Kodaikanal to Munnar

The art of getting lost, as my friend rightly called http://lostinthewinds.blogspot.com/2008_01_01_archive.html, this trek was truly unique. We did take few wild choices and luckily none turned out to be life threatening! :)

We started our base camp in a forest rest house next to Berijam lake.

Quoting from "The Art of Getting Lost",

"In the morning we went to the lake, and 'went around' the forest. The lake was peaceful and serene with a large herd of blossomed water lilies on one side. Mani had mentioned there would be an old boat tied somewhere and that we can try it but to be very careful. Nothing on the lakeshore looked like a boat landing. We walked along the shore a bit. Only me, roop, jomy and shanti were there when we found the boat. It looked pretty shaken down, with no oars visible anywhere! But we figured the couple of wooden planks lying inside the boat were supposed to be serving the purpose. I don't think any of us were on anything like this on our own and we were skeptical about whether we should try it or not. We were no rowing experts! But there we were eventually, untying the boat, stepping in hesitantly and pushing ourselves off the shore! roop and jomy were the rowers or oarers, I was the control and shanti was the observer - she was to keep observing if the water level inside the boat was rising enough to cause alarm!"

The important aspect he missed to mention is that none of us can swim in such deep waters and we had no life jackets and no one else other than us knew that we were rowing the boat. Now I think, it was a rouge choice that we made! Nevertheless, the experience out of it was truly unique.

Roop, another dear friend of mine has jotted down his trip thoughts  too - http://blog.knurd.in/2008/01/ex-road-trip.html#more

Roopkund & Kuari Pass trek

In 2009, we a group of 6 guys and as usual, me the lone girl attempted couple of weeks long trek in Himalayas. Typically, Roopkund and Kuari pass trek are not done together as the trekking period lasts to 2 weeks. We attempted to do at one shot and were successful. However, success didn't come easy and we had to push our limits. The memory of the surreal surroundings and the painstaking attempts to reach every day destination still energizes me.

It is been few years since I trekked in Himalayas. But, those memories still brings me chill & thrill. So, once in a while, I keep going back to my friends words at
http://lostinthewinds.blogspot.in/2009/07/roopkund-and-kuari-pass-walking-over.html and relive those moments.

On this trek, we experienced various terrains and passed by many villages filled with fun loving kids and helpful mountain people. We trekked few days on lovely high altitude green grasslands at 11,000 feet. Oh, I still remember the cool winds brushing through me and help me forget all the pain!

From one of our camps, we did a hard climb to the glacial lake, Roopkund at 16,500 feet. The route to the lake was very steep covered with snow and loose rocks. We had to take every step with great caution bearing in mind that with a small mistake, we may roll over at great speed into the valley below. But, this got easier as we kept walking, the fear went off and we started enjoying the breath taking devilish foggy surroundings.

This emerald lake http://lostinthewinds.blogspot.in/2009/07/roop-kund-emerald-lake.html tested my endurance the most and it brought out my true character. The incident gave me more insight into myself.

Quoting the incident from Kumar G's blog

"It was almost 1 O'clock now. Shanti and the rest of the group have not reached yet. I doubted if she will be able to make it. But we waited. At about 1.30 we heard some shouts and Shanti and group emerged from the fog. She had made it finally! In spite of low hemoglobin, and an affliction of altitude sickness, puking and almost running out of steam she had ploughed on and did reach the top, Kudos! And as soon as she reached, she uncontrollably broke down in tears putting us photographers who were ready with flashes in a dilemma of whether to take snaps or not! :-D "

The true self comes out when we get pushed beyond our limits and without fail each of the trek brings out some!

Phuket, Thailand

From Phi-Phi, our next destination was to the popular and lively island, Phuket. This island was a good way to gradually change the tint of our trip. With so much of time already spent on the clear blue waters, we thought  it was time to experience other aspects of Thailand, say cultural! Though Phuket offers beautiful beaches, we didn't spend much time on them during our two day stay here. Instead, we visited some of the historical temples in the day and party-ed in the night.

