Lonar Trip

After a lot of thoughts about going somewhere we finally decided to visit Lonar, Maharastra on the weekend of 10-12 July. Two of my friends who have been there told me great things about the place and a quick wikipedia/wikitravel look confirmed that the place is infact a good one for a weekend trip.

From Lonar, Maharastra

What's Special about Lonar: Well lonar is famous for its crator lake which is about a 1.2 KM in diameter and said to be formed due to a meteorite strike about 50,000 years back. What's more special is that its the third largest crator lake in the world. Another speciality which may not sound very interesting is that its water is Alkaline and therefore its devoid of any plants or fishes.

From Lonar, Maharastra

We started the trip on early Saturday morning (around 1 AM) on a rented Innova from 4 wheels. The night journey was expectedly not very exciting or beautiful so most of us dozed off very soon, but as soon as it was dawn ppl started getting up one by one. When I woke up we were at "Bodhan" and our driver decided to stop and take nap, it was around 7 AM. Rohit figured out that we could get nice fresh Idlies as breakfast and so some of us did. We left that place by around 8 AM heading towards the destination. Which was approx 250 KM from there, our driver had taken a wrong route as we realized soon, but it wasn't that bad, probably a 100 KMs extra.

From Lonar, Maharastra

The officer at the RTO checkpost in AP was a honest man and demanded 200 bucks for the 7 days permit and made a receipt for the same, I felt good because of a strikingly different experience when we going to Wayanad from Bangalore. I felt nice that the taxes were so less but soon we realized that we had to pay a separate "fees" at the Maharastra RTO checkpost. This guy demanded 700 bucks for a 7 days permit which is as you can guess excess. Unlike Kerala the booth didn't have any mention of prices anywhere so there was little to expect. Now this gentleman gave us too reciepts one for 400 and another for 300. As we noticed the 300 Rs receipt was merely a piece of printed paper with no proper stamps but "RTO Bhainsa, Dist Nanded", the other one actually carried a Govt of India or Maharastra stamp. So do expect to give some bribe to the RTOs at the border, yeah we cud have argued etc. but from previous experience it felt like wasting of time.

From Lonar, Maharastra

After another 4-5 hours of driving we finally reach Lonar by 12:30 or so. The famous MTDC (Maharastra Tourism's) Resort is actually right next to the Lake. How close ? Well 2 minutes by walking out of the Resort and across the Highway. The Resort is pretty nice, with big well maintained rooms. We stayed in 2 bed, AC deluxe room and the cost was 800 bucks per room. The resort also provided pretty decent food, specially the Poha/Pohe, Parantha, Tea which were yummy as well the Dal tadka which I liked. We ended up eating all 3 meals at the same place. The actually village and shops are at about 1 KM distance from the lake and resort and don't seem to offer much in food. We cudn't find PuranPuri which Abhishek wanted to eat anywhere.

From Lonar, Maharastra

On the contrary we found quite nice Jalebi which being prepared as we reached the shop at around 6:30-7 PM. These "Harayana special" jalebis were super awesome, as we were enjoying them we saw the Movie "Taraju's" poster in the background, and it was decided among the 4 of us instantaneously to watch the movie. While heading to the these shops we also had a chance to see how the multi-cultural celebrations were arranged for a visiting MLA. In about 10 minutes that we were following the procession we heard these songs in different languages: Appadi Podu (Tamil), Ringa Ringa from Slumdog Millionaire(Hindi) and funny Crazy Chicken (Instrumental but probably of Foriegn origin). [Let me know if there any copyright violation by posting the link to the song, I will remove it].

We had to return to the resort for the Bhajiyas which we planned to eat there and also for the dinner and then we would come back for the 9:30 PM show. After a pretty heavy dinner we did go for the movie. It was a different experience to watch the movie on the non-digital print after a long time. After the movie we tried our luck in asking entry in to the projector room and we got it. The guys nicely explained and demonstrated us how the whole thing worked, how nice of them.

From Lonar, Maharastra

The next morning I did wake up early to see special sunrise effects but there weren't any because of cloudy weather. As decided earlier we trekked down to the lake and on our way down decided to take a guides help, which proved helpful later as he took us through easier/faster treks and helped us see at least a couple extra temples, buildings on the way. Of special interest is the Gomukh one which has a very clean water stream under which ppl can take bath. The water felt pretty refreshing after the trek in the moderately sunny conditions.

