Paradise Islands : Maldives

What can I say about the Maldives which hasn't been said or seen before?
A picture is worth a thousand words and if you've seen anything from the Maldives, you would already know what I am talking about. Still being there and living it is a different experience altogether and you have to visit these islands to know what Paradise can mean!

Maldives is a country of some thousand small coral islands in the Indian Ocean. Its quite a unique country, as its made up of so many islands all distributed over a large geographical area. (Also apparently, the country is going to disappear sometime this century due to global warming and the rising sea levels, so you must definitely visit the islands before its too late:)).



There are not many industries or agriculture in these islands, and the main revenue earner for the country is tourism. So Maldives sure is making the most of the beauty it offers and projecting itself as the luxury holiday destination around the world. Its relative closeness to India makes is a favorite destination for vacationers from India. And the fact that you get a visa on arrival is always a bonus!

There are hundreds of resorts in Maldives offering luxury tourism to all. Most of the islands in the country are small and each island is given to one resort. So once in a resort, you can walk around and explore the whole island, swim in the shallow waters around and indulge in water sports around the island as well as other activities which most of the resorts provide.

Since the islands are all coral island, the water around the islands is crystal green and shallow for long stretches. The beaches are all of white sand and clean of course, a pleasure to relax at. One thing of course you definitely need to keep in mind, the resorts are all very luxurious and so highly expensive. The fact that once on an island, getting off it is not as easy, tends to make it all the more pricier. But its all definitely worth it!

Anyways, we stayed at two resorts during our trip and I can write about those two places. Am sure most of the resorts are quite the same and offer similar facilities too.

The first resort where we stayed is the Taj Exotica, run by the Indian Taj group. Its on an island about 15 minutes by speedboat from Male, the Maldives capital. In the evenings, you can even see the lights of Male at a distance. The size of the island is just about 700 mts by 100 mts and you can cover it within 20 minutes at the most:). There are green trees covering the island with white sand all around. Everywhere on the way, there are places to sit and relax and sleep, hammocks, sunbeds and so on.

There is a spa at the resort which is quite an experience.  

It offers a huge variety of treatments if you are interested! Other facilities at the resort include a diving centre, which can take you diving or snorkelling at some corals nearby, a games room with pool et al, a library, a DVD collection (with hindi movies too!), and of course a wide range of water sports, like jet skiing, kayaking and so on. The lagoon at the Taj is quite huge and shallow for the most part, with beautiful blue green crystal water till where the eyes can sea and fishes swimming everywhere. Snorkelling in this area is awesome, the variety of fishes and the colours that you see are so pretty, you can just get lost enjoying the views underwater!

In the evenings, the resort have sting ray and shark feeding for all to see. The fishes all come next to the feeding areas at the designated time and eat the food thrown into the water by the staff. The sharks are actually baby sharks, but still scary. Especially if you look at their teeth. The sting rays are big, and flappy! They swim quite gracefully actually and are a treat to watch.

The pool is located just next to the sea, where you can get a beautiful view of the ocean around. Its a good place to spend time if you don't want to get into the salty water. I for one preferred to be in the green water rather than the blue:). The waters are so shallow, and so clean, with very few waves or disturbances. And sometimes you would see fishes swimming just next to you, in different sizes and different colours. How often do you get such water to swim in? Of course it would be a good idea to beware of the sting rays or the baby sharks while in the open waters:).

Taj also has two restaurants on the island itself, one in the open while one with more varied menus, and a bar and lounge which plays live music in the evenings, a nice way to spend time in the evenings viewing the sunset!! You can have a romantic dinner in the evening at the centre of the sea with the wind blowing and not much in sight:). (A positive at the Taj is that they have a huge vegetarian menu which is a good thing for people who are vegetarian. Maybe thats one of the reasons this resort is highly popular with Indians:)).

