Busy busy ... and MSI's new look

There has been times before when I couldn't blog for more than a month. However, I doubt there has been a more busier period in my almost 7 years of professional life.

It has been partly because of the 3 weeks vacation I took to get Engaged and to go on my last bachelor trip, a trip to the North East. I would hopefully get some time next month to write about my experiences there.

The other important reason which has kept all of us here at Must See India busy is the new look of mustseeindia.com. Our earlier theme had been around for some 8 months and we thought it was about time to get something new. We now have an orange theme throughout the site, which looks pretty pleasing to my eye. Also, the pages are much better organized now with one click access to all our new features - flight, train, bus and hotel search.

Please do comment with your valuable feedback for the same.

That is all the time I can spend on this blog right now. You can catch me on twitter for more frequent updates. And tomorrow is an important day in my fiancee's life, so I better get prepared for that ;-)

Paragliding in Manali

What a fantastic vacation it was. I have always had a knack for adventure sports and Paragliding was loads of fun as well as satisfaction to learn something new. Five of us went together to do a course on Paragliding at Solang close to Manali.  

Continuing the tradition of live blogging in Ladakh, I wrote most of the blog during the vacation itself, and this time it was much easier to type on my iPhone. 

10-10 8:30 PM

Learning from the mistakes of Ladakh Trip, we booked a HPRTC Volvo Coach well in advance. In the bus right now and it looks pretty good. This is the last official bus to manali. However, lots of private deluxe and sleeper buses seem to be available.

11-10 11:30 AM

Reached manali in exactly 15 hours. Gonna be leaving for Solang Valley(thats where the paragliding happens) immediately via a taxi. He has agreed for 400 bucks.

11-10 10:00 PM

Today has been all about resting. While having lunch at our hotel, we spotted some people doing paragliding and clicked photos. 

First View

Had a walk in the evening to the paragliding centre. There is Horse Riding, Zorbing and a ride in an all terrain vehicle. Prices are exorbitant and nothing other than Paragliding seemed interesting. 

Zorbing

12-10 3:00PM

Today is our first day at paragliding. Our instructor is Mr. Anil. The first session was pretty good. Paragliding is best during summers. Heated surface generates thermals needed for high flying. Also the wind needs to be continuously belly up.

The basic concept of paragliding is "take the glider and run". As Rishi Kapoor said in Namastey London - ball phad, aur saand ki tarah bhaag.

Run hard

4:30PM

We couldn't do any paragliding in the afternoon as the tail wind started instead of belly up. Need to start early tomorrow.
6:30PM 

We met Mr. Bhagat, who is the organizer here. Very nice guy. He would be giving us lift to Manali. On the way, he showed us this great place for pizza and beer. Its called Himalayan sports club and its open only on Sundays. After a good pizza, we are off to manali. 

With Bhagatji

13-10 8:00PM

A very satisfying day at Paragliding. The trainers today were sikander and dharmender, two young and enthusiast chaps. During the last practice of the day, I was actually able to take off. Shobhit also reached pretty close to taking off. One bad thing that happened was that Shitiz got injured during the start of the day. Though the injury is minor, it prevented him from any practice today. We came back at 4, rested and then left for Vashisht Springs and manali at 6.
10:00 PM

We had a bath in the hot spring of Vashisht Temple. The water was pretty hot. It was just great. Had dinner and came back.

Come on Fight

14-10 4:00 PM - Rest Day.

We decided to take a day off from paragliding as everyone was pretty tired. Shitiz injury is not yet healed. It came out to be a good decision as it started raining around 11AM, which meant we could anyways not paraglide today. We decided to visit Manikaran to visit the gurudwara and the hot water springs there. Manikaran is quite a long drive from solang. The route is solang -> manali -> kullu -> manikaran. Took us 2.5 hrs to reach there. We visited the gurudwara and had langar. Then we saw the hot water springs and the shiva temple of Manikaran. The water was boiling hot. Even the temple surface was pretty hot due to the water.

