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.

Los Angeles and San Diego

This is my final post on the US destinations that I visited this year. Los Angeles is one of the go to destinations for people in the bay area. It is at a driving distance from San Jose and the surrounding places make it an ideal visit with family for long weekends. My friend got a deal to fly down to LA and since I had no plans for the long weekend, he asked me to join. There a lot of things to do in and around LA but I will focus on my itinerary.

Seattle

When I visited our office in Vancouver earlier this year, I did not have a weekend on itinerary. I was supposed to land on a Saturday and take off back to India the next Saturday. However I requested for a day off and decided to stay back for a weekend. I had friends in US who were ready to meetup in Seattle. I had a US B1 visa and could visit them as Seattle is just 3 hrs by road from Vancouver. Agenda was just a get together and bit of visiting places in Seattle. 

Pismo Beach

Pismo beach is located on the highway 101 between San Jose and LA. It was a get together trip of our hostel gang. Pismo is famous for the ATV’s (All terrain vehicles) and Sky Diving. We only did the ATVs though.

Santa Cruz

In my previous post I wrote about Half Moon Bay. In this post I will write about Santa Cruz, and this is not the one in Mumbai. Unlike half moon bay, Santa Cruz is actually a proper city with an easily accessible beach. There is a bus every hour to/from San Jose and the ride is 1hr one way. I pinged one of my juniors who was in Santa Cruz for information but then on the day I woke up late that messed up my schedule. That is the biggest disadvantage of using public transport.

Half Moon Bay

I started my US blog series with an introduction to California and then wrote about San Francisco. The assumption I am going with is that most people who are traveling to the west coast will probably be staying in the Silicon Valley. In the next few posts I will write about the beaches I visited when I was in the bay area. The nearest beach to visit by public transport is Half Moon Bay. Of course you could drive there, which is the most convenient way.

Exploring Hampi

Hampi, the once pride of Vijayanagara empire is now nothing but ruins. On one side you will admire the architectural beauty this place has to offer and at the same time you can’t help but feel bad thinking how awesome it would have been if it was not destroyed. And as most blogs have pointed out, Hampi is to be explored and not toured.

A collage of few of sculptures found in various places