Friday, December 29, 2017

Pondicherry

Ever since I got engaged, my bro and I were planning a trip to Pondicherry. My fiance was working in Chennai at the time and the plan was that she would join us and we would have a bachelor party sort in Pondy. But with all the wedding preparations, the plan never took off. Fast forward 6 months after the wedding and a weekend finally came which was optimal for visiting Pondicherry. Google said it will rain the entire week except for the weekend when the weather was supposed to be pleasant. Thus began our short and relaxing trip which was spent mostly by the beaches and cafes. 

Saturday, December 2, 2017

Euro Chapter: Disneyland Paris

When I was a kid (back in the 90s), like any other kids my age I was very much eager to visit Disneyland, maybe shake hands with Mickey and Donald, dance with Minnie, drift off to a fairyland with Cinderella. We grew up with these characters and seeing them live meant the life to us. For some of us, it is quite as exciting now as well! This was my first visit to a Disneyland and I was as excited and curious as a 7 year old. It was a dream come true for me! So for all of you out there who feel you are too old to be going to a Disneyland, remember what Walt Disney told “Adults are only kids grown up, anyways”.

Tuesday, September 5, 2017

Euro Chapter: Switzerland

It's been around 4 months since my Europe trip so I hope I can do justice to this post on the Switzerland part of the trip. In the first post I wrote about how to plan a trip to Europe in general and in the previous post I covered the Paris part of the trip. If you check the Swiss tour packages then they mainly focus on two places - Interlaken and Lucerne. We checked out all the places that we could visit including Zurich, Bern and Geneva however due to the lack of time (and money) we stuck to the touristy places. The other honest reason for selecting the places we visited was that unlike Paris, we wanted to have a relaxing vacation and not go all over the place (we were on our honeymoon, so you can understand).

Thursday, June 29, 2017

Euro Chapter: Paris

So I finally made time to write the Paris part of my Euro-trip blog series. This post will focus more of logistics involved in planning the trip because you can get information about tourist places elsewhere too.. If you get a chance to look at package tours, you will see that most tours give you 2 days in Paris and an optional 3rd day if you want to visit Disney Land. While it definitely looks enough, we kept 4 days/4 nights for Paris.

Friday, June 16, 2017

Planning a EuroTrip - Paris & Switzerland

Ever since I watched the movie Euro-trip, I have been wanting to plan something similar. However I couldn’t do it because of the vicious cycle of time vs money. When I finally had both time and money, I was told it is time to get married and I cannot be “wasting” money on travel. That is when I decided that my first travel after wedding (popularly known as honeymoon) will be to Europe. Now this is challenging because there is a wife involved and you need to have a good plan. That is where package tours come in but since I have traveled “quite a bit”, I was stubborn enough to plan the whole trip myself. In this blog I will outline how my fiance and I planned the whole thing. Some of this might not apply if you are backpacking across Europe (not the way Joey in Friends does it) but most of the information here should be useful in general.

Tuesday, March 21, 2017

Aiyur Forest

If you are looking for a short road trip with good roads and no real expectation of the destination then Aiyur forest is well suited for you. My brother and his friends were planning such a bike trip and as in the recent past, I tagged along on my Unicorn (the bike, in case it was not clear). Aiyur forest is situated around 80kms from Silk Board off the Hosur road in Tamil Nadu.

Sunday, March 5, 2017

Road trip to Jayamangali Blackbuck Reserve

My brother and his biking gang were planning to go to the Jayamangali Blackbuck reserve which is located in Madhugiri Taluk of Tumkur District. For a change I was free that day and decided to join them. It was my first bike trip since my friend bought a car in 2015. I was an amateur among all these pro bikers. There were three Royal Enfield’s, two Pulsar 220, one FZ and I was on my Honda Unicorn. 

Thursday, March 2, 2017

Vancouver Island

When I asked my colleagues about places to visit during my 6 weeks stay, they said go hiking, go skiing and experience the ferry ride to the island. One of my colleagues even suggested that I take a Seaplane ride to the island if I get a good deal. As the name suggests, Vancouver Island is an island off the coast of Vancouver. It has few cities and takes about an hour to two hours by the BC Ferries depending on which part of the Island you want to go. The seaplanes take you there in about 30 mins.

Sunday, February 26, 2017

Vancouver - The Mountains

In my previous post I wrote about the various hikes I went on before the winters set in. Towards end of November it rained heavily and started snowing at the major hiking places. So it was time to explore the winter destinations around Vancouver. To start with I experienced two snow storms in the city which I am told is a rare occurrence (lets all blame climate change).

Friday, February 24, 2017

Vancouver - The hikes

I visited Vancouver for the first time in Summer 2015 but it was a short visit. When I visited again in 2016, I got to experience the winters. November was just rainy and the temperatures were between 5 to 14 degrees celsius and it started dipping to 0 towards mid December when I returned (for good). So for the first 3 weeks of my stay in Vancouver, the weather was decent with slight drizzle so I got to go on numerous hikes (or as we call it - trek)

Monday, January 30, 2017

Dandiganahalli Dam & Nandi Hills

Dandiganahalli Dam is a small reservoir around 90kms from Bangalore. You travel on the AH-43 (formerly NH-44, Hyderabad Highway) past the Airport Road toll in Devanahalli and then take a deviation from Chikkaballapur. This is a really good place for some peace and quiet since it hardly has any visitors. We were the only people there when we visited.

Saturday, January 21, 2017

Amtrak to Portland & the Oregon Historic Route

In my previous post, I summarized my 5 weekends of the recent Vancouver trip. During my trip to Vancouver in 2015, I had crossed the border and visited Seattle. This time I went a state further south to Oregon (Portland). In this post I will highlight my long weekend in Portland. Well technically I spent 8hrs on two of those days traveling to/from Portland but that was an experience too.

Wednesday, January 4, 2017

2017 Calendar

Let me start with wishing you all a very Happy New Year 2017. Thank you for all the support and encouragement you have shown to me by visiting by blogs and liking my posts on other social media platforms. 

Earlier this week I thought I should try something new this year and one of my ex-colleagues sent me a pdf with 12 of his clicks as a calendar. So I thought to experiment with my clicks. I installed Gimp (for windows) and started playing around with it. This is the first version of my calendar and I am pretty sure there is a lot of room for improvement. Feel free to download and use it as appropriate :) 

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