#GshnyTravelsGyan - Generic tips for planning a tour on your own

It is time for renewing your old new year resolutions which you most probably have not managed to fulfill in 2019. If travel is on your mind for 2020 then this post will help you with preparing yourself and keeping your plans realistic. I have written location specific posts about planning trips but I thought I would write a generic one too. 

Long time no blog again

2019 is almost over and I just have two posts to show for this year. I was in a similar blog-less situation back in April 2018 and I wrote a post explaining to the future me about why there was a short break in the blog and ended the post with - “I will try to blog regularly so that you don’t have to read a post like this again”. (Link to the post in the bottom) Well here I am with a similar post again and this post is just me thinking out loud about things that changed over the past few years.

Weekend at Sakleshpur

The scent of the mud during rains, sipping on a glass of hot tea after getting fully drenched and the sound of onion pakoda being prepared while your eyes soak in the lush greenery is something that we experienced in Sakleshpur. After our successful monsoon trip of Kudremukh in 2018, more folks were interested to join us on the trip this year. For a relaxing weekend we booked a resort to laze around and decided on a few touristy places on the way.

Andhra Chapter: Vizag and Araku Valley

Vizag is one of the underrated Indian city for tourism. It has clean beaches, naval museums, a hilltop accessible by cable car and is at driving distance to Araku valley. I had visited the city back in 2012 for a friend’s sister’s wedding and had covered the touristy places inside the city during a half day trip. I of course did not recall the places (pre-blogging days, duh!) until I went there again last month for another wedding which brought back memories of the good old days. Now my travel blogs provide me a memory anchor to remind me of places and things :)

Weekend in Pune - Bhira Dam, Tamhini Ghat and Shaniwar Wada fort

After visiting the Malenadu region of the western ghats, I got a chance to explore the ghat section in the outskirts of Pune. Tamhini Ghat is around 60 kms from Pune and is known for the smaller waterfalls and foggy weather during the monsoon season. Bhira Dam is further ahead from the ghat which provides breathtaking views. During this trip I also got to visit Shaniwar Wada fort and of course savor the various local delicacies.

Kudremukh Monsoon trek and Western Ghats

In July, one of my colleagues had to visit Kukke Subramanya temple and he asked 4 of us teammates to join him. The idea was to have a road trip with visiting couple of places on the way and ending the trip with visiting the temple. This was just after the Coorg floods and the best routes to reach the temple were all blocked. With the alternative being Charmadi ghat route we decided to trek the Kurinjal peak in Kudremukh. I know it doesn’t make sense and I am still wondering how we ended up doing a trek during peak Monsoon :P Anyways here goes the blog :)

Roads to Coastal Karnataka

In the last 12 years that I have stayed in Bangalore, I have taken pride in being from the Udupi/Mangalore region. Though I hardly have any blogs about back home, I do have a whole lot of information that I can collate from all the the tweets/DMs/whatsapp chat I had with folks asking me for information. The most common question I get is which route to drive on from Bangalore and it is a really tough question to answer. In this post I will go over the common places that folks usually visit and the routes you could take for the same. I will also go over the train, bus and flight options in hopes that this post will serve as the first of the many blogs about my hometown :)