Weekends in Vancouver

It is the last day of 2016 and like the previous year, I have a backlog of blogs that I planned to write but never did. This year it is the blog series on my 6 week Vancouver trip. So just like my past blog series, I will cover the highlights in this post and go into details in my future blog posts in January.

Eden Heights - Premium homes at Whitefield

It’s been 3 days after my last site visit to a newly launched residential project. This time, it was Habitat’s Eden Heights. As a blogger, especially with real estate, it becomes second nature to keep my ears open and listen to any and all the feedback I receive about a said property. This helps with the writing process, especially since I can address any concern. Over the last weekend, I went to the Eden Heights project and I was pleasantly surprised with its proximity to Hoodi Circle, to luxury malls, IT parks, restaurants and many places for business and fun.  Hoodi is bustling with activity and what more, there’s an upcoming metro station the vicinity.

Talacauvery

Talacauvery is the origin of Kaveri River near Madikeri in Karnataka. Kaveri Tula Sankramana is famous for Teertodhbhava which is an unique annual spectacle when the holy water gushes from Brahmakundike, a small tank, on the Brahmagiri Hills at Talacauvery. During the one month starting with Tula Sankramana, thousands of people from regions of Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu visit this place to take a holy dip in the river. If you are not a religious person than you should visit just for the amazing view offered by the Brahmagiri Hills.

Friends & Travel

I have been blogging about travel for around 2 years now and almost all my travel have been with family or friends. A lot of people have asked me to try solo traveling. I aim to do that someday though I highly doubt that would happen. When going to new places, I like to be around people that I know. In this post I will summarize few of the trips that I went on with my best friends.

#TVShows - The Marvel & DC Universe

There is a huge following for the action hero movies from Marvel & DC comics. Off late these franchisees have entered the silver screens too. While few people are aware of this, a vast majority do not know that few of the shows are actually back stories or links to missing piece of information presented in the movies. In this post I will go over the shows that are created from the world of comics.

#WorldTourismDay - India

September 27th is the world tourism day. My first thought was to blog on responsible tourism but its been a busy day and I will not be able to do justice to the post. So I decided to go through the photos I clicked and post one picture from each Indian State & Union Territory  I have visited.

Shows to Binge Watch over the weekend!

For folks who know me well, I spend most of my free time either roaming around or watching TV Shows. For the roaming around part I have my travel blogs or Instagram pics. For TV Shows I have not attempted to show off in any way yet (lets just say twitter doesn't count, I mean one or two tweets among all that spam? duh!).

So why have I not attempted to blog about shows so far. Well, I cannot tell you what you may or may not like. And I watch so many shows at a time that my feedback is usually relative to the other shows I watch. There is always a first time for everything, so in this blog I will try to cover the shows that I binge watched recently.

Lepakshi

Lepakshi is on the Bangalore-Hyderabad highway, 100kms from the Bangalore International Airport. There are 2 major places to visit in Lepakshi. The first one is the monolithic Nandi and other one is the Veerabhadra Temple and its surrounding incomplete temple complex. The temple architecture is of the Vijayanagara empire style so if you have not visited Hampi then this would be a preview and if you have visited then this would be kind off a quick recap.

Jaipur

Last year I did my first North India trip where I started with Delhi and after 4 states and 2 Union Territories, I ended the trip in Jaipur. I have already blogged about rest of the places, so here goes the final one. We did a one day tour around Jaipur covering the palaces, pink city & forts. The next day we head out to Ajmer & Pushkar.

Murudeshwara

I recently went to Shirali near Bhatkal for a friends wedding and since we had time to spare, my uncle suggested we visit Murudeshwara. This was not the first time I am visiting the place but its the first time of me clicking pics. Murudeshwara has the world's second-tallest Shiva statue. The town lies on the coast of the Arabian Sea and is also famous for the Murdeshwar Temple.

#UrbanForest - Comforts of modern life with the joy of nature

The reason most of us travel is to get away from this concrete forest that we stay in. And if you have not been doing that then take the nearest exit from Bangalore through any of the toll booths and you will observe the change in landscape. I remember my good old days in Udupi where my house was surrounded by trees and taking an afternoon nap in the balcony was something to be done on holidays. In Bangalore, holidays do not have anything new to offer.

