Colaba-d (Day 1 in Mumbai)

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Selected to present at a conference in Mumbai!

I mean could things get any better?!

If you like traveling, then this was golden! Atleast, it was for me!

This trip had ‘First ever solo trip’ written all over it!

I booked my flights well in advance. Ibibo had some crazy deals going on. I booked my bunk at Zostel, Mumbai for 1.3k for three nights. And, I was set.

Midnight flights are fairly cheaper than the morning ones, so if you have anyone to pick you up, book these. If you’re willing to doze off at the airport, book these again.

I landed in Mumbai at 4am on a cold Thursday morning. I slept for a bit till I got uncomfortable and then decided to head to Zostel. (I wanted an early start to the day, you see)

Zostel generally let’s you stash your luggage, use the washroom and be on your way. 5:30 am I was on a tuktuk to Andheri, and the city was already awake. I was checked in at 5:50am (They were just so sweet!) And after a little freshening up, I was on my way.

I was adviced to take the Metro to the local and head to Colaba from there. Not being too sure about going on a local, I took a bus.

Do. Not. I mean, just do not, even in your wildest of dreams take the bus from Andheri to Colaba. It took me three hours to get there. (I won’t complain here because I met the sweetest old lady who became my tour guide and told me how to brave my way around the city)

If you’re in Andheri, or elsewhere take a can or a local. The autos don’t operate here. The region from Sion onwards, doesn’t allow tuk-tuks. My roommate at Zostel belived that it was because Mumbai was reclaimed land. It wouldn’t be able to best the brunt of additional vehicles.

Reports online claim that the reason could be political. A dude on Quora said that roads in South Mumbai are narrow and curvy and tuk-tuks wouldn’t be able to navigate (Have you ever been in a rickshaw? They’d balance on two wheels if they had to)

One article sounded more down to Earth, it said that the traffic was already bad with vehicles taking far too long to move an inch. Adding rickshaws would only make things worse and harder.

That apart, once I was at Colaba. I was awed. I was flattered. The place and the architecture was everything that I imagined and more.

I roamed around under the canopy of trees in the narrow bylanes of Colaba till I got on the main steet. From far away, the place was an absolute sight to watch. Taj Mahal Palace on the left and the Gateway on the right flanked by the noiseless sea.

The place was crowded. Tourists flooded The Gateway. Photographers flocked the place and the uncles who print your photo in a jiffy waited for a customer to click.

This place just did not disappoint.

After spending a while here, I shopped. I shopped to my heart’s content. Remember to carry cash here. Some of them accept Paytm or Google pay, but most of them prefer cash.

While here you can always eat at Leopard Cafe, which is a name iconic in itself.

I got quite a few trinkets here. An antique compass, a magnet, a few dress, and what not.

I realised after my shopping spree that I was running out of time. The sweet old lady I’d met earlier, had warned me to take the local back but to do the same before the rush hour began.

I still wanted to visit a few churches and the Afghan Church was quite a distance away. I went instead, to the Cathedral of Holy Name. The place was all peace and quite and much needed tranquility in the city that never stopped or slept.

I then walked around a bit looking at all the colonial era things that the city had to offer before I got to the local that took me back to my stay for the weekend.

