A canine travelogue

We are the epitome of unconditional love and are loyal till the end. There are not too many things that we need to be happy; three square meals and a cuddle is all we ask for. 

But once in a while we do need a break from this frugal lifestyle and let out some steam. All we ask is to let us travel now and then and explore the world around us. 

 
We are born explorers and enjoy taking a bit of fresh air and seeing the countryside.    

Maybe even take the car for a spin once in a while.

Even long distance travel suits us just fine and jet lags mean nothing to us. We are quite adaptable that way.

We like to spend some quality time with our loved ones and what better way to rekindle the romance than by taking long walks and watch the sun go down together.

We love to do trick photography whenever we get a chance. Luckily, we are quite good at it.

Keeping in touch while travelling is important to us. So we like to be connected even while we are away. After all, our Facebook page will not update itself.

Some of us who still haven't found our special someone like to meet exotic foreigners from unknown lands. That way we are very adventurous.

We also love our travel gear and never miss a chance to show it off. Our holiday photographs need to look perfect!

A day at the beach for us may be bad for our fur and mean extra cleaning hours for you. But it relaxes us. And watching the sun set in the far horizon means a perfect ending to a day well-spent. It really is a dog's life. 

Weekend getaway to Alibaug

Every so often, Mumbaikars feel the need to get away from the city even if it is to simply breath a little easy. Often with just a weekend to spare, a quiet little nook close to home is what we look for. Luckily, we don't need to look too far. Alibaug is a perfect destination to head to - it is close to Mumbai, convenient to get to and has a lot of options to stay.

When I visited this coastal town some months ago, I stayed at the Radisson Blu Resort & Spa - Alibaug. It was absolutely fantastic!  

Radission Blu by day with the Sahyadri range in the background

It is a huge spread with rooms lined such that they form a squarish courtyard. This has a little island in the centre with a smattering of beautiful mango trees that you can admire from your room. This island, I was told, has seen many an Indian wedding. 

We gave Alibaug beach a miss and instead headed to the quieter Varsoli beach located about a mile from the main beach. Varsoli is a small village near Alibag and has a thick vegetation of coconut.

Me at Varsoli beach

You can hire a rickshaw to get there. We hired one to take us to the beach from our hotel and drop us back with a couple of hours waiting time in between - and all this for Rs 200. This beach is less popular among tourists and therefore cleaner! 

To look for other attractions to visit while in Alibaug, browse this great site called MustSeeIndia.com.

The Radisson Blu Resort & Spa, as the name suggests, is known for its humongous spa called Mandara Spa, which has won many awards. The hotel has two restaurants - Aparanta which is a multi-cuisine restaurant and Kokum & Spice which specialises in Konkan cuisine. 

The second night, we decided to try Kokum & Spice for an authentic Raigad experience. The decor and the food was absolutely fantastic here although non-vegetarians will more to choose from. 

And since we were the only guests that night (we were so lucky to miss the wedding party that was about to land the day we were to leave!) the chef prepared something that was not on the menu that night.    

How to get to Alibaug

Taking a ferry from Gateway of India is the best option. It's quick, economical and very convenient. Although ferry services don't operate during the monsoons, they have very good frequency. Ferry services start from September and go on till May.

The service is available between 6 am to 7 pm. Travel time from the Gateway of India to Mandwa port is approximately one hour. For more details on the ferry timings and rates, check the Alibaug tourism website. 

Check Tripadvisor ratings and reviews for Radisson Blu Resort & Spa here. You can also explore other accommodation options in Alibaug. 

Great deals for Oktoberfest in Munich

Although the chances of even finding decent accommodation and flight tickets by this time are low, one can still come across some nice deals to attend Oktoberfest. Here are a few nice deals that I found.

Flight tickets
Oman Air is offering special fares from India to Munich specially for Oktoberfest. These are on specific flights (via Muscat) on specific dates which will allow you to enjoy the beer festival for 6 days/7 nights. It's great for people who love beer but can't get enough leave. 

ONWARD
Flight: WY 202 
Date: 23 Sep
Departure from Mumbai: 07:20
Arrival in Muscat: 08:25

Flight: WY 121 
Date: 23 Sep
Departure from Muscat: 14:15
Arrival into Munich: 19:05 

RETURN
Flight: WY 124 
Date: 29 Sep
Departure from Munich: 14:35
Arrival into Muscat: 22:55

Flight: WY 201 
Date: 30 Sep 
Departure from Muscat: 01:15
Arrival into Mumbai: 05:30 
 



The all-inclusive fare for this is: 

Booking Class U: Rs 39,521
Booking Class L: Rs 41,591
Booking Class N: Rs 43,690

Accommodation
Booking.com has some great deals for hotels near Oktoberfest tents. Four-star hotel Tryp München City Center is offering rates from Rs 5,937 per night. 

HostelWorld.com is a great place to find great hostels. Oktoberfest-Beds is offering a 3-day package for Rs 16,000 and includes a whole of things including free beer!

For more Oktoberfest packages, look at this site called... what else... OktoberfestPackages.com.         

