Memoirs of a Wandering Nomad

Day 3: Manali local and Rohtang (Gulaba) --------------------------------------------------------- The next morning at Manali came early. The day looked bright and sunny, and there was none of the gloomy, cloudy feeling of yesterday. We decided to try our luck on the Rohtang road after a hearty breakfast of omlette and bread from a local roadside chap. For Rohtang, one has to cross the river and go to the other side. Taking left, you first reach a petrol pump - one of the last few on the road to Leh - this is the base of a place called Vashisht - famous of its hot medicinal water springs. The road is dotted with shops selling and renting snowgear - jackets, boots, the works. But most of it is reused often and usually quite dirty and smelly. Stairway to Heaven? Anyway, some 20km ahead, a road leads to Solan valley. Do not go there - especially when you know that Manali is swarming with tourists. All Indian tourists go to Solan to play in the snow, and make an absolute lousy...

Day 2: Bilaspur - Aut - Mandi - Kullu - Manali (170km, 4 hours) --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The morning came swiftly on the second day, but before we started off, it was already about 10am - perils of a family traveling together that one has to learn to endure over time. The road further ahead is now narrower and winding, and the going starts getting slower. The surface gets a little rough once again near Barmana - where ACC has a cement factory, but it is better than the last night. There is a large lake near Bilaspur - I believe it is called Gobind Sagar. We could see the glimpse of the water body from far, and the setting looked nice. The road climbed further to Sundernagar - which is actually quite pretty (Sunder - literally 'beautiful') - with a canal flowing along the edge of the road, and has a small-town feel. It is pity they have not developed this one into a nice a tourist place. There are no restauran...

Day 1: Gurgaon - Karnal - Ambala - Chandigarh - Ropad - Swarghat - Bilaspur (350km, 8 hours) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Manali is perhaps the most discussed and described destination in North India, as it caters to all sorts of tourists - families enjoying their school vacations in May-June; bike riders trying to scale Ladakh and the valley of Lahaul-Spiti during July-August; adventure junkies trying their hands and feet on various things that drive adrenalin - like mountain biking, snow trekking, paragliding etc. esp in Nov-Dec; and foreign tourists - mainly Russians and Israelis all round the year trying to find a home away from home in the limited dollars they have managed to put together . Manali also offers different things to different people. For some, it is an alternative which is safer than Kashmir - although not as serene - with the snow-clad mountain peaks all around. It is also an alternative easier...

This was written some time in June 2012, when I visited Seoul. This is the pre-Gangnam era, and no one knew - or cared, for that matter - about the weird monkey-dancer-singer fellow from South Korea. Neither was the world full of nuclear war-cries from the northern neighbor of the country at that time, so you need to take the write-up uncolored with these recent 'developments' - if that word can be used at all. Anyway, the reason I never got down to publishing this earlier is among the usual suspects - not enough time to complete the post, not having enough breathing space to upload it .. blah blah! ... I was going through my heap of unfinished tales for some other reason recently, and chanced upon this rather abrupt version. The other reason I got reminded was an unplanned occasional lunch arranged at a local Korean joint in Delhi ... So here it is, for what it is worth ... S. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------...

Essential Singapore: ------------------------- Just back from the 'fine' country of Singapore - there is a popular T-Shirt that you get there in Chinatown and other markets too, which says that Singapore is such a fine country that you get fine(d) for everything - fined for littering, fined for jaywalking, fined even for chewing gum - can you imagine! ... So apparently the country does not have chewing gums. They also do not have crows - it seems they did not like crows, so they shot them down to the last bird! Anyway, there is just too much written about Singapore these days - some official and guided by the tourism ministry, while some unofficial. In fact, Singapore is perhaps the most exploited and over-exposed destination in terms of holiday writeups - all full of juicy descriptions of the shopping, Bukit Timah Zoo, Bird park, other tourist attractions like the Universal Studio at Sentosa, the Merlions on Marina Bay, and the glitzy Clarke Quay (pronounced 'Clark-k...

This is my first trip to China, and I know the first impressions may not be enough for a land that ancient, but this is what I have guys at the moment ... So this is my last evening in Guangzhou, China. Tomorrow morning I leave for Singapore. And now I can safely say that I have finally come face to face with the dragon, and also to a certain extent - tamed it. It so happens that for my first visit to China, I was in a town most famous for its seafood. Also since it's close to HK and due to the trade fair they have every year, there are a lot of Western style hotels like Mariotte and Sheraton. I stayed in Landmark Canton. Quite an old hotel, but rooms are nice. I was in the exec suite anyway, so especially nice. What was best is the office is in this same buidling complex. I even have a secret passage to reach there. We did not even leave the building during the day - only in the evenings for dinner. The food was great, and my clients were especially hospitable. For e...

Day 6: 27th Jan 2012 Ashtamudi to Kochi (Ernakulam) We start for Ernakulam at around 10am. But first the driver takes us to a local temple of goddess Bhadrakali, about 4km from the resort on the way to the highway. The deity is highly revered among the local inhabitants of the nearby villages. There is massive pillar of gold, which has (according to our driver Ramachandran) 15 kg of gold used for the plating. The temple is itself small, and men have to remove their shirts to get inside. Women need to be dressed in Indian attair, or else they are not allowed. The idol of the deity is very pretty - soft white marble with pleasant face. Since we ask for a puja, which the priest does for us behind closed doors, we are given the blessings from the goddess in the form of prasadam - rice prepared with thick dark brown jaggary - very strong in taste and very very sweet. We hit the highway by 11am and head towards Ernakulam. This time we have decided to stay at Ernakulam, not at Fo...