Why this blog?

Travelling has been a passion. It has become a habit, and now is an addiction.Though i have not had a chance to go out of India, I have traveled to some of the most exciting places inside India.

India, a country of such varying cultures and climates, has immensely pleasurable places to travel to.

A country of such huge proportions, one would not know what lies within unless visited.

This blog is dedicated to all my travels which i would like to cherish and share with you through this simple documentation.

Hope you would enjoy reading it like i have enjoyed writing it !!

Happy Journey!

About Me...

Lets not keep me a stranger! Read on to know a little about me...

Being a native of Chennai, Tamil Nadu, I was born and brought up in a sleepy but sweltering place called Warangal in Andhra Pradesh. Virtually, belonging to two states, I ended up learning both their languages. Being multi-lingual helped quite a lot when travelling.

Frankly my passion for travel cannot be said as my own. It is a kind of inherited trait. The passion for travelling has been passed on to me by my fun loving family, making me quite adventurous much to the dismay of my kith and kin! The fun loving part of me has come from them while the risk loving part is notoriously my own.

Lets not bore you anymore about me and start with my travels which are listed in chronological manner.

P.S: Some of the pictures below are not taken by me. Since I have either lost or don't possess the photographs of places i have visited when i was very young, I have taken help of Google and put photos that closely resemble the exact scene i have seen so that those who read can picture and re-live my experience .

I will mention below each picture if it is mine or taken from Google.

Places Visited

I wish to give you an outline of what places are going to be mentioned here. I have travelled to 47 places in the past 23 years.
Varanasi/Banares is a place in Uttar Pradesh, India where people mostly travel as part of piligrimage in their old age to wash away their sins in the river Ganga. Ironically that is the first place i had visited at the age of one. I am told i had actually turned 1 in the train on the way to Varanasi.
Since my native place is Chennai/Madras I had travelled back and forth from Madras to Warangal as an infant.
My next major vacation came when i was 7 years old. I, with my family had gone to visit Bombay/Mumbai, Aurangabad, Shiridi, Basara.
Two years later, at 9, I was taken to a complete South Indian tour by my family. There we had gone on to visit lots of beaches and temples at Trivandrum/Tiruvananthapuram, Kanyakumari, Trichy, Srirangam, Nagarkoil, Tanjavur, Madhurai, Kumbakonam, Uppiliappan, Thiruvallur, Thirnalveli, Chennai, Rameshwaram, Dhanushkodi and ending our tour with Vijayawada (Andhra Pradesh) on our way back.
Two years past until my next vacation to Delhi, Agra, Chandigarh , Kulu-Manali (Himachal Pradesh).
Somewhere in the middle of the year we had gone to visit Mantralayam in Andhra Pradesh and Gulbarga in Karnataka.
An year later we had gone trekking to a place called Ahobilam in Andhra Pradesh.
In the same year we had gone to historical places of Kaleshwaram and Ramappa in Andhra Pradesh.
Being Hindus, Tirupathi is one sacred place we ought to go atleast once in our life times. So we went to Tirupathi an year later.
On numerous weekends we had gone to have fun in Hyderabad visiting Yadagirigutta on the way.
Around the time i was 16 or 17 we had taken a brief time off to visit Pakal and Badrachalam.
When i was around 18 I made a trip to Pondicherry with my lovely grand father.
A seminar when i was doing my Bachelors Degree had taken me to the beautiful place of Visakhapatnam with its beautiful hilly regions and pleasant beaches. I, my friend and my father had also gone to Simhachalam near Visakhapatnam.
An year later, in 2008 I with my big group of friends had gone on vacation to Bangalore, Mysore, Ooty, Coimbatore, Munnar and Cochin, visiting three different states in about 10 days.
Two years later my work had taken me to Mysore again where i had spent about 6 months.
In those refreshing 6 months i had visited Coorg with my parents and Waynad with my fun loving group of friends!
And now my work had brought me to Hyderabad. Hoping I can make more of such opportunities to travel, let me list out the places I have visited so far ( i.e those visits to places i would be describing in this blog) :

1. Varnasi
2. Aurangabad
3. Bombay
4. Shiridi
5. Basara
6. Trivandrum
7. Kanyakumari
8. Trichy
9. Srirangam
10. Nagarkoil
11. Tanjavur
12. Madhurai
13. Kumbhakonam
14. Uppiliappan
15. Thiruvallur
16. Thirnalveli
17. Pondicherry
18. Chennai
19. Rameshwaram
20. Dhanushkodi
21. Chennai
22. Delhi
23. Agra
24. Chandigarh
25. Kulu-Manali
26. Ahobilam
27. Tirupathi
28. Gulbarga
29. Mantralayam
30. Hyderabad
31. Yadagirigutta
32. Pakal
33. Bhadrachalam
34. Vijayawada
35. Visakhapatnam
36. Warangal
37. Bangalore
38. Mysore
39. Ooty
40. Coimbatore
41. Munnar
42. Cochin
43. Coorg
44. Waynad
45. Ramappa
46. Kaleshwaram
47. Simhachalam

MY FIRST TRIP : KASHI

My first significant visit to any place was when I was as feeble a child as a 1 year old could be!