At this point some of us decided to head back to the resort while Rohit and I decided to see the other special temples. The famous ones we went to are called the Datya Sudhan temple, which has a carvings similar to that of Khujraho (as seen on TV :D) and the Hanuman mandir, which has a single rock carving idol of hanuman in resting position. The guide told that its actually made our of the meteorite's material, no idea how much to believe that. Besides these two there were couple of temples which we could have visited included a pretty big Jain temple which were closed at it was around afternoon. So we headed back to resort.

After another heavy lunch at the resort, we started back towards Hyderabad. The highlight of the return journey was once again the "Jalebi" at Nanded bus stop, accompanied by some dry "pani-puris". The return journey took about 11 hours including abt 2 hrs of breaks, including Dinner at the Natraj Dhaba near Nizamabad.

Info:

1) Route: http://maps.google.com/maps?f=d&source=s_d&saddr=Hyderabad&daddr=Lonar,+Buldhana,+Maharashtra,+India&geocode=%3BFRD7MAEdOqWPBA&hl=en&mra=ls&sll=18.69048,78.890076&sspn=5.597052,11.491699&ie=UTF8&z=8

2) MTDC resorts booking website http://www.maharashtratourism.gov.in, they have online booking and payment via credit card. Pretty cool stuff. Make sure to select the location as Lonar.

Note that checkout time is 9 AM, but the staff is friendly and accommodating.

3) Aurangabad the nearby city has the famous Ajanta Alora caves you can try visiting them. Its about 160 KM oneway.

Bike trip to SuryaLanka and Voderevu Beach

The weekend of June 13-14 the Google Hyderabad bikers club had a bike trip to SuryaLanka and Voderevu beach.

Numbers: 10 bikes, 1 car. 16 ppl, ~350 KM oneway. Cost: Fuel, about 20 Ltrs for round trip in most bikes. Food (about 100 Rs per meal). Accomodation (350 per head 2 days, AC :))

From SuryaLanka Bike trip

Now the details: We left at around 6:15 PM from Google office at Kondapur, Hyderabad (yeah bad timings, but we signed up for it :)). Soon as we reached Madhapur it started raining and got worse over next few minutes. There was some chaos because of the rains and before we could get to the petrol pump at road number 12 at least some of us weren't in the group anymore. After some confusion and stuff we finally got together at MPM mall at abids and started the ride again this time getting out of the city. It turned out the rains have slowed the traffic much further causing lots of roads being jammed, fortunately bikes could take the alternate muddy lanes and continue. Ultimately when we stopped just outside the city we had spent about 2.5 hrs and gone about 49 KM and most were pretty badly soaked.

From SuryaLanka Bike trip

The ride went quite fine after that, we stopped over at two three places in search of dinner finally managed to get food at the "Pal Punjabi Dhaba", which was pretty good. The rain had mostly stopped and riding speeds improved, though very soon we came to a single lane highway.

From SuryaLanka Bike trip

At around 2:00 AM or so came the first surprise of the trip, my bike's front tire got punchured. I was definitely among the less prepared ones as far as these surprises were concerned. Finally Ram and others managed to find a mechanic guy to come to the place where we halted and then the whole wheel was taken out and taken to a nearby shop for fixing the punchure. It took about 1 hr and 15 minutes before we could get back to start, just to realize that the car's battery has drained as they kept the indicator on all the while :D. Some pushing the car and we were back on the roads.

Besides this the onward journey didn't have any more unexpected stops and we reached our destination by about 9:15 in the morning taking enough breakes during the night and speeding quite a bit as the dawn came.

We had already decided to stay at Vodarevu because the only accomodation at Suryalanka, the Suryalanka beach resort by APTDC didn't have any vacancy so we went to Vodarevu and stayed at Vamsi Krishna Guess House the same place where we stayed in our last trip to Voderevu.
After resting for some time we decided to go for lunch to Bapatla which is about 12 Kms from Voderevu. Lunch was at ShreeGodavari restuarant, the non-veggie loved the prawns but the veggies like me didn't have a great experience with the meals.

Post lunch we went to SuryaLanka beach which is just 5 Kms from Bapatla, it was a nice ride and the beach was great too. Suryalanka is considered much better destination then Voderevu as the beach is cleaner and more targetted towards tourist compared to later being more of a fishing beach. I didn't wanted to lose the chance of getting in to the beach and went ahead alone spending some 10-15 minutes having fun with the waves before we decided to head back to Voderevu.

After we returned Ram figured out that we could take our bikes to the beach and ride them there. What a nice surprise! Most of us were super excited and went ahead and spent the next 1 or 2 hrs biking on the beach. Two of the bullets didn't like the salt water much and gave quite a bit of troubles to the riders, ultimately as it got dark we took back our bikes to the lodge and later came back to the beach for Bonfire.