Hot Springs

8:00PM

We went to Kullu to see the dussehra mela. Kullu Dussehra is famous and is celebrated over 7 days here. Various god statues from nearby villages are brought over to kullu where the kullu god is brought by the king of kullu. We reached just in time to see the procession of the gods.

Kullu Dev

Now we are going to manali to have dinner.

15-10 11:30 PM

Another rest day, a forced one. We started at 10 in the morning in overcast conditions. Barely did 3 flights when it started raining. Kept on raining throughtout the day. We have been playing dumb charades of Hindi songs since yesterday and we continued that. We have pretty much guessed every song of the world :D Sleeping and playing dumb charades has been the order of the day.

16-10 1:00PM

It hasn't stopped raining yet. Shobhit is not too happy. He wants to fly. But it seems like our paragliding dreams are over. It has snowed a lot at Rohtang and the roads are blocked. There is snowfall in Marhi too, which is normally the location for medium flying (i.e. people paraglide from Marhi to Solang). High Flying is from Rohtang to Solang, take around 45 mins. 

We went to Manali in the morning to take Shitiz to a local doctor to fix the bone joint of his knee.
We would be going to Marhi today to enjoy the snow.

11:00PM

Marhi was fantastic. I remember stopping at this place when we went to Ladakh. This time around it was covered with snow. Snowfall was going on when we reached, and we played in the snow for a while. Took some nice photos as well. The weather got cleared by the time we came back which gave us hopes of paragliding for tomorrow.

The Five Samurai

White all around

Marhi Panorama

At 11 in the night, I came out to photograph the snow covered mountains under the moonlight. Whatever photography knowledge I have gained so far got me this photo which I would call my best photo so far. 

Mountain in Moonlight

17-10 7:00PM

Beautiful sunny day. Paragliding at last. Started at 10 today. Shitiz is still not fit and Kirti got unwell due to the snow last night. So its gonna be just me, shobhit and shubra. We had quite a few flights today. Notice that I used the word flights and not trial :-) we learned a lot today and got lifted quite a bit in our flights. We paraglided till around 2 after which the tail wind started.

11:00 PM

We got tickets for Volvo coach back to Delhi for tomorrow at 5:30PM. Tomorrow is going to be our last day here and at Paragliding. We plan to paraglide till around 12PM and also get a tandem flight from medium height if possible. 

18-10 6:00PM

Another very satisfying day at Paragliding. This also concludes a very satisfying paragliding beginner's course. Shobhit and me both got some great flights, and I was able to reach the highest point for a beginner to take off from, in the last flight of the day.

Me Flying


Shobhit Flying

I finished the flight, took off the harness and helmet and went over to Sikander. As soon as he sees me, he says Aap Pitching theek se control nahi kar rahe hai, this is dangerous ... not really realizing that I am done for the season. That has been the story of the two coaches, Sikander and Dharmender, very keen on teaching and very strict. Next time when I come over, I would like to continue the classes and scoldings from them. 

With Dharmender and Sikander

Shubra and Shitiz did tandem flights too.

Shubhra Flying


Shitiz Flying

Now we are in the bus back to Delhi, ending a fantastic week. Next destination for me would be my hometown Jaipur, where I'll stay till Diwali. See ya and have a great Diwali. 

Off to Manali

Its been 3 good months in Bangalore. Its been fascinating working on Must See India and there has been great progress to keep the enthu going. For one, the traffic on Must See India has doubled in these 3 months! But the real motivation is the encouraging comments for travel enthusiasts that keep on flowing.

Other happenings in these 3 months have been Tennis, trip to Coonoor, two trips to Chennai and a rediscovered interest in photography. Traveling with some great photographers to Coonoor gave me motivation to get better pictures from my camera and I have been working towards learning the manual modes of my Canon Powershot S3 IS. The best of the pictures that I have taken all go in this Must See Photo Album.

After a real busy past 2 weeks, its time to take a break and do what I like the most - travel! Leaving for Delhi today, and then to Manali. The primary agenda is gonna be Paragliding at Solang Valley. And its gonna be a 5 day course where we should (hopefully) be able to paraglide all by ourselves.

So here I go, wishing everyone Happy Dusshera and a prosperous Diwali in this festive month.

A New Beginning

6 years in software industry. 3 years in a software product company working on a web-based product.
That is the time it took me to realize what I really want.

Last year, I talked about how I have always been fascinated by software products which can solve pains. I also talked about the potential of Indian software market, and that we software professionals in India need to serve our own people.
There is one more thing to talk about. That I am a travel buff. And after traveling to quite a few places over the past few years, I find out that the pains to traveling remain the same. Its always about:

• When to go
• Where to go
• who else is available to go with me
• where would I stay
• what would be the prices like
• what to do while I am there
• My friends are too lazy to send me the pictures.

To solve all traveler's pains, here comes ... let the drums roll ... www.MustSeeIndia.com. It's gonna solve all my pains. It's gonna plan my holiday. It's gonna make my lazy friends upload their photos. It's gonna fetch me the best deals.
Well .... not quite all pains as yet. We are a young startup who aim at connecting travel enthusiasts. We know that its people who solve each other's pain by sharing their experiences.

Communication with our readers is really important for us and hence the first thing I did was to setup a MustSeeIndia Blog. See you there.

The Ladakh Trip

I have traveled to lot many places in the past 1.5 years, and to continue that tradition, I took a 1 week trip to Ladakh this time around.


This was the third instance when I entered J&K, visited it once 2 years ago when I went to Vaishno Devi (Jammu) and once last December when I visited Kashmir. J&K certainly is the place where the best of trips come up, and I would call Ladakh my second best trip after the Kashmir trip.

There was lots of traveling time in this trip and I utilized it by writing a travel log on my mobile phone, and thats what I gonna use for this post.

18-08-2007
We left for manali on saturday morning at 6:40AM from Delhi. It was a bad time to start the journey, for one we had to travel around 14 hrs during the day, and second there were no volvo coaches available during the day. But we didn't have a choice and proceeded.

Around 8 hrs later, it turned out to be a worse decision when our bus met with an accident close to a place called Swarghat. Luckily there were no major injuries, but quite many people got some minor ones. I got a minor injury in the tooth while one of my friend had his lower lip bleeding. Luckily everyone else in our group was fine. My iPod died in that accident too :-(

We got some treatment at Swarghat itself and then took a taxi to Manali. We reached manali at 2AM and decided to rest in Manali the next day.

19-08-2007
Rested the whole day in hotel. The view from the hotel room was pretty nice.

Went for sight seeing at 4 PM. Moved around, sat at the river banks and booked a cab to Leh. Two tourists from Denmark, Anne and Ester, were looking for a cab to share ride with and we obliged.
Saw a Tibetan cultural festival in Manali.

20-08-2007
11:00 AM - crossed the rohtang pass and all the rains and fog is suddenly gone.
now we have nice sunny weather and beautiful mountain view.

4:00 PM - just crossed suraj tal, we are now 30 kms from sarchu, at a height of around 14k. The mountains are barren and rocky, and add lakes, rivers to it ... the landscapes are amazing. Waterfalls intersect with the road every now and then.
The mountains r blocking the sunlight and breeze has turned strong and chilly.
one person has slight trouble breathing.

6:30 - 7 kms from Sarchu and we have reached the place where we gonna stay for the evening.
Its a camp surrounded by mountains, and the barren lands r replaced by lush green grass, and there are some great tents to stay in.
The weather has got increasing chilly, and a pretty strong wind is blowing outside the tent.

we had a walk on the road after dinner in darkness, the night sky has some clouds, but we can still see lots of stars. I don't remember the last time i saw so many stars.

21-08-2007
7:30 AM - Crossed Sarchu and entered J&K. after a cold and chilling night, the weather has turned sunny and dry. One side of the road has a mountain and the other side has a valley with a river flowing.

The foreigner with us is having all sorts of breathing problems, headache etc.
The roads are much better though.

8:30 AM - We started at 13780 ft and for the past half an hr we have been climbing up a mountain. right now at 15302 ft.

