#GoSleeekASUSExperience

"Indian by birth, blogger by choice" - This was written on the tshirt that I got for the 1st Indiblogger meet that I attended couple of years back. Indiblogger is a community that provides a platform for bloggers to connect and socialize. I have attended 4 meets that happened in Bangalore but have to shamelessly admit that this is the first time I am blogging about it. Each Indiblogger meet was a unique experience and had something different to offer. With every meet I make new acquaintances which over time have become into friendship. There are more familiar faces every time I attend the blogger meet. This time the meet was sponsored by ASUS and was hosted at the ITC Gardenia.

Mumbai!

2014 was a great year with a considerable part of my salary going towards exploring new places. The Thailand-Laos trip in September was the highlight of 2014. During that trip I met people from across the world who asked me a lot about India and I realized that I have hardly explored my own country. In October last year I visited the historical places in Maharashtra and it made sense to start the new year by continuing from where I had left off - Mumbai. This trip was different from my other trips because it was more about spending time with my best friends and less about exploring the new place. It was the reunion of my PESIT gang :) I will not post the day to day details here but will just post the places that I visited in my short 3day stay in Mumbai. Took the trip during 1st week of January but was too lazy to sit and write this blog.

Yana and Unchalli falls!

I am believer that if you are going on short trips then rest is something you need to compromise with. When I had planned the Gokarna trip last year I wanted to cover all surrounding places and Yana was recommended to me by quite a few people. But things did not fall into place back then! So when I went to Sirsi for cousins wedding, I had enough time to spend a day exploring near by places.

Forts, Caves and Temples - Maharashtra

In the last couple of months I have found a new meaning to life - "Live to travel". I have been lucky to have friends who planned and accompanied me to the various tourist destinations. Frankly speaking (just like Arnab, only I will be talking) I have not gone outside of the 5 southern states. So visiting Maharashtra was like adding another feather to my cap. The entire trip was planned by my friend who is working in Pune. So to summarize the trip we visited 5 major places - Lonavla, Aurangabad, Shirdi, Nashik and Pune.

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.

Thailand and Laos - Part 3

Continued from Part-1 Part-2

There are Buddhist monks who walk the streets at around 6am and people donate food to them. We thought that at least once we should wake up early in our trip and we did wake up at 5:30am that morning. After seeing the monks we came back to our dorm and slept. Oh ya, at 6am we saw that the people who went for bowling were just returning back to hostel. Most backpackers see only one place in a day and just relax the rest of the day in hostel. We had overdose of Buddhist temples, so we decided to stay in hostel and do nothing. If there was no free WiFi, I would probably have killed myself out of boredom. [ Yeah, you get free WiFi in all restaurants and hostels in Laos. So if you have bought the local SIM then using 3g is not actually required]

Thailand and Laos - Part 2

Continued from Part-1

We left the city the next morning to go to Vang Vieng. It was a 3hrs ride in a tempo traveller to the party town of Laos. In India tempo travelers have 2+1 seat layout and these had an extra foldable seat in the path in between to add another person.  We checked into the hostel at around 1:30pm and left for tubing. Tubing is like the lazy river in the water park except that the river is not that lazy and you have different start and end points. You rent a tube and get into the river. The flowing river takes you through the scenic mountains and greenery. After going some distance some guy from the shore throws a rope at you and pulls you to the river bank. This is where the party happens. Singing, dancing, football, basketball and lot more activities. Not to forget beer and food if that is what you are there for. There are 3 such places on the tubing route. While people get souvenirs from their trip, our friend Vikram has an art of losing things. He donated his spectacles to the river during tubing. We came back at around 8pm and freshened up. There are 3 pubs/disco in this town and you can do pub hopping if you are interested. Here we met a guy from Brazil who had come alone on the trip. He was one of the very few guys who was on a short trip. Yes, 9days is a short trip by backpacking standards. Everyone else we met on the trip had plans of 3-6 months covering at least 4 countries.