From SuryaLanka Bike trip

From SuryaLanka Bike trip

The bonfire was another experience of its own, with the very breezy winds it took about an hour of consistent effort and abour 3 Litres of fuel(petrol ?) to get the woods catch the fire, as quite a few of us enjoyed the drinks and scenic view and some nice chitchat.



The next morning some of us had the lovely breakfast of idly/dosa which I am super fond of, the prices were unbelievable each idly 1 Rs and dosa 3 bucks :) We went back to the beach on bikes though we were too late for the earlier plan of watching the sun-rise from the sea reaching at about 8 AM instead of 5:30 or so. I got a perfect reflection photo of my bike with great struggle but unfortunately my friend deleted all photos by mistake, damn you.

From SuryaLanka Bike trip

From SuryaLanka Bike trip

From SuryaLanka Bike trip

From SuryaLanka Bike trip

From SuryaLanka Bike trip

We left at about 9 AM or so back towards Hyderabad. The return journey was fun and exciting too as we had good rest in the night. There weren't too many surprises, Santosh's bullet had some trouble (which he got get fixed himself but we spent about 1 hr) and then Vivek's bike had a tire punchure. After taking our lunch quite late we started back for Hyderabad, we reached Narkatpally at about 7:30 PM. After which I would say we had about the toughest riding of the trip with just 1 lane road and too many trucks all the time. Our earlier target of cover the remaining 50 KM by 9:00 PM was soon to revised. Ultimately we reached outskirts of Hyderabad by about 10:30 PM.

This was my best bike ride till date and despite my earlier apprehension about driving in the night and all the risks involved it turned out to be wonderful. I am now looking forward to longer rides and seeing our photos many of my friends who missed it are now determined to come for the next one.

Kauri Pass Trek and Rishikesh trip

We went on a 6 days Kauri Pass trek from 24-30th of April followed by few days spent in Rishikesh, Haridwar and Delhi.

From Kauri Pass trek

From Kauri Pass trek

From Kauri Pass trek

Kauri Pass Trek:
It was my first overnight trekking experience, the lack to time to figure out the details of what to expect there made it even more interesting. I started from Hyderabad, took a flight to Delhi and an overnight train to Haridwar. All of us were to meet at Har-ki-pauri but instead we met at the Train station itself at around 7:30 AM and took a bus to Nanda-Prayag right away.

From Kauri Pass trek

The bus journey wasn't a very good start for the trip as most people felt uneasy due to the motion sickeness of that rough drive on the winding roads. We arrive at the NandaPrayag by 4 PM, here we dropped of some of the extra luggage at the "Siddhart Lodge", taking one room for 6 days for 400 Rs. We continued to Ghat by a couple of Jeeps. We arrived there by 6:00 PM or so.

From Kauri Pass trek

From Kauri Pass trek

Now the surpises started for those of us trekking for the first time. I soon realized that it was not like those organized camping sites I saw at few national parks in the US. It was plain jungle with 4 tents belonging to us, no maps, no toiletts, nothing :). I haven't really stayed overnight in a national park either so no idea if the experience is any different.

From Kauri Pass trek

Soon there after we got our welcome drinks and then spent some time refreshing up on the fresh/running water stream. The day ended quickly after a good dinner and a tea. There isn't much to do in such an environment and all of us were tired too.

From Kauri Pass trek

The next few stays were pretty much spend in a constant manner, we walked for somewhere between 7-16 KMs per day mostly stopping near a village so we can like the villagers make use of the water stream nearby. I will try to add the itinerary here.
One thing that astonished me when visiting these villages was that almost every kid in the village went to school. One village of about 300 family actually had 2 different schools. Also unexpected thing at a village named Guni was how a single person named Mr Negi owned almost everything there, lots of farms, the only Telephone booth, a big lodge, a shop and being a school teacher earning 18 K per month. Somewhere later the potters told us how most ppl in the village were actually much more rich than someone would expect. For e.g many villagers would own up to 100 goats each costing 300o -4000 Rs. Some of them actually owned 300-400 goats, can you believe that ?

From Kauri Pass trek

From Kauri Pass trek

From Kauri Pass trek

From Kauri Pass trek

From Kauri Pass trek

From Kauri Pass trek

From Kauri Pass trek

After we finished trek at Auli we stopped over for a night at Jyotimath, the food at the Badri Kedar restaurant was a great treat to the mouth and the stomach. The next day we rented a car to Rishikesh. Yes renting for oneway wasn't that bad a idea it costed us around 500 per head. They charge 300 per seat and take 10 ppl in a 7 seater, so can pay them 3000 and rent the jeep for yourself.

