Truly Asia

We had gone to Malaysia in early Apr 2007 and somehow when I came back I couldnt write do a post on that as I concivied and then the bed rest and then the baby... life got busier and busier and busier... But in the last 2 months multiple friends have mentioned multiple times that this vacation needs a post on ur blog... So I am doing the same...

Its been really long so I really dont remember the trip in so many details... So what I am going to do is to post the trip itenary and the snaps...

We started from blore and the itenary was basically as follows:
Day 1 morning - reach Kuala Lumpur... We reached the airport early morning... Used the spa of a nearby 5-star hotel to get fresh and then went on a tour of Petrona Towers did a lot of Shopping and then took a night train to Lankawi...

Day 2 noon - reached Langkawi and checked in Berjaya Beach Resort, we had actually got a fantastic deal for this and we realised this only when we reached there as the place was superb... We spent about 3 days there and saw the Eagle Square, the different beaches, the cable car where Don climax was shooted and that indeed is a lovely place, was the aqaurium, did a day trip to Pulau Payar which has various things like snorkelling, sucba diving... I had done snorkelling before in Lakshadweep and i thought the corals were better there more colorful and pretty... but Scuba diving was a first and we both thoroughly enjoyed it :)

Day 5 start from Langkawi by boatin the evening and reach Penang by almost night. It was a one day halt there and we did all tourist thingies... went to the Snake temple, the budha temple, up on the cable train etc... and then in the night we took the train back to KL....

Day 7: Reach KL early morning... Get fresh in one of the hotel spas again :) and then went to Genting had a blast of the day there in various rides... the plan was to spend half a day in rides and half in the casino but we both got so involved in the rides that we forgot abt the casino totatlly :)

We took the flight back to Bangalore the same night :(

so here are the pics Pics

God's Own Country

In the long independence day weekend we decided to give ourselves a little freedom from the city hussle bussle … the intial idea was to just get out of the city somewhere and then the wish to see Kerala backwaters in monsoon clubbed with our close friends daughter’s baptism in Cochin we headed towards God’s own Country…

The group this time was myself, hubby, ojas my 9-month old son, my sister Aparna and a couple friend Manish and Shivani, owing to the fact that we both had new cars (ours cedia and their city) and our craze for driving it was not a surprise that we decided to drive … We left Bangalore on Thursday i.e 14th August evening around 6:30 pm in the evening… It was one of those Bangalore monsoon days when there was a sudden crazy downpour and if u have been to Bangalore in the recent past you will now what becomes of it roads when it rains…. We got terribly stuck in city traffic and could step out the city only by 9:00 or so and that when we took some internal routes and came out on Hosur Road after Electronic City… and then all of us were hungry and hence began the search for a good place to eat, fortunately due to our previous travels on this road towards Yelagiri, towards Yercaud, Chennai etc we knew of quite some places to eat in Hosur…. We decided to stop at Hotel Renaissance and had a good dinner or Dal tadka, aalo jeera and some good tandoori rotis…. Ojas also had his milk there and then slept off….

Other important thing we did there was book a hotel in Salem for the night halt… and then we started the journey towards it… It was still pouring cats and dogs and the roads looked lovely, both me and hubby love rains and were enjoying the drive but Manish was not really happy with the night drive…. Nonetheless we reached Salem at about 01:00 in night and started searching for the hotel that we had booked and on the way we saw this very nice and huge hotel called Salem Castle and we decided that rather than going further and finding the other hotel to be not good lets checkin here if they have rooms…. Fortunately they had……. And we were all off to bed at 1:45…. Me and hubby took turns sleeping as the bed was small and Ojas was getting up and starting to crawl as soon as his eyes opened a little…… but still it was a nice rest

