#UrbanForest - Comforts of modern life with the joy of nature

The reason most of us travel is to get away from this concrete forest that we stay in. And if you have not been doing that then take the nearest exit from Bangalore through any of the toll booths and you will observe the change in landscape. I remember my good old days in Udupi where my house was surrounded by trees and taking an afternoon nap in the balcony was something to be done on holidays. In Bangalore, holidays do not have anything new to offer.

Introducing everyone to the world of sounds

Cochlear™ India called for bloggers in Bangalore for a meet and greet event with Brett Lee. Only after I attended the event did I realize how serious the event was going to get.

It all started with a game of Dumb Charades. 4 bloggers volunteered to act while rest of us had our laughs as we guessed what they were trying to convey. Then came the question of what if we had to play that game all our life. In most cases the loss of speech is due to the primary reason that as a child, they were not able to hear anything. The first step towards any solution is accepting that there is a problem. This was the agenda behind the Cochlear™ Bloggers’ meet – understanding about hearing loss and the remedy that is available for it. 

Bangalore Food Truck Fiesta

Bangalore is a cosmopolitan city and things are ever changing here. In this post let me tell about the latest trend in the one thing that Bangalore absolutely loves boasting about - Food. (If you thought weather, then no.. Its terrible these days) From the SLVs to Empires to Barbeque Nation to the whole bunch of breweries, now we have the food trucks. This probably started couple of years back and picked up slow but now I am told there are about 30 food trucks in Bangalore. In one of my previous posts I wrote about how Bangalore celebrated the Open Streets and continuing the similar efforts, BMRCL (Bangalore Metro Rail Corp Ltd) tied up with the food trucks to have a month long food truck fiesta.

Shivagange Trek

Shivagange is a peak and Hindu pilgrimage center located near Dobbaspet,20 km from the town of Tumkur and 54 km from Bangalore. The sacred mountain is shaped as a shivalinga and a spring flows near locally called "Ganga", thereby by giving the place its name. It is also known as Dakshina Kashi and it has various temples.

Nammoora Habba

I wrote my first blog in 2009 when an article I wrote did not make it to the college magazine. The article was about Udupi-Mangalore which focussed on culture, tourism and food. And here I am writing my blog number 101 about the same thing. Till date I never miss an opportunity to highlight anything good from my hometown. Last month Bangalore hosted its 3rd Nammoora Habba in Jayanagar. It was a 2 day festival with competitions during day and cultural events in the evening with a supply of Dakshina Kannada style food throughout the day.

MG Road Open Streets

While everyone was busy drooling over the Bangalore weather or cribbing about the bad roads and garbage in our city, most people missed the amazing Open Streets that happened on MG Road last month. Yes, the ever busy MG Road was closed for traffic and opened up to people to do whatever they enjoyed the most. However the closure was only between Brigade road and Kumble circle and between 9am to 9pm.

Avalabetta and Gudibande fort

Firstly Happy New Year :) I would like to thank you all for your support and suggestions to my travel blogs. Its second week of 2016 and I am still figuring out my travel plans for this year. As I look back, there have been a lot of amazing places that I have visited but not blogged about. In this post I will write about Avalabetta and Gudibande fort. Both these places are located off the Bangalore-Hyderabad highway (NH7 or AH43) after Chikkaballapur. Its a 100kms drive from Hebbal.

Manchanabele - breakfast ride !!

It was just one week from our previous Belur-Chikkamagluru-Halebidu trip and Sagar already started missing highways and bike rides :D. Early morning rides would be best though getting up is a problem for most of us and that too on a Sunday.  We wanted to explore some closest gateways to Bangalore, Manchanbele and  Dodda Aladha Mara roughly being 50 kilometers from Bangalore was perfectly fitting our requirement.

Aero India 2015

This year I got an opportunity to attend the Aero India Show at the Air Force base near Yelahanka in Bengaluru. This being my first time to the event I had no clue how crazy it was going to be. It was a Saturday so I expected traffic at the Airport Road. What better way to beat the traffic than to go in a two wheeler. And my strategy worked, sort off. It took me 2hrs to cover the distance of 10kms from Nagavara to Yelahanka on my bike. Imagine the condition if I had taken the bus. 

Mekedaatu

After the Thailand-Laos trip, it was time to get back to 1day road trips where we explore the places at a driving distance from Bengaluru (yes, not Bangalore). In September we visited Madhugiri on Tumkur road and Heritage Winery on Mysore road, so this time we decided to visit Mekedaatu on Kanakapura road.

Heritage Winery - Wine and Dine

My friends and I decided to explore something new every month in January 2014. So far all we were able to do was to cover a lot of restaurants in various parts of Bangalore. We tried something different last week when we did the Madhugiri Trek. This week we decided to take a road trip to Mysore road and visit the Heritage Winery. To reach this place you can drive upto Chanappatna that is around 50kms from Kengeri. Once you pass Chanappatna keep an eye out for the signboards on the left.

Conquering Madhugiri Fort!!

Bike trips are always exciting but sadly I don't get to do it very often. The last time I went on a bike trip was to Coorg in 2012 (Clutch Breaks and Gears). Off late use of the 'M' word has increased in my family and it made me realize that there are so many things that still needs to be done before I get a +1. It so happens that most of my friends are facing the same situation. So a few months back we started planning various things but anything hardly worked out. So as things work out, you guys can see more and more posts being written in this blog (no, not a threat). 

[ PS: Click on the pics to see the full resolution pictures]

One day trips around Bangalore!

It has been a while since I explored new places. The last time I traveled was during the Gokarna-Goa-Dandeli trip in December 2013. This year I did not get a chance to go on a holiday but I did manage to visit a few new places around Bangalore. As a coincidence I had written a similar post during the same time last year (A day outing - Bike, Roads and Food). So here are the places I visited in the last 4 weeks.

A day outing - Bike, Roads and Food

One of my friends is leaving for his MS next month, so we wanted to plan a trip. Planning a trip is tough especially when the people going on this trip work in different companies. After looking into all options and feasibility, we came to a conclusion that we cant have a trip. It was my friends last weekend in Bangalore and to quote his words "A lot of people want to meet me but i don't have time". (I can give the link to his tweet :P) We now decided to make it a day outing. Since only 3 of us were available, we did not have much choice as in what to do or where to go. So we decided to take it one step at a time (Too much cricket commentary influence). All we needed was a start.