From Kauri Pass trek

Rishikesh is famous for its Rafting offerings. We were able to get a rafting deal paying them mere 400 Rs per head for a 16-21 KM rafting (there were varying responses when we asked them the distance). The category would be 3+. As there are atleast 2 rapids of that category though there are others of Cat 1+ and Cat 2+ too. The surprise in the package (or atleast I didn't know) was them allowing people to dive in to water from a 20 ft high cliff in the middle of the rafting. We cudn't get to swim as we were pretty late. Do note that you should try to start from Rishikesh by 3 PM to make sure you are available to start rafting by 4 PM (starting point is about 20 KMs away from Rishikesh). We stayed overnight at a dharmsala for mere 400 Rs per room. (yep good dirt cheap accomodation is available in most ashrams, dharmsalas).

There are quite a few temples in Rishikesh. As I took a stride in the city, I did feel it was probably the calmest city I have been too. There isn't much traffic or pollution. All you hear anywhere is the bells or enchanting of prayers from the temples. The Lakshman Jhula and Ram Jhula suspension bridges in the city are also beautiful peace of civil engineering worth a visit. I didn't find the Chotiwala restaurant that people spoke so much about worth the hype.

From Kauri Pass trek

The next day we stopped over at Haridwar. The most famous spot here is the Hari Ki Pauri and the maha aarti 6:30-7:00 PM seems to be a event you can't miss. Well I didn't find it that great. The whole thing lasted for mere 10 minutes but the wait was more than 45 minutes. The donation collection at the spot reminded me of the emotional blackmailing technique used in the insurance ads. That guy would keep pursauding ppl to donate saying that since they have come all the way so they must spend money otherwise they will repent later :D

Waynad, Kerala Trip

On the long weekend of Good Friday we had a trip to Waynad. The trip was rather impromptu to the extent that we only booked tickets to/from Bangalore and talked to a cab driver to pick us up from Yashwantpur station. On the Wednesday evening we kinda finalized that Waynad is going to be a good option in this season compared to Humpi or Mysore and around. We rented a tempo traveller from Bangalore as we were 7 in number and a car would be uncomfortable.

Waynad's wikipedia/wikitravel article gave enough information to help us decide. The place is pretty cool throughout the year with peak temperature of 35 and min of 20 degrees celcius. On arriving we did find it true.

From Waynad, Kerala trip

The distance from Bangalore to Waynad is around 240 KM and should have taken 5 hours or so but the calculations didn't work good enough :). Starting at around 8:30 AM from the station we finally arrived in Waynad at around 6:30 or later. Yeah couple of things went wrong. Based on experience of my last trip to Ooty, Mysore etc. I suggested stopping over at Kamat restaurant on Bangalore-Mysore road. This time the restaurant was too busy. It took us around 1.5 hours to get basic breakfast down and it sucked because of poor service.

From Waynad, Kerala trip

From Waynad, Kerala trip

Then we stopped at McD which was just 10-15 KMs away from Kamat for some good food. Like all McD's there isn't much that can go wrong, they were fast and efficient in providing us food even though we had to wait for getting seated. Another 1.5 hours gone. Post this the stops weren't too big until we came at the Kerala border. The driver was trying to be extra smart making us pay 1000 Rs to him when the fees was just 380 Rs for 7 days visit. Lots of time was wasted here because of improper papers our driver had or something else, the police official did want to clarify that everything done was as per rules and "Of course I will give you a reciept this is not Karnataka boss, this is Kerala".



Before/After(?) the checkpost came we were able to see some wildlife as the road goes through the forest, We saw Elephants quite a few of them around 3 groups probably all of them were about to cross the road when we saw them. Later during our actual safari in the Waynad wildlife sanctuary we saw one additional animal species the deers and nothing else. As they said if you are luck you can see leopard, bison, tiger etc. but my experience with most safaris say you hardly get lucky ever :D

From Waynad, Kerala trip

Our stay was in Sultan Bathery the first city that comes on our route, around 12 KMs before the more famous Kalpetta city. Later in the evening when we went out for dinner most shops were closed by 9 PM, someone suggested that it was because of Good Friday. As I said in my other post about Kerala festivals aren't the best time to be in Kerala as tourists. We at the Sagar restaurant where we could get Kerala specialities, the Parantha and the Fish curry and other non-veg stuff. The later part of the evening was spent playing "Bang".

From Waynad, Kerala trip

From Waynad, Kerala trip

The next day we went to the Eddakal caves, much more than the cave part we enjoyed treking towards the cave and then hiking on the hill across the cave. As we kept climbing we could see clear panormic view of the surroundings and as is well know Kerala's mesmerizing beauty made up keep going despite the improper and uneasy route upwards and downwards.

