the island, we could see how huge it was – our reference point was Seychelles (you can read it after this story). There were hills strewn across the island with plains in between and we could see the weather changing every few kilometres.
The Spain leg of our Western Europe trip was done and we landed at Lisbon, the capital of Portugal (you can read the Seville and Barcelonablogs after this one). We left our bags at the airport itself and only carried the backpack. We had to get back by night for our flight to Ponta Delgada.
A short day in Lisbon
The plan was to spend the day in the Baixa area of the city. We took an Aerobus from the airport which is a convenient way to get to the city and got down at Martim Moniz.
First sights of Lisbon
The plan was to explore the district by foot. We saw the famous egg custard tarts (pasteis de nata) at one shop and tried it – it was really good!
It might look weird for someone who has never tried it. Once you try it, you’ll look at it differently
We continued walking and saw the old trams – a historical symbol of the city which started in 1873.
Another historic structure which is worth a visit is the Elevador de Santa Justa – an elevator walkway to negotiate the hilly terrain of the city. It was constructed in 1900 and originally operated using steam!
The giant old escalator of Santa Justa
It was a cold, windy yet sunny day and the sun provided relief from the chilly breeze. As we reached the large town square at Terreiro do Paco, we saw that a music festival, Eurovision, was ongoing. On the other side of the square was the Tagus river.
We quickly grabbed dinner from a restaurant called El Rei dom Frango (amazing sangria and lasagna). Initially, we weren’t sure if it was a good restaurant – the tables were empty when we entered. But we finished our meal and stepped out to see a long queue of people waiting to get a table.
Apparently it was a popular place
In case you are wondering why we didn’t just check the ratings on Google Maps, we were travelling without SIM cards and going “with-the-flow”.
With happy tummies, we took the next bus back to the airport for our most unique experience in the Azores. We would be back in Lisbon for part 2 of discovering the city (below).
Another day in Lisbon
We were back from the Azores. The luggage we had left in the airport locker was still there. We unpacked and re-packed our stuff, took essentials for a 1-day stay and put the bags back. It was super convenient to have a system like this – all that lugging around had been prevented. This time we took the metro instead of the bus.
On the way to our guesthouse, we entered a cafe for breakfast – the worst food of the trip so far. We checked into our room and immediately left – looking for better food.
It was 5:08 pm and we boarded our train to Barcelona. We had just completed the France leg of our trip and got on the train from Nimes – a lesser known town in the south of France. The train sped along the coast as we passed the cities of Montpellier and Perpignon and we reached Barcelona at 8:45 pm. It was a trip unlike any we had done before.
Navigating a maze
There was a direct connection between the train station and the metro. However, it felt like an underground maze as we went up and down different floors, crossing platforms and getting into confusing lifts which had doors on multiple sides (you may enter through one door but exit through another one on the side). I had never seen such lifts before and it was very disorienting.
We got into the metro station of Sants Estacio and evaluated getting regular tickets vs passes. Among all the options, the T-10 ticket seemed best for us as we were only here for two days – we could use the same ticket for multiple people.
Our stay for 2 nights
Finally, we were on our way to our Airbnb which was on a street named Carrer del Camp – the closest station was called El Putxet. We checked into our apartment – an old Argentine lady owned it. She lived on one side of it while she had let out the other side – the entire place smelled of cigarettes. We quickly left our stuff and took the metro back to Catalunya.
The train sped past the sun-drenched landscapes of Andalusia at a jaw-dropping speed of 300 km/h. This was the fastest we had ever travelled on land! Despite the speed, everything was calm and stable inside. We were travelling from Barcelona to Seville in Spain for the next leg of our Western Europe trip.
Getting into the city of Seville
We exited the station (which looked more like an airport) and went on a short side-quest. We had to get our flight tickets printed for the next day and walked into the nearest tabac shop (yup – tobacco shops often function as multi-purpose outlets selling local transport tickets and printouts). Prints in hand, we took a bus to Plaza de Armas – the main bus station of Seville. Some of you may have heard of “Plaza de Armas” in Latin American countries as well. It is a common term used to refer to town squares and literally translates to “Weapons Square” (no weapons kept here in the modern times).
Seville is a very unique city – with architecture and culture that are different from the rest of Europe. Let’s take a quick look at its history.
A couple of weeks ago, I was in Chennai for my US Visa interview (I’ve written a blog about that experience which you can read here). After the interview, I had some time before my evening train back to Bangalore. I picked up the phone and called my ever-dependable sources of information – my parents. They recommended the Egmore Museum. And that’s where I stumbled upon something super fascinating – a display showcasing the evolution of the Tamil scripts from 3rd century BC to modern times.
The rapid evolution of the Tamil script
What really caught my eye was the realization that the Tamil script only began to resemble its modern form around the 15th century. Think about that for a moment – a person today who can fluently read Tamil will be completely unable to decipher their own language’s script from just 600 years ago! And this is for a language whose script has been dated back 2500 years and the language itself to roughly 5000 years!
The Tamil script
So this brought me to the question – what is the age or lifespan of a script? I saw a bunch of scripts in the museum that day and none of them exist or even resemble any modern day Indian language – and these were all from the years 800-1500 CE. Let’s try to go a bit deeper.
A global perspective on the evolution of scripts
To understand the lifespan and evolution of scripts, I decided to pick a few popular languages and scripts from modern times and dig deeper into their stories.
English
The Latin alphabet forms the foundation of the modern English script. It originated in Ancient Rome which was itself derived from the Greek alphabet. Some other interesting facts:
One of the most frustrating things for me while applying for the US tourist visa was how little information was available online. There were multiple versions being posted on Reddit threads (often contradicting each other) and the official websites were very ambiguous in their statements. Also, the portal itself had changed recently and most of the content online was relevant for the old portal. So, I’ve decided to pen down my detailed experience of applying for a B2 tourist visa – essentially my personal guide to the US tourist visa process for myself and my 3 year-old son.
The process started in Jan 2024 (remember this for later). I applied for the US Tourist Visa by filling up the DS-160 form and selecting the earliest available appointment date in Chennai – Jan 2025. I was one of the lucky ones – I got back-to-back dates for the biometric and visa interview – both at the same location. There are people who get dates 1 week apart in the same location or even back-to-back dates in different cities. Phew!
Let’s start with the core question of this article – “When was the last time you explored your own city as if you were a tourist?”
This is one thing I’ve noticed very often (and also find funny) – many of us rarely explore our own city like we would a vacation destination. I’ve been a culprit of this as well – I had never been on a houseboat despite being from Alappuzha. My first time exploring the town was with college friends – I was the “local” guiding them!
Same story in Mumbai where I lived for 5 years. The only Mumbai I knew was my home in Chembur, my school in Mankhurd and the few places we used to visit frequently like temples, markets and restaurants. Now I’m looking forward to a Mumbai visit to explore it as a tourist!
To avoid such a thing happening in my current home – Bangalore, we make it a point to explore the city “like a tourist” whenever we get the chance.
Hong Kong is a foodie’s paradise! With various cultures from across the world coming together, it is a true melting pot when it comes to food. While we’ve covered most of the food places in previous blogs, we will summarize all the iconic foods and places we ate them in this blog. This is for the Hong Kong foodie!
Breakfast at Australia Dairy Company
On our last day in Hong Kong, we said goodbye to our friend, Naveen and made our way down the escalators one last time. We headed straight to the Australia Dairy Company for breakfast. There was a long line outside the restaurant but it moved fast. We quickly got a table and ordered Hong Kong style milk tea, mixed coffee and tea with milk, milk pudding, french toast and sandwich with egg and ham. Everything was so fresh and tasty that we ordered another sandwich with eggs and cheese!
It was day 3 of our trip to Hong Kong. Our destination for the day was Macau – we had planned to do a day-trip covering most of the must-visit places in the city.
Starting the day with 3 breakfasts
As you make your way down the Central-Mid-levels escalator in the morning, the smell of freshly baked goodies would drag you into the bakery called Bakehouse. There was a line at 8 am itself! I have a weakness for bakeries and wanted to eat everything! Since that wasn’t possible, we went for the beef rendang pie, vanilla custard doughnut and egg tart. Everything was delicious! The egg tart felt like a warm hug with a crispy flaky outer cover.
Freshly baked goodies at Bakehouse
Next stop was a tiny place called Fineprint. It had a very unique vibe – dimly lit, a long table in the center and people sitting all around. Most of them were occupied with their own laptops or books. We ordered a half and half – avocado toast on one side and tomato with feta on the other. It was too good – I had never tasted avocado like this before – it was the perfect combination with the buttered crispy sourdough bread!
Discovering delicious food in the tiny lanes of HK
Our third breakfast was a small one – pineapple bun with BBQ pork and wife cake (one story goes that a baker loved his wife’s creation of wintermelon pastry so much that he named it “Wife cake”) at Hang Heung bakery. All these places were on our way to the Macau ferry terminal – so we could just keep eating without any deviations.
Pineapple buns and wife cakes
The ferry terminal at Sheung Wan
Google maps showed us that the ferry terminal was right across the road. But there was no way to cross it – and Maps told us to go half a kilometer down the road and then cross. We stood there for a minute eating our pineapple bun – the bun helped slow us down. That’s when we noticed the metro station entrance right there – and it had an exit on the other side!
Pro tip: don’t always be in a rush. Sometimes it helps to slow down – it opens up new options.
As soon as we entered the ferry terminal, we realised that we hadn’t carried our Hong Kong PAR form. But we felt safe as we had the entry slips which we got at immigration. They asked for neither as we exited immigration to board our ferry. They just looked at the passport and let us go. Huge sigh of relief!
We continue on our Hong Kong adventure in this blog. Last time we explored some of the green oases nestled within the skyscraper packed city. We continue down that path and visit some temples and monasteries and also explore Hong Kong’s culture – both traditional and modern.
Sik Sik Yuen Wong Tai Sin temple
We exited the metro at Wong Tai Sin station and walked over the temple next to it. There were some cultural programs happening next to it – with songs and dances being performed on a stage. The vibe outside was very similar to an Indian temple – many shops outside selling incense sticks and other offerings to the gods. The architecture was beautiful with arches at the entrance and bright colours everywhere – once again, we felt like we were in a movie.
Wong Tai Sin temple’s entrance to the main hall
This was a Taoist temple dedicated to the deity of healing – Wong Tai Sin. After the first set of steps, we arrived at a landing that had statues of the 12 Chinese zodiac animals. A quick Google search told us that my zodiac was the Horse and Nam’s was the Metal Goat. Parth’s animal was the Metal Ox. People kept rushing around them, some praying to them, others walking into the main hall.
Posing with the Chinese Zodiac
Inside the main temple, there were a lot of lanterns hung up. It was an open air area and the lanterns were rotating automatically, powered by solar cells. In the shrine, there were idols and statues, storks and other animals and scrolls. People were kneeling in front and shaking bamboo containers that had sticks with numbers on them. The entire scene reminded me of the Kung Fu Panda festival scene inside the palace courtyard.