Yercaud

Yercaud, known as the poor man’s Ooty is situated around 230 kms from Bangalore. It is a very small town on the Eastern Ghats and there is a little of everything. So I would recommend this place as a weekend getaway to take a break to relax. Before I go into the list of places I would like to point out that you can either cover all places in a one day trip or stay a night and relax over 2 days.

Himachal Chapter - Manali

We reached Manali on day 11 of our trip and we were tired and just wanted to get home. Also when compared to Leh, Manali was just Meh! Having said that, I will try to do justice to this post even though I have lost patience to write (type) after the previous 3 posts which collectively had over 5000 words. Bear with me on this one and if you have read all the previous ones then thanks :)

Continuing from where I left off in the previous post, we left Leh on day 10 of our trip and during lunch we crossed over from J&K into Himachal Pradesh. You can see the transition in landscape as soon as you enter Himachal. The J&K side is all white with snow and blue with frozen lakes while Himachal side is all green. You pass via Keylong (3350 m) & Rohtang Pass (3978 m) to reach Manali.

J&K Chapter - In and around Leh

There are 2 kinds of vacation that you take. First one is where you need a break and you don’t care about visiting too many places. You just want to cover few ones and have a relaxed day to spend time with your family/friends. The second one is where you have a time crunch and you want to cover the maximum possible places in the limited time you have. I am the second kind. I mostly laze around at home (and if required I can take WFH and sleep #justsaying) so I would rather make the best of my trip.

J&K Chapter - Jammu to Leh via Srinagar and Kargil

In the previous post I wrote about how to plan the trip to Leh. That post was written under the assumption that you have read or seen pictures about Leh and were interested to go there. This post and the next one focuses on the locations and routes, intended for those who want to know more about the places or the ones who would want a virtual tour on #GshnyTravels ;)

J&K Chapter – Preparing to get Leh’d

Leh, a high-desert city in the Himalayas, is the capital of the Leh region in northern India’s Jammu and Kashmir state. (I didn’t know how to start the blog so after a lot of thought process, I copy pasted the above from wiki). Now let me go over how I planned for the trip. In this post I am trying to cover almost everything that will be required to plan a trip to Leh.

Haridwar and Rishikesh

So far in my North India 2015 blog series I have covered Delhi, Agra, Chandigarh, Kasauli and Amritsar. We had ended day 5 with the visit to Wagah Border and then took the train to Haridwar in Uttarkhand. On Day 6 morning of our trip we reached Haridwar. Since I went with family, I kept aside more time for temples but I did do water rafting in Rishikesh.

#LoveScotch - Party with the stars

May 21st, 2016
Sangri-La Hotel, Bangalore

Every morning Bangalore Times features a few celebrities that were found partying in Bangalore and I always wondered what happens in such parties. This weekend I got to be a part of one such party that took place on World Whisky Day.

A visit to Chandigarh, Kasauli and Amritsar

Last year I took my first trip to North India. I started blogging about it once I returned but then lost track of it. I thought I could resume from where I left off last time. This was the trip where I created my own travel hashtag - #GshnyTravels that I currently use whenever I am on road enjoying everything travel has to offer.

Let me start this post by summarizing what I have already blogged about. Mom, bro and I started our 10 day trip by flying from Bangalore to Delhi by an early morning flight. We had booked a cab which picked us up at the airport and took us sightseeing around Delhi where we covered Qutub Minar, Lotus temple, Delhi Haat, India Gate and Akshardham. The next morning we head out to Agra via the Yamuna Expressway to reach Taj Mahal and post lunch we headed out to Fatehpur Sikri where we visited the Akbars palace and Durgah. We reached back in Delhi at midnight. I have written 3 blogs detailing the events of first 2 days of that trip. In this blog I will cover the next 3 days.

Introducing everyone to the world of sounds

Cochlear™ India called for bloggers in Bangalore for a meet and greet event with Brett Lee. Only after I attended the event did I realize how serious the event was going to get.

It all started with a game of Dumb Charades. 4 bloggers volunteered to act while rest of us had our laughs as we guessed what they were trying to convey. Then came the question of what if we had to play that game all our life. In most cases the loss of speech is due to the primary reason that as a child, they were not able to hear anything. The first step towards any solution is accepting that there is a problem. This was the agenda behind the Cochlear™ Bloggers’ meet – understanding about hearing loss and the remedy that is available for it. 