We started from there the next morning after breakfast around 9:00 am or so i.e after we had our breakfast and we attempted to giving Ojas his breakfast which he refused to eat… it was my birthday that day and hence I was in a happy happy mood you now…. I was also at the wheel and thought I am going to freak out today…. Little did I know what laid ahead… the roads from Salem to Coimbatore were in a really bad shape… there was construction going on to make it a four-lane highway and there were so many criss cross, so many diversions, so many pot holes that you could hardly pick up any speed… after 2 hours we had barely gone for about 80kms and we were all getting exteremly frustrated and thus decided to take a tea break… we had a tea somewhere and attempted to give Ojas something to eat again which is refused again and thus I gave him milk… and from here Naren took back the wheel and started the frustrating journey again… The journey went on , Ojas was either sleeping or playing in his car seat happily in between eating his biscuits and playing with massi… The road became good after the Coimbatore bypass and we were finally able to pick up speed… We stopped for lunch somewhere at about 15:30 and there was hardly anything available there till then… we somehow managed to stuff something in us… the sambhar and the brown rice were edible so bas kaam chal gaya, this time to I tried to feed Ojas his lunch but he refused to eat anything at all… not even one bite to taste whether he likes it or not, I was sure if he has a bite he will eat as it was his favorite Oats but he simply refused and had milk again after sometime in the car… This was getting me worried because he had eaten only 1.5 biscuits since morning and was wondering if he will behave this way in the whole trip….

We started from there and the road became much better but my son decided to play havoc…. He started screaming at the top of his voice and just wouldn’t stop specially in hi car seat…. We had to stop 5 times in the next 1 hour to pacify him and then he finally fell asleep in my arms and then I put him back in his car seat…

Post that we soon reached the by pass to cochin rather Alwa just before alwa and we took a left from there and headed through the mild slopes towards the backwaters in Kumarakom … the road up there kept getting curvier and thinner as we approached ahead… it was a lovely stretch but because of the frustrating first half the journey felt like never ending to us… And finally we saw the first backwater canal… it was an amazing feeling actually… there was a sudden gush of happiness and then started the search for our resort The Backwater Resort at about 20:00 in the night… the first look at it we were happy and satisfied…. They were nice cottages and the resort was on the Vembanad Lake…….. nice small swimming pool too………

We then decided to get fresh and put Ojas to sleep and meet outside our cottage in about an hour’s time… Ojas went to sleep without any difficult, I guess he was as tired as us … we put him in his sleeping back to be tension free… afterall he cant crawl and fall down the bed in his sleeping bed… I give credit of this idea to my hubby which saved us fro 3 sleepless nights
And when I came back I was pretty surprised to see a nice cake kept on the chair with a knife and all… I cut the cake etc and then we chilled out with some drinks and food… actually all of us desperately wanted some chilled beer specially Manish…. He went to the extent of saying that his motivation for the drive was the chilled beer in the end… but 15th August being a dry day we had to do with some Absolut vodka that we had got along with us… All in all it was a very different birthday for me this time, birthday on the road… not to mention that I enjoyed it the amount I love travel and driving…….

In parallel we called multiple people and try to figure out a alternate route to go back as I was so sure I am not driving 16hrs back at a stretch having Ojas with me and we figured out a route too through which it takes about 10-12 hrs to reach Bangalore… and we cursed ourselves to have done this research before starting normally me and Naren make sure we talk to people, get enough info on the best route to take before we head out this time owing to Ojas we hadn’t got into it at all…

The next morning was our houseboat day…. We had booked a morning to evening houseboat as we were not sure how will Ojas behave on it and hence didn’t take it for the night… so after a leisurely and nice breakfast we went on the houseboat… Manish had in the meanwhile gone for the traditional Kerala massage in the resort and had a Ok Ok feedback regarding the same… even I wanted to go but decided for the evening as Ojas had to be made ready etc…

The house boat was the highlight of the trip and was truly amazing…. I had never imagined that the houseboat will be so modern… it had all the comforts and was fun to be in….. the backwaters view was amazing and we all loved every minute of it….. including Ojas who was in a happiness spell seeing so much water around him… I think he belonged there…

And then suddenly we saw lots of small small boats coming near our houseboat and we started the guess work, they would be coming to sell fish etc etc and then we suddenly saw them all getting tied to our baot and then we realized what it is… they are all fishermen going back to the villages after fishing and saving their rowing energy, truly working in tandem, in a team isn’t it…. These people know it so well and we have to teach this so much back in office……. I guess great lesson here

And then there was a brilliant truly kerala style lunch served on the boat….. and we had a truly amazing chilled out day on the boat……….