In the previous blog, we explored Lantau island and got a glimpse of Hong Kong at night. Home to the most skyscrapers in the world and with mountain peaks offering amazing bird’s eye views, Hong Kong is indeed a vertical city. In this blog, we discover the green side of the city – nestled in between the tall towers. These gardens and parks create a perfect blend of nature and concrete jungle to make up Hong Kong’s urban oasis and make it a unique place to live in.
Hong Kong has a lot of green spaces in the city
Morning hike to Victoria Peak
We started the day 1.5 hours later than planned. But no regrets – we managed to get a good night of sleep and were well refreshed for the day!
Naveen suggested that we hike all the way up to the Peak from his home on Robinson Road. It was not too steep but quite long and took us 1.5 hours to get there. This is when I truly got a chance to appreciate the city from the ground.
The streets are very well planned with enough space between buildings. There were canals made to allow water to flow downhill without damaging buildings and roads – especially during torrential rains and typhoons.
After 10 mins of walking away from the main road, it felt like we were in a dense forest. There was no clue that a megacity was right below us except the low roaring sound of the city – an amalgamation of cars, buses, planes, chimneys, construction and other sounds. One more thing that amazed me was that there was construction happening all the time but there was no dust anywhere.
We begin our Hong Kong and Macau adventure in this blog. We’ve already covered all the travel essentials in the itinerary blog before this. That contains info about Hong Kong’s history, best time to visit, visa, currency, etc. So let’s get started!
Unique immigration experience
Our trip began in Kochi from where we took Thai Airways via Bangkok Suvarnabhumi airport to Hong Kong. We landed in HK at 11:30am and stood in the longest immigration line we’d ever seen. There was only one line leading up to all the counters – like the coiled up queue that you typically see in temples. They had plenty of counters and the line kept moving continuously – there was no bottleneck created at the counters where the official was slow. So, no one complained and everyone kept walking – a brilliant strategy!
Landing at Hong Kong International Airport
We both had made sure our pre-arrival forms matched our passports exactly and it was printed on an A4 sheet – so we had a smooth entry.
Getting the basic supplies
As per our usual process, we converted a minimum amount at the airport to HKD (Hong Kong Dollars), bought an Octopus card – this would give us access to all public transport by topping up the stored value. We looked for SIM cards but couldn’t find any economical options. Our friend had recommended SoSim but we couldn’t find a shop anywhere. So we decided to move ahead to our first stop and look there.
As with all my itinerary blogs, I’ll start this one with the origin story – why did we even make a Hong Kong itinerary?
Nam is a huge fan of Imagine Dragons and she was tracking their latest world tour to see if they would pass by somewhere near India. The closest options were Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia), Singapore and Bangkok (Thailand). All of these places had one thing in common – we could imagine them as being part of a larger trip. Then we saw Hong Kong – a place I’ve always wanted to visit!
It was small enough to cover in 3-4 days and was far enough away from everywhere else that we wouldn’t club it with anything else. Also, a close friend of mine lived in Hong Kong and I hadn’t met him in some time. Enough reasons to pick that as the destination! We bought tickets on Viagogo and got started with trip planning!
Hong Kong is a special administrative region of China. In 1997, it was handed over by the UK to China after their 99-year lease expired. Given its strategic location in the Asia-Pacific region, it evolved from a fishing village to one of the financial capitals of the world (like New York and London). It is also blessed with one the deepest natural maritime ports in the world – it ranks among the top ports in the world in terms of activity.
The word Hong Kong means “fragrant harbour” referring to the incense that used to be traded here.
Temples and skyscrapers co-exist in Hong Kong
Hong Kong has the highest number of skyscrapers in the world with the number standing at above 550. The definition of a skyscraper is that the building should be taller than 150 m. The region is also the 4th most densely populated in the world. Enter the contradiction – over 75% of land is not used for development and is covered by dense green cover. This can also be found in the heart of the city – we’ll explore these places in later blogs.
On the north of Hong Kong is the Silicon Valley of China, Shenzhen (the third most populous in China) and Macau which lies to its west in the South China Sea.
Macau is a former Portuguese colony and feels like a bit of Europe planted in China. It is a unique experience as well and something that we were also looking forward to.
Hong Kong and Macau in the South China Sea
I was particularly excited about this trip because of the food and culture. I had never been to China before and Hong Kong would be a perfect fusion of China and a typical global city. This is also the trip where both Nam and I realised that we were both “city-people” – people who are more excited about travelling to cities.
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AI is supposedly taking over every aspect of life. There are custom GPT-assistants for every task imaginable. One of the popular use-cases is building a travel itinerary with AI Trip Planners. I decided to put it to a test for my recent trip to Hong Kong!
I’ve talked about this before in my blog – a well-planned itinerary can make a world of difference to your trip. My definition of well-planned? I’m referring to the hidden gems, the best of local cuisine and truly cultural experiences. It doesn’t mean I exclude the overly touristy places – there is a good mix of both.
With AI trip planners like ChatGPT and Perplexity, it is super easy to create an itinerary. In fact, it is as simple as typing, “Give me a 4 day itinerary for Hong Kong and Macau and include all the hidden gems and authentic experiences”. Or you could just copy-paste the last sentence and replace the destinations. You can sit back and let AI generate detailed day-wise plans for you. While this can be a good skeleton of an itinerary, it falls short. And I mean, VERY SHORT of what I would call an ideal itinerary. All right then, let’s get into the details!
I love how Perplexity shows the sources just above the answer
What AI trip planners do well
I like to start with the positives. And there are definitely a couple of those.
You need to keep running to stay ahead in the race!!
There’s no time to waste, every second is precious!!!
“I take a (slow) tea break and think about where I am in life. And suddenly, I realise that it has been almost a year in the new job and the calendar is about to turn once again. What am I doing with my life?” How many times have you had this feeling? For me, this question eventually led to taking a career sabbatical – a decision that changed my perspective completely.
Modern city life is fast. So fast at times, that we don’t notice life passing by. That’s the nature of capitalism. That’s how corporates work. Tasks are laid out from morning till night. We keep jumping the hoops, ticking off each task and then go to bed. Next morning, the cycle repeats. There is hardly any time to think about these tasks. Because if you do, you will miss out on a bunch of them and end up feeling inadequate.
A city that speeds up life
This is more so in a city like Mumbai. It never sleeps! I’ve had the opportunity to work in Mumbai for a couple of months. I remember dreading it when I got the assignment. The Mumbai hustle was not something I enjoyed or wanted to be a part of. But within a matter of hours, I was swallowed by the machine. I was no longer an individual – I was a small ball rolling around a complex apparatus – moving from a tightly packed bus to an overloaded shared auto, till I reached my destination. Work was tough and kept the brain occupied the entire day. I never felt the stress that I anticipated and kept going with the flow. Life was easy – there wasn’t a lot to think – just keep doing.
In what felt like a week, I completed those months and was on my flight back to Bangalore! It was a numbing feeling – as if time had fast-forwarded without me realising it.
A “chill” city
I was glad to be back in Bangalore – a city I always wanted to live in. The Bangalore of 2013-14 was the ideal city in my books – it had good weather, was well connected, had ample opportunities, good areas to live in and plenty of good food. The people were nice and the city itself had a “chill” vibe. I remember days when I would go on a walk on the by lanes of MG Road during my lunch break and it would feel so nice and calming!
Fast forward to 2024, Bangalore has been reduced to a shadow of the city that I knew from 10 years ago. Apparently, I was not the only one who noticed all the above qualities of this city (duh!). While its “live-ability” has reduced significantly (I’ve been privileged to not bear the brunt of it to a large extent), some of the above qualities remain. And the important one for me is the “chill” vibe.
I’m grateful to have been around people who have reinforced in me the need to slow down, learn and improve as a human, spend time with loved ones and “experience” life. Thanks to this, I haven’t really been sucked into the corporate “rat race” entirely. Drawing the lines, taking time off, and having a life outside of work – I’ve been lucky to prioritize these decently well over the years.
Entering a new phase of life
A defining moment for me was when my son was born. I was very clear on the kind of father and husband I wanted to be – that meant I had to re-engineer my day to make a lot more time. My job at the time was designed for bachelors (to some extent married folks without kids) – the base assumption was to dedicate life to work. Realization dawned on me that the definition of “work-life balance” had to change further. The perfectly balanced DINK (double-income-no-kids) lifestyle had to change and I needed to break the cycle. NOW!
The idea of taking a career sabbatical started forming when my son was 5 months old. I wanted to spend more time with him and the family. Even though work was entirely remote due to Covid, the days and nights, weekdays and weekends were packed with work – especially because of the festive season. I had seen a close friend opting for the sabbatical policy and opened my mind to it.
Taking a Career Sabbatical – The Decision
I felt that it was the right time for me to exercise the same. Kudos to my company for having a sabbatical policy in the first place. I am super grateful that my circumstances and privilege allowed me to take this pause!
So, I completed the festive period and as soon as we entered the lean months, I informed my manager about my decision. It was planned as a 4 month break. I thought I’d quickly get used to it – after all, I had a good work-life balance, no? Apparently, no!
Struggling to slow down
It was like taking an addict off drugs. It took me close to 2 months to accept that it was ok to spend a day without working all day. I used to panic because I didn’t have meetings to attend, no deadlines to meet. To compensate, I stuffed my day with a ton of things to do – just to make myself feel that I’m not wasting time. Thankfully, most of these things were with Parth – like his morning routine, daily baths, evening walks and night-time reading. No regrets – this was the primary reason for taking the break anyway.
I eased into the new routine along with my baby boy. Ultimately, it reached a point where I stopped noticing whether it was a weekday or a weekend. I felt completely present in the moment – not worrying about deadlines or chasing targets. It felt amazing. Why couldn’t it always be like this?
Realizations and outcomes
That’s when I realised what people mean when they say – when you’re doing your dream job, you never need to worry about retiring. Every day is the ideal day. You don’t need to put it off till retirement. What used to seem utopian suddenly seemed achievable. How? I still didn’t know – I would end up in a corporate soon enough. But I knew I could switch my brain to be more present when needed. The break had opened me up to new possibilities and impacted me way more than I anticipated.
Looking back, taking a career sabbatical was one of the best decisions I made. The break was really productive in many aspects – I figured our family finances, re-balanced investment portfolios, bought insurance (yes!), started using my calendar more productively, read a bunch of books, figured out my career anchors and also made a note on the identity and habits I wanted to create for myself. Now that I look back after almost 3 years, I can see the various tracks that were set in motion in those months. In fact, it has also helped me redesign my current work-life in a way that I’m not sacrificing one for the other (will keep this for another time).
I don’t think I could have achieved even half of this while working full-time on a demanding job. Things actually Moved Faster by Slowing Down!
Finding your balance
Here’s another important bit. While taking a career sabbatical might not be possible for everyone, and that’s perfectly okay, the lessons I learned about slowing down have been invaluable.
Even if you do have the luxury to slow down, it is important to recognize when to hustle and push things harder.
At the end of the day, too much of anything is not a good thing and we all have to find our own paths to balance!
