Singapore

It has been 4 long years since my last international trip and the same can be said about my blog. Since 2020, I have mostly gone on road trips and did not have anything worthy of a full-fledged blog. In 2022 we were blessed with a daughter, and we felt that if we were to continue our passion for traveling then it should include her as well. Traveling with an infant/toddler is challenging so I will try to go over what we did and how Singapore helped us make this trip easier! 

To be honest, in the good old days I would never plan a standalone trip to Singapore. I always considered it as a transit city to spend a couple of days on my way to some further destination. However, this time since our daughter was around 18 months old, we were limited by the places we could take her. It had to be something leisure and urban with tourist places at commutable distance from the hotel. Very few cities came to mind and Singapore was recommended by many folks who have visited the city.

Singapore Merlion

Spiritual Tour of Prayag-Kashi-Gaya

Tourism in India has mostly been associated with spirituality. Most of my travels with family as a kid were to temples and it always followed the same pattern. The day starts with no-onion-no-garlic-no-rice based breakfast followed by some religious activity. After the prasadam for lunch we would visit a museum or park or zoo or a water body so that we kids did not complain. The day ended with street food or dinner at a hotel where we could order the dishes which were not available in our village. Those were the days when I would just tag along without getting involved in planning the trip! Well, this trip in March 2020 was something similar for me (Yes, 2 weeks before the infamous lockdown). The main agenda was visiting temples and performing some rituals along with exploring our religious heritage. Then of course my side project of savoring some of those mouth watering street foods.

Let me start with giving some background on this trip. My uncles had decided to immerse my grandmother’s asthi (ashes/remains after cremation) in the Ganga and also perform the Kshetra Shraddha at the holy cities of Prayag (Allahabad), Kashi (Varanasi) and Gaya. While this was being planned, I expressed my interest to join them. The trip was entirely planned by our family priest who accompanied us and took care of all the arrangements. So in this blog I will hold off on explaining what and why of the rituals and focus on our itinerary and some tips in case you plan to visit them on your own.

Ganga Arathi in Varanasi

Vietnam - The affordable luxury

Did you know few of the most Instagram worthy places are located in Vietnam? Did you know that the locals have a different perspective on what happened during the Vietnam War? Did you know you can be a millionaire in Vietnam with just 45 USD (INR 3000)? Did you know Vietnam has some of the most popular UNESCO heritage sites? Did you know both Coffee and Beer is available for under 1 USD (INR 70)? So no matter what your reason for travel is, Vietnam will surely not disappoint. Of all my personal international trips, Vietnam was the one that was planned in the shortest span of time and let me assure that it was the most economical trip too!

#GshnyTravelsGyan - Generic tips for planning a tour on your own

It is time for renewing your old new year resolutions which you most probably have not managed to fulfill in 2019. If travel is on your mind for 2020 then this post will help you with preparing yourself and keeping your plans realistic. I have written location specific posts about planning trips but I thought I would write a generic one too. 

Long time no blog again

2019 is almost over and I just have two posts to show for this year. I was in a similar blog-less situation back in April 2018 and I wrote a post explaining to the future me about why there was a short break in the blog and ended the post with - “I will try to blog regularly so that you don’t have to read a post like this again”. (Link to the post in the bottom) Well here I am with a similar post again and this post is just me thinking out loud about things that changed over the past few years.

Weekend at Sakleshpur

The scent of the mud during rains, sipping on a glass of hot tea after getting fully drenched and the sound of onion pakoda being prepared while your eyes soak in the lush greenery is something that we experienced in Sakleshpur. After our successful monsoon trip of Kudremukh in 2018, more folks were interested to join us on the trip this year. For a relaxing weekend we booked a resort to laze around and decided on a few touristy places on the way.

Andhra Chapter: Vizag and Araku Valley

Vizag is one of the underrated Indian city for tourism. It has clean beaches, naval museums, a hilltop accessible by cable car and is at driving distance to Araku valley. I had visited the city back in 2012 for a friend’s sister’s wedding and had covered the touristy places inside the city during a half day trip. I of course did not recall the places (pre-blogging days, duh!) until I went there again last month for another wedding which brought back memories of the good old days. Now my travel blogs provide me a memory anchor to remind me of places and things :)