There are different types of the rooms at the resort, the beach villa, water villa or the water bungalows each offering a different view and experience.The rooms are beautiful as expected, with complete privacy and separate from each other. From most of the huts, you can just enter into the sea from the balcony itself giving it a feel of your own private ocean space. Also while sitting in the balcony itself, you can see fishes swimming in the water most of the time. Is very relaxing and feels so completely idyllic!

On the whole, its a relaxing place to just spend time relaxing, sitting by the sea, enjoying the sunset, swimming in the warm waters,  observing the fishes in the water, sleeping on the hammocks or the sunbeds jutting into the sea, swimming in the pool next to the sea. A perfect relaxing vacation or a honeymoon destination, isn't it? Its an experience not easily put into words.

Also, something I must write about is the Taj experience. One of my firsts, the experience was just awesome, especially the Taj hospitality that everyone likes to talk about. The level of service is amazing, ever present without being intrusive. You have a personal Man Friday who is available for any requests and needs you may have, making your whole stay a lot more comfortable and enjoyable. 

The next resort we went to was Soneva Gili and in my mind it perfectly describes what luxury would be like. Its about 40 minutes from Male, and runs on its own 'Soneva time' which is one hour slower than Male. Quite an interesting concept, isnt it? Also there is a no news, no shoes policy on the resort, you walk around the island and the beaches without shoes and they don't deliver you newspapers. Interesting.. !

Soneva is built on the concept of isolation, the huts are bigger and farther apart, and completely private. The resort also has some Robinson Crusoe huts, which are away from the island and can only be reached by boat.

The island at Soneva is bigger than the one at Taj, and also a lot greener. Since the island is huge, you need cycles to move from one place to another. There are green gardens on the island to while away your time as well as tennis courts and all for more hectic activities.

The island has the usual activities for all to do, the pool next to the sea, the restaurant in the sea, the water sports, the spa, the relaxing sun beds strewn all around the island, enough places to rest and enjoy.... You can even swim till the hammock or the small island in the centre of the sea, and then you would definitely want to rest there!!

Their residences are huge, and this is how they look like! You can relax on the beds outside, on the roof, or even in the living rooms with glasses all around. The perfect location to see the beautiful sunsets especially during low tides. The floor of the residence has glass at some places, and you can see the fishes swimming below from the rooms itself. Just beautiful....

Here are some pics of how its like to be there, just an idyllic life...

When we were in Maldives, it rained a lot though which is not the case usually in December. Weather change I guess?

Anyways, the whole experience was so different, completely relaxing and beautiful.. A perfect place for a complete vacation. A must visit place at least once if not more in a life...!

Tigers of Kanha

Kanha National Park : what a place it is, maybe one of the best national parks I have visited in the country! One of course for its abundant tigers(comparitively that is, with parks like Sariska having

none left) and the second for its beautiful green jungles! Its a huge park, with two main gates from where tourists can get in. One of them is the Kisli/Khatiya gate and the second one is the Mukki gate. The Mukki gate is where most of the high-end resorts are located, while the Kisli gate has the not so high-end resorts. The Khatiya village is also located at the Kisli gate.

Reaching Kanha is a big challenge though, its not one of the most easily accessible places to go to! For Mukki gate, you need to fly to Jabalpur and drive a couple of hours from there. For the Kisli gate, you need to fly to Nagpur and then drive till Kanha. We went to the Kisli gate this time. The drive took us about 5-6 hours and you drive through the Pench Sancturary on the way. The roads are quite average, with lot of patches of bad roads. The landscape is quite pretty mostly, with lots of forests and shrublands on the way. The setting is rural throughout the way, passing through villages and small towns of Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh.