I’ll end this post with something that my first manager told me when I told him about my panic after taking the sabbatical decision. He said –
“In life, always keep upgrading yourself to become a Ferrari. When you get there, you don’t need to feel compelled to drive at 200 kmph ALL THE TIME! You can slow down, enjoy life, experience it and speed up later when you need to. Just don’t forget that you’re still a Ferrari. The choice is in your hands.“
Check out some other non-travel blogs about life, habits and more here.
When we planned our trip to France, we were looking for places beyond Paris and Nice. If you read the previous blog on the Azores, you know what I’m talking about. One place that quickly caught our attention was Mont Saint-Michel in Normandy. From a commute and proximity point-of-view, it did not make sense, especially given our 2 week constraint. The next one was in the south of France – an interesting little city called Nimes (pronounced Neem). That’s the one we picked!
We waited for our bus at a junction in Cannes. The city of Cannes is most popular for being home to the international film festival as well as other festivals. We had spent half a day exploring the town, the Walk of Fame and cute cafes. There wasn’t a lot to do here and we had planned to take a bus in the afternoon to our next destination – Nimes.
The Cannes Walk of Fame
Why did we pick Nimes?
If you check the map of the South of France, there are a bunch of cities lining the French Riviera- Provence-Occitanie region – Saint-Tropez, Marseille, Aix-en-Provence, Arles, Avignon and Nimes. Many of these places are famous for lavender fields. Some are resort towns. All of them are nice stops if you’re doing a slow road trip along the coast from Italy to France to Spain.
Map of the south of France
We were looking for something unique however. Nimes had a bunch of Roman monuments – in fact, it was often referred to as the most Roman city outside Italy. The Nimes arena is considered the best preserved Roman amphitheater in the world. It is still used for concerts. The Maison Carree, an ancient Roman temple, is also considered to be one the best preserved in the world. The best part however was a sight just outside the city and was one of the main things which prompted us to visit here.
I opened Google Maps to check where we had reached. We were supposed to take a cable car to the Tatev monastery. I could neither spot the cable car nor the monastery. I scanned all the surrounding hills but they only had trees. Why did we enter this parking lot 15km away from Tatev in this village called Halidzor?
Where is the cable car?
It was day 4 of our Armenia trip and we were at a remote village in the south of the country. Zaven took us towards the ticket counter and showed us the platform that stood above it. This was the starting point of the cable car. That’s when I realized that the cable car was going downhill – that’s why I couldn’t see the monastery anywhere.
The cable car is called the Wings of Tatev (Such a cool name!!!). It is the longest reversible aerial tramway in the world. At the ticket counter, we were told that we had a set time for boarding and returning on our ticket. The cable car would arrive every 15 minutes and the last one was at 6:45 pm.
Some stats about the Wings of Tatev
Where is the monastery?
Once it arrived and we boarded, I started looking for the monastery. It was still nowhere to be seen. Soon, what I noticed was that the cable car line was shaped like a “U”. We were first going down, then up to the top of the next hill. And after the pillar on that hill, there was another “U” to the next hill and that is the one which had the monastery! We were actually crossing two hills to get there!
We could see cars snaking their way along the hairpin bends on the roads below. I was glad we didn’t spend an extra hour navigating those!
At the edge of the cliff
The monastery is a short walk away from the cable car. It is literally standing on the edge of a cliff. There were many hidden rooms and halls and it was a lot of fun to explore the entire place! Our cable car back was at 6 pm – so we got to spend a good hour here.
Exploring the hidden rooms of Tatev monasteryThe monastery stands on the edge of a cliff
When we got back, we asked Zaven to take us to our hotel in Goris – the town where we were spending the night. Tatev and Halidzor only had basic homestays and would have been difficult with the kids. It turned out to be a good decision.
A remote Soviet town
We stayed at a place called Khoreayi Dzor. It was a castle-like building on a hill overlooking the town. The view from the room was really nice! We could see the mosaic Soviet-era buildings strewn across the town. This would be the most remote part we visited on this trip.
The town of Goris as seen from our hotel
For dinner, we had dolma – lamb and rice wrapped in grape leaves. It was amazing!
Yummy dolma!
Next morning, we had breakfast at the hotel and started on our way back. We said goodbye to Goris! First stop was Shaki waterfalls. We hoped it wouldn’t be as difficult to reach as the Gveleti waterfalls in Georgia!
Waterfall time!
The hike was not very steep to begin with and thankfully, we got to the end quite fast.
A relatively easy hike to Shaki waterfall
We turned around the corner to see the waterfall gushing down with its spray rising almost as high as the waterfall itself. It was a beautiful sight. We took off our shoes and went into the water – it was ice-cold and the kids quickly had enough of it. Parth was quick to ask for his cap to cover his ears from the spray and sound.
Super refreshing experience
We spent a lot of time here, enjoying nature. It was the most underrated experience so far. And there was no one there except us!
Our next stop was for an early lunch at the same food court. The kids were fast asleep after playing in the water, so we packed lunch for them and left for Noravank monastery.
Another unique monastery
This monastery is unique in its shape – it’s a two-storey structure unlike the others we had seen so far. It was also surrounded by brick red cliffs inside a gorge which gave it a very different look as compared to all the monasteries we had visited. I guess the others were tired of monasteries by now but I couldn’t get enough of them as each was different.
Posing in front of the Noravank monasteryThe two-storied red monastery of Noravank
That’s how the trip was planned so that we wouldn’t be repeating stuff. We got back to Yerevan by evening, explored the Cascade area, had dinner at Rehan restaurant and slept. Our flight back to India was the next day. We had finally completed the trip that originated with the Air Arabia vouchers left over from our Uzbekistan adventure!
Researching is one of my favorite parts of traveling – apart from the actual travel of course. I look for the most unique experiences possible in a place and try to accommodate it into the itinerary. After all, if I am traveling all the way to another country, I don’t want to come back and find out that I missed something good. This is not to say that the trip should become a long check-list. Rather the contrary – know everything that the place has to offer and then make an informed decision – pick only those that appeal to you. This process led me to Khor Virap, Mount Ararat and Areni in Armenia.
It was Day 4 of our Armenia trip and we found out that it was Zaven of Hyur Service, once again, who would be taking us. This was a 2-day trip which meant he would be staying overnight with us and then bring us back the next day. There he stood next to the Mercedes Vito with his black sunglasses and white shirt – sharp as always.Our two-day excursion to south Armenia started with Khor Virap, Mount Ararat and the Areni winery.
As you drive from Sevan Lake to Yerevan, you will pass through some mountains. At one point in this journey, you might spot a snowy peak in the distance. It is an imposing structure and disappears again for a while. The mountains soon give way to reveal the greatest symbol of Yerevan – the snow capped peaks of Mount Ararat.
Ararat approaches on the way to Yerevan
We’ll cover Ararat in greater detail in the next blog, for now, let’s call it the Burj Khalifa equivalent of Yerevan – a monumental structure that defines the city in many ways and forms a part of the lasting memory of being here.
It was the second last day of our Georgia trip. We had booked a car for the next day to cross the border from Georgia to Armenia. I got a message from the driver, Iuri, that we would have to modify our plans slightly.
We were supposed to visit Haghpat monastery on the way to Dilijan. His message was exactly this, “Good evening. I wanted to warn you that the road to the Haghpat church is closed, we will go tomorrow only towards Dilijan. The road was washed away by the rain and the road there is blocked. I don’t know for how long, but I don’t think we can get there”.
Floods in Armenia
I searched on Google and found that the entire north of Armenia was affected and train services were suspended. The main highway between Georgia and Armenia had been washed away by the floods, the worst they had seen in more than a decade. The entire train system was also blocked. And we had to cross over the next day!
It was day 8 – the last day of our Georgia trip and we had to drive back to Tbilisi. Our hotel had been kind enough to pack breakfast for us and we started early at 6 am. We had to return our car before 9 am and take our next car to Armenia by 10 am.
We had to drive over the Gombori pass to get to Tbilisi – both our hotel and driver from the previous day had told us that the road was really bad due to renovation happening there. We hoped it would not be closed. We passed by some petrol pumps but decided to skip them for now. Our car’s fuel indicator showed that we were good for at least 100 km and our route was around 92 km long – it should make the cut. In any case, we would be over the mountain pass soon and we could refill petrol.
The roads were empty at this time of the day. We left behind the villages and entered the dense forests and mountain roads. Here also, we saw sections of the road which were completely washed away and had to drive with caution. We started wondering if the Georgian definition of a “bad road” meant a road with some potholes – in that case, we had nothing to worry about.
The road to Gombori
Soon enough, the road ended and became a dirt track. We couldn’t drive faster than 15-20 kmph as we rolled over the mud and negotiated the sharp turns along the cliffs. Gombori pass was brutal.
That’s when I noticed the fuel indicator – it was depleting fast. The original indicator showed the distance based on the speed at that time – we were cruising at 70-80 kmph without much use of the accelerator or brakes. But the current road was a mileage killer. And it continued for another 20 kms even past the town of Gombori!
All my hours of driving in Bangalore traffic came in handy now. I used to set the “live mileage” option on the dashboard and keep looking at how it changed when I hit the accelerator and brakes. The trick was to minimize acceleration to maximize mileage. It also meant I had to minimize braking – otherwise I would need to use the accelerator more. Bottomline – I had to drive at a steady speed using gravity as much as possible. Since we were on a downhill slope, it helped.
The mountains were almost done but there was no sign of a petrol pump. I continued my fuel-saving driving style for almost 40 kms more until we hit the main highway. Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, we got to a petrol pump! Thankfully, I hadn’t told anyone else about this predicament we were in – driving through that horrible road was bad enough. I didn’t want anyone worrying about getting stuck on the remote mountain pass with no help nearby.
It was smooth sailing from there till we reached Tbilisi. If you have been reading our earlier blogs, you would know that we were worried about the parking fine which the car owner had informed us about. We had tried checking the parking systems in Telavi and with some locals also but found that there were no fines outstanding on our car. He only charged us the cleaning fee and didn’t mention anything about the fine – happily taking back the car and asking us to leave him a good rating. All’s well that ends well, I guess!
Our next journey was a road trip to cross the border into Armenia. We had found out the previous day that Armenia was witnessing its worst floods in over a decade and the northern part was most affected. The highway that we were supposed to take to enter the country had been entirely washed away in the landslides and floods. Our driver had told us that he knew an alternate route through the mountains and we kept our fingers crossed that we would reach our next destination safely.
An Exciting End – Dirt road, petrol scare and upcoming floods
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In the last blog, we covered the romantic towns of Sighnaghi and Telavi in the wine region of Georgia. We were traveling to Kvareli with our driver for the day, Rezo. It was Georgian wine day!
Rezo kept explaining about the region as he drove – how Telavi and Alazani valley lies between the Caucasus and the Gombori range, about the history of grapes, Georgian wine and a lot more. Here’s a quick run-through for you.
