Yana and Unchalli falls!

I am believer that if you are going on short trips then rest is something you need to compromise with. When I had planned the Gokarna trip last year I wanted to cover all surrounding places and Yana was recommended to me by quite a few people. But things did not fall into place back then! So when I went to Sirsi for cousins wedding, I had enough time to spend a day exploring near by places.

Forts, Caves and Temples - Maharashtra

In the last couple of months I have found a new meaning to life - "Live to travel". I have been lucky to have friends who planned and accompanied me to the various tourist destinations. Frankly speaking (just like Arnab, only I will be talking) I have not gone outside of the 5 southern states. So visiting Maharashtra was like adding another feather to my cap. The entire trip was planned by my friend who is working in Pune. So to summarize the trip we visited 5 major places - Lonavla, Aurangabad, Shirdi, Nashik and Pune.

Mekedaatu

After the Thailand-Laos trip, it was time to get back to 1day road trips where we explore the places at a driving distance from Bengaluru (yes, not Bangalore). In September we visited Madhugiri on Tumkur road and Heritage Winery on Mysore road, so this time we decided to visit Mekedaatu on Kanakapura road.

Thailand and Laos - Part 3

Continued from Part-1 Part-2

There are Buddhist monks who walk the streets at around 6am and people donate food to them. We thought that at least once we should wake up early in our trip and we did wake up at 5:30am that morning. After seeing the monks we came back to our dorm and slept. Oh ya, at 6am we saw that the people who went for bowling were just returning back to hostel. Most backpackers see only one place in a day and just relax the rest of the day in hostel. We had overdose of Buddhist temples, so we decided to stay in hostel and do nothing. If there was no free WiFi, I would probably have killed myself out of boredom. [ Yeah, you get free WiFi in all restaurants and hostels in Laos. So if you have bought the local SIM then using 3g is not actually required]

Thailand and Laos - Part 2

Continued from Part-1

We left the city the next morning to go to Vang Vieng. It was a 3hrs ride in a tempo traveller to the party town of Laos. In India tempo travelers have 2+1 seat layout and these had an extra foldable seat in the path in between to add another person.  We checked into the hostel at around 1:30pm and left for tubing. Tubing is like the lazy river in the water park except that the river is not that lazy and you have different start and end points. You rent a tube and get into the river. The flowing river takes you through the scenic mountains and greenery. After going some distance some guy from the shore throws a rope at you and pulls you to the river bank. This is where the party happens. Singing, dancing, football, basketball and lot more activities. Not to forget beer and food if that is what you are there for. There are 3 such places on the tubing route. While people get souvenirs from their trip, our friend Vikram has an art of losing things. He donated his spectacles to the river during tubing. We came back at around 8pm and freshened up. There are 3 pubs/disco in this town and you can do pub hopping if you are interested. Here we met a guy from Brazil who had come alone on the trip. He was one of the very few guys who was on a short trip. Yes, 9days is a short trip by backpacking standards. Everyone else we met on the trip had plans of 3-6 months covering at least 4 countries. 

Thailand and Laos - Part 1

After 4 months of planning that involved several email conversations and meetups, we finally completed our two nation trip covering Thailand and Laos.

During my engineering days, I used to check for long weekends and linking holidays so that I could take a long vacation and go home. I still do that and I observed that taking a 3 day leave can get me a 9 day vacation. But since I stay with family now, I could travel elsewhere in those 9 days. So 3 of us discussed about it and Vikram pointed to us that we could go on a  Thailand and Laos trip. His friend had planned the trip but did not go on the trip. We agreed upon it and applied for leaves in office. We booked flight tickets 3 months before the trip date because the tickets were cheap then. We booked beds in backpackers hostel dorm and also applied for a Thailand visa. Visa on arrival was available, but we did not want to waste time (we ended up wasting a lot of time during  the trip anyways).

Heritage Winery - Wine and Dine

My friends and I decided to explore something new every month in January 2014. So far all we were able to do was to cover a lot of restaurants in various parts of Bangalore. We tried something different last week when we did the Madhugiri Trek. This week we decided to take a road trip to Mysore road and visit the Heritage Winery. To reach this place you can drive upto Chanappatna that is around 50kms from Kengeri. Once you pass Chanappatna keep an eye out for the signboards on the left.

