Pai is, at its heart, a thriving village. It is a couple of hours north of Chiang Mai and is nestled among beautiful hills. Rolling green fields, wild flowers and waterfalls add beauty to this place. It is a great place to visit over the weekend, or like us, you can opt to stay a…
A Taste of Northern Thailand, Pai: How to Reach
Pai is a quaint village in Northern Thailand. It is no longer a secret hippy hangout, and at any time, the village has more tourists than local inhabitants. However, all this rush is confined to a few blocks filled with shops. Beyond that, once you move out of the epicentre of Pai, you get to…
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Nearly Home: Sunrise and Sunset @ Kanyakumari (days 62 to 64)
13th October to 15th October, 2016. The drive from Rameswaram to Kanyakumari felt like the last leg of our journey. In reality, we still had to drive home from Kanyakumari. But somehow, that did not count. Kanyakumari is barely an hour from Kerala, and any place in Kerala is more or less home. So we…
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Life in the Deep South: Rameswaram and Dhanushkodi (days 59 to 61)
10th October to 12th October, 2016. The most beautiful beaches in India are not found in Goa. Trust me on this. They are found along a tiny island called Rameswaram, around the Gulf of Manna. White sands, blue water, and absolutely no tourists on the beach. The drive to this place from Karaikudi was no…
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Steeped in History: Karaikudi (day 57 and 58)
08th October to 09th October, 2016. Driving down from Puducherry, we headed for the land of Nattukottai Chettiars, Karaikudi. The drive took us through the red flat lands of interior Tamilnadu. While we were a bit sad to leave the coastal route, the destination rewarded us richly. We spent most of our time here looking at…
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A Pit-stop at Puducherry (days 54 to 56)
05th October to 07th October, 2016. Driving south from Mahabalipuram, we took the well maintained East Coast Road to Puducherry (Pondicherry). Puducherry is a very famous tourist destination, and we are sure there is little in this article that you don’t already know about. But driving into Puducherry, it is easy to see why it…
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Pallava Temples of Mahabalipuram (day 52 and 53)
03rd October to 04th October, 2016. Mahabalipuram or Mamallapuram is like any other village in coastal Tamil Nadu. It just has a few added bonuses. For example, there are humongous temples , nearly 1300 years old that are the epitome of Pallava architecture. The fact that some of these temples are right on the beach definitely…
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Art, Architecture and Ocean: Puri (days 46 to 51)
27th September to 02nd October, 2016. Odisha is a state with too many destinations to choose from. Beautiful forests, tribal art, waterfalls, villages and beaches. We decided to sample as much as we could in the few days we had. Our base for the night was a very unique guest house /dorm near Puri in…
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City of Joy: Kolkata (days 41 to 45)
22nd September to 26th September, 2016. Our drive to Kolkata was rather uneventful compared to our Sikkim drive. The roads were decent, and no rocks were waiting to fall down. We did get stuck in a couple of traffic jams ( the highway is single lane, and if a lorry breaks down, the whole traffic…
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Heaven on Earth: Sikkim (days 34 to 40)
15th September to 21st September, 2016. Driving to Sikkim is by far the most adventurous thing we have done during this trip. It started with the drive to Siliguri from Muzzafarpur. Our trusted google map told us to follow the NH for a while and then take the state highway (SH 63). Calling SH 63…
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Bodh Gaya: The Land of Enlightenment (days 30 to 33)
11th September to 14th September, 2016. When we started this journey a month ago, part of the plan was to find accommodation in some friend’s house wherever we go. Staying in hotels for two months was not viable, in terms of health and economics. This plan had worked pretty well for us till we reached…
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A Sensory overload called Varanasi (day 29)
10th September, 2016. Varanasi is unlike any other place we have experienced. It is loud and congested and smelly. At the same time, it is beautiful and refined and holy. Not an easy combination to pull off. But Varanasi does it with great ease. Consider the sights for example. We sit in one of the…
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With Love from Taj – Agra (days 26 to 28)
07th September to 09th September, 2016. I guess that is what Agra is all about. Everything here revolves around the Taj Mahal. And for good reason. Despite being photographed and publicized to death, the Taj is still charming and beautiful. Here are a few pictures to prove our point. We will not waste time talking…