Tour packages
The Backpacker Co is offering a great deal on Oktoberfest. Their 7-day tour includes Berlin and Prague along with Munch and can be yours at Rs 58,000. This does not include airfare and visas.

Alternately, you can book directly without going through any tour operator through Viator.com. They have 2 really nice packages: Munich Oktoberfest Tickets & Tour and the Munich Segway Tour During Oktoberfest.   

Willkommen to Oktoberfest!

Germans, I feel, are a somewhat misunderstood lot. They are perceived to be robotic and slaves to time and routine.

But how can a group of people that has invented something as awesome as Oktoberfest be so! Germans, in my opinion, are like a more refined and classical version of the Irish. They like their meat, they like their alcohol and they love their beer!

(On an aside, I stumbled upon a really interesting blog written by an Australian chippie about Germans as people. I suspect most of it is true!)

In short, Germans like to have fun and they know how to as well. The good part is that they like to include everyone else as well. Oktoberfest, the world’s largest beer festival that is held annually in Munich in September-end for around 16 days since 1810 is now attended by an equal number of non-Germans as well.

In fact, the festival has become so popular (it does involve getting intoxicated, after all) that it has spawned watered down versions of the original in every city worth its salt. Hell, even Mumbai sees unimpressive replicas of it every now and then.

The cherry on the froth is that Speyside – the centre of Scotland’s whisky industry – has announced that it will hold the region’s first Oktoberfest beer festival on October 4 and 5 this year oxymoronically titled 'The Speyside Beer Festival'! Four microbreweries in Moray will be joining forces for this. Hmmm...

It’s tapped!

The opening of the Oktoberfest (called ‘die Wiesn’ by the locals) is a big deal so you might want to be present when it happens. It has a traditional opening with a 12-gun salute after which the Mayor of Munich taps the first keg of the Oktoberfest beer at 12 pm sharp with a “Ozapft is!” (‘It's tapped!’).

This ‘mayor’ or the Oktoberfest burgermeister is an important figure. He has a number of duties including pouring the first beer, awarding prize ribbons and overseeing the festivities. What a job! In case this appeals to you, the Vienna Business Association is looking for a burgermeister for its Oktoberfest celebration.

The festival ground has a lot of huge tents where everyone drinks. To enter them, you will need advance reservations. To know more on how to choose your tent, read this interesting article, aptly titled: Which tent to visit at Oktoberfest 2013?

For more details on the festival, you can visit the Oktoberfest official site that has a lot of useful and interesting information – even things like the Oktoberfest dictionary that is a practical guide to communicating with drunk Bavarians. 

Meanwhile, you can enjoy this funky but meaningless ‘Disco Oktoberfest’ that someone with a lot of time and not much creativity has made.

Go forth. And travel

Buy a camera.
Take a leap of faith.
Take more time-outs.
Quit the monotony.
Find a travel companion.
Marry someone you love to travel with!

Make a top ten list of places you want to visit and stick it on your wall.

Daydream.

Open your heart.

Don't be afraid. But be cautious.

Talk to strangers.

Fall in love.

Exchange notes.

Join a club.

Take up Capoeira and travel to Brazil.

Get your passport.

Travel to Ladakh at least once.

Get to know the world, one person at a time.

Encourage people to travel.

Save money for your next trip.

Buy that haversack you've always wanted.

Enjoy the local food.

Remember never to carry dairy products, dried plants or fruits with seeds to Australia. 

Don't hold back; envy the travel show host.

Go trekking.

Make memories.

Take a picture of you with a Lonely Planet guide in every new place you travel to.

Read Bill Bryson.

Go crazy at the local flea market.

Collect memorabilia.

Don't forget to buy gifts for friends and family.

Get a tattoo.

Buy the tickets.

Take notes while travelling.

Go camping.

Make mistakes.

Laugh out loud.
Pack your sense of humour.

Get lost.

Never give up.

6 ways to do Ladakh

Isn't it amazing how some destinations can be visited over and over again and still manage to offer the most exhilarating, yet an altogether different experience each and every time?!

Ladakh is one of them. It’s the most fascinating and intriguing destination in my view and therefore figures six times on my bucket list.

What can I say about Ladakh that hasn't been said, written, or spoken about before? Not much. So I’ll dispense with the adjectives for now and list down six different ways in which Ladakh can be experienced.

a)      Do a road trip

Seeing Ladakh by road is an experience in itself. There are two ways to do this – from Kashmir Valley via Kargil and from Manali to Leh. The wonder of these two roads is that each one will offer not just a different landscape but also conjure a different emotion within you.     

The route from Kargil remains open for traffic from early June to November. The most fascinating part of this road journey is passing the Zoji-La that stands at 11,500 feet and serves as the gateway to Ladakh.

The Manali-Leh road is open for traffic from around mid-June to early October. A bus journey will take you around 19 hours (or two days) with an overnight halt in camps in between. 