After we came back from the houseboat I went for a massage…. And it was a a mixed kind of experience……. Read abt it here and then night again was a chilled out chat cum booze session, today we actually decided to try the Gujrati and the marathi cuisine that was listed in the menu… we had seen it the first day but were not in the mood to experiment so much but today the mood was upbeat and also we had come to know that the head chef is from Maharashtra…. And the food was a pleasant surprise… we had ordered dal methi, khichdi and some other items and all were good…

The next morning was the day to start back and head towards Cochin for our friends daughters baptism and we started from the resort at about 9:30 in the morning and the route we took this time was really neat and fast we made it to Cochin in exactly 2 hours as compared to 3.5 hrs we had taken on the way up…. The baptism was in a nice hotel and ojas enjoyed himself crawling all over in the lobby of the hotel and we also had a chilled out time but it the weather was really bad there… from there we headed towards the place our friend had arranged for us to stay and it was a nice home and then we had what is called a long afternoon siesta ruining all our plans to go see Cochin fort…. By the time we left home it was about 4:30 pm already and then by the time we reached the port road it was about 5:30pm and then there was a whole lot of commotion as there was some festival going on and hence we decided to ditch the fort plan and went towards the Bolgaty Palace and from there we took an hour’s boat ride around the Indian navy boats and then came back chilled out the palace with some chilled beer finally and nice buffet dinner….

Next day morning we went for breakfast at our friends house and had nice aappams an curry and the kerala banana… we started from there around 9:00 am in the morning and started driving on the new discovered route unfortunately I have lost the log that kept on what exactly is the route we took but I remember we took a diversion somewhere from NH57 on to SH17 and then got on to another SH (me is trying to search for the log, if I get it then I will update the same)… In between we stopped at naren and manish’s common friends house for lunch at Pallghat… these guys were meeting each other after some 8-9 years and it was nice to watch the reunion and watching them getting into comfort zone in a instant even after so long… that’s what friends are isn’t it

By taking the modified route we reached Hosur at about 20:00 and that was really good as compared to what we had done in the updward journey though post that the law of averages caught up and we got stuck in a jam and reached home only by about 21:45 but nonetheless it was brilliant….

And all through the trip the darling was my dear Cheetah… the Cedia…. It would just rip the minute u press the pedal… be so steady even on very high speeds… I actually did my frist 170kmph in the trip… my highest speed ever… it was really thrilling and the car was rock steady at that time…….. but still after all this I would say the comforts of a SUV are brilliant for a long drive, I did miss my elephant the safari………

PS: as usual check out the snaps at Kerala Pics

To the land of coffee

Last month sometime we packed our bags for the first vacation and long drive with our little son Ojas to chickmagalur, apprehension and anxiousness were the top feelings we had when we started, we had estimated the distance to be around 250-275 kms and were prepared for it to last above 8 hrs which is quite different that how we usually drive... always timed and fast is what we want but we didnt want to take any risks with the little one with us who was only about 3.5 months at that time.

Owing to the fact that we had to get him ready and pack a lot paraphernalia along (sterilizer, bottles, pram, car seat etc etc) we started from home at about 9:25 in the morning and started moving towards Penenya, there was lot of traffic on the road and lots of signal, getting out of the town and reaching Neelmangla took us about 1.5 hrs for 45 minutes and we were worried that if this is the rate of moving then including stops for Ojas we might not make it there by night :) after neelmangla we could pick up speed though and it was really a nice drive the average of the car was going up, but we immediately felt very sad when we looked around... the roads looked barren as compared to the last time we drove on this road which was abotu 2 years back when we went to Mangalore. All the trees on the side had been cut and that was such a sad site, now the tree cutting spree for widening roads has reached the highways too :(

After going for about another 40 kms in 25 mins we stopped for a milk heating break for ojas, basically we wanted to fix the car bottle warmer ect properly as this was practically the first time we were using it though we had experimented with it before and realized that it takes about 30 minutes for it warm milk atleast... the road ahead was good too and we were zipping at quite a good pace when we halted at the pit stop for breakfast or brunch at 12:20 which a meter reading of 130 kms. the food was ok but there were flies all around and we had to finally move inside the car as Ojas was with us, and we got our first lesson there... with a baby never stop at small places :) :) till now as a couple we would just stop wherever we wished but know I guess we have to be more careful, we had our meal and Ojas had his milk and off we went from there at about 13:10. Ojas also seemed to enjoy his ride and was either playing happily in his car seat or sleeping. The roads form here on were also decent though they could have been better... and we crossed the towns of Hassan (14:20, 200kms), Belur (15:05,243) without a break as Ojas was happily sleeping and me and hubby were enjoying chatting and the lovely country side on the way... it was a lovely day with clouds and sun together...