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Gardens of Chandigarh (days 23 to 25)
04th September to 06th September, 2016. Driving from Dharamshala to Chandigarh was relatively relaxing after driving inside Dharamshala. The NH 503 is initially a double lane road with no divider separating the up and down traffic. However, it becomes a segregated four lane road after Dharamshala. It is then one pleasant drive to Chandigarh. Chandigarh…
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Trinkets from Dharamshala (days 20 to 22)
01st September to 03rd September, 2016. What do you do when you end up in a place that is intensely scenic, historically significant and all too diverse? What is the best approach to understanding, or at least getting a feel of this place if all you have is 2 days? This is our attempt at bringing…
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Bleed Blue: A story of Jaipur’s Blue Pottery
30th August, 2016. How did you choose your profession? Entrance ranks, interests, family backgrounds; I am sure many reasons come to mind. For a change, assume none of these existed. Assume that you were surrounded by people following a single profession from the time you can remember. Assume that whatever they were doing seemed worthy…
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Pink City, Palaces, and Peacocks (days 16 to 19)
28th August to 31st August, 2016. We started rather early (by our standards) from Udaipur with the hope of reaching Jaipur by late noon. As fate would have it, it took us two hours to get out of Udaipur. With no hope of reaching Jaipur with any time to spare, we headed to Jaipur. The…
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When you have but one day in Udaipur (day 15)
27th August, 2016. The Old city of Udaipur has many positive attributes. It has breathtaking monuments, lakes, and great art. Parking space availability is clearly not on the list. Except for high end hotels, private parking is not available anywhere in the old city. This meant that we had to park our car on the…
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Being Chased by the Monsoon (days 10 to 14)
22nd August to 26th August 2016. We left for Mumbai from Satara on 22nd August. Driving that stretch was a pleasure, given excellent roads including the Mumbai Pune expressway, and disciplined drivers. The plan then was to reach Mumbai, spend a couple of days there, then move to Indore and enter Rajasthan via Chittor. However,…
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Drive Tour Explore :-) (day 8 and 9)
20th August to 21st August, 2016. We started from Goa one day later than expected. That was a much needed day off, to clean the car and re-organise our luggage. So, instead of doing the above said urgent work, we spent the day sleeping. We also needed some maintenance down time. The drive from Goa…
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Goa Unexplored… (days 5 to 7)
17th August 2016 to 19th August, 2016. August is probably the best time to visit Goa. Everything is green and beautiful, and it not too touristy yet. We do not want to talk to you about Goa’s well known tourist attractions. So here is a list of half a dozen places that are more or…
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Sweet Goa… Eating Our Way through the Old Bakeries of Goa.
17th August, 2106. Goa is known for many things. It has beautiful beaches, a vibrant party scene, adventure sports, cheap alcohol, and amazing sea food. We could write about any of these, but then again, it is easiest to write about what you love the most. So we decided to go with exploring the bakeries of…
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Green All the Way (day 3 and 4)
15th August to 16th August, 2016. We left off at Mysore in the last blog. After a restful night, on August 15th we left Mysore for our next destination, in the Shivamogga district of Karnataka. The river Sharavathi plummets over 250 m in Shivamogga to create the mighty Jog falls. Given the traffic conditions on…
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A Drive to Mysore (day 2)
14th August, 2016. Today was a really long drive. Don’t get me wrong, we covered just about 200 Km. But thanks to the weather and our frequent stops, we took over 7 hours to do so. The plan was to get out of Kozhikode by 7.30. So naturally, we were out by 10.30. This drive…
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Of Survival and Strength
13th August, 2016. This is the story of two women from Kozhikode. Two women, who though separated by a sea of differences, chose the same path for survival. We met the first at Kappad Beach. Her name is Narayani, and she runs a tiny eatery on the beach. Her story began a few years earlier,…
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Kozhikode (day 0 and 1): History Lives in these Lanes
12th August to 13th August, 2016. Our drive started from Kollam, Kerala on August 12th (our day ‘0’). Our first stop was Kozhikode (marked day 1!). However, driving is serious business, and food is a serious requirement. So, by noon, we reached Shibin‘s place at Ernakulam. After a couple of hours (and a couple of biriyanis)…