At Kanha, we stayed at the Mogli resort, which is located just next to the Kisli gate and the forest guest house also located just

next to the gate. The rooms at Mogli are basic; they will have all you need and the staff is helpful. About the food there, I wouldn't know much, as we everyday ate at a dhaba next to the gate called Kamlesh Dhaba. The food at the dhaba was so amazing, a little oily but so tasty and all for 300 bucks for 4 people! We ended up eating all our meals at this restaurant itself:). The best places to stay would be the forest guest house and the bageera tourist resorts which are located inside the gate, within the jungle. I guess you can take small walks there, and feel you are closer to the tigers too:)

Anyways, we did 3 safaris in the park over two days. Two morning ones and one evening one. The morning safari starts at sunrise. The safari gypsies queue outside the gate from 5am onwards waiting for their turn

to get in when the gate opens. Apparently the earlier you get inside the park, the greater the chances of spotting the tiger (apparently!!). The day we landed at Kanha was the first day of the park opening after the monsoons and our entry was delayed by two hours because of a dispute between the park officials and the taxi union! Anyways it was quite a show in negotiations with the forest officer finally coming out to sort the issues.

Once the issues were sorted, we all rushed in, with each group trying to outdo each other to spot the tiger the first! Each

gypsy has about 5-6 tourist with one guide provided by the forest officials. The spotting of the tiger as well as the whole park experience depends a lot on your guide. There are some guides who really dont know much while some do know the forest inside out. So they

regale you with stories of the forest to entertain you while you are looking for a tiger. We were lucky to get a very good guide in the first safari itself, and we learnt a lot about the jungles from him.

Our first morning safari was all focussed on spotting the striped

one! We saw one napping in the bushes, pried on him for a long time but anyways gave up when he refused to wake up or budge (Plus some 10-15 gypsies landed there, so it wasnt any fun either!). After roaming around in the other parts of the jungle, we finally came back to the same spot and what a sighting we had of the same tiger (once he managed to get out of his slumber that is).

We caught the tiger stalking his prey: a couple of chitals in the

grass. The deer caught wind of the tiger however, after the tiger has sat patiently for half an hour (and so had we!!) and ran off, making a barking sound and warning other animals in the vicinity too about the presence of the predator.

With his prey running away, the tiger then started walkin on the path towards us for a minute and a half, posing and giving us all the photo time we wanted. It did get a bit

scary after a point though, as the tiger was one gypsy away from us and moving towards us, while the gypsies behind us were not backing off at all! Anyways the tiger was a friendly one, so no incident occured and we all went back happy from the safari.

Once the sighting is over, we just roamed around in the jungles.

The weather was awesome, pleasant and a bit chilly, with no sun in sight. The jungles green and lush after the monsoons. A nice and pleasant drive away from everything else!

Our evening safari was bereft of any tiger sighting, apparently they just sleep throughout the day and walk around only at night and

the morning. So we just drove around and enjoyed the green jungles of sal trees, the Kanha meadows and the hills and the grasslands and water bodies and the white foam covered grass.

The next morning we were again off to a 5 am safari, we spotted

the same tiger as the previous day walking towards us! There were three gypsies on the other side, with us getting the front view. The tiger kept walking towards us, leisurely, sometimes venturing into the grass but then choosing to stay on the road.

Behind us also, suddenly there were ten other gypsies all trying to get a look at the tiger, while it continuously continued to walk towards us. We backed down an incline, crossed a stream of water but I guess we were too slow for him. He just decided to go off into the shrubs.

It was again a long sighting, with the tiger continuously walking

towards us, and us again trying to back off faster than the tiger. And what a royal animal the tiger is, the leisurely ' I don't care about anything walk', the cute cat-like look, its really regal to look at and observe. And scary too, when you imagine, even a friendly slap from his paw and you are gone!

Once the tiger sighting was over, we went off for the other sights of smaller animals in the jungle. We saw wild boars and jackals and lots of very beautiful birds that day.

We also went to another part of the jungle where we saw some of the most beautiful butterflies ever. They were just everywhere.

We also saw a small brook where on three specks of grass were sitting dragonflies of three different colours, yellow, blue and red.

And the spiders! If you can manage to tolerate them, some of the webs they make are amazing!

Actually Kanha has a lot of other wildlife too, like bears, leopards

(which are very rare to spot), wild dogs, barasingha etc etc all of which would be fun to spot in the wild. The tiger however eclipses all the other wildlife as everyone is only excited to see one while all the other wildlife is forgotten. (Well I guess we were also the same category:) but still!)

