Of This and That

After almost an year’s break from any travels, to allow my daughter to fully concentrate on her class X, we finally decided to get out of the routine and go spend a few days at some resort. Since the decision was taken at a time when summer vacations of kids had already started, getting a booking at any place, on the weekend, at a short notice was impossible. Also, given the summer heat and lack of water at our home, due to water cut by the society, we wanted to go to a place with enough water. So, we narrowed on Jal Srushti Island Resort  and booked for a 2-night package on weekdays. I had heard good things about the resort and a very good trip advisor rating convinced us to try this place out. We were a bit skeptical of how much water will be there, given that it was peak summer and rains had not yet graced the city, but our doubts were ill placed. Well, to start with, the booking for the place is typically managed via their own site and you need to typically pay about ...

Come Summer and it used to be the time to get packing and make the month long trip to grand parents place. A tradition that kept on for many many years and then took a break in between as I graduated from school to engineering and then onto my job. These trips became far and wide. However for the last few years they are back on track, though the destination has changed, for now it is the grand parents for my daughter.  Though climatically this isn't the ideal time to visit Delhi, but can't help it. Fortunately due to the changes in weather pattern, the summer heat has also got pushed along and the initial few days of the month of May aren't as hot as it used to be. Eventually the heat does catches on, but we do get some days of good weather. Interestingly this time, the electricity board was also a bit favorable and the power cuts were less and also not long lasting.  After my typical week long break (that's all I manage these days), I boarded the Duronto Expres...

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...

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...

Bhandardara , a place I had not even heard off till recently, turned out to be one of our best holidays till date. I had recently seen this place in a friend’s Facebook updates and when we had some time at hand (in between my changing jobs), we decided to give it a try. About 165 km from my place (about 4 hour drive), this place is almost like heaven on earth. A place you can visit all year round due to its lush green mountains, Wilson dam, Arthur Lake (also known as Pravara lake), Umbrella falls and many other points worth visiting. We stayed at a place called Anandvan resort . There are only 2 other places worth staying – Yash Resorts and MTDC resort. The MTDC resort was in a really poor condition and was in a state of renovation. Didn’t notice Yash resort, but Anandvan is by far the best place to stay, as also rated on trip advisor . The experience at Anandvan was just great, right from the reservation call I did. A friendly person advised on various options and shared the...

This was our second trip to Alibaug and unlike the earlier one, was intended to be a pure relaxation weekend. One of the best places to stay there is Radisson Blu and this is where I got the booking, with a great deal which had all meals inclusive. It worked best for us since our intention was to get away from routine work and have weekend where we will just relax and eat and sleep. The last few months had been busy (trip to our native and then home renovation work) and hence the interest of a work free weekend and also enjoy a weekend before kid's school would reopen. We spent the weekend of 7 th June 2013 there. The monsoon arrived a few days earlier, so this weekend ended up with a rainy spell, but it did mean that we had a lovely drive to Alibaug and nice stay at the hotel. We had left from home around 1 pm and drove down in our Mahindra XUV. Since the time I had bought XUV, this was first time I got to take it on the Pune Mumbai expressway and it sure was a ple...