From Waynad, Kerala trip

From Waynad, Kerala trip

From Waynad, Kerala trip

Post this we went to the Soochipura Waterfalls where we spent lot of time treking and then sitting right under the water falls posing for photos and fighting for the right spot to sit or stand. Not to mention before we started the trek for the fall we at a the proper lunch in form of Maggi noddles and omelets for some. Like at all other places the concept was to eat enough to make sure you "vasule" you contributions to the pool :P

That was it it was around dark and we headed back to Hotel after having our dinner at another restaurant in Sultan Bathery very close to our hotel. Again we couldn't get the veg specialities like Apam and Iddiapam and had to eat the regular north Indian kind of food except for the Laccha parantha.

From Waynad, Kerala trip

From Waynad, Kerala trip

Next day we took safari at the Waynad wildlife sanctuary. There isn't much we saw there as I already mentioned. Post this we headed on to Mysore where we spent time at Srirangpathnam visiting the Tipu Sultan's summer fort which is now made a museum, It liked it quite a bit though it was small the painting were quite well documented and informative. We also went to see the placed where Tipu's body was found in his last war. Soon we were on our way to Bangalore and then back to Hyderabad.

Hong Kong and Macau Visit (When, What and How)

Many may not be aware of the Hong Kong's tourist friendly Visa on Arrival policy. In short you can arrive in Hong Kong with your return ticket within next 14 days and you will get a visa. This makes hong kong a top choice for transit from traveling from India to US.

From Hong Kong and Macau

My visit to Hong Kong was piggybacked on my US trip which I decided to do with Cathy Pacific airlines for visiting HKG. The HKG visit was a 3 day long trip and I found it pretty much enough to travel around. I also found enough time to visit Macau which also has similar immigration policy.

From Hong Kong and Macau

What is there to see in HKG ?
HKG has the image of being one of the financial centers of the world. The city is characterized by the sky scrappers which are lit in fashion. The buildings are indeed beautiful and their lighting does impress as much. Another thing to notice is how the buildings are so well connected to each other via overbridges wherever possible so as to make it easy for people to walk conviniently across long distance without ever needing to hit the road.
Coming to points of interest, Victoria peak is arguably the best point to overlook the city. It makes for a scenic treat in the bright light of the day or the darkness of the evening. Mind you its pretty windy and its one of the places in HKG where you would miss you jacket or sweater :)

From Hong Kong and Macau

The other famous things to do include the skytrain from Airport to Lantau Island (didn't try), the ferry to go to various Islands across, visiting the 10000 Buddhas Monastry and enjoying the free cultural shows organized by Hong Kong Tourishm daily (for e.g we saw the Kung Fu Performance by Kung Fu Corner in Kowloon park).

Macau which is just 1 hour oneway on a ferry is considered a place to visit when you are in HKG. Macau is considered Vegas of the east for its numerous Casinos. The more interesting fact however is that it was a Portuguese colony. Though I didn't spent enough time to notice the difference from HKG which was occupied by the English but people say they are worth noticing. The casinos themselves are grand and their interior pretty well decorated comparing them to those in Las Vegas wasn't easy for me.

From Hong Kong and Macau

From Hong Kong and Macau

Tips for traveling in HKG
1) You can buy the Octopus card available from the Airport for 220 or 300 HKD, they are pretty useful if you are considering taking the Airport express shuttle to the city (100 HKG oneway). The first gives one ride the second a round trip. + Unlimited Metro train travel for 3 days, 50 HKD is refunded on return. Amazingly this card works for paying almost anywhere including most public modes of transport, the shops etc.
2) Traveling within the city could be done with Metro trains or the local buses both of which are pretty cost effective the trains being cheaper. Bus are good to get a good view of the city while traveling. Taking E11 from airport to city center turned out to be wise advice I got from someone on the internet. The bus stop are pretty well documented in english, grab a map from the tourist desk for convenience. (Airport express takes 20 min, A21 takes around 1 hr, E11 takes more than that but goes through about a full trip of the city).
3) City cabs are pretty good too, note that their isn't much concept of tipping in HKG the money is just rounded to the next dollar mostly.
4) Nearby Islands are connective by quite fast and cheap ferry services.

Traveling within Macau:
1) The casinos arrange free pickups/drops from/to Ferry terminals.
2) Cabs and busses are other way of going around in the city.
Note that the Ferry from HKG Island to Macau are pretty regular during the day time almost 1 per hour but between 2 AM - 6 AM they don't operate that frequently.

From Hong Kong and Macau