We did see the usual Cheetals and Sambhars too. Two animals which we did not manage to see though were the bison and the barasingha which are quite common sightings actually.

Another thing which we missed is the tiger spotting done by elephants. Mahouts on elephants try to follow the tigers pug marks into the forest and when they spot a tiger sitting somewhere/resting, they then take the tourists in groups one by one to where the tiger is sitting, on the elephant itself. Its apparently fun, we however missed it, there were no tiger spottings when we went! Another thing we saw were trees with the tiger paw scrappings, that is how the tiger marks his territories as well as some trees with leopard paw markings, where a leopard had climbed the tree. Other than the safari, there are also nature trails to walk on, through the forest.

Also while in the forest, you would come across multiple forest checkposts where forest rangers stay. Its quite impressive and scary too, for these people to be staying all alone like this in the jungle. Apparently they don't even keep guns with them!

Another point to note is that since we went there after the monsoons, it was colder and the weather was a lot more enjoyable and tolerable, even though the sightings of animals is not as

much as in the summers when all animals come to the water bodies in search of water. Still i'd rather enjoy the woods and the weather in the winters than the summers! Would generally suggest to visit such parks in the winters only.

A lot of the tourists who come to jungle are quite a disgrace though, I must say. They use flash to take photos of the animal and behave like kids when there is a sighting, making sounds, refusing to budge, trying to get their vehicle in front of the other one when there is a sighting. Quite irresponsible behaviour I must say, leaves quite a bad taste.

Duke University and Durham

Durham in North Carolina is the seat of the Duke University. Its quite a cute little town, like most small US towns I guess. The landscape is beautiful, with green forests and lakes and waterbodies in between, dotted with small towns very close to each other.

Durham downtown is small. We went to a mall complex as well as the mills converted to pubs and restaurants. Quite a relaxed chill environment. And there is sooo much space everywhere! Between buildings, and shops.. Everything feels so grand and spacey. Coming from Bombay, it does mean a lot:).

I also visited the Duke University in Durham and what a beautiful

place it is to study! With woods all around and nature trails within the university to spend time in. The student halls are built in stone, typical European style. The university chapel is a pretty picture as are the stadiums in the campus.

Am just posting some photos. Quite an old-style inspired university, must be a pleasure to study in:).

Culture and times of Bali

Bali is one of the islands in Indonesia, popular among tourists as a beach resort, as well as providing a rich cultural experience to all. We did a short four day trip to Bali, and it turned out to be quite a complete vacation.

The capital of Bali is Denpasar Bali, where the airport is located. Thankfully, Bali offers visa on arrival for tourists which is a big plus. The Indonesian Rupiah (IDR) is the currency used in Bali and a big pain to use. Most dinner bills would run into millions of IDR irrespective of how much you eat. So you have to be very careful about using the bills:).

We landed at Denpasar and the first view of the country is enough to make you feel it has a lot to offer: and something very different from what you would have ever seen before.

Our first stop was the Hard Rock Hotel in Kuta where we stayed for the first day. Kuta is a beach resort town very near Denpasar. Nusa Dua is the more popular place for water sports, but Kuta is more popular with the surfers. It is however a small city, hence not as isolated as some people would like. Anyways, we went to the

beach which was very commercial and full of people. But the waves were really good to even body-surf. The sunset was lovely, as well as the different shaped kites flying in the air. We even saw some of the flights landing at the airport from the beach itself. The air strip almost runs into the sea, and the flight landing there is scary as well as beautiful.

The Hard Rock cafe has a beautiful pool, with sand and an artificial

beach created. Good for some lazing around. Outside the hotel, there are lot of shops to get a good meal. Indonesian food is yum, the curries, the chickens and all. In fact most of the places we ate, the food was very tasty. Also the shops in Kuta as well as elsewhere in Bali sell a lot of beautiful dresses made of batik. Very colourful and bright, they look very tempting to buy. Kuta is a nice place to chill and relax, and thats what we did!

