Sunday, January 14, 2007

Daman: the adda of Gujjus

A trip with my school (childhood) buddies. Though the trip was on a little costlier side but was worth it.
People: Nitin, yash, me
Vehicle: Plane, train, auto, bus

Bangalore To Mumbai: Air
Mumbai To Daman: Train then auto
Daman To Mumbai: khatara (broken) bus and then train
Mumbai To Bangalore: Air

As it was the year end the city was full of Gujratis who mostly, I believe, were there to enjoy and drink. To be true, we weren’t in Daman to explore a lot and mostly did one think – not to be mentioned here – hey… don’t get me wrong. Anyways had a lot of fun, attended a beach side new-year party, watched that ’russian’ channel, doing stuff in a boat (I didn't do much but still the location was awesome when you can just see water all around you and a glass in your hand :P) and travelled to another beach which we agreed could have been much better location to live in. I also believe Daman can be developed more as a tourist spot. Oh btw one more thing I forgot to mention - the activities going in the cottage next to ours… again such things can’t be said in public – and hey, I won’t be writing it this time.
Why the trip will be remembered: First trip with these guys after growing up and traveling in a khatara roadways bus, then an unreserved train (standing) and then an aeroplane – all within 5 hrs. Such stark differences in travel mode just made me wonder.

Tuesday, January 09, 2007

Coorg: Road trip to Scotland of India

A trip I was taken in probably because the other guys wanted to reduce the cost. (I have told each & every person I know that if they are going somewhere and have a place for 1 guy and have no problem in travelling with me – let me know)

People: pele, ranjan, Haver, me
Vehicle: Indica

Well on Friday night I was asked that if I wanted to join them and my obvious answer was yes. Left in the morning for Coorg and had breakfast somewhere in between. One hour or so into the road-trip and we saw a fundoo accident which probably took place a day before involving 2 trucks, 2-3 cars and an ambassador which was thrown to the other side of the road. Such accidents are visible only in Hollywood movies where people drive in lane and seeing that in india – we liked it because it proved that people in India also drive in lanes. Unfortunately, we didn’t take a photograph of it; otherwise you would have realized the intensity of that accident. One best thing about the trip to coorg was it had lot of stopovers with many nice/ picturesque places - First a bird sanctuary, then a temple, some tipu’s place, a great Buddhist monastery and then some reserve sort of area (wonderful place where you can stay at night – obviously prerequisite for that are advance booking and a partner ;). There were some machans and a small water stream flowing). Overall this 250 odd kms journey took us around 12 hours+ but it wasn’t like munnar – when we had no idea of where we were going. Night spent at a hotel doing some guy’s stuff and in the morning we left back for Bangalore. Again the good thing going back was we still had couple of different places to visit – Couple of waterfalls, cocoa/ coffee plantations etc. BTW enroute I also bought some honey which thankfully turned out to be good. By night we were back in Bangalore – this idiotic place where I work ;)

Why the trip will be remembered: Nothing too specific here but yes the accident, that fundoo Reserve is in my future to go list :) and ranjan’s tripod.