Birthplace of wine
Georgia is widely considered to be the birthplace of wine in the world. Even the status of “Mother of Georgia” that we saw in Tbilisi was holding a cup of wine in her hand. Remains of a clay qvevri – the traditional pot used for making grapes and fossilized grape seeds were found in this region which have been dated back to 8000 years ago. Yes, you read that right – EIGHT THOUSAND! The amazing part is that the traditional method of winemaking in qvevris is still practiced to this date.
Miniature qvevris – the vessel used to make Georgian wine
Over 520 varieties of grapes call the Alazani valley their home. The unique climate of the region housed between the Caucasian mountain ranges along with the extremely fertile soil on the banks of the river make the perfect combination for grapes to flourish. The harvest season is between September-October and almost everyone we met told us to come back again to enjoy the grapes and the harvest related activities.
Georgia is mostly a mountainous country with the Caucasus mountains running along the entire length of the country and the rest of it merging with the Armenian highlands. One of the vast stretches of plain lands lies to the east – the Alazani valley, home to the famous Georgian wines! That’s where we are going in this blog. We’ll learn more about grapes and wine as we tour vineyards and the beautiful towns of Sighnaghi and Telavi in the Kakheti region of Georgia.
It was Day 6 of the trip and we started our day at Stepantsminda. I opened the curtains to see the Gergeti church and Kazbek mountain one more time before packing our bags. We said goodbye to this beautiful mountain town in Kazbegi and started our drive to Telavi – the main city of the Kakheti region.
We’re on Day 4 of the trip. We just arrived at Stepantsminda in the northern part of Georgia (close to the Georgia-Russia border). Our stay for the next 2 nights was at the Mountain House Kazbegi, a beautiful property with a view of Mt. Kazbek and the Gergeti church standing in front of it. Wherever you stay in Stepantsminda, try to get a room with a view of the mountain – trust me, that will enhance your experience multifold!
View of the Gergeti church and Kazbek mountain from our room
Travel hack (almost)
It was around 5pm and we decided to go for an early dinner. It was drizzling and there was a light breeze – so we couldn’t walk. We headed to the Rooms Hotel Kazbegi – the most luxurious and expensive hotel in the city. This is a nice travel hack which we’ve used before. Even if you don’t stay in the best hotel (to save costs), you can always go to the restaurant there for lunch or dinner and still experience the place.
Towards the north of Georgia lie the Caucasus mountains and on their other side is Russia. Georgia and Russia have an open border – which means, Georgians don’t need a visa to cross over and the same is true for the Russians. While we didn’t have any plans to cross over, our next leg was a Georgian road trip to beautiful mountainous border district of Kazbegi.
If you haven’t yet read the previous part, you can find the links at the bottom of this blog. Let’s get started!
It’s Day 3 of the trip and we’re in Tbilisi. Check out the previous blog where we participated in the Independence Day celebrations of Georgia. We carry on from the Holy Trinity Cathedral of Tbilisi or Sameba, as it is popularly called. Let’s continue with our Tbilisi travel guide!
On checking the map, we realised that we could walk down the hill to reach Rike park and the cable car. It wasn’t a long walk but a little tiring carrying around two sleeping toddlers.
We had bookmarked a place called Old Generation – it had only a few reviews but really good ones for its wine and vibe. We got off the main road and walked a couple of streets inside to find a tiny little shop with a few tables.
Didn’t expect much after seeing the exterior of the building
Finding a hidden gem
An old lady sat inside and welcomed us in – it had a nice homely feel and we were the only ones there. She brought out some goblets and a huge jar of red wine. She said it was made in the Kakheti region in her vineyards there. The wine felt nice and cool in the goblet. The place was also very cool – a much needed change from the hot outside. I still remember the first sip I had – it was the most refreshing sip of wine I’d ever had. It was sweet wine – meaning it was not fermented as much as the more popular dry wines.
It was afternoon on Day 2 and we stepped out for lunch. We were on our way to the Independence Day celebrations.
First, we stopped at Pasanauri restaurant and had some authentic Georgian food – Khinkhali (soupy dumplings), Khachapuri (cheese filled bread – think of a better version of pizza) of two types – Adjarian and Imeretian and kebabs stuffed with the local sulguni cheese. I’ll publish a guide on the different varieties of khachapuri in the next blog.
This wasn’t our first time eating Georgian food though – we had been to a Georgian restaurant in our last visit to Almaty and loved it. Our table was right next to the barbecue area where the chef was making the kebabs. Parth enjoyed watching him rotate the kebabs on the fire.
Next stop – Liberty Square (also referred to as Freedom Square). We couldn’t really see the square when we had arrived here the previous night. In the center, was a monument with St George slaying a dragon on top of it. The square was surrounded by the City Assembly and some prominent hotels.
Our trip to the Caucasus started in Georgia. Since we’ve already covered the brief history, geography and plan of the trip in our previous blog, we’ll get right into the trip of how we travelled and our arrival in Georgia.
There were 6 of us this time – Nam, Parth, me and our friends who also had a 2.5 year old toddler. We had done a couple of trips in our pre-parent days and this was our first one together with our toddlers. We were excited and terrified at the same time.
Flight and immigration
We started from Bangalore at 10 AM and took a domestic flight (Indigo) to Delhi. There was a terminal change at Delhi (we didn’t have to lug around our bags as it was a direct check-in till Tbilisi) and we boarded our Indigo flight to Tbilisi at 8:30 PM. It was really convenient to have such low cost options to travel internationally. Thanks to the Diner’s Club credit cards, we could have our meals of the day in the lounges at both airports.
Our A321 Indigo flight to Delhi
It was a smooth flight to Tbilisi and we landed at 12:10 AM local time (1:40 AM India time). The immigration was the fastest we’ve ever had, it took hardly 5 minutes and the officers were really nice – this was in complete contrast to all the horror stories we’d heard of deportation of Indians from Georgia. So, a really good start to the trip!
We’ve reached a milestone on this blog. What you are reading right now is blog #100!
The journey has been long and challenging. I never started writing to get to this number, but here we are anyway. I’ve written earlier in detail about the route this blog has taken. There are two parts, so I suggest you read them after this blog – I’ll link them down at the end as well.
To summarize, it started off as a place to capture memories from college, then I started writing about college trips and enjoyed that more. After college, it became a place to capture thought trails during my travels. Then it became a “proper travel blog” with full itineraries and immersive travel blogs – aimed at making you feel as if you’re travelling with us. I also started exploring other areas of my life in my blogs – so ultimately, this website has become a Pensieve of the memories that I would love to access later in life.
Dumbledore’s memory repository
The big question which keeps popping up is – what next? To put it in the words of my 2-year old son, “Where we are going now?” – a question he came up with when we were travelling to attend multiple wedding functions across Karnataka and Kerala in a span of 2 weeks.
One thing is certain – the travel blogs will continue to come in. I absolutely love recounting the entire trip in detail and believe that it captures the emotions way better than photos. I know that most people don’t prefer to read in so much detail, but this is something I will continue to do for myself and my family. Up next is a series about my very first trip to Europe where we will cover some popular destinations.
A visit to the home of Ferrari in Maranello, Italy is coming soon
Another thing I’ve been working on is to make the website’s flow better and more discoverable. Staying true to my last blog on upskilling as a way to achieve frugality, I’ve learnt a bunch of SEO (Search Engine Optimization = techniques to make your website appear on Google Search) and optimized all 99 other pages for keywords, title, meta description, alt text for images and all that jazz. It seems to be working as the organic search traffic to this site has almost doubled in the last month and continues to go strong. The Kazakhstan series is getting the most number of hits followed by Uzbekistan and then Austria. I’ll keep experimenting to make the overall website better and better.
There are two other topics that I’m really passionate about which I will delve into at some point in future.
One is my parenting journey as a working dad. I’ve struggled to find enough material about this as most “parenting” websites are written from a mother’s POV. I did manage to find a couple of books based on which I’ve implemented things over the last 3 years. I’d love to create a repository of my learnings. Hopefully, it becomes a bunch of content that gives dads more confidence in their parenting journey. It would be fun for my son to read them (I hope) when he is a grown-up!
The second one is balanced leadership. There’s a lot of stuff out there talking about leadership but it is mostly from a POV of climbing the corporate ladder. My take on leadership is that it is a mindset that reflects across all aspects of life – you don’t always need to be the person rallying from the front. The focus would be on how to strike a balance and grow in all aspects of life. I have been doing annual goal-setting and reviews for every part of my life for the last 4 years – I will be sharing my learnings from there as well.
I have no idea how all of this will fit seamlessly into this website. I guess I’ll figure that out on the go – I have a couple of ideas in mind which I will experiment with.
That’s about it. This blog was mainly to break out of the mental block – “oh no, what do I write for the 100th one? Aaaargh!”. I’m super grateful for each and every one of you who has been there on this journey with me – reading, commenting and supporting at every step. Thank you!
Many organizations talk about “frugality” as one of their core values. It is one of Amazon’s famous leadership principles. It is a handy value to have – not just in corporate but also in life. It might come easy (not generalising here) to a person with a typical Indian middle class “mindset” (note that I don’t say middle class “background” because people’s mindset is not the same as the background they come from).
Recently, there were a few discussions at my office around this term which got me thinking – what really is frugality? How does one go about being “frugal” in a corporate setting?
There is one aspect of frugality that is not spoken about much. That’s what I’ll address in this blog and I’ll bank on my learnings over the last 10 years in corporate life.
In April 2020, the world had been shut down. This statement might sound weirdly apocalyptic to someone who hasn’t experienced those 2 years but thankfully, we made it through. Those years helped a lot of people take a pause from their super busy lives and explore hobbies and interests. I discovered pockets of time where I could do more brain work. For example, cooking – I had to be physically present but my brain wanted to do more. That’s when I discovered the world of podcasts and became a podcast learner.
One of the first things I picked up on podcast was learning more about the history of Ancient Egypt. After our visit to Egypt in 2019 (which I have covered in detail in earlier blogs), I was fascinated by the level of planning and attention-to-detail that ancient Egyptians had – creating things that survived for more than 3000 years. I went on the Google Podcast app and started listening to the History of Egypt podcast. I loved the story telling and how the episodes were structured and got hooked.
It had become a daily routine – wake up, finish off the morning hygiene routine and get into the kitchen to prepare the meals for the day (yup, this was a daily activity during Covid and something I miss now). In the kitchen, on the window sill, I would prop up my phone and switch on to the next episode of the podcast.
We reached Luxor, Egypt – our destination after the Nile cruise. It was evening and the orange setting sun covered the city with a very warm and welcoming vibe. It was a lot cleaner than Cairo and far less crowded.
Luxor, known in ancient Egypt as Waset and later Thebes, is one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world. It was the capital of Upper Egypt at a time when Egypt was split into two kingdoms. Today, it is called the largest open-air museum in the world as it is home to temples, tombs, monuments and giant statues.
We headed to the Luxor temple. The promenade near the temple, called the Luxor corniche, was beautifully landscaped and would make for a nice evening walk.