The trip was, as I previously mentioned, ironically to Varanasi (or Banaras/Kashi as some people would prefer to call it).

I obviously do not remember one single morsel of what had happened in that trip (Well..How could you even expect a 1 year old poor little thing to!). But based on what I was later told, it was one of the most “horror hath overwhelmed me” kind of experiences one could ever have. I was completely bewildered when I was narrated about that particular travelling expedition. 

Starting point: Warangal
Destination:Varanasi

It goes like this:

Expecting what a routine pilgrimage would be like, my family members, namely my mother, grandparents, two aunts and a ‘never-travelled-this-far-before-and-never-will-again’ neighbor set out on a 2 day train journey to Varanasi. I was being looked down as a tiny mass of mess because I had started puking right from the onset of the journey much to the frustration of my mother. Crying all the time didn’t add much to the comfort of her either.

So, in order to regain peace and tranquility she had made a make-shift cradle using one of her sarees inside train!! As all the passengers around were thankfully my family members nobody minded, rather they were very much relieved that the ambience had quitened a great deal. So having successfully found out a way to appease me so that I would stop howling, the rest of the journey went by quite uneventfully.
We reached Varanasi approximately two days later and went straight to the house of one of our relatives who was residing there (My relatives have somehow managed to scatter all over India, though I still wonder how!). After having taken ample food and rest, the next day we had set out to say Hi to God, His Almighty Kashi Vishwanath (one of the avtaars of Lord Shiva).
The Vishwanath temple according to them was glorious with its dome covered in gold (Who said Indiia is a poor country???)! It is said that when Aurangazeb, the Mughal Emperor came to destroy the city and the temple the idol of Lord Shiva was hidden in a well in the temple. It is believed that to this day the idol is in the well. The well is called…(Wait..What is the well called??My parents didn’t tell me that L)..Ya, the well it seems, is called Gyan-Kupor (Yippee!Google to the rescue).
Then we had gone to The Kashipuraadeeshwari (commonly knowly as Goddess Annapurna)temple near the previous temple.

Then we went on to visit the Dashashwamedh Ghat nearby. Dash-ashwa-medh meaning 10 horses place, is said to be the place where Lord Brahma had slain 10 horses as a sacrifice to Lord Vishwanath.

Next we had visited  The Visalakshi Temple, a very famous temple which is believed to be the place where Goddess Parvati had allegedly thrown off her ear-rings and asked Shiva to search for them.

Then we had seen the Scindia Ghat where the temple is partly submerged in water because of its weight.
On our way back we had gone to pray at The Sankatha temple. It has a well which is said to possess remedial properties. It also consists of nine temples for the nava-grahas (nine- planets). And a huge lion statue inside gives a regal look to the already temple is what I am told!

And don’t know exactly when but somewhere in between visiting temples and visiting more temples we made time to take a dip in the Holy Ganges, The River Ganga.

Temples!Temples!Temples! That is what the city is all about.

The excitement or rather the absence of it, was more than made up by the return journey from what I have heard.

Now let me tell you why my God loving neighbor, an old woman now, never made a long journey again after this one. Incidentally her last one (no..she didn’t die..she’s very much alive)  happened to be my first one!

After praying whole heartedly at all the temples we could set our feet upon, we at last boarded our train home.

It was early August and it was still raining at the time. The train was moving at a very  slow pace, maybe we were nearing some station. My grandfather had gone to stand near the door to take in the fresh cool air. He had unsuspectingly put his left hand out to check whether it was raining or not. To his horror somebody took his arm and his watch as grip and entered the train and 3-4 others followed suit. All the men were masked and to our utter shock were armed with knives! They had taken my grandpa as hostage and demanded money and jewellery from all the people in the compartment. They had taken off most of the gold from my family. My mother hid me under the long end of her saree (pallu) trying to hide me (and save at least the trinkets that were on me as well). After looting the compartment they had disappeared as suddenly as they had appeared. It was very dark outside and nobody could make out anything. It was very long before they could arrive at some station where they could lodge a complaint (mobile phones were unknown then). By that time it was too late. The dacoits had escaped with their loot.

This incident marred the otherwise memorable tour of ours. My family had recovered over time. But the person who had never regained enough courage to go on further trips (much less with us) was our unfortunate neighbor.

Thus was the story of her last trip and my first!