Of This and That

If you are looking for a place to go and relax; kind of de-toxicate, then Ark Wellness Retreat, off Paud, on Paud Lonavala road, is the right place to be.  Our daily chores keeps us busy all week long, so when we planned our vacation, we wanted to go to a place, where we will not have to get up and go visit echo point, or lovers point or suicide point etc. All we wanted was a nice and cozy place to go and relax. We would be fine to not go out of the resort at all and just stay put in the room or roam around the resort and literally do nothing. Ark’s website  looked promising and so did the rooms. The place is just about a year old and extremely well maintained, so looks the same as you would see in the pictures. I called the resort and the person on the other side was very patient to explain the various options and the facilities available. They have only 8 rooms of which 4 of Deluxe and 4 Standard. Both rooms are good, well maintained and with good interiors. The de...

Come long weekend and the trend these days is that you need to be going out with family for the long weekend trip. However this also means that one has to make the bookings well in advance as otherwise usually nothing much is available at the last min. For the 26 th Jan weekend, we did realize a bit late and unfortunately as expected, didn't get any bookings anywhere. Spending the 3 days at home, wasn't making any sense, so we decided to rather make do with day trips so that we don’t have to stay anywhere. With this intention in mind, we looked up Rajaram’s PlacesNearPune blog site, and like in past, I did find options near Pune that were within 30-40 km range. The first was the Kodit Maskoba temple and the other was the Kanifnath temple . Both are on Pune Saswad road and hence easily doable in a single day trip. Given that many temples tend to close during noon, we decided to start early in the day so that we get sufficient time to spend in the temple, but the g...

Dubai, one of the 7 cities or rather emirates that constitute the United Arab Emirates (the other 6 being Abu Dhabi, Ajman, Fujairah, Ras al-Khaimah, Sharjah, and Umm al-Quwain, and Abu Dhabi is the capital of UAE), celebrates its national day on 2 December. It is known for its passion to create world records like  Burj Khalifa : world’s tallest man-made building and world’s highest outdoor observation deck on the 124 floor   Burj Al Arab :   world’s only 7 start hotel, world’s tallest hotel, world’s highest helipad Dubai Mall : world’s largest mall, world’s largest acrylic panel aquarium A quick note on Burj Khalifa’s observation deck. There is no doubt that it is one of the main attractions of the city and hence advance planning will be a good idea. We missed it as we could not plan in advance. You can check out the prices  here  and also do the booking. The prices vary based on the time of the day. Based on the season and your own plans, you...

One visit to this place and you wonder, why such a beautiful temple (one of the best temple’s I have seen) is not on the regular tourist map of Pune. In fact it is almost as if this place doesn’t exists, for not many people are aware of it. The temple is named after Lord Shiva and depicts his blue throat due to the venom that he had swallowed during sagar manthan. It is a huge temple, with lots of open space, space to sit and enjoy the exquisite sculptures that tell different Hindu mythological tales. I have never seen so many sculptures in one place. See some of the pictures to get a sense of what you are missing, if you haven’t been to this place as yet. These pictures still don’t tell the complete story. Now that you have seen some of the pictures and want to make a trip to this place, note the following. The temple is on a small hill, maybe around 700-800 ft high. Physical walking distance maybe around 1.5 km, but given the steep climb that...