ghumakkar.com

I love the name of this site as it defines my aspirations. I have been thinking of writing on this site for long but somehow could not and may be the culprit is yet again the same old “starting trouble” and its first cousin “will do it tomorrow”.
I own a Bullet, the legendary Royal Enfield Bike and it’s the first thing I bought once I started earning decently. I have seen a few places in and around the NCR on my bike. It started from Sultanpur Bird Sanctuary to Hardwar & Hrishikesh then Chandigarh & Shimla to Agra followed by Joshimath & Auli amongst others. However the one trip I have decided to write about, as my first contribution is my trip to Rohtang pass along with an Indo-Chinese colleague and friend Wilkim Lee.

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Have you ever seen bearded Lord Shiva ?? Strain your brain to recollect if you have indeed seen a picture or idol of Shiva with a beard.
No ? Read on….

Despite the Portuguese influence that dominated Goa over the centuries, it is fascinating to see how such a large number of Hindu temples have survived here. Shoved away from place to place, the deities were preserved and worshipped till they were finally installed in their present day hearths.

We happened to visit a few of them; I’ll speak about only one where I saw bearded Shiva.
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Balmuri (Bal=towards right and muri=curve)

Situated near the village-town of Srirangapatna, this place is well known as a film-shooting spot. Many a kannada movies have been shot here. This makes a good 1-day visit. Leave Bangalore in the morning and be back by nightfall.

How to get there

This place is close to Srirangapatna, which is between Bangalore and Mysore. Take the
Mysore road , drive all the way to Srirangapatna. As you approach Srirangapatna, there is a diversion towards the right. Sign boards will help you get to Balmuri.
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This post is in continuation of Meeting with Monalisa and Mr. Eiffel - Part 1.

We had already met Monalisa and were going to meet Mr. Gustave Eiffel (The person engineered Eiffel tower).

We left Louvre and were really hungry by that time. It was around 4′o clock in the evening and we hadn’t taken our lunch as yet. So we started searching for a place for a quick bite . We saw some of the coffee places on a road outside Louvre and chose one of them. I don’t remember what I ate, probably an omelet, few breads and a coffee but it was very expensive. We ended our lunch and after paying bill we came back on the road.

When we decided to plan for Paris, I had done this agreement with my fellow traveler (Ankur) that we would not hurry to cover too many places but would stick to only few places and spend enough time there. We started our trip with only two things in our itinerary 1) Louvre & Monalisa 2) Eiffel tower. After reaching Paris and Completing 1st one we still did not want to disturb our itinerary. We knew that we had enough time to cover the next step.

We started walking towards the main road to come out of the market place (where we had our lunch), and reached an entrance of a park. I guess this was the park mentioned in Da Vinci code just outside Louvre. Its name is Jarden Tuileries in French, which means Garden Tuileries in English , I guess. It is a huge garden and was looking even bigger because of less people there.

Garden Tuileries just entered
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