Sangla, the quaint Himalayan village/town/valley is an over-deserving candidate for the travelogue that I was yet to write. But then between the ‘no-travelogue-at-all’ or a ‘hotel-review-quickie’, I am choosing to force down the latter. Procrastination is overwhelming and a hotel-review-quickie must be done within the expiry-date of your memory for the objective details, so let me do that; and I would try my best to throw in some good pictures to display what Sangla has in the offing. The second stop for our ‘Chalo Kaza’ run was to be in Sangla. We were advised by the internet that we should spend at least 3 nights there so we decided to increase our stay from one night to 2 nights at Sangla. It looked like a stop good enough, a provision to rejuvenate the calf muscles from active driving and to get us some worldly pleasures, before we reach Kaza and take the great Kaza-Manali drive head-on (almost literally!).

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Here is the 3rd and final part to the series “Visakhapatnam Trip”

29th Oct 2008 – We had plans to go to RK beach early morning to watch the ocean with rising sun. But due to exertion from the Araku trip, we woke up quite late. We had booked the same driver for the last day of our trip. It was almost noon when he arrived with his car. We left for Indira Gandhi Zoological Park in Vizag city. The park spreading over an area of 625 acres, exhibits about lots of animals and birds in open surroundings, except the birds of course! We decided to move around in car only. One thing we noticed in Vizag that at every tourist attraction there was a charge of Rs.20 for camera. AP Govt is surely minting money from tourism. There is a special house of nocturnal animals where owls, civets, porcupines, wild cats, loris etc are kept in total darkness with artificial dim light and air conditioned cave sort of place. It was both eerie and scary! We were wondering why they have done that as in natural habitat, these animals experience daylight! I found the answer on internet. Apparently the Hyderabad zoo has a similar section.

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You can read here Part I and Part II of Malacca .

मल्ल्क्का के चाइना टाउन के बीच में है Cheng Hoon Teng मंदिर (The Cheng Hoon Teng Temple). 1645 में बनाया गया |

यह मंदिर मलयेशिया का सबसे पुराना चीनी मंदिर है जो अभी तक समय के थपेड़ों को झेलता चला आ रहा है | मंदिर काफी बड़ा है और सुन्दर भी |

मंदिरों में भी लाल रंग की भरमार ?

बर्तनों का साइज़ देखिये

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I have been footloose and travelling extensively in the last few years, visiting many corners of the country. I have spent time in the North East, Ladakh, Rajasthan and Kanyakumari, where I have seen varied cultures and the amazing diversity of the country. But wherever I go, one thing that I often see is the difficulty in getting the right information. Informed tour guides with in-depth knowledge are always are hard to come by. Some times it is even difficult to get details about the right places to visit. It may often happen that you go to the most touristy spot in a location and completely miss something nearby that is equally interesting. Sometimes it can be frustrating to be standing in front of a beautiful monument with no one to tell you the inside stories related to its history.

When I met Lakshmi who shared similar thoughts and had furthered her ideas into helping travellers get a better experience, we joined hands together and created TravelWise. Both of us having done a lot of professional travel writing for newspapers and magazines, we had been used to taking that extra effort to collect information. We decided to launch trails and take with us people who are keen to know more about the places they go to. While launching our trails, we spent a lot of time researching about places to travel to. We spoke to experts to know more about history, culture, biodiversity and other aspects of interest to the travellers. We talked to the locals to understand the traditions, stories and legends associated with the places. We went through research materials and documents to design trails around a destination as a story telling session that can grip even the marginally interested tourist.
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