Dusty Roads Beckon

"The best way to live history is to stay at its heart"!! This is exactly what I had in mind when I was visiting Fort Kochi. Arranging for a place to stay is obviously one of the most vital aspect of one's travel arrangement and since I was visiting this coastal city of Kerala, which is smeared with history, I naturally wanted a place, which will let me eat, sleep and breathe history. While I don't really consider myself to be a hardcore backpacker in the true sense, yet there are a few things I prefer to do like the backpackers, for example the stay arrangements. Being a solo traveler, I have always preferred to stay in travelers hostels as that gives me enough and more opportunities to meet new people and like minded fellow travelers, who sometimes end up becoming good friends.  So, travelers' hostels have always worked fine for me whenever I have traveled out of India but during my travels within the country the thought of staying in a travelers' ho...

Fort Kochi happens to be that quaint corner of Cochin or Ernakulam, which has now become one of the busiest cities of Kerala. Wrapped in centuries of history, Fort Kochi stands there as a melting pot of various European cultures and the existing native population. This port town, which was called Muziris in the ancient times, attracted hordes of merchants and visitors from Rome, Persia, China and Arabia till it was destroyed by a devastating flood in the 14th century. Much later, in the 16th century, this trading hub, now turned in to a fishing village, was visited by the Portuguese, who built a fort by the waterfront for their own commercial purposes and thus Kochi got rechristened as Fort Kochi. However, this fort was destroyed by the Dutch invasion in 17th century and later Fort Kochi also witnessed the arrival of the British in the 18th century. The British controlled Fort Kochi till India got its independence in 1947. This place has still retained its old world charm in it...

What do you do when you get to know that your employer wants you to attend a 3 days long conference in the royal Pink City and the third day happens to be a  Saturday !!?? The wanderlust in me resurfaced as I knew that I have the  Sunday  to myself and I can postpone my return for a day after the conference gets over. The conference got over by lunch  on Saturday  and post lunch I was absolutely free to explore the city on my own. Now the challenge here was just 24 hrs to myself and how much of Jaipur City I could squeeze in this limited time. So, this is how my itinerary was planned : Jantar Mantar Post lunch, I took an Uber and set out to see this astronomical marvel   built by Maharaja Sawai Jai Singh II, which is very close to the City Palace, also known as Chandra Mahal. This place has the largest stone sundial    of the world and has been declared a UNESCO World Heritage site. The observatory houses 19 geometric instruments...

God's own country, as Kerala is most commonly known, was always there on my bucket list of travel. The dilemma which stopped me from making it happen was lack of holidays each year. To cover the whole of just south Kerala leisurely, I would need nothing less than 15 days and I hate to rush up while exploring. Finally after much deliberation, I decided to break up my Kerala visit in pieces and take one portion at a time. So, this time the Republic Day weekend was brought to good use. My destination was Alleppey, Kumarakom and Cochin. I started with a houseboat ride from the jetty in Alleppey. My Air India flight acted super funny and I ended up landing at Cochin airport 3 hrs late from the schedule time. The idea was to go straight to the Alleppey city from the airport and look around the beaches and the Museum there before boarding the houseboat from the jetty. But as I was super late, I had no choice but to rush straight to the jetty from the airport. The prepaid taxi counter at...

All of us live with those small little voices in our head, which constantly keep whispering to tell us how we should stay away from certain things and how we are not good enough to do a few things. Sub consciously our mind keeps brewing an unpleasant emotion, which is caused by the threat of some kind of danger, pain or harm. This emotion is popularly called 'fear' and all of us live with it in some form or the other. No matter how strong we look from outside, somewhere or the other, this emotion makes us weaker from inside and we chicken out when confronted by the biggest fear of our lives. This weekend was about conquering one such fear of mine. I was always scared of water and hence never learnt to swim until about few years back.....and let me tell you, I am a very bad swimmer. I can barely manage to swim only in the comfort and security of the pool of my apartment or some plush resort, where the water level isn't too deep and I can put my feet down and stand up at ...