The city of Luxor – near the Luxor templeThe ancient path connecting Luxor temple with Karnak
We entered the temple and spotted an obelisk. Our guide, Karma, told us that there were originally two obelisks here – one of them was gifted to the French and could be seen at Place de la Concorde. Regular readers of this blog would have encountered these obelisks in many of our other trips – like the one inthe Vatican, Istanbul and Paris (blog coming soon).
The home of the obelisk which is in Paris today
The temple had statues of Ramses II, Tutankhamun and his wife. The temple was dedicated to the sun god, Amun. The statues of Ramses depicted different stages of his life – one was made for every 10 years that he ruled.
After a thrilling drive to Abu Simbel, we were now on our boat, all set to depart for the Nile river cruise. Our guide, Ahmed, was also joining us till the first stop, Kom Ombo. After lunch and a short rest (we had started our day at 3:30am), we climbed up to the sundeck to enjoy the breeze and the view. We could see some giant pillars in the distance – presumably of the temple we were visiting next.
The Nile is the longest river in the world. It runs 6650 kms long starting in Uganda (the White Nile) and emptying itself into the Mediterranean Sea. It is the reason for Egypt’s existence (the Gift of the Nile) and was home to one of the most advanced civilizations of the world at its time.
The Nile offers views of greenery and desert at the same time
Here’s a bit about the Nile cruise. There are many companies that operate these multi-day cruises on the Nile. Some go downstream the river from Aswan to Luxor and few even go onwards to Cairo. You can also find cruises in the opposite direction – it would depend on how you plan your itinerary. If you want to experience the Nile river’s glory and also not get bored by the long travel, we highly recommend that you pick the Aswan-Luxor stretch for your Nile river cruise.
We continue on our Egypt adventure (check out Part 1 – The Egypt Itinerary). It’s day 2 of the trip and we woke up in our hotel at Giza. Breakfast was included with our stay and we ate veggies, yogurt, sausages and croissants – I love breakfast buffets! Our cab driver was waiting outside to take us to the airport. We were flying out to the southern part of Egypt, to the city of Aswan.
At the Cairo domestic airport, a person met us who took our bags. He spoke to our guide as well – so we assumed they were part of the local team to guide us through check-in. He walked with us till the security check-in, turned back and asked us for money. It was a con! We told him to collect his dues from our guide as we didn’t have any cash. But he had our bags and we were forced to part with 50 EGP (roughly 120 INR at that time). Anyway, lesson learnt – do not accept help from anyone for bags!
It was a small airport with few check-in counters – we had to wait till our flight’s name appeared on the boards. We were travelling by Air Cairo and it was a 90 mins flight. On the way, the sight was desert everywhere. At one point, we could spot the Red Sea in the distance to our left.
The entire country is desert and the Nile
We passed over a giant lake, saw a highway that was as straight as a road could be – thanks to no obstacles in the landscape (we would be covering both later in this blog) and finally landed in Aswan.
Food is a huge part of the overall travel experience. Every place in the world has its signature dishes – food that is made better there than anywhere else. Whether it is the falafel of Amman or the kulcha of Amritsar or the vada pav of Mumbai or the croissant of Paris – once you’ve eaten them in their home ground, everywhere else seems inferior. Then there are foods that are adopted by different people who give their own twists to them. Today, we talk about one such food.
I woke up this Sunday with a craving. Sadly, we didn’t have the raw material to make it at home. And we couldn’t go out as other plans were already made. Basically, this blog is not a story of how I went about successfully fulfilling my craving. In fact, I take you through most of the versions I’ve encountered and how I loved (almost) all of them! This is one thing I could eat every meal of the day, most days of the week. Yes, I’m talking about the DOSA!
Dosa is a dish that instantly connects me to my childhood. My mother used to make the best dosas in the world – crispy but not lethal (yes, some dosas can be lethal – we’ll come to that), with the perfect amount of ghee and paired with some amazing versions of the versatile coconut chutney. No matter which restaurant we went to, nothing could beat this simple yet elegant version of the dosa. Over the years, my mother has changed her style of dosas but I’ve figured out how to replicate the OG version. Now, my favourite “nostalgic version” of dosa is the one that I make <humble brag>.
Welcome to Part 3 of our series, “Three Small Countries”. We continue our trip in Europe exploring the smallest countries in the world. We’ve already covered the smallest two countries – Vatican City and Monaco. We skip ahead a few spots on the list – number 3 and 4 are the Pacific Islands of Nauru and Tuvalu – hopefully, we will get to visit them in the future. This time, we explore the 6th smallest country in the world – Liechtenstein!
To continue the comparison trend of these countries to other popular places in India, let us pick the city of Mysuru (Mysore) in Karnataka. The beautiful city covers an area of roughly 160 square kilometres and can entirely swallow up the country we are visiting today – Liechtenstein. Don’t worry, I’ll tell you how to pronounce this!
Nestled in between Switzerland and Austria is the double-landlocked country of Liechtenstein (pronounced Lick-tahn-stine). The only other double-landlocked country in the world is Uzbekistan – hope you’ve already read those blogs!
Liechtenstein is a German-speaking country and is considered a “principality” headed by a Prince. The Holy Roman Emperor decreed this as a principality in the year 1719 and named it after the family that owned these lands – the Liechtensteins. After that, is a long and messy power struggle as Europe witnessed two World Wars and multiple changes of power. Liechtenstein was smart to take the route of its neighbour, Switzerland and adopt neutrality – a large reason why it is still an independent nation.
That much history is good enough to get us started. Let’s dive right into the travelogue:
Hello there! This is Part 2 of our series, “Three Small Countries”. In the first part, we visited the smallest country in the world, Vatican City. We continue our journey through Europe and move to the second country in our list.
This country has the highest population density in the world. The word “population density” always reminds me of Mumbai – especially Dharavi. Well, if we compare sizes, this entire country is even smaller than Dharavi and fits within 2.02 square kilometres. And it is in sharp contrast – being one of the richest countries (per capita) in the world. You may have guessed it, we’re talking about Monaco!
A bit of history to understand how this country came into existence. Monaco is entirely contained within France except for its Mediterranean coastline. It has been ruled by the House of Grimaldi since the 1200s. Given its location, both France and Italy had an interest in it – however, they mostly left it to be administered by the prince of Monaco – this makes it a principality (which it is to this date).
Size has never been a constraint for Monaco. It hosts the Monaco Grand Prix (Formula 1 racing) and is home to the Monte Carlo Masters 1000 (Tennis). It is also famous for the Monte Carlo casino, luxury cars, yachts and it provides a home to the rich and famous from around the world. One question that comes up – is Monaco the same as Monte Carlo? The answer is No. Monaco is the country, Monte Carlo is just one of the districts in the country.
The Monte Carlo casino
All you geography buffs would have noticed the flag of Monaco on the cover pic of the blog – it looks exactly the same as that of Indonesia right? Well, the main difference is the height to width ratio of the flag. Monaco’s flag is 4:5, while Indonesia’s is 2:3. Some people claim that the shade of red is slightly different – but tough for the average person to perceive it (I couldn’t tell the difference!).
Can you go to Monaco as a tourist? Yes! Getting to Monaco is quite easy. It is hardly 20 kms away from Nice, France. You can hop on a bus and get there easily. No additional visa requirements. You can also come in from Italy, which is also only around 20 kms away – but there is a higher chance that you’d be on the French side. The currency is the Euro itself. It is expensive to stay in Monaco and affording a hotel can be tough. So, it is advisable to stay in Nice and do a day trip.
And now, we go into the travelogue. After a really nice lunch of pizza and wine, we walked to the port where we took bus number 100. This would take us to Monaco.
How large does a place need to be to be called a country? Well, apparently, size doesn’t matter when it comes to that decision. It is a far more complicated affair to define what a country is – we’ll probably not get into that in this blog. But what we will explore are 3 of the smallest countries in the world. We will try to understand a bit about how they came into existence and what life is like there. This is part 1 of my travels to these countries.
Do you know about Bengaluru’s Ulsoor Lake? It has an area of about 50 hectares and lies right in the middle of the city. At any point on the banks of it, you can clearly see every other part of the lake – so, it’s not too big. Can an entire country fit into Ulsoor lake?
The earth has completed yet another revolution around the sun. And it has started on yet another one (how could I not use a pun on this one!).
It’s time to put up that brand new 2024 calendar. Every year, a new calendar would come home. It would end up on the side of the fridge or one of the wardrobes in the bedroom. Like the newspaper, this has been replaced by digital calendars now which are available at our fingertips. At best, we have some desk calendars now which actually have the primary purpose of being a photo album!
A typical Malayalam calendar
The unique thing about this calendar was that it also had the Malayalam calendar and important dates marked along-side the Gregorian one. Strangely enough, the Malayalam year starts on the first day of the Chingam month, which comes around August 15th. But wait a minute, isn’t Vishu the Malayalam new year? Vishu, the first day of the Medam month which falls around April 14th, used to be the traditional start of the new year before the current Malayalam calendar (the one with Aug 15th as the new year) was started in the year 825 CE.
Different cultures had developed their own ways of tracking the seasons and revolutions around the sun. The most interesting one we’ve seen on our travels has been the one in Egypt – a calendar that was designed around the Nile river’s water levels.
The Egyptian calendar at Kom Ombo
Wherever you are in the world and whichever calendar you follow, there are some things which are common. The start of a calendar year is seen as an opportunity to start afresh and set goals for the new year. It is a time for new year resolutions and manifesting what you have always wanted. Some people are successful in meeting their own expectations, a majority fall short as life gets in the way.
I’ve never really been big on resolutions. I’ve tried them in the past but never really made it past February or March. So, I changed the approach about 4 years back. In the new mental model, the end of the year acts as a milestone for introspection. This presents an excellent opportunity to take a pause and look at various aspects of life in detail.
Being a big-time productivity nerd, I’ve tried out different models to create the perfect “Annual Review” format. In this blog, I’ll cover some of the TOOLS that have really helped me over the years.
December 1st 2022. I woke up at 5 am, freshened up, packed my bag, picked up the car keys and stepped outside. It was pitch black and I drove my red Swift guided by its lights. Seven minutes later, I stopped in front of the Titan showroom and took the lift to the fourth floor – the lift was a little rickety which is usually the case in such buildings. I took my first tentative step inside the gym. The first feeling was that of intimidation.
The definition of gym – in my head
I was never a fan of gyms – they made me very uncomfortable. Right from childhood, I had been thin with skinny arms. And in my head, gyms were a place for bodybuilders with huge muscles on every part of their body – I could not relate to it at all. And once you started gym, you had to take protein powders (which would make you abnormally disproportionate) and before you knew it, you would be having supplements and steroids of all kinds. Everyone knows that, right? Going to the gym for “fitness” was not something I had encountered growing up.
The definition of fitness – in my head
Fitness had a few definitions. One of them was running and cardiovascular exercises. All you had to do was get 20-30 minutes of walking or jogging and that would take care of the entire body. It’s ok if you aren’t able to do it regularly when you’re young – once you are older and have more time, you could always walk a little extra and catch up. If you wanted to go a step further and improve your flexibility, you could get into Yoga. That should tick all the boxes for overall fitness, right? Wrong!