Finally reached Nakeela at 15547 ft.

11:30 AM - after crossing Pang, we have now reached a plateau at around 14000 ft ... it spans for around 50kms , after which we'll gain height and reach Tanglang La at around 17800 ft. This road is really bumpy.

1:30 PM - We reached the second highest pass of the world.
the bumpy ride caused me a bad headache.
Also my camera batteries died down and am currently surviving on ordinary cells bought at Pang. That didn't stop me from shooting the pak china border.

Pakistan China Border

3:30 PM - We saw some inhabited place at last. Crossed Gya at 13900 ft.
it had been quite some time since we saw trees and animals. The mountains here are red and green. A stream is running parallel to the road as usual.

my headache isn't all gone yet but the road is way way better. Leh is still 60 kms and we need to stop for lunch.

9:00 PM - Reached Leh and checked in a hotel. The headache finally went away after another disprin, hot water bath and dinner. Need some rest this night. Weather outside is pleasant.

22-08-2007
1:00 - Woke up late. moved around a little. Had breakfast and now going for local sight seeing. Will be visitng Alchi and Likir.

Spituk Gompa

The sun is really hot but the breeze is cool. Indus is flowing along with the road. Zanskar also merges into Indus at a point.

7:00 PM - Visited Alchi and Likir.

Likir

Only cool breeze now making the drive much more pleasant. going back to Leh.

23-08-2007
10:00 AM - Did some shopping last evening. Pretty much like every other place in India, lots of bargaining is recommended.

Leaving for Nubhra valley today. on the way, we'll pass thru Khardung La, the highest motorable road in the world at 18000 ft, slightly higher than Tanglang La.
I have been out of college for a long long time but just now I remembered something that I would like to speak out loud - JAI KUMAON.

11:20 AM - a Scorpio on the route has a puncture tyre. While our driver is helping them, we have started walking towards Khardung La. A warm sun and cool breeze as usual. Going a bit ahead, few army vehicles have blocked the road.

Writing this log.

11:45 - The routes have cleared and we r back in our Qualis. reached khardungla. This place has some great meditation points.

some breathlessness, some coughing, but overall everyone is in good shape.

2:00 PM - 20-30 kms from Diskit. the driver has been playing NFS for a while. We need to tell him that life doesn't have a restart button :D. After repeated requests, he has finally slowed down a little. The views are spectacular but the route is scary. Saw a jeep that fell off the hill a couple of days ago, Scaring us even more.

4:00 PM - Had lunch in Diskit. took a 5 km walk from Diskit to Hundar.

5:30 PM - Reached Hundar. It has lots of sand dunes. We did double hump camel ride.

8:00 PM - Took a guest house, strolled around.Pak border is only 60 kms from this place, and tourists r not allowed towards that route.
This place is pretty much a forest, its all green and river Shyok flows through it. we sat alongside the river and listened to the flow.

24-08-2007
1:00 PM - Slow start again, started at 10:30 AM, did some unorganized trekking. Climbed up a hill. We were carrying very less water and ran out of it. The sky is partially cloudy and some droplets of rain too. the top of the hill had cool breeze and a full view of Hundar.
we came down and reached the river Shyok. quenched our thirst with river water. The flow is fast and the water is ice cold.
My friend Shobhit found the locket that i lost last evening while strolling.

Moved alongside the river for sometime. This route is actually a 3 day trekking route to Leh. Can't believe it has started raining here.

Going back to Leh now.

9:30 PM - Reached Leh at 6:30. some bit of rains here too today. Planned a trek for the next 2 days.

25-08-2007
4:30 PM - we started off from Stok at 9:00. Stok is at 3700m and from there we must climb up to Stok La at 4900m and then climb down.
Initially started off along the stream and the first 2 hours we didn't climb much, but me and ranjeet have already started lagging behind.

We had lunch at 11 and seems like the real climb will start now.
This has already been the most grueling trek that I have ever done. Treks are always most difficult for people who lag behind. In an effort to catch up, They lose the resting time. It is almost impossible to catch up once you lag behind. The one who is ahead dictate terms, can rest as he likes, can walk as he likes, as he is not the bottleneck.