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The Temple Trip

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We left Bangalore at around 6am by car. Mysore was about 3 hours away. 
On the way we stopped at Adiga’s for breakfast. Shivalli and Maddur Tiffany’s are also commendable and hygenic options. The prices at the Adigas on the highway are literally twice, compared to what we find in the city. We paid ₹33 for a coffee that costs ₹15, you get the point. 
We reached Mysore at around 10am, and headed straight to the Shrikanteshwar Temple on the banks of the river Kabini at Nanjangud. The temple is open from around 5:30am to 1pm, and reopens again at 4pm.
Said to have been built by the Cholas, the temple is an ode to mythical story where Shiva drinks the poison while churning for Amruta. 
We’ve been coming here every year for the last 25years, and surely, a lot has changed. The area near the idols which were once open, have now been barred. If you’re lucky, you’ll get to see devotees doing the ‘Tula Bhaara’. This is a ritual where a person sits on one side of the weighing scale, and the other side is filled up with grains or jaggery, till both sides are balanced. This is one ritual that never ceases to amaze me. 
The entrance to the temple is free. But the queue for this is quite long. So there’s always the special enterance option, which costs a few more bucks.
In the recent years, the place has become more populated, so more restaurants have cropped up. There is ample parking space all around the temple. There is also a bath complex close by. 
Once Nanjangud was done, we headed up to Chamundi Betta. The place was crowded, with hardly any space to even breathe. As with Nanjangud, Chamundi Temple had a general enterance which was free, and a special enterance that Costs ₹25, and a VIP enterance that costs ₹100. The enterances that you pay for helps you cut the queue.
Built in the 12th Century, the temple marks the victory of Durga (Chamundeshwari) over the demon, Mahishasura (who’s statue you’ll see at the entrance of the hill). 
The temple was crowded. Even with the queues, you can see people pushing and falling over each other. You’re hardly allowed to get a ‘darshan’. As you’d be blocking the others. 
There are a lot of shops around the temple, where you can buy trinkets and religious offerings. There are parking spaces around the temple as well. There are also tiny bakeries some hotels, coconut water stalls, and sugar cane juice stalls near the temple. 
The temple is open from 7:30am to 2pm; 3:30 am to 6pm, and again from 7pm to 9pm. 
Post Chamundi, we headed down to another lesser known temple. This temple is that of Chamundi’s sister, Sri Jwalamukhi Tripura Sundari Temple. Legends have it that if you visit one sister, and not the other, she’ll be furious and misfortune awaits.
Since the temple is lesser know, it’s much quieter, the crowd is sparse. 
After a stopover for lunch in one of Mysuru’s vegetarian hotels. Mysuru Mylari and Om Shanti are two of my favorites, do let me know if you have other recommendations. We picked Om Shanti today. And we waited a good 40 minutes before we could get a table. 
Bidding adieu to Mysore, we headed back to Bangalore. On the way back, we visited the Nimishamba Temple in Srirangapatana.
A little temple on the bank of the river Cauvery is about 2 kilometres away from the Sangam. We sat by the banks of the river for a bit, enjoying the cold breeze. But this was cut short by people dumping garbage all around us. 
Heading back, we stopped over at Kamat Lokaruchi for dinner. This is my absolute favourite. It has the best ambience. It gives out immense village vibes; the little bags of onions used as decor, the cow shed, the dimly lit sitting space, they’re something the city could never offer. You can order from a range of South Indian cusines, I always pick the jollad rotti (with extra butter, ofcourse) and palya. 
We reached Bangalore back by around 8pm (Thanks to Bangalore traffic for always making sure that we reach late). 
-You can reach Mysore by flight or by buses from Bangalore. Once in Mysore, you can hire cabs that will take you to these places. 

-The total cost of the trip for four of us, would be approximately ₹4000. 

-The charges include food and fuel for five people

 

Little Secrets of Paradise

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We left our hostel at around 5:30am. The streets of the BITS, Goa campus were unnervingly dark. Strays howled at every corner. We walked with our phone cameras on, far too aware of every little movement around us. 
We lied at the security, told him we were hungry. He grugingly let us out. So began our walk to a tiny little beach in South that no one frequents. 

After following the GPS for about a kilometre, we began to ask around for directions. 
“Straight to the circle and left”, a girl in a uniform said. Behind us, the sun had already begun to ascend. 
We took the left from the highway, into a tiny road. 
The Goa we had seen so far was filled with structures, this little road showed us different. Coconut grooves lined both sides of the road. The Portugese architecture gave way to mud huts and tatched roofs. 

We walked for an hour. My friends cursing me under their breathe for dragging them this early. (I mean, who does lame things alone, right?! What are friends for, anyway?) The greenery of Goa seemed to never end. The rushing sound we could here, was only of the stream. 
We were almost willing to turn back, when we finally heard the waves. Our hopes refreshed, and our paces quickened. We reached a little shack, shutp and barred. Cigarette butts and beer bottles from the night before, lay everywhere. 
After jumping the broken perimeter wall, we landed at what seemed like a slice of paradise. 
The sunrise was breathtaking. But what was better. Was the walk by the beach. The little stream met the ocean, and did with such grandeur, that we could only gawk. 

(Check out the photo blog for what we saw!)

When we were finaly up for return, we saw an empty road ahead. Another 10km walk back was not something we were up for. 

Just as we took a few steps, along came a school bus to drop some kids off at the local school. 

We requested the driver, and hitched a ride back to the highway. Another bus at the highway, and we were back at the campus, in time for the first session of the day. 

Kappu Ice cream

 

You open my cupboard, you’ll see black clothes. Black shirt, black pant, black jacket, black bra, and all that. You open my shoe cupboard, and it’s the same; black converse, black running shoes, black ballerinas, black kolhapuri; you get the idea. So when I heard that had black ice cream, I had to eat it.