See this National Geographic documentary on crossing the Khardung la to Nubra Valley by road titled ‘Perilous Journey Crossing the Himalayas.’ It does get a bit monotonous at times but the host Marsh Mokhtari will keep you engaged – sometimes with the information and sometimes with his good looks!

b)      Raft down Zanskar

A rafting expedition on the Zanskar river – a tributary of the great river Indus – is one of the most surreal experiences you will ever have. It will take you down an extremely desolate, remote and sheer Zanskar gorge with walls rising a few thousand feet from the river bed.

You can also do a rafting expedition on the Indus.

d)      Walk down Zanskar! (Chadar Trek)

The Chadar trek is taking the same route as rafting but instead of paddling in a raft, you will be walking on crampons. Here, you will experience Ladakh at its harshest. Temperatures plummeting to -25 degree Celcius with no basic amenities and absolutely no connection to the outside world until you reach Leh! Read my (rather incomplete) post on the Chadar trek for more.

c)       Trek

There are so many trekking routes in this region, that you can do 10 trips just trekking all of them. The one that tops my list is the Stok Kangri trek. It will take you to India's highest trekable summit at 20,086 feet!

The terrain and the altitude make it a very difficult trek. The Stok Kangri base camp lies at 16,300 feet and is a collage of colourful tents. Check this site for more details on the trek; it has dedicated itself to it.

e)      See the sights

You can do the usual sightseeing routine and still never get bored in Ladakh. Visit the Thicksey and the Hemis monasteries as well as the Shanti Stupa. Dare to wet your feet in the Pangong lake. Shop at the Leh market (but beware, the summer rates are high). Taste the awesome local dishes of momos and thukpa.

f)      Attend the festivals

Ladakh is extremely popular for its annual festivals. The most famous of them all is the Hemis festival that takes place every June. There is also the Thiksey Gustor (Gustor literally means ‘sacrifice of the 29th date’), which is a two-day festival and marks the victory of good over evil. It takes place at the different monasteries of Spituk, Thiksey and Karsha Zanskar in different months of the year. 

I found this site on Ladakh very informative. You can try it too.

Chitti-chitti Bangkok

I had arranged to meet my local contact on the day I was to land in Bangkok. When he came to pick me up at SuvarnabhumiAirport, I realized that he was of Indian origin. Fifteen minutes into the conversation, I gathered to both our astonishment that we were from the same neighbourhood back in Mumbai!

Bangkok is a city where Mumbaikars will easily feel at home. The vibe (read chaos), its people, its public transport, its roads – everything reflects the life as we know it back home.

It’s also a very easy city to live in. I met (and saw) so many Indians living there and running successful businesses, most of which are into precious and semi precious stones since Bangkok has a huge market for this.

As a tourist, i loved it. Bangkok was recently rated as the number one destination for international visitor arrivals this year according to the MasterCardGlobal Destination Cities Index, managing to surpass even London by a slim margin! This makes Bangkok the first Asian city to figure in the top rank since the Index was launched in 2010.

And why not. I found it to be a pretty safe city (unless of course you are not too smart and venture out alone to places you’re not supposed to after dark). Any doubt I had regarding this was removed by one particular incident that occurred on my second night there.

I stayed at a pretty decent and basic hotel called Princeton Park Suites which is close to the city centre. There’s also a Carrefour close by! And since I was travelling alone, I took advantage of their oh-so-convenient motorcycle taxis instead of taking a tuk-tuk. They’re fast, cheap and absolutely thrilling! There’s no meter of course so fares are to be pre-fixed.  

I was out for dinner with some friends not too far from my hotel at this Indian dhaba-style restaurant that had ghazal nights every Friday. Unfortunately, we were there on a Friday too. Now, I’m not a big fan of Indian food when travelling abroad. But my friends insisted. And come to think of it, there is a certain kind of perverseness to go to an Indian restaurant abroad.

So when at midnight we decided to call it a night, I decided to take one of the bike taxis back to the hotel. I was told that it’d be safe what with the hotel being only 15 minutes away at that time. And so I went.

When I told my ‘biker’ my destination (I even showed him my hotel business card) he nodded aggressively, which if translated would mean ‘I know, I know’. So I hopped on and waved my friends goodbye. Soon I realized that we were on a highway that had a line of brightly lit Go-Go bars.

I gulped and asked the rider again if he knew where he was going, and he nodded again. I had not realized the extent of the language barrier that I was about to face that night. Apparently, English – or more precisely English as is spoken by Indians – is not understood that well in Bangkok.

Twenty minutes later and still on the highway, I began to wonder whether he would need to kill me before taking all my money, my card and my passport that was in my sack. Still praying like the dickens, I forced him to stop whenever we were lucky to spot a smattering of people and ask for directions. Apparently, Princeton Park Suites isn't that well-known among the locals!

After 35 minutes, it looked like we had gotten off the highway and finally nearing the city centre and my hotel. And five minutes later I was getting off the bike outside my hotel.

A motorcycle taxi

To my rider’s credit, he didn’t ask me for more than what was decided even though we had taken a major detour. He sat there smiling an apologetic smile and all I could do was pretend that I hadn’t minded the ride too much. So I paid 20 baht over and above the 50 that we had agreed upon and climbed up the stairs to my hotel. 

Note to self: Don't panic until it's time to panic.