My Travel Tales

Maldives Islands is an archipelago comprising 1,190 low-lying coral islands scattered across the equator. Their pure white sands are fringed with green palms and surrounded by some of the clearest water in the world. Each resort sits on its own island, so it's important to pick the right place & also right time to visit Maldives. In this post, I will give all the information  required , for planning a trip to the Maldives.

When I reached my hotel at Badami, the hotel manager told me that there are a lot of places to visit inside and outside Badami. I had two days at my disposal to visit these places. So I dedicated my first day for visiting places within Badami and I decided to spend my second day to visit places outside Badami. Pattadakal was the first destination in “my list of places to visit outside Badami”.

After visiting the Badami fort and the cave temples, my next destinations were Aihole and Pattadakkal. From my previous day's visit to the Badami  Archaeological  museums, I got an opportunity to read about the history of the Chalukyans and their kingdom. The articles say that the Chalukyan's early capital was at Aihole. Then they moved their capital to Badami, which is about 33 kilo meters away. Aihole earlier known as Ayyavoḷe and later Aryapura. So, as usual, I  inquired  about the bus timings and the share auto timings to Aihole at the hotel's reception, the Royal Deluxe lodge. The boys at the hotel, were of great help as they suggested me two options: 1) To catch the van that was going to Pattadakkal at 9 am. From there, I can catch an auto or another bus to Aihole. 2) To use the direct bus service from Badami to Aihole. However the overall one sided cost for the trip will be around 12 rupees.

"Land Rover Experience" is one of the unique concept driven by "Land Rover" company during which  customers get a chance to experience the real power of Land rovers in off road conditions, which generally not possible in normal test drives. I'm very passionate about Land Rovers since child hood and always wanted to experience this beast. I never expected that I will be part of this event and I should thank Harish of BlogAdda for giving me this wonderful opportunity,  it was like my dream come true.

Penang is a Malaysian state and is situated on the northwest coast of Peninsular Malaysia. This region of Malaysia is the most industrialized and urbanized part of this magnificent country. As it is basically an island, you will find ample of scenic beauty to feast your eyes with.

I was planning to buy a water proof + compact camera and found 'Click Pro Prime' on snapdeal.com. I'm really impressed with the quality of this product and thought of writing a detailed review. Bought from: Snapdeal ( http://www.snapdeal.com/product/click-pro-oculus-prime/301067427 ). Only available on snapdeal. Price: 12450 Rupees. Photo Quality: This comes with 12Megapixel1/2.5 HD CMOS Sensor, which takes good quality pictures in daylight. Only drawback I found was, even though I took pictures in day light, images are getting darker some times. Photo burst and time lapse features are very helpful and works great. 

Gokarna beach trek was in my travel list from many years, but didn't get a chance to visit this beautiful place. I visited Gokarna when I was 13 years old, but didn't went for the trek. So when I came to know about this trek from prakash, with out any second thought, I blocked my calender. It was really a great experience visiting one of the best and picturesque beaches in India. 

I visited many places, trekked many mountains, but still there are many dream treks that I'm planning to do in the coming years. I really love trekking in Himalayas and they are very addictive. Once you visit Himalayas, you just can't stop loving it. From soft to moderate, Challenging to strenuous, trekking in Indian Himalayas could be a life time experience.

Malvan is a place in Maharashtra, which is emerging as one of the best places to try scuba diving in India. Not many people know about this place and beautiful beaches present near this place. Two year back, marine biologist Mr Sarang Kulkarni discovered the massive coral reef around the Sindhudurg fort and Thereafter, he also took initiative to train local youth from fishermen community in conduct of diving and snorkeling expeditions. Near the outer walls of Sindhudurg fort one can see lots of live corals and colorful marine life under the sea.

Rameshwaram is considered as one of the holiest places in India and also part of Char dham Yatra. This is the place from where the Rama built a bridge, across the sea to Lanka to rescue Sita from her abductor Ravana.  Many people think that rameshwaram is just a holy place with temples and devotees, but don't about that there are many beautiful beaches and must visit places. In this post, you will get all the details on what to visit and how to visit all the places of interest in rameshwaram. 

I visited almost all the famous beaches in India and its time to rate the best beaches among them. More than half of the top 10 beaches lies on the western coast of India - Arabian sea. Even though Palolem ranks top on the list, I personally love Kovalam Beach. This list excludes beaches of Lakshadweep and Andaman Islands.

After reading so many blogs, interesting articles about dhanushkodi and ram sethu, I was really excited to visit this beautiful haunted place. Dhanushkodi is located at a distance of around 23 km from Rameshwaram, on the southern tip of India. This is the place where Bay of bengal meets Indian Ocean. Trip to Dhanushkodi will be a life time experience, the landscapes, off road driving, beaches, everything make this place as one of the must visit destinations in India.

This is my 50th post in MyTravelTales. This post gives you all the information required for a trip to Goa. I visited Goa 8 times, always goes to the same beach, same restaurants and stays in the same apartment, but I never get bored of Goa. There is some thing special about Goa. The beaches, food, leisure life style are the best things that I like in Goa.

This is my second post on yeleswaragutta, popularly known as Mysterious island. Two year back I visited this place in peak summer, but was unable to reach till top of the hill because of the dehydration and unavailability of water. This time we planed perfectly and strongly determined to reach till top at any cost. I recommend reading my previous post on mysterious island: http://www.mytraveltales.in/2012/05/trek-to-mysterious-island.html before reading this post.

In this post, I gonna give all the information required for a trip to Ladakh. Travelling to ladakh is once in a life time experience and you won't repent for the time/money you spent for ladakh trip.

This is the last day of our trip and our plan was to explore pangong lake as much as we can in the first half of the day, then proceed to chang la, spent time in chang la, proceed to leh, then visit Leh palace and shanti stupa. 

This is the day 6 of our trip and we are going to visit beautiful Pangong lake. Every one in the team was so excited to visit this place and we are going to stay over night adjacent to the lake. As per the plan, there is no night stay at pangong lake, but we changed the plan and included it. A day before pangong trip, we came to know that there was huge land slide happened near chang la and we were not sure whether we will be going to pangong as per the plan on day 6. In the morning, our trip manager told us to visit leh palace, sindhu ghat, Thiksey monastery and by that time if the road is cleared, we can go for Pangong lake, but there are just 50 % chances of road to be cleared.

After two days of hectic long journey to Nubra valley, fourth day of our ladakh trip was planned to be a leisure trip visiting some attractions near to leh town. So we woke up late in the morning at around 8 AM, had break fast and boarded the cab. Our first stop was at Hall of Fame Museum, setup by the Indian Army in memories of brave soldiers who lost their lives in Indo-pak wars.

Because of the long road journey from Ladakh to Nubra valley, we were very tired and had a good sleep in the Tirth camp(Nubra Valley). When we woke up, the whole Nubra valley is filled up with fog and it was very cold. Every one woke up at around 7 in the morning, freshened up, had break fast and again boarded our cab to visit Diskit, Hunder then return to Ladakh. I was so excited to visit sand dunes, double humped camel in Hunder.

Trip to Khardungla & Nubra Valley is one of the must visit attractions when you are traveling to ladakh. This is not a regular road trip, be prepared for landslides, long traffic jams,breathlessness, spectacular views of valley and tasteless food(that’s better than nothing). The view of mountains keep on changing and you will end up taking hundreds of pictures of landscapes. Every time you have to remind yourself that you are traveling in India, not anywhere out of the world. There is one place in nubra valley, which literally blows you away, where at the same place; you can see desert, snowfall, waterfalls, river and cultivation.