Hassan Shettihalli Church

If you have bought a new car or bike (or DSLR) and just want to drive aimlessly on a highway with no particular destination in mind then Shettihalli Church in Hassan would be perfect for you. Situated at a distance of 200kms on the Bangalore-Mangalore highway, this would be a perfect off beat location for you to go and do nothing.

Bangalore Food Truck Fiesta

Bangalore is a cosmopolitan city and things are ever changing here. In this post let me tell about the latest trend in the one thing that Bangalore absolutely loves boasting about - Food. (If you thought weather, then no.. Its terrible these days) From the SLVs to Empires to Barbeque Nation to the whole bunch of breweries, now we have the food trucks. This probably started couple of years back and picked up slow but now I am told there are about 30 food trucks in Bangalore. In one of my previous posts I wrote about how Bangalore celebrated the Open Streets and continuing the similar efforts, BMRCL (Bangalore Metro Rail Corp Ltd) tied up with the food trucks to have a month long food truck fiesta.

Shivagange Trek

Shivagange is a peak and Hindu pilgrimage center located near Dobbaspet,20 km from the town of Tumkur and 54 km from Bangalore. The sacred mountain is shaped as a shivalinga and a spring flows near locally called "Ganga", thereby by giving the place its name. It is also known as Dakshina Kashi and it has various temples.

Nammoora Habba

I wrote my first blog in 2009 when an article I wrote did not make it to the college magazine. The article was about Udupi-Mangalore which focussed on culture, tourism and food. And here I am writing my blog number 101 about the same thing. Till date I never miss an opportunity to highlight anything good from my hometown. Last month Bangalore hosted its 3rd Nammoora Habba in Jayanagar. It was a 2 day festival with competitions during day and cultural events in the evening with a supply of Dakshina Kannada style food throughout the day.

MG Road Open Streets

While everyone was busy drooling over the Bangalore weather or cribbing about the bad roads and garbage in our city, most people missed the amazing Open Streets that happened on MG Road last month. Yes, the ever busy MG Road was closed for traffic and opened up to people to do whatever they enjoyed the most. However the closure was only between Brigade road and Kumble circle and between 9am to 9pm.

Opera Software - Roundtable

Earlier this month I got invited to be a part of the round table with Mr Bruce Lawson who is the deputy CTO at Opera Softwares. The agenda was to discuss their global strategy to bring the next billion online and the relevance of its products and technology in the Indian market. This event took place in Taj Vivanta on 5th of February. 

#FlipkartOutdoors Indiblogger Meet

It is the age of ecommerce and we like to do everything from the comfort of our home. Let us take shopping for instance. The once window shopping is now replaced by in window shopping (see what I did there). Given a choice most people like to spend their weekends outdoors, and by outdoors I don’t mean getting stuck in traffic and visiting malls. So you can now browse and select stuff you want to buy during breaks in office, thus keeping weekends free for your family and friends. Each city has weekend getaways that offer a range of activities like camping, cycling, trekking or just lazing in the arms of Mother Nature. Keeping this in mind, Flipkart now has a range of products that will make your outdoor experiences better and also helps you capture those moments to share (show off) to the rest of the world. Well, that pretty much sums up about what #FlipkartOutdoors is all about. 

Chelavara Falls

This again is one of the places I visited during my trip 3 years back. Chelavara falls is on the Madikeri-Virajpet route. We had a tough time finding this place last time but now there are sign boards everywhere so it should be easy to reach. Even google maps is accurate with the route. The route in the last 5kms is bad but apart from that the roads are good.

Mandalpatti

Mandalpatti is one of the most scenic places in Coorg. In a post written nearly 3 years ago, I had explained the adventurous bike ride to this place. This time I went there in jeep and there was a huge difference in experience (Bike feels more near to nature). Also the place has become touristy resulting in more vehicles and crowd.

Avalabetta and Gudibande fort

Firstly Happy New Year :) I would like to thank you all for your support and suggestions to my travel blogs. Its second week of 2016 and I am still figuring out my travel plans for this year. As I look back, there have been a lot of amazing places that I have visited but not blogged about. In this post I will write about Avalabetta and Gudibande fort. Both these places are located off the Bangalore-Hyderabad highway (NH7 or AH43) after Chikkaballapur. Its a 100kms drive from Hebbal.