Comic Con Bangalore

The first episode of The Big Bang Theory - Season 8 aired today. This show has introduced me to the fun side of science and Penny ( Penny > Science ). Every season has one episode dedicated to Comic Con. It was fun watching those episodes and also made me wish to be a part of that event.

Conquering Madhugiri Fort!!

Bike trips are always exciting but sadly I don't get to do it very often. The last time I went on a bike trip was to Coorg in 2012 (Clutch Breaks and Gears). Off late use of the 'M' word has increased in my family and it made me realize that there are so many things that still needs to be done before I get a +1. It so happens that most of my friends are facing the same situation. So a few months back we started planning various things but anything hardly worked out. So as things work out, you guys can see more and more posts being written in this blog (no, not a threat). 

[ PS: Click on the pics to see the full resolution pictures]

The Green Train Route

Phew! A long time since I went on a vacation. Been doing the one day trips but not a long vacation. I have reached the stage where I call my visits to native (Udupi) as a trip and a well deserved vacation. Its been sometime since the day train from Bangalore to Mangalore has started and this route is popularly known as the Green Trek Route. The trek from Sakleshpur to Subramanya was 'the' trek to do. However due to the risky nature of the route, the trek has been banned. So I did the next best thing to experience the route - take the train ride. (Well people who know me would know that I wouldnt have done the trek anyways. I cannot walk 3kms without taking atleast 4 breaks in between *sigh*). 

[ You can click on the pics to get a full resolution view ]

One day trips around Bangalore!

It has been a while since I explored new places. The last time I traveled was during the Gokarna-Goa-Dandeli trip in December 2013. This year I did not get a chance to go on a holiday but I did manage to visit a few new places around Bangalore. As a coincidence I had written a similar post during the same time last year (A day outing - Bike, Roads and Food). So here are the places I visited in the last 4 weeks.

#100HappyDays - Post 5

Continued from #100HappyDays - Post 4

Day 100 - Apr 17

And to conclude #100happydays.. Today is Day 100 :-) Exercised my right to vote :-D pic.twitter.com/3VhzLNDuAN
— Gowrav Shenoy (@gshny) April 17, 2014

#100HappyDays - Post 4

Continued from #100HappyDays - Post 3

Day 70 - Mar 18

Said some random stupid things but that later it made me think.. Actually thought a lot and decided on something :) #100HappyDays
— Gowrav Shenoy (@gshny) March 18, 2014

To quit or not to quit

While everyone seems to be worrying about the Whatsapp acquisition by Facebook, there are a whole lot of other people who are worried about their careers. A lot of companies have gone trough the exercise of laying people off in the name of skill re-balance, title inflation, cost cutting and many other fancy words used in the industry. In certain cases, I have heard the actual reason behind the firing was 'not sucking up to their bosses'. In this context, there are a few questions I would like to post, based on the talks I had with my colleagues and few friends working in other organizations.

#100HappyDays - Post 3

Continued from... #100HappyDays - Post 2

Day 40 - Feb 16

Happiness is chilling out with friends :-) amruthbhat vikrambk @uttamhv #100HappyDays http://t.co/SNcfW1XFaN
— Gowrav Shenoy (@gshny) February 16, 2014

#100HappyDays - Post 2

Continued from... #100HappyDays - Post 1

#100HappyDays is a commitment to find atleast one thing per day that made you happy. You can tweet or post a pic with the hashtag telling people what made you happy that day :)
To know more about #100HappyDays visit http://100happydays.com/

My tweets about RG vs Arnab :)

My views about today's RG interview in < 140 chars :)

I feel RG is like Abhimanyu... He entered the Chakravyuha and now he is just lost :P
— Gowrav Shenoy (@gshny) January 27, 2014

#100HappyDays - Post 1

#100HappyDays is a commitment to find atleast one thing per day that made you happy. You can tweet or post a pic with the hashtag telling people what made you happy that day :)
To know more about #100HappyDays visit http://100happydays.com/

PS: A lot of tweets were posted after midnight but I still consider them for the previous day :)

Jan 18 - Day 11:

Paryaya was awesome and seems to be the clear winner for today's #100happydays.. Check my tweets with #UdupiParyaya to know why :-D
— Gowrav Shenoy (@gshny) January 17, 2014