At around 2, 3 of my friends have taken a short but much more steep climb. This is my chance, I moved steadily over my longer route, and now I am ahead of them, am no longer the bottleneck :-).

3:15 I have reached Stok La. We must have traveled atleast 15 kms. Those 3 guys are still around 15-20 mins behind, so I can take a nap while they arrive. We'll be going down from here.

4:30 PM - Descending a mountain requires some balance and skill though it is not tiring. The soil is loose and slippery. first timer Ranjeet is finding it slightly difficult.

Our destination is the green pasture.

5:00 we have almost completed the descent. the village for night stay should be around 3 kms.
6:45 9.5 grueling hours of trekking come to an end. we must have trekked around 20-25 kms. we have reached rumbakh, a small village where we are doing a homestay. tomorrow should be a much easier 3-4 hr trek to zinchin.

26-08-2007
12:00 PM - This is our final day in Ladakh. We started off from Rumbak at 9:00. As expected, the trek today is much easier. We have reached our destination already.
currently I plan to bathe in the river.
12:40 PM - Bath in the ice cold water was pretty refreshing. going back to leh now. that should summarize our adventures in Ladakh.

Some Misc Stuff
Ladakh has more foreigners than Indians. Most of the foreigners here are european. Food has never been the highlight of the trip. This is quite contrary to the kashmir trip where the food was delicious. Am guessing its also because of all the foreigners who have a pretty different taste.

The attitude of a typical Ladakhi is relaxed and chilled out. People don't lock their shops when going out. Even the trek and tour operators don't give you much weight if you talk to them during off hours. We actually had problems finding a good tour operator who would give us information and help us plan our itinerary.

You can see the remaining pics here.

Me the travel buff

I have always been a travel buff. Ever since college 1st year, I have been out to atleast 1-2 trips every year. I remember going to Ranikhet, Nainital, Shimla, Mussorie, Panchmarhi and Goa during college.

That continued in bangalore too, where I went to Kodaikanal, Coorg and Kerala with friends.
Then came a gap of almost 2 years in noida during which I only had one visit, that to Vaishno Devi with parents.
However, 2006 saw the end of all that when I made up all the earlier years going to as many as six places namely - Rishikesh, Mcleodganj, Damdama Lake, Nainital, Lansdowne and then the greatest of them all - Kashmir.

Keeping up with the enthu this year, I have already had 2 trips. First was in April to Singapore, making that my first trip to a foreign land. It was a whole new experience altogether, amazing infrastructure, an almost zero crime rate, great night life. A heavenly place for gadget lovers, I bought Canon Powershot S3 digicam to do some justice to my talent for amateur photography ;-)

The second trip was this month itself, it was to Mcleodganj again, this time with my company colleagues. Mcleodganj is a quiet place close to dharamshaala, and its the home of the dalai lama. Its a beautiful place with lots of natural beauty, and few treks to go out on. Even after going for the second time, I have not yet been able to fully explore the place. Its a highly recommended place for trekking and camping fans in particular.

Let the good times roll :-)

Haminasto Haminasto Haminasto

2006 was the year of trips to me. And in what better way could it have ended than a 7 day trip to Kashmir.

Firdaus wasn't kidding when he said that this place is the paradise on earth. Though some people took those words a bit too literally and decided to open a route to directly reach the zannat from it.
Sarcasm apart, it was good to see that military tensions are much less in these areas at this time and our trip went very smoothly.

No amount of words are sufficient to describe this trip. Hence I would let the pictures do all the talking :-)

Gulmarg - Starting off from the hotel


View from the Gondola (Ropeway)


The Mighty Skiers


It doesn't get better than this


Playing in the Snow


Srinagar - Houseboat we stayed in


Dal Lake - Char Chinar


Yusmarg - Heavy Snowfall


All we want is peace


Gulmarg - The panoramic view

You can find all the photos of the trip here.