The next day we did a full-day tour of Ubud and Kintamani and other places on the island. Our first stop was to see the traditional

Balinese dance. Since Bali is a Hindu country, a lot of the dances are based on stories from the Ramayana and Mahabharat, but are still somewhat different and unique.

We saw the Barong dance at the village, and it was a lot of fun.

The dance had characters like Devi Kunti and her son Sahdeva though in a very different context.The Balinese dancers look very graceful and dance slowly.

And the Barong (or the tiger like animal below) is a lot of fun to watch. The music is also very different, very soulful, with musicians playing different kind of instruments than the usual ones.

After the dance, we visited different local villages. Each village in Bali has a village craft, which everyone in the village learns.

So we saw the Batik painting in the village, jewellery, stone carvers as well as the wood carvers villages. The Batik paintings and jewellery pieces were pretty though quite expensive. What we loved the most though were the wood carvings, they were all masterpieces, very intricate, detailed and pretty.

Also, the villages in Bali are very pretty. There is a lot of greenery around, with rice fields and other

plantations. The houses are all very pretty and well decorated. Each house in built in a similar design, with a sloping roof and stone carvings placed outside the house. Each house also has its own temple with beautiful work decorating it. The houses on the way were a treat to look at as well as all the temples in the villages.

Apparently, each village in Bali has three temples, dedicated to the three gods: Shiva, Vishnu and Brahma. (This is something very different from the Hinduism we practice in India, isnt it? ).

The temples are again very pretty and grand with beautiful carvings and sculptures.

The temples are however opened only once in six months for ceremonies,the rest of the time they are closed. We did manage

to see a temple during a ceremony actually. It looked like the entire village was there, in traditional attire, waiting for the ceremony to start. Tourists are allowed to enter the temples but you need to be dressed in the traditional sarong to be able to do that.

The same day we also visited the Batur volcano and lake, one

of the two volcanoes in the island. Apparently you can trek to the top in two hours, we however chose to just take a look at it:). Its quite a beautiful place to spend some time, and an even better place to bike!

We also visited a coffee plantation, as part of the agro-

tourism being promoted in Bali.Saw how Luwak coffee is made, uggh!! That day we stayed at Ubud which is supposed to be the cultural capital of Bali, at another beautiful resort, Kori Ubud.

The next day we visited the Ubud palace and temple. And then cycled in the city and villages around. We visited the monkey forest, which is dedicated to Hanuman.

The temple in the forest is again worth a visit. Beware of the monkeys there though. They are revered as well as very naughty. I almost lost our camera there!

And then that day we drove through the market and through

the villages with the beautiful fields. So serene and unreal it was! We also saw rice fields in the villages, very quiet and calm. Not at all like villages in India :)).

Passed by farmers...

On the way while biking, we also stopped at a place where women were sitting and making offerings for ceremonies using leaves. The version of Hinduism practised in Bali is quite different from what we follow in India. Its very interesting to see how something with the same roots could develop into something so different! The people of Bali are very simple and nice. They still seem to be untouched by commercialization, was quite a nice thing to see:). Also, they get very happy to meet people from India.

A standard line we heard was ' You Hindu? Me also Hindu (with a big smile) Nice to meet you'!! They also seem to like Hindi movies a lot, a lot of them use that to strike up conversations with Indians:).Also, here is the statue in the main square in Ubud. Its funny that in the country of its birth, I have never seen a statue of Ram in a public place like this!

Firangipani is a popular flower in Bali, used everywhere,

in dances, as offerings, and even by women everyday to put in their hair. A very pretty flower. Also, balinese massage is something very popular with all, guess you can try it. I didn't find it great though.

The last day we spent in shopping in the markets of Ubud. Stone carvings and Batik dresses was the most popular selling item. Not very reasonable in prices though.

All in all, a really enjoyable trip, with relaxing on the beach, cultural tourism as well as seeing the countryside. Its a really beautiful country, still far off away from commercializations. A must do place for a nice week in the countryside.