To choose a place to stay in Phuket was a confusing job to me. It has so much to offer and that too at affordable prices. After spending sufficient time on the internet, we found a beautiful place to escape on the Karon beach; Bamboo House. The rooms were very stylish and were equipped with mac mini which was loaded with umpteen songs/movies and 32'' LCD TV to watch them. The room decor was very impressive and they had a clean and cute swimming pool. Above all, their service was brilliant. Our stay in Bamboo House was one of the highlight of our visit to Phuket.

Phuket has many temples and monasteries around it and we chose to visit only Wat Chalong. After spending some time here, we walked around the Old Phuket area and we got see many Sino-Portugese style buildings. We then entered into the market places looking for strange fruits, vegetables and species being sold. Along one of the crowded street, we saw hundreds of people dressed in white and strolling along. Upon checking with couple of localities, we came to know that it was their 8th day of celebration of Chinese Vegetarian Festival. Yes, it is Chinese, coz it was introduced by them. During this 9 day festival, people here refrain from eating meat, drinking alcohol in an attempt to cleanse their soul. We also bought a white t-shirt from the road side shop and joined the crowd in the celebration. The streets were tightly lined with small shops with each vendor selling different types of vegetarian snacks, fried stuffs and main meals. It was a scintillating environment with so many good looking eatables to choose from. We tried as many snacks as possible and loved most of them. At the end of the day, I just couldn't remember the name of each of the items we tried or even some of them or even one of them!

After-dark stroll on Patong's Bangla road was an experience altogether different for me. Music, Beer and Girls is what this place is all about. Before entering these streets, you need to be open-minded to accept that this place is raunchy and set yourself to enjoy at whatever suits you. Listening to deafening loud music, sipping beers while walking along the jazzy road, filled with fellow travelers enjoying as if it is their last day in their lives, was fun to watch and an experience to remember.

From Phuket, we flew back to Kuala lumpur, just spending a day and seeing only the most important symbol of Malaysia, the Petronas tower!

Goa, June 2012

 

To rejuvenate myself, I went for a week long trip to Goa with Jomy & Ri. We planned for a very relaxing trip, which meant absolutely no plan. We kinda stuck to it for the whole week while being there. We went out for couple of days, exploring some villages and beaches of south & central Goa. We enjoyed our time at Covla beach, drive to Madgoa and drive along the beach side road. Being true to our way of exploring, we went around the places on motorbikes. Ri who is 16 months old now, thoroughly enjoyed the motorbike ride and when she was very happy, she stretched both her arms to the sides and felt the blow of cool winds (whenever we went for drive after rains). In the initial few days when pre-Monsoon shower had not started, it was very humid and hot. But, after couple of days, with the pre-Monsoon shower, the weather was pleasant and enjoyed being on the beach.

 

Ri was very co-operative the entire trip. Oh man, this little girl enjoyed the beach so much, I felt, Like mom, Like daughter! We spent most of our time in the backyard beach in the resort. While not being on the beach, we lazed in the resort swimming pool.


We stayed in Club Mahindra resort in Varca which offered good indoor games options. Ri tried her hands at Carom with her Appa teaching. God knows, what she understood! But, she tried to use the striker.


 
Overall, a very memorable vacation with family. Of course, at the end of it, felt rejuvenated.

Phi-Phi Islands, Thailand

Oct 22nd to 25th Oct

An hour and half of ferry time from Krabi took us to Phi-Phi. It has two main islands - Phi-Phi Don, the bigger one which has plenty of accommodation and Phi-Phi Leh, the magnificent one. Leh doesn't have any accommodation except for the night camp in Maya bay organized by a single operator. It also only allows limited number of people.


More photos on facebook

On the day we reached Phi-Phi Don, the weather was clear and we decided to camp at Maya bay. The trip started in the evening with 20 of us in a big motor boat. En route to Leh was beautiful with small fine sand beaches. If you can kayak to them, you can have those amazing beaches for yourself! On the way, we stopped at a couple of places for snorkeling. It was wonderful to be in such clear blue waters! However, I didn't find the marine life to be too exciting. Later, I heard from other travelers that places near Bamboo island are better suited for snorkeling.