I always loved going back to Kerala for my vacations. Since we always lived outside Kerala, it was a long journey that had to be made – but we still went at least once in a year. One of the things that I really looked forward to was spending time with both sets of grandparents – especially my maternal grandmother. She would tell the best of stories and it was a daily ritual of sorts. There used to be a power cut every day in the evening and we would all go and sit outside the home, looking up into the clear sky with every star visible – almost the entire town was pitch dark during this time. This was also the time when she would tell a story. It would usually be from one of the epics – Ramayana, Mahabharata or one of the Puranas. Sometimes, the story would go into such detail that we would have episodes stretching across days! I wish I could keep hearing her stories every day.
This is part two of my story on “How I Overcame the Resistance to Writing”. If you directly landed here, you might need some more context – go check out Part 1 here.
Done with Part 1? Let’s move on and see what was the thing that made me overcome the resistance to write.
I spoke earlier about arriving at an “identity” which is reinforced by the habits we inculcate. When I did this exercise, I was a bit too ambitious and took up way more than I could handle. Each habit was given a 2-min version which had to be done everyday that was eventually meant to make it a regular habit.
Remember how the world was supposed to end in 2012? The year when every culture in the world had at least one reasoning as to why the world would end or “transform” in that year. Seems like a long time ago, right? I was graduating from my engineering college that year. It was also the year when I started my blog. And this piece is about that blog. You were expecting to hear about the end of the world? Sorry, no conspiracy theories here!
I have always been fond of writing – I remember writing poems in my school days and entering competitions. I also used to write short stories with imaginary characters. It gave me a sense of strength – creating something on my own. Social media was not big at the time – Facebook was just catching on in India, Orkut was big but not at all like the platforms of today. The best way to write was to start a blog and that’s the route I decided to take. I wrote mostly about different thoughts I had – my experience of joining B-School, joining a club, the different trips I went on etc. It was not a regular habit and more of a journal. An outlet to ensure that I don’t lose the writing habit.
Contrary to what many think, Cappadocia (Kapadokya in Turkish) is not a city or town. In fact, it is the name given to a region in central Turkey spanning across five major provinces. If you are planning to visits, some of the towns where you will visit and probably end up staying are Mustafapaşa, Ürgüp and Uçhisar. Larger cities in the region are Aksaray, Kayseri and Nevşehir. As you might already know, Cappadocia brings to mind the images of “Fairy chimneys” and hot air balloons. What are these chimneys exactly? Read on to find out!
Last time, we covered the ancient city of Ephesus and had started on our journey to Pamukkale and then Konya. If you haven’t read it yet, no worries – I’ve provided all the links at the bottom of this post.
Our drive to Pamukkale took almost three hours. Our guide, Abdul told us that there were many thermal springs found in this area and the steam was used to generate electricity – we even saw some of these plants on the way. This region was also famous for its cotton – the cotton grown here is considered among the best in the world, only second to the famous Egyptian cotton. In fact, the name Pamukkale itself means “cotton castle” – but that is mainly attributed to the sight that we were about to see.
Here is a map-view of the journey that we will be covering in today’s post
(Image credits: most pics on this blog of Troy and the other Turkey ones were taken by my dad 🙂)
After almost 2 days of exploring Istanbul on our own, we joined our group – we had opted for a group tour for the rest of Turkey. My parents were also part of the group – a big reason why we went for this trip – it gave us more confidence to take Parth on his first international trip. As soon as we reached the airport and saw them, Parth jumped into his Appuppa’s (grandfather) arms and stayed there for a good part of the next 4-5 hours! We would be back in Istanbul for the last day of the trip. You can read about it here.
Our first stop in the trip was the western city of Çanakkale. It was a long drive – took almost 4 hours and Parth slept throughout the drive on Appuppa’s lap. On the way, we saw the Marmara sea, a sea contained entirely within Turkey and the one which connects the Aegean Sea to the Black Sea. On the Aegean end of the Marmara is the Dardenelles strait (Çanakkale is at the narrowest part of this) and on the Black Sea end is the Bosphorus strait which we had crossed in Istanbul. The Marmara Sea and the straits split Turkey into its Asian and European sides. The Marmara is named so because of the marble islands in it (the origin of the hindi word “sangmarmar”).
We reached Istanbul late the previous night after travelling on the speed train from Ankara. Parth was still operating at India time and we were up at 3 am entertaining him. We were all drifting off to sleep when we woke up to the sound of knocking at around 4 am. I went to check if someone was at the door and saw that it was not the main door – it was the wardrobe door opening and shutting. And it kept swinging back and forth. We also realised that our bed and the entire building was swinging like a pendulum. It was an earthquake! And we were stuck on the 20th floor of the hotel! I opened the main door and checked if people were evacuating – but everyone seemed to be fast asleep! I went to the window to check the status outside, but no one was coming out on the streets. Digging back memories of what to do in such a situation, we found the strongest table in the room and hid under it – hoping that the building was strong enough to hold together. The rocking motion continued for at least 5 more minutes – what felt like an eternity! The weird part was that it was not a simple vibration – everything was swinging back and forth (with significant “amplitude”).
When everything came to a standstill, in our heads, we could still feel the rocking motion – similar to how you feel the swinging motion of a train after having travelled for a day or two in one. We wondered if it was in our heads or actual aftershocks. We couldn’t go back to sleep – so we got ready for the day. I kept checking the news and saw that there was a strong earthquake with its epicenter midway between Ankara and Istanbul (where we were the previous day). Over 2500 buildings were damaged but luckily, there was no direct loss of life. It was a terrifying experience, to say the least!
Our trip began in Istanbul, the historic city which resides on the border between Europe and Asia and the perfect place to experience Turkish food! We reached our hotel in Beyoğlu – very close to the Galata Tower by 4:30pm. This was on the European side. In fact, most of the monuments are also on the European side. Since it was mid-November, we did not have a lot of daylight left. I had put together a very ambitious itinerary for the roughly 1.5 days that we had here before the rest of the group arrived – and we were raring to go. In fact, Parth was super energetic and kept jumping on the hotel bed!
We walked out onto Istiklal street – a famous walking street. Just 2 days before, there was a horrific bomb blast on this very street which took the lives of some people. Due to this, there was extra security positioned all along the street. We weren’t planning to walk down Istiklal right away, we were keen on going to the Asian side of Istanbul! Before we head further, a disclaimer – this is going to be a food blog!
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Central Asia is a fascinating part of the world and is picking up fast in terms of tourism. My first exposure to this part of the world was in school geography where we learnt about the Steppes – vast empty grasslands that spread across the continent. I had also learnt that the USSR used to occupy most of this region until it collapsed – giving way to new countries. There was a mystery associated with these new countries – the “Stans”. The largest of them is Kazakhstan.
Kazakhstan is the ninth largest country in the world. As we went about planning our Central Asia itinerary, we knew it would be tough to cover the entirety of Kazakhstan – most of the country was covered by desert or steppes. Which meant a lot of travel between places. So, we did our research and picked the Almaty region – a region that is often compared to Switzerland in terms of its natural beauty.
You can find some of the most striking landscapes imaginable, really amazing hiking options and even skiing in the winters!
Kazakhstan has borders with Russia, China, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan. It is the largest landlocked country in the world (poor Caspian Sea is not considered a “real sea”).
This blog contains:
Best Time to Visit
July and August are the peak season months in the mountain regions as everyone heads out here to avoid the heat. November to March plunges the temperature to sub-zero (Astana, the capital of Kazakhstan is the second coldest capital in the world after Ulaanbaatar in Mongolia). So, the perfect time to travel is….
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Kazakhstan’s largest city and its erstwhile capital, Almaty can come as a big surprise for a person touring Central Asia. The city has a very European vibe – very well planned and developed and beautiful. There are footpaths and cycling lanes everywhere, fountains and benches for people to enjoy the evening, plenty of parks for children and the city has mandates to add a certain number of public spaces every year! It is truly amazing how well they have prioritized urban planning keeping the citizen at the center of it all. It is perfect for a family trip with kids – read on for more details on this!
Before 1993, Almaty was called Alma-Ata – “alma” translates to apple and “ata” is grandfather – so Almaty is technically the “the grandfather of apples”. The oldest ancestor of the modern day apple has been traced back to the Tian Shan mountains of Kazakhstan!
An apple shaped fountain in Almaty
Almaty is the perfect base to explore the lakes and mountains of the Tian Shan range. There are quite a few unique national parks in the area which can be covered in quick day trips.
Now that we have some background, let’s dive back into Day 2 when we just arrived at our hotel in Almaty after a beautiful tour of the Kolsai and Kaindy lakes and Charyn Canyon. This is also the perfect time to subscribe and get your free virtual world tour (through our blog, of course!).
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Day 2
After we’d settled into our room, we started looking for dinner options. We had not taken a local SIM in Kazakhstan – so we had to do all our planning when we had Wifi. We found an authentic Georgian place nearby and decided to go there for dinner. It started drizzling and we picked up the umbrellas that were kept in the hotel for guests. The weather was beautiful – nice and cool with a drizzle. The streets were lit up and nicely maintained – we felt like we were in Europe.
For dinner, we had the original Khachapuri – shaped like a pizza and filled with cheese, spinach and an egg on top. Even the thick crusty parts were stuffed with cheese. We also ordered Khinkali – Georgian dumplings filled with lamb, herbs and a juicy broth. They were essentially soup dumplings. They were significantly different from the Manti that we had been eating so far – those were also filled with meat but dry and had to be eaten with yogurt. We also ordered some vegetable stew, Georgian style fried chicken and a Russian honey cake (which was delicious!). With happy tummies, we ended the day.
It was our last day of sightseeing for this trip and the plan was to enjoy Almaty. We did not have any plan for the day. So we quickly put together an itinerary on Google maps and marked all the places we wanted to visit. Then we struck off the ones which seemed like a stretch and which would greatly increase the amount of walking involved (we skipped the Central park and Republic Square).
We started the day with a walk to the Big Apple Coffee Shop down the road from where we were staying. One thing that we were constantly impressed with was how well the city was being maintained and planned for the future. Public spaces was a constant feature everywhere we went – parks, broad footpaths, cycling roads, play areas for children – it was very well thought out and executed. There were still more public spaces being created!
And their maintenance was also good – there were people sweeping the streets, blowing away dried leaves from the grass and footpaths using a leaf blower and even trucks which were washing the roads with pressure jets. There were sprinklers employed to water the plants regularly. Vehicles drove as per the street lights and gave way for pedestrian crossings (this wasn’t very good in Uzbekistan). For a city so young (it was being rebuilt after independence from USSR), they had sure got their priorities right, at least in terms of city planning. We felt sad thinking about the state of Bangalore and the city it could have been – with its amazing parks, lakes and weather.
This boy made use of every opportunity to get on a slide!
Parth did not miss out on the opportunity and jumped right on a jungle gym and slide that he saw. He had to be extracted from it and taken along. For breakfast, we had some interesting looking pancakes and shakshuka along with coffee.