We reached the chickmagalur town at about 15:35 the meter reading at about 265 and were pretty impressed with ourselves and happy with the fact that Ojas was happy in the travel and didnt really become cranky at all. Now that we had time on hand we decided to have a leisure delayed lunch break at taj garden retreat chikmagalur, its a lovely property and this is where we originally wanted to stay but unfortunately it was booked... we had a pizza and a pasta there, Ojas had his next feed and we started from there about 16:30 for our destination i.e. Tex Woods which is basically a small resort in the middle of the coffee plantation adjacent to Bhadra Wildlife Sanctuary... and here is where the ghat road started, we crossed malandur which is a mall town at 17:15, 297 kms and from there took a left towards Muthodi... and from here on the road started becoming narrower and steeper and we were glad that we were in the safari... after sometime we actually could see no people and no traffic at all and we got really scared that are we at the right track as if we were not then there was no way we could reverse the car also :) and to top it all the cell phone was not working so we couldnt call and check if we are on the right direction... so we had no choice but to move on looking for the forest check post the resort guy was supposed to meet us at...

After going ahead for about 5 kms we finally spotted some life, a jeep was coming in the opposite direction... we were actually worried that how will we both go on this road and then on the slight curve the jeep took it as close to the rocks as possible and we were driving as close to the edge as we could... and we finally managed to cross :) we also checked with him that yes we are in the right direction. After going some more distance we finally spotted the check post and the Tex woods jeep standing there and we breathed a sigh if relief little did we knew what lied ahead of us.... the guy told us that the road ahead is a kacha road so if u want to leave ur car here u can though there is no problem a safari can easily go... so how could we leave it behind and we said ok lets get going...and trust me the next 5kms were the scariest drive of my life :) it was a completely rocky road with a 35-40 degree incline and just enough width for a safari or a jeep tp pass through, the mud on the road was slushy at points owing to the rain that had been pouring off and on from past sometime in the area... and we were sure that if the car stops somewhere here we are gone as we will never be able to start and pull it up again :) both me and naren wondered how do we always land up in these places... this time with Ojas with us we wanted to do a risk free safe trip and according to us we had planned and checked everything and still here we are in the middle of nowhere again :) we thanked our stars and god when we reached Tex woods at 18:05, 313 kms

Its a lovely little quite place with just about 10 rooms I think, a nice pool, home made food, common area in the ground floor as well as first floor with lovely views... the rooms are spacious and have all basic comforts required by anyone... we just relaxed had a cup of good filter coffee and then just decided to chill... had a nice dinner and then chatted for a while in the sit out after Ojas slept and we too slept early as we wanted to catch the sunrise realizing only in the morning that we are on the other side and sunrise is not visible from here sob sob :) We just spent the day like we had never done before in any of our vacations... did nothing :) just chilled out, chatted with each other, played with Ojas... didnt even take a swim in the pool.... so it was a do nothing vacation for us... in the evening after Ojas slept we had a couple of beers before the food and then slept again :)

And the next morning was the time to pack and go again, though we had planned to start around the same time as we did when we started from home.... the super lazy us could only start at 11:50, we were shit scared of the drive down that 5 kms but it was actually easier than the climb up :) and we managed it in 25 mins as compared to the up climb which had taken us 45 mins... On the way back we stopped in the town to buy some plants (which we mostly do when we drive somewhere to remember the place), had lunch again at Taj and reached back home at 19:50, 625kms...

All in all it was a excellent break and now that we have tested that Ojas does just fine in the outdoor trips we hope to be back to our traveling very soon....

do check out the pics here......
Snaps