'Viking cave' on Phi-Phi Leh is one of the attractions. We saw the place from the boat and didn't make any attempt to explore this place! Our tour guide also seemed least interested, however, he mentioned that the cave is filled with bird's nest and the nest soup is a delicacy in Chinese cuisine.

Just before sunset, we reached Maya bay. It was a back door entry and had to swim for a small distance to get to the shore. We then walked for about couple of minutes before the beach could unveil in front of us. With gleam of light on the beach, Maya bay was stunning, breathtaking and it felt like a heaven on earth. It is truly an other-world experience. I was floating in the water viewing the sunset and I would cherish this memory forever.


In the evening, we were served with delicious supper and bucket of alcohol. Me and Jomy donated the bucket to an American who later showered us with blessings! Later in the night, we set our sleeping mats on the fine sand beach and laid watching countless stars on clear dark sky. It felt like paradise and we slept peacefully on the beach. In the morning, we woke up to the fine misty tropical rain and headed to Phi-Phi Don after the breakfast.

Trivia : The movie "The beach" was shot in Maya bay.
hi-Phi Don
For the next two days, we rambled around the island hoping from one beach to the other. We tried out the local cuisine in different restaurants and it was delectable every time. Papaya is one of the popular local restaurant serving good and cheap food and we liked it too. One of our favorite snack was the thai pancakes sold at the road side food stands. We tried it with different fruits, but banana turned out the best. They can also be topped up with some chocolate syrup for the extra yum-yum!

This island is overly developed with every inch converted to shops, resorts and restaurants. The place was more crowded than I had imagined. Also, some of the beaches were totally covered with the long tail boats! But, our resort was at the far end of the beach and it attracted very less crowd. Good for us! Among all the beaches on this island, I liked Long beach with very less crowd and very few resorts around.

In the nights, the island was very lively with loud music and parties going on in many places. But, we kept ourselves away from all the urban rituals and chose to enjoy the nature and watch the clear skies on both the nights.

Phi-Phi would always hold a special place in my heart for we celebrating our 5th marriage anniversary with a beautiful beach side dinner.

South East Asia : Krabi, Thailand

19th to 21st Oct 2009

More photos of Krabi @ My-Facebook-Album

From Langkawi, we took a ferry to reach Satun, Thailand. After getting our passports stamped at the port, we headed to Krabi by a pink double decker bus. Good roads, beautiful paddy fields view along the roadside, entertaining Thai comedy video played in the bus and a little nap in between helped me pass the time. It took us about 4 1/2 hrs to reach Krabi and it was about sunset.

Krabi has two very popular and beautiful beach areas. One is Ao Nang, a hustle bustle place with long beach and the other is Railay, a calm and more scenic beach. We choose to stay put at Railay first.

Railay beach


Railay beach is surrounded by huge limestone cliffs and is cutoff from the mainland. It is accessible only by sea and we took a long tail boat to reach here. It was already dark when we reached this place and had traveled the whole day. After relaxing for a while in the resort, we went for a brief walk along the dimly lit narrow path. The entire East Railay beach is only about a Km long and the interesting part about this path is that we need to walk through many restaurants and cafe. This place was very relaxed and less crowded, though every inch of the place is developed. It felt like we were in a small island.


The next morning, we went to Railay west to take our long tail boat for the day tour to near-by four islands. The west beach was stunning with huge cliffs on either side, calm clear blue water and fine white sand. It deserves all the praise given by the fellow travelers on other blogs. The four islands tour included Phra-Nang beach, Poda island, Chicken island and Tub island. Phra-Nang and Poda were breathtaking and I went crazy looking at the beauty. We went snorkeling near the other two islands and found variety of fishes. We had enough time to explore the under water life and go behind some fishes! Coral life wasn't exciting enough as many of them were dead and the live ones were not colorful.


In the evening, we sat along the west beach side restaurant and watched the sun set while sipping the hot Cappuccino. The color change in the sky and its reflection on the water was brilliant. We kept watching till the place went dark.

The huge cliffs in Railay makes it the one of the best destination for rock climbing. We initially planned to take a day for rock climbing. But, Jomy had twisted his leg the previous day and he couldn't do it. I for some reason decided to drop it as well (Shame on me!) and ended up watching experts climbing the rocks!!

Ao Nang beach

The next day we spent our time in Ao Nang beach. The place was bustling with people, numerous resorts and other shopping centers. The beach coastline was very long, clean and very good for swimming.

At night, with scores of bars and restaurant, Ao Nang was a party scene. But, we peacefully sat along the beach side benches and munched chicken satay bought from the late night street food shop. Ao Nang was different from Railay and I enjoyed the experience in both the places.

South East Asia : Pulau Langkawi

More Photos

On 17th day of Oct, while rest of my family & friends were celebrating Diwali in India, Me & Jomy set out to enjoy the beaches of Malaysia & Thailand. We reached KualaLumpur in the evening and flew to Langkawi after couple of hours wait.

Langkawi, one of the most popular Malaysian islands is said to have many good beaches like Cenang, Kok, Datai bay, Tengah. Without really doing much pre-work on things to do in this island, we had planned to spend only a day & 2 nights here. Only after reaching here, we found that a day was just too little to explore this island. But, I think it gave us enough time to get a feel for this place and people!

The nights were very lively with rich lights along the clean streets. Many restaurants displayed variety of fresh sea food waiting to be cooked in the style we prefer. On both the nights, we tried Malay cuisine and thoroughly enjoyed it. I found that Malay food generously uses coconut milk and is spicy with good flavours. The culinary style here has very good influence from India & China.

In the day, we went around the island on a motorbike. Motorbike & car are available for daily rental and is the most common way of going around the island. With intermittent rain and clean roads, it was pleasure driving along the coast lined up with dense trees.

We were staying in Cenang area, one of the bustling places in Langkawi. It has many good resorts and restaurants lined up along the beach side. It also offers plenty of budgeted stays for the backpackers. We started our day trip from Cenang towards Kok beach holding a detailed Langkawi map in our hand. On our way from Cenang to Kok, we stepped into the tropical forest which didn't have any proper route. While wandering here, we caught a glimpse of monitor lizard, which quickly slipped into the dense forest sensing our movements. This lizard is not as big as Komodo dragon, but it was big! Also, unexpectedly we found access to a very small beach. On this isolated beach, we met a small group of Malaysians from mainland who were camping here for few days. After chit-chatting with them for sometime, we continued our drive towards Kok.


As mentioned in many travel sites, Kok was certainly more beautiful with pristine beach and very few people. After spending some time here, we proceeded to Datai Bay in the north west corner of the island. It took nearly 30mins of bike ride to reach this place and once we reached, we found that we need to pass through a private resort to access the bay. As expected, the resort doesn't allow outsiders to stroll on their own in their premises. But, we managed to talk with the resort folks and they agreed to take us to the beach by their mini electric car. They also gave a tour of their resort! The resort is "Datai Bay" and is filthy luxurious. The cottages are build in the unspoilt natural tropical forest aging 50 million years, with clean river flowing in its backyard. They looked Superbb! The resort also has two swimming pools with one being on the beach side! And above all, the beach was an absolute beauty. I totally believe this is one of the must stay place in Langkawi, if you don't mind the pinch in your pocket.

Later in the evening, we took a cable car ride over the Machincang moutain range. The view enroute was breathtaking. With clear sky, one is expected to see a 360-degree view of the islands around. But, the time we took the ride, the sky was filled with clouds and we couldn't see the 360 degree panaromic view. But, surely the ride itself was enthralling when it glided above the virgin tropical forest and it was a unique experience.

After sunset, we decided to visit Kuah town without any plans in mind. We just ended up driving up to this place and returned doing nothing. The duty free shopping malls had closed by then and we couldn't shop!:(


In the next morning, before leaving Langkawi, we went for a early morning walk along the Cenang beach. I was totally flattered at the first sight of the beach; it was vast, fresh and clean as if new. I felt very peaceful and calm while I inhaled the pollution free clean air.

Then the time came for us to leave Langkawi and head towards Satun, Thailand.

End of Langkawi.