ShakshukaStarting the day with some coffee
The waiter there was kind enough to give us his phone’s hotspot to let us book Yandex cabs to go to Panfilov park. That’s when we discovered that we could book two cabs together on Yandex. And the tracking would appear on the same map! So, no switching back and forth to check the status of each booking – both would appear together on the same screen and the same map! Yandex worked on offline mode as well to help navigate our current location and use most of the other functions – like ride history. Uber and Ola had miles to go to catch up to Yandex in terms of features. The biggest downside of Yandex was the size of the app and the fact that it would drain out our battery if active for too long. So, we had to kill the app every time we were done using it.
The roads around the park were broken as new pipes were being laid. We walked across the makeshift bridge and entered the park. It was a beautiful park which had memorials for the 28 soldiers from this area who died defending Moscow from the German invasion during the World War.
The beautiful Panfilov Park
As we walked down the pathways, we saw some squirrels running around. They were the most peculiar looking squirrels we’d ever seen – they had pointy ears and a long and bushy tail! They were more than twice the size of Indian squirrels. We spotted two of them running around chasing one another. Parth joined in the chase along with 2 other kids in the park. Parth was making friends with every kid he came across – they were bonding over “kukoo-achi” peekaboo and games which involved chasing each other.
It was fun to watch these squirrels run around
We walked over to the Zenkov Cathedral which stood in the middle of the park. It is a Russian Orthodox church built in 1907. It is apparently made entirely of wood, no nails and one of the only buildings that was unaffected by the 1911 earthquake. We couldn’t figure out the “wooden” part as there was a lot of plaster and tile work which had been done on the structure. It was very eclectic inside – way more than any cathedral we had been to – many paintings adorned the walls, there were golden candle holders of various shapes and sizes all over the place and images of bishops stood staring from the walls. It was a mix of colours that greeted us everywhere we looked.
The Zenkov CathedralCandle holders inside the cathedral
Close to the cathedral was a children’s park with many kids playing. He spent a good 20 mins playing there, telling an “anna” to not climb on the slide because it was Parth’s turn and generally running around the whole thing climbing up and down.
Our next stop was Zhibek Zholy Street. We couldn’t visit the Green Bazaar as it was closed on Mondays. So we decided to walk along the street and see if we could find any souvenirs. All shops around the bazaar were shut – so no luck there! But as soon as we crossed the bazaar, the air was thick with the smell of chocolate. It smelled more like hot chocolate. Curious, we walked towards the smell (like how Tom and Jerry float towards the scent of food).
It took us to the doors of the Lotte Rakhat factory. We could see people working inside the chocolate factory and remembered Willy Wonka. Sadly, we did not get entry into the factory. Instead they pointed us to a store where they sold their products at factory price. We bought a bunch of chocolates, wafers and biscuits. We stopped outside, finished the wafers, walked in and bought some more!
We continued walking down Zhibek Zholy towards the metro station. On the way, we picked up some Boba tea. Parth did a great job of sucking the boba pearls till the end of the straw but couldn’t get it into his mouth as he was biting the straw and making it too narrow. Finally, he had to wait till we finished the drink, opened the lid and gave him the boba. He was delighted! He was enjoying Almaty the most!
We entered the Almaty metro. The ticket counter is on the level below ground level. The platform is almost 4 levels below that. It feels like you are reading the Earth’s core to find the metro train. Do exercise caution and hold the handrails of the escalator so that you don’t fall down after realising the depth and angle of it. To give you a comparison, the Bangalore metro stations go to depths of 80 feet below the ground. In Almaty, it is over 250 feet! And mostly covered on a single escalator!
Hold on tight so that you don’t fall off!
The stations were standard unlike those in Tashkent. The trains were also the new type – a typical metro like any other city.
We got down at the Almaly station, took the walking street in front of the Opera House and walked to our hotel. Parth ran off to play in the fountains on the street.
The Almaty Opera HouseThis kid was having the time of his life!
We got back to our room, rested for a while and went out for lunch to a nearby cafe. We ordered some burgers, sandwiches and pad thai. They said it would take 30 mins and Parth decided to sleep at that very moment. So we went back to the room, put him to sleep in the bed and brought in our food as takeaway. Everything was excellent – the place was called Cafe Plus and it is right behind D’Rami.
We left our room at around 4pm, got cabs and went to the Kok Tobe gondola start point. We got return tickets for the cable car. It was a ride which offered a panoramic view of the city. We passed by homes, hotels and even the highway. At the top of the hill was an entire amusement park! It had an upside-down house, a Ferris wheel, remote control cars for kids, souvenir shops, roller coasters and even a zoo! There were very good viewpoints for the city from where we could spot artificial ski slopes. A family walked up to us and asked if we could click a photo together – Indians are famous here as well. Parth seemed keen on driving an RC jeep – so we put him in one. One minute into the ride, he started crying and screaming. He made it to 2 mins (out of 5) and we had to get him out.
One of the installations on Kok TobePanoramic view of the city from Kok Tobe (can you spot the ski slope sticking out?)
We visited the zoo, walked around the rides, got some ice cream and then took the cable car back to the city. The area just outside the cable car station – in front of the Republic palace had a huge fountain. Parth ran straight towards it. And Nam was fully prepared for this. She changed him into his swimming shorts and let him join the other kids playing in the water. Ever since we saw such fountains in Vietnam, Nam wanted to enter and play in it. Now, she was living it through Parth – in fact, she had packed swimming shorts for this very purpose! He was initially not too happy that the water was cold but slowly adjusted to it. We had to literally pull him away when it was time to leave. We stood in the shade of the Abay monument, changed him into warm clothes and walked towards the Abay metro station.
Hotel Kazakhstan -similar to Hotel Uzbekistan in Tashkent
Maps.me is the best maps app in Central Asia. Its offline maps feature is miles ahead of Google maps. And the level of detail is astounding – it even tells you where the benches on the footpath are, which places have cycling roads, where to find currency exchanges and ATMs (with high accuracy) and even lets you go on navigation mode completely offline! This along with Yandex made us realise that Google and Uber are far from the best options out there.
We took the metro from Abay back to Almaly, had some coffee and ice cream and walked to our dinner place – a restaurant called Aurora that was right opposite our hotel. There was some huge party happening there and all the waiters were attending to it. They were so distracted that they brought a chicken dish when we had ordered vegetarian. Poor experience and a sad way to end the trip. But we didn’t mind much as we were all quite tired and wanted to get back to the room. We packed our stuff and got into bed.
Day 4
It was our day to head back home. We booked Yandex cabs at 4:45am (the sun was already out) and left for the Almaty airport – it was a bit far from the city center and took about 25 mins (this was a lot as compared to our previous stays but significantly better than Indian cities). We took Air Astana back to Delhi and then split to reach our homes in Mumbai, Kochi and Bangalore. Everyone was home by 7pm. Tired, because we had walked for more than 7km per day on average, but happy to have travelled to these beautiful countries.
And that concludes the short trip to Kazakhstan. Check out our other blogs on Kazakhstan here to plan your perfect itinerary:
The Kazakh Itinerary – the perfect short and sweet itinerary through the Steppes
The next part will be our itinerary and travel tips which will help you plan your trip. Subscribe right here! Leave us a comment below if you liked this one. Feel free to share this with your travel-loving friends!
As we set about planning our trip to Central Asia, I wondered what I knew about Kazakhstan. I knew it was a huge country – it is the ninth largest in the world and the largest landlocked country by area. I remembered from school geography that the Steppes were somewhere there. And I knew the entertaining tennis player, Alexander Bublik. Here are some things I did not know – Kazakhstan is largely empty – one of the emptiest in the world in terms of population density. The country is largely covered in the vast grasslands known as the Steppes. Its capital Astana is the second coldest capital city in the world (after Mongolia’s Ulaanbaatar). And its mountains and lakes are out of this world in terms of natural beauty – rivalling even Switzerland.
Let’s dive right into the trip – we start off from Uzbekistan’s Tashkent international airport. We’ll put up the itinerary and planning blog right after these (just as we had done for Uzbekistan) – so, sit tight and enjoy this journey of Kazakhstan!
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Day 1
We started early in the morning from Tashkent. Our flight was a Boeing 767-300 ER (there aren’t any of these in India as far as I know) on Uzbekistan Airways from Tashkent to Almaty in south-eastern Kazakhstan. There were plenty of vacant seats and we moved to window seats after boarding was completed.
As we took off, the landscape of the city quickly change to desert and sand dunes. It changed soon to grasslands and lakes. And by the time we reached our destination, it was completely different! The flight time was less than an hour. But Kazakhstan was 1 hour ahead of Uzbekistan and we had to adjust our watches accordingly.
As we touched down at Almaty airport, we could see huge mountains on our right side with snow capped peaks. Yes, snow! Those who have been on the Uzbek journey with us (check out those blogs after this one) know that we had just come from places that were getting baked at 38-40 degrees. So, this was a much welcome change!
Snow capped peaks welcome us at Almaty
There were some new airlines (SCAT, Arystan Air) and some familiar ones (Air Cairo). We also saw Russian-made planes – the ones which had wings on top of the fuselage!
Funny looking old Russian planes!
Immigration took some time as the queue was long. They scrutinized our passports for a long time and let us through. We collected our bags and met our tour guide outside at the arrival gate. We quickly exchanged currency (1 USD converted to 441 Tenge during our trip).
A cloudy day at Almaty
Our car for the trip was a Mitsubishi Delica. It looked like a double evolved Pokemon version of an Omni.
Our captain loading up the van with our luggage
Looking at our driver, one would think that he could be an Indian – from the north-east or Ladakh. Only when he opened his mouth and Russian came flowing out would we realize that he is a local here. This is something interesting we observed. As we got closer to China, the ethnicity of people was also changing. The existence of ancient trades routes and frequent invasions made sure that different tribes moved around and mixed, giving a very diverse set of cultures and features to the people of this region. Central Asia is indeed at the crossroads and a melting pot of cultures – forming a unique culture of its own.
Once the luggage was loaded, we started on our drive towards the Kolsai Lakes. The first thing we noticed was that our car had a right-hand drive similar to India. But the vehicles were driving on the right side of the road like in the western countries. When we looked at other cars, we found a mix. Most were left-hand drive while a few were like ours with a right-hand drive!
We stopped to get something to eat – a cheese samsa and some sausage rolls and fruits for Parth (we were too hungry and forgot to take pics!). The highway was very good and we were cruising at 110kmph. On both sides of the road we could see farms. On the right side, the mountains stood tall – the same ones we had seen after landing at the airport. There were dark clouds looming in the distance indicating that we might get rain. But the way ahead of us was sunny and we hoped it would remain that way.
After about an hour of driving at around 12:30pm, we got off the highway and stopped at a restaurant for lunch. The menu had a lot of lagman (noodles) options. The taste was really different from the one we had in Uzbekistan. The Uzbek one was more mild and was mainly tomato sauce. This one had a lot more garlic, had a dark sauce and was spicier. Very similar to the Chinese food we get in India. The khachapuri was also like a pizza instead of the puff pastry we got in Uzbekistan.
It’s always Lagman time in Central Asia
Parth had a fun time playing with an “akka” he met there. He was running all over the place and playing hide and seek with her. It’s really amazing how kids have the same language all over the world.
Making friends in a remote part of Kazakhstan
We continued our drive and the landscape changed drastically. The farmlands gave way to open fields. The fields were barren with only some grass and they lay as far as the eye could see. There were absolutely no trees at all. We were driving through the Steppes! We spotted wild horses running through the fields – this was a bucket list item for Nam! No words or photos can describe the vast emptiness that we were passing through – the only thing for miles miles was the road we were on and a few wild horses running into the distance!
Pictures cannot do justice to the vastness of the Steppes
The roads were as straight as could be – we’d seen similar roads in Egypt and Jordan – both running through deserts where there was no need to build curves around obstacles. The hills were also as barren as the rest of the landscape and we felt like we were in the middle of nowhere! Soon, we took another turn and the landscape changed again. This time, it was absolutely barren – similar to Leh in India – no vegetation at all. The road curved around deep gorges and we stopped at our first sightseeing spot – the Black Canyon.
We could see the Charyn river flowing in the depth of the canyon and a line of trees on the banks of the river. That was the only green stretch for miles! The canyon was so named because of the dark colour of the rocks. It wasn’t as jet black as we expected but it was definitely blacker than the rocks around. We clicked some photos and moved on towards Kolsai.
The Black Canyon
The landscape changed rapidly and the barren, rugged terrain now gave way to green hills and soon, we started seeing trees. There were streams flowing down the hills and some of the hills even had thick woods. We passed by a few villages – the first ones after over a hundred kilometres it seemed like. We crossed Saty village, the one where were staying that night. The picturesque landscape reminded us of Kashmir and Switzerland. There were plenty of yurts (the nomadic tents which are common in Central Asia) which acted as camps for tourists. Soon, we reached the parking area of the Kolsai Lakes.
We were going to visit the first Kolsai lake only. The second one was an 8km trek away. The third one was another 5-6km away and almost at the Kyrgyzstan border. In my head, it felt like a wonderful idea to go on that adventure – but I guess that ship has sailed for now and I’ll need to wait a bit for it to return.
It was cold and damp when we arrived – there was light rain and a strong breeze was blowing. The temperature was around 15 degrees – a huge departure from the 38 degrees we were experiencing just a day back. We walked into the view of the lake – it was beautiful! It looked as pristine as some of the lakes we had visited in Austria. We climbed down to reach the level of the lake and walked along the banks towards the starting point of the boats. The path was narrow, there were steps built into the path for the first half of it and the rest was just mud and roots. It was a challenge carrying Parth all the way but we managed it.
The entry point to the trail along the lake
Panoramic view of Kolsai lake
The place was way too crowded for somewhere so remote. We hardly saw any people and few vehicles on the way but this place was jam packed with tourists. There were a lot of locals too as it was a Saturday and people were enjoying their weekend. There was loud music playing at the boating area and suddenly from Austria and Switzerland, we were transported to Ooty and Kodaikanal. We didn’t spend much time here and walked back. The initial viewpoint was a lot more serene and beautiful. We clicked a lot of pics before heading back.
We reached our guesthouse – Algados. It was close to the arch which marked the beginning of Saty village. Our hosts welcomed us with a huge mug of kumis – fermented mare’s milk. I was looking forward to having this but not in a mug so big! As you would have guessed (seeing the word “fermented”), it was extremely sour and there was no way we finished the whole thing.
Kumis – fermented horse milk
We had an early dinner. The table was covered with food – donuts, a pastry with sugar dusted on top, cheese, fresh butter, jam, biscuits, a brown powdery thing (tasted like the powder used to make laddus) and some other smaller items like chocolates.
It looked like a royal spread!
The actual main course was a soup with lentils, meat and vegetables.
The main course was this soup with meat, veggies and pasta
It was a simple meal and very light on the stomach – something that we all appreciated after a week of heavy food in Uzbekistan. We slept early and got more than 9 hours of sleep!
Day 2
Breakfast was at 8am – the breads, butter, cheese, jam and biscuits stayed on the table. The main course was a couple of fried eggs. It was a recurring theme – the table was full of biscuits and wafers etc and the main course was really light.
We finished breakfast, packed our bags and got ready to leave for the Kaindy lake. The road to the lake started just outside Saty village near the huge cemetery. The road was basically a dirt path and only 4×4 vehicles and local buses could make the journey. It was a bumpy ride but our driver expertly navigated our way. We crossed a couple of streams which ran across the road. The water had a strong flow but our car was upto the task.
Funky looking buses crossing the river
The mountains were covered with a thick cover of coniferous trees – the view was out of this world! The mountains were getting closer to each other and we were right in the middle of them. Once again, we felt photos and words could not describe these incredible landscapes!
The mountains were covered in the thickest woods we’d ever seen!
We reached the parking where our horses were waiting. Our guide, Aida asked whether we wanted our horses to be tied to each other – the answer was, of course, yes! We didn’t want our horse running off crazy on the side of the mountain! The initial path was a gentle upward slope which kept going for about 10 minutes. The last 6-7 mins was a steep descent and we got our first view of the lake. The horses dropped us at the end of the trail and we walked the last stretch for about 8-10 mins. There is also a walking path which is slightly longer – takes about 20-25 mins to get to the lake.
The path got narrower and steeper as we went along but these horses were experts!
We had got perfect weather for today – the lake was an amazing shade of blue and there were many dead trees sticking out of the lake. Dead trees? Let’s quickly have a look at the story of this lake – Kaindy is a very young lake – it was formed as an aftermath of the devasting earthquake of 1911. An entire side of the mountain collapsed and brought down with it all the trees which now stood silently in the middle of the lake. The lake isn’t exactly dead – there is a lot of algae growing under the water and we could see ducks wading around.
We clicked a lot of pics. We also spent some time standing at the viewpoint and enjoying the remoteness and silence of the place. Such pristine beauty was best enjoyed in this kind of an environment. Aida told us that we got to enjoy this because we came early. By evening, even Kaindy would be full of tourists! During winters, the lake would be completely frozen and the mountains covered in snow.
The eerie trees in Kaindy lakeGroup pic timePanoramic view (notice the beach on the opposite side?)
We made our way back on the horses and reached the parking. My parents and Parth were waiting for us. Parth wasn’t too thrilled to see us on horses and when Nam tried holding him, he quickly wanted to get down. We were glad we didn’t take him. On the way back to the guest house, we saw many many mashrutkas (local taxis) full of tourists making their way to the lake. We stopped near the point where the stream crossed the road and clicked some pics. The water was not too cold.
Proper group pic time
We reached the guest house by 12, had lunch (plov and lentil soup in addition to the breads etc and a new pastry coated with condensed milk) and then started on our way back.
The landscape changed again in reverse – thick woods gave way to green hills which gave way to barren craggy mountains. We made our way to Charyn Canyon – it was a narrow road and it felt like we were going into the middle of nowhere. The entire setting was very similar to the road leading to the Wadi Rum desert in Jordan. We were cruising at about 100kmph and suddenly the car got caught in the wind! The driver immediately slowed down as the car was swaying from side to side. We saw a board that warned travelers about natural calamities and one was the wind!
We entered the parking area to be greeted by many tour buses – these would be the day tours starting from Almaty. We walked along the path towards the “valley of castles” and to our surprise, there was no river! The bottom of the canyon was dry and there were vehicles running there and people walking! We had seen the river flowing through the Black Canyon but it seems to have diverted once it reached here. The canyon looked quite impressive but the heat was scorching.
Charyn CanyonIf not for the scorching heat, it is a nice walk along the valley of castles!
We took refuge under umbrellas and clicked pics. The walk back seemed longer than the way towards the canyon as we just wanted to get out of the sun.
We headed back to Almaty, only stopping for some coffee at a petrol station. Parth had some apple juice there and was jumping up and down for the rest of the ride thanks to the sugar high. Our driver and guide dropped us at our hotel, D’Rami. We checked into our room – it was a very nice hotel. The only issue was that it was on the 3rd floor with no elevator. But the room made up for it and it was a good upgrade from our guesthouse stays! Time to take some rest and continue our trip!
The Kazakh series is here:
The Kazakh Itinerary – the perfect short and sweet itinerary through the Steppes
Almaty – The Origin Of Apples And An Amazing City!
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B-schools mean business! What better lesson can one learn on the first day at IIMK! I hadn’t even joined college and here I was submitting assignments and following deadlines. And the very first day – the registration day – was a clear indicator of how things worked here. The day had a proper itinerary from morning to night. Talk about an organized and systematic life!
This post is exclusively for each and every one of you – my incredible subscribers!
A few days ago, I received a notification that this blog has crossed 250 subscribers. It took me a couple of seconds to register that! Two Hundred and Fifty people have chosen to follow along on this journey with me – I never imagined that I would be able to reach out to so many people. I know the number may seem “small” by today’s social media standards, but honestly, numbers have not been my driving force. What really matters is the connection. Analytics of the blog shows me that in the last year, over 13,000 people have read my blogs. I am super grateful for each and every one of you who chose to subscribe and be part of this community! This post is my way of saying THANK YOU!
Immersive Storytelling
My mission has been to capture my stories in as much detail as possible, so that you – the reader – gets a sense of experiencing the journey along with me. In this age of videos and live-stream vlogs, this is my attempt to keep the power of imagination alive through words.
It takes me back to my childhood, reading stories by Enid Blyton and JK Rowling and more recently by authors like Ken Follett. They had the magical ability to make me “see” entire worlds unfold in my mind. I could feel the stones beneath my feet as I wandered the corridors of Hogwarts, heard the plane engines roaring in World War 2 and could practically taste those warm scones in the Famous Five (not a fan of them after actually tasting them!).
My attempt here has been to replicate that effect through, what I call, “immersive blogs” – painting each moment with a lot of detail to transport you from wherever you are reading to wherever the story unfolds.
Gratitude to my pillars
For a large part of my initial blogging journey and even now, the most loyal readers were my family and friends – really grateful to them! They were my pillars – consistently offering feedback, engaging with posts and sharing their thoughts. What might seem like a simple reply to an email or a quick comments means much more to me. These interactions silence the inevitable doubts that creep in from time to time (things like – who am I writing this for? Is anyone even liking any of this?) and keeps me going.
So, next time you come across a blog or post that you particularly enjoyed, do drop a note. That small gesture can make an enormous difference in someone’s creative journey 🙂
Looking forward
As I continue on this journey, I’d like to request a favour from all of you. These insights would be invaluable for me:
What draws you to this space? What do you think sets it apart from other content out there?
What would you love to see more of? Is there anything you’d like me to write more about? Any new formats, directions, topics etc?
Excited to hear your thoughts and ideas 🙂
And with that, I’m off to write the next blog series about the enchanting island of Mauritius….