It’s not that I haven’t seen black food, sometimes my friend burns the chappati and it becomes dark brown, almost black. Sometimes you forget about the food you had hid in your bag, one fungus infestation happens and that also becomes green, and then black.

But black ice cream was not rotten food, anthe. Something about charcoal, they said. I’d been reading quite a bit about going zero waste, and charcoal was supposed to be a natural cleaning agent used in tooth paste and stuff. Instead of tooth paste, I could just consume it, an organ version of detox, you could say.

The first store with this black ice cream to open in Bangalore was Fritz Haber, a place too far and inaccessible to civilization. So I waited, these fads catch on, you know. Soon enough, Mama Mia opened in Indiranagar.

The store was lit dimly, like it was a Hogwarts corridor. It had a brown wall on one side, and white one on the other. The brown wall had some fake plants, and some white and purple pebbles in a Keventers bottle. The white wall said ‘La Dolce Vita’ in cursive, and it was quite catchy. Eno pa.

I knew what I wanted before I even walked in. The extravagant menu on the wall behind the counter made no mention of anything remotely close to the word ‘black’, so I looked through the ice cream storage and found the black ice cream in the furthest corner. ‘Vanilla Startdust’, I think it was called.

Teddy being the thoughtful child that he is; he read my mind and got me the black ice cream in a black cone. Wowzie.

I shut my eyes tight, hoped it would be nice took a leap of faith and gave it a lick. It was sugar. It was just plain sugar syrup, and nothing else. It didn’t even taste like vanilla, da.  Teddy being the whiskey aficionado, heard that some variation of chocolate ice cream was called Whiskey-something took that. Good thing he uses his brain sometimes.

And the black cone? I hoped it would at least be crispy, but no. It was thick and chewy, and faintly tasted like egg. As I finished the last bit of the black chocolate ice cream stuff that I had, I knew that I would retreat back into my rocky road cave, and would never try to be adventurous with my ice cream again.

 

Makalidurga

As I stood at the edge of this unknown lake, grey clouds surrounded Makalidurga. Behind me herds of sheep neighed and marched, cows moo-ed, and a dog barked. My friends chatted away in the distance, something about Coca-Cola or Sprite. But in the silence, you could hear the wind rushing, the slow gurgle of the water, an occasional spit-splat as the stones hit the water. The hill looked different now, greener even.

The betta from afar

Makalidurga, is a tiny hill beyond Doddballapura, that’s set in a district with the same name. A railway line marks the entrance of the hill, or rather the climb. The route till there is accessible by car or bike. After a tedious process of registering with the forest department, our climb began. The internet said it was a 4/5 hour climb.

As we made our way through the sandy shrubbery, we were asked if we could carry a small bag of cement to the top. ‘For the temple construction’, they explained. A few of my friends offered to, and I have never seen them regret a decision more. Far away we could hear the saffron people screaming ‘Jay Hanuman’, it echoed down the pathway. Later, we were told by the yelneer anna that people (read men) came specially to carry bags of cement to the top.

The path to the top was marked by white arrows, some on the ground, some on the trees. And for those who could not afford to look down, the path was marked by saffron ribbons on the trees. Surprisingly, the place lacked monkeys; there were garden lizards, and some bugs and insects. But no monkeys.

The hill, though green, was barren. It had dry grass that left scratches and cuts on your hand, it had trees, but no shade, it had rocks that were heated up by the sun above. But it had these flowers, the size of a big ant, and the colour of the sun. When you stood on the edges that the paths offered, you could see those great fluffy clouds casting humongous shadows down on the fields below, and nothing ever looked more enthralling and unique.

You’ve reached the top when you see this.

Climbing Makalidurga was tiring, exhausting even, mostly because of the scorching heat. It was a three kilometer trek, but it seemed like it was 30. Finding water there is hard. At each edge, you see humongous lakes surrounding the hills. They’re waters reflecting the clouds above, but on the hill itself, you’re left parched.

Once you climb it, the lakes around are your motivation to come back down. Right on top is a small fort and an even smaller temple, and a poorer attempt at a man made lake. Makalidurga is said to have been a fort for the Vijayanagara empire where army exercises were conducted. Cannot imagine what they were thinking.

Some useful tips:

-Carry loads of water

-Shades and a cap too

-Wear shoes that are not worn out

-Don’t impose your ideas on others

-Be kind and respectful.

Over and out.