As you would know I have just returned from Kanha national park, a Tiger reserve and wildlife sanctuary. Jungle life is so exciting and thrilling. Travel Gods, if there are any, thank you. I was fortunate enough to see tigers, please note the plural. 😀 Actually, to say, I just spotted a tiger would be an understatement. 🙂
Gorgeous sunset from the hillock.
So, did I move to
The moment I entered the hall, I jumped with joy. There it was!! On the walls, on the tables, spread across three halls. The famous cartoonist Mario Miranda’s work!
Mario Miranda’s books on different themes.
Mario Miranda, one of the most
This is that time of the month when we talk about the souvenirs collected from all over the world. No points for guessing the place of this month. 🙂
Yes, this month it is Goa from where I returned only this weekend.
Postcards of different theme from Goa.
For travelers to Goa, the
After attending the ICTT (International Conference on Travel Technology) India which was held in Trivandrum, I was privileged to be invited on a tour of Kerala.
We were a small group of four (two Australians, Adam & Selina and two Indians, myself & Suresh). An Innova car with driver was assigned to us for the entire trip. The first stop out of Kovalam to spend a day was in Kumarakom.
How to reach there?
On a houseboat!
There is only one way to get to the resort Coconut Lagoon… .. over the water. 😀
Yes Selina, let this photo session end, then you can attack the Papaddams. 😛
The
As you know I was invited to the ICTT (International Conference on Travel Technology) India which was held in Trivandrum. After the conference the delegates were shown different places of Kerala and their beauty.
I’ll write about the Indian adventures on the road in a separate post. 🙂 We were a group of four (2 Australians and 2 Indians).
Meanwhile, I take you to the God’s own country through these photos.
Lush green velvety hills were a treat to our eyes.
I was invited to the ICTT (International Conference on Travel Technology) India which was held in Trivandrum.
It was a first of its kind of travel and technology conference in India by ATTOI (Association of Travel Trade Organizations, India). I have shared the program’s link in an earlier post.
A two day conference with 17 speakers from all over the world, it was a huge success. The chief minister of Kerala inaugurated the function. My favourite among the guest speakers was Shashi Tharoor who simply stole the show with his short yet powerful speech.
Shashi Tharoor has a huge no. of fan followers on Twitter.
Govindghat to Ghangaria – Day 4
You can go through the previous day’s journey here.
So we began our 13 KM hike at around 9:30 AM. 13 KM was not a problem. The first 2 Kilometers is steep and arduous climb. After that….. well, after that you start getting used to it and submit to your fate. 🙂
Once in a while the chopping of the
How many days do you need to do Valley of Flowers trek?
Beautiful view!
Now that you have seen awesome pictures of the Valley of Flowers and awestruck by its sheer beauty, you have decided to go yourself.
That is the time the big question hits you. And you start asking.
Following are some useful tips but before that, see if your query is one of these below.
Joshimath to Govindghat & Ghangaria – Day 4
You can go through journeys of earlier days in sequence.
Train journey to Haridwar
Haridwar to Rishikesh and
Rishikesh to Joshimath.
After that grueling, bone breaking bus journey sleep would not come early and when it came, it was difficult to get up early in the morning.
We were told at Joshimath that share-taxis start as early as 6 AM for Govindghat and Badrinath and they are frequent.
We got up as planned, packed and had tea at the only roadside tea cart. It helped us to recover from over groggy state somewhat. We walked to the shared taxi stand that would take us further north and further up.
A view from the taxi stand at Joshimath. I hate those electric wires.
On reaching the place we found that
Rishikesh to Joshimath – Day 3
Below are the accounts of journeys of previous two days.
Day 1 – Train journey to Haridwar and
Day 2 – Haridwar to Rishikesh.
As planned, our day 3 started early reaching the bus stop at 5:30 AM to board the 6 AM bus for Joshimath. We had already booked our tickets the previous evening. Since August end is considered off season, the earlier 4:30 AM bus had been cancelled.
We were told it’d take 10 hours to reach Joshimath. A grueling 10 hours bus journey in a 20 year old private bus on mountainous roads, and me with altitude sickness and diabetes …. We were sure going to have a tough time. Again, the bus was not full and right from the start the crew were stopping at every opportunity to fill up the bus. This wasn’t welcomed by us but we had no choice. Even when all seats had been filled, the crew was taking in standing passengers! This is illegal in the mountain roads of Uttarakhand.
A very common sight for us.
I had taken an
Haridwar to Rishikesh – Day 2
You can read Day 1 journey here.
After an intensely religious journey, thanks to our co-passengers in the train, I never realized that we had reached our destination. Actually, I was still trying to get some sleep when we pulled into Haridwar at around 2 PM. 🙂
Haridwar station is not big and as usual; sensing we are not locals, a large number of Auto and taxi drivers were after to ferry us where we wanted. We mechanically responded that we did not need one but still they wanted to know where we were going! One of them said “Arre nahi jana to koi baat nahi, knowledge ke liye to bata do!” (Even if you don’t want to go with us, tell us for our knowledge). 😀
We had read a few places that we could get
You must be wondering what took me so long to write about my trip to Valley of flowers, Hemkunt Sahib et al which happened in August last year. Well, no reason in particular…. last year I travelled a lot and every time I thought of writing it down, I travelled some more ! 😛
Other assignments kept me occupied and VOF posts got pushed again & again. I must now start documenting lest I forget.
Without further delay, here is my day by day account of the trip. Kindly bear with me if it turns out to be very detailed, I need to document it for future reference.
Train journey to Haridwar- Day 1
Our journey had started on August 27th when the monsoon season was at its peak. We traveled by
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