Selamat datang to Bali

Bali is pretty. Very. Many would say that it's basically a cleaner Goa, but I don't think that's doing justice to the place. I don't want to make claims about Bali being prettier or more interesting or anything, but the two are definitely different. Goa has its own beauty, culture and stories and so does Bali.
With that said, here's the top few things that I took back with me this last week.

1. The magical waters - the color, the majestic waves and everything below

The waters are indeed beautiful (and as I had remarked here about the waters in Croatia), are clearer than I ever expected. You see this remarkable color - the debate on whether its blue or green or turquoise can go on - that captivated me when I saw it first and continued to enamor me even after a week. Now, one may wonder why I should be so enamored with the blue color of the sea, given I have lived in Bombay (or at least close enough to it ) for the good part of my 26 years, one has to remember that if there's any debate on the color of the water on beaches in Bombay its in the shades of brown and olive green.

Just look at the blue. Swear I've never seen it in Bombay. Ever. 

The sea faces are either white sand beaches like this

Or huge rocks that the waves lash out against like this

The waters around have some of the best and easily accessible corals and aquatic fauna in the world. The short snorkelling trip was proof for it and definitely inspiration to brush up those swimming skills and upgrade to diving next time!

2. The temples
Bali is a 95% Hindu region and are these people religious! They have a lot of daily temples. Of course, there are the really famous ones - the ones that have been recognized by UNESCO and all. We saw a couple - Tirtha Empel and Ulu Watu. I love Ulu Watu - it's on a cliff and offers a splendid view - the huge cliff going all the way down the ocean and huge waves coming and lashing against the rock!

The ulu Watu temple is the three tiered conical roof structure you can see on the cliff behind me

The cliff that you can see from the temple

But apart from these, there are temples everywhere you go. People say that if you throw a rock in Bali, you'll probably hit 10 temples and that's probably true. Cause there aren't just the temple complexes, but every home has a temple in its compound and several shops have temples just outside the door.

A temple outside a restaurant

3. The offerings
Religion is clearly a big part of their lives. It's not just in temples that have been built and forgotten. Everywhere in Bali you will see these offerings. It's some flowers, sometimes a ball of rice and a incense stick in a bamboo basket. You will see it at all times at all places - in temples, in homes, outside shops, or at the door of a bar!

4. The doors
So there is a lot of artwork in Bali all around - wood, gold, silver, stone - lots of things. A lot of furniture is really intricate and ornate. A lot of walls are filled with very delicate carvings. The temples are of course very ornate. But the one thing that really stood out for me was the doors - the gates to enter a compounded space, the archways to mark the end or beginning of a city, or the door to enter a house. The gates are mostly pillars on either sides, with flat walls on the inside and pointed peaks. The doors are often made of intricate wood carvings plated with metal sheets

Entrance to a beach

Entrance to a hotel

Another hotel

A replica of a door from the Jimbaran style of architecture

5. The food
Bali is a paradise for seafood lovers - lobsters, prawns, fish, clams! I'll let the pictures do the talking.

Shell fish

Crab

Prawn or the way they call it - Udang

6. It's more than just beaches. 
When you say Bali, you think beaches. But it's more than just that. There's the temples, and the art that we've seen earlier. But even in terms of the natural landscape there are the beautiful mountains.
The central Ubud region is home to a lot of mountains, many of them volcanoes.

Mount Batur

It's a beautiful landscape. You can see the mountain standing tall and the conspicuous lack of vegetation on the black soil marked by the lava from the last eruption. And then of course the charming rice terraces.

Bali was great. Signing off with a shout out to the people who made the trip what it was!

That week in Sri Lanka

There's something about photographs. They have this uncanny ability to bring back the people you were with, the conversations you had, the sounds that surrounded you and the feeling that defined the moment. And somehow, I can't think of many photographs which make me sad. Most just fill me with a warm, fuzzy feeling. Now that could be because we tend to click photos when we are happy and not when we are sad. But I also think, it's because our mind selectively chooses to remember the good parts and forget the not so good ones. For instance, looking at a photo with a bunch of friends at shack on the beach, one remembers the conversations, the breeze, the beautiful sunset, maybe even the music that played but rarely do we remember the bad service or the noisy people on the neighboring table or the wave that splashed and damaged your phone.

So, there's something about photographs, which brings back a bunch of feelings and the right ones. And I've really wanted to post about the trip to Sri Lanka for a while now. Also, I'm feeling kinda lazy. Also, Sri Lanka is beautiful. So, here we go -

This was my first glimpse of Sri Lanka. Quite literally. We landed at about 9 pm at Colombo. Got into a cab straight from the airport and landed at Kitulgala where we were to raft the next day. This was the sight that greeted us when we woke up in the morning. 

This was a pit stop we took on our way to Nuwara Eliya. The view was so good, you could see layers and layers of mountains and a lake long into the distance, we wished we could have just stayed there.

We did a hike known as the 'World's end' in Nuwara Eliya. This picture was what we saw as we were beginning the hike. Flat plains on both sides extending as far as we could see. The hike alternated between flat plains like above and rainforests. And finally after about a 4 km hike we reached the end of the plateau to see the 'World's end'. 

Honestly, I wasn't very impressed with the view and I made it quite clear to everyone when I proclaimed quite clearly in English "This view isn't too impressive, na?" causing about two dozen other people to turn around! This was basically the end of the plateau, and one could see the valley extend ahead. Clouds had descended into the valley and it's said that on a clear day one could see as far as the sea. Clearly, the day we chose wasn't clear.

As we continued the hike after seeing the 'World's end', we passed along this waterfall. What I really loved about this view was the bright blue sky. The color of the sky was the textbook blue that you read about and the poster color blue that I used to paint the sky as a kid. 

After Nuwara Eliya, we spent some time in the forests of Sinharaja. Sinharaja was quite an experience. There was no mobile network. Just one landline in the whole resort that worked. That too, only intermittently. We went on some jungle trails, jumped into some natural pools and waterfalls and saw a surprisingly large number of colorful but dangerous looking spiders. The other amazing thing about Sinharaja was the food. This was probably the only place where we had some authentic Sri Lankan cuisine. We had some coconut filled pancakes, omlettes, curries, dry chutneys and loved it all!  

I can't seem to find many pictures of the two days we spent there. Probably an indication that it was good enough to keep us so engaged that we forgot to click pictures! 

After the forest of Sinharaja we headed straight to the beach! We were staying at a relatively small place called Hikkaduwa. This was the place where the waves splashed and got us drenched. Thankfully they didn't get our food, like they did to a few unlucky tables. 

The beach was beautiful. Showed us a beautiful sunset and a beautiful sunrise the next day. 

We made a half-day trip to this quaint little town called Galle, which has a cricket stadium, a fort and a bunch of absolutely cute looking eating places, like this one here. Our evening in Galle was also interesting - we did a little bit of a cycle ride to go around the town, again witnessed a beautiful sunset and went through a couple of hours of a pan-country electricity cut-off.

So that was a glimpse of how Sri Lanka looked to us. I am going to sign off with a shout out to the bunch that really make these photos and memories come to the life! I hope we do more of these, guy!

Hello, Oslo

I did some sort of a walking tour of Oslo in two parts – the first one being the day we started our Norway trip and the second the day we ended it. The rain played a little bit of spoiler both times – we all got wet and then really cold. And it wouldn’t let us take our cameras out at times. But Oslo, was basically the first European city I saw properly, after the fleeting glimpses of Koln the previous day and of Bruxelles that day while on our way to Charleroi. So notwithstanding the rain, or maybe cause of it (courtesy having lived most of my life in Mumbai or to be more precise, Thane) I quite liked Oslo.
The first thing that I fell in love with were the cobblestoned streets, and I couldn't stop Sound of Silence from playing in my head on a loop. 

Karl Johans Gate

~In restless dreams I walked alone, narrow streets of cobblestone~

The next thing I fell in love with was the bright colours of the building. I encountered those bright coloured buildings first in Oslo, and then kept seeing all through Norway and later in other European towns as well. I still haven’t gotten over the freshness of the colors. They are straight out of the set of 12 poster colors that I used as a kid – you could identify the poster red, cobalt blue, prussian et al.

                     

             
Oslo, like most towns and cities in Norway is a coastal city with a harbour worth watching. I've heard Oslo has a spectacular coastline, especially at night. Unfortunately, we couldn't catch that but we did visit the harbour.

The harbour

We saw all the touristy places such as the Royal palace, and the parliament. Honestly, I was rather disappointed in the Royal palace. The Main building at R was more imposing and beautiful than this. And maybe having seen so many palaces in Rajasthan, one just expects to see something really grand and rare.

Oslo, was pretty, rainy and cold. And if I am adding adjectives, how can I miss expensive? To plan your first trip to Norway is a bad bad idea. One would find all of Europe expensive compared to India, and Norway is expensive even by European standards! That first day in Oslo, was so difficult. We just couldn’t get ourselves to pay 3 euros for a coffee!

By the second time we came to Oslo, five days later, we had gotten used to Norway and bought ourselves a nice hot breakfast of waffles and coffee. 

Of course, that breakfast wasn't half filling and we couldn't stop ourselves from shamelessly staring at those delicious macaroons through the store window! 

Before I sign off, a big shout out to the people who I walked around Oslo with! Cheers! 

Sun, sand and no surf

I like travelling. I like the going to new places, meeting new people, pretending to understand cultures and all. Now that I've grown up enough, I also like it, because it's considered  a valid excuse to not do everything you don't want to do and not pick up all the calls you don't want to pick up. So anyway, I recently went on this trip to Rajasthan, and apart from finding excuses to avoid work and not pick up calls, I clicked a couple of pictures which I quite like. Well, I also had a lot of local food, quite a lot of which was vegetarian and still good, but that later.

This one, at some lake in Jaisalmer is my personal favourite. The tranquility of the water shaken by the sudden flight of the birds was beautiful. 

You can see the impending sunset in the golden hues reflecting on the sand. 

Now what kind of a photographer, even amateur, would I be if I didn't get a camel silhouettes against the setting sun pic? 

If I had enough people reading my blog, I would announce a prize for guessing if this was sun was bidding adieu or saying hello. 

There were so many peacocks! All roaming around without a care in the world. One even made the driver bring the car to a halt with a jolt as it decided to come out of a bush without notice

and cross the road. This was all in a village which inhabits people of the Bishnoi community, bishnoi standing for 29, for the 29 commandments they follow religiously. One of the 29 is that they don't hurt plants and animals, which is mainly why these beautiful animals can move around so freely here. The world definitely has a lesson to take from this seemingly community, whose villages got roads only a decade back and who still live in mud houses.

And a blog about Rajasthan, wouldn't be complete without a fort now, would it? 

Why?

Now there are some things that humans are just programmed to like, like chocolate, chicken ( Yeah, I am a very enthusiastic chicken lover who believes that absolutely everyone must like chicken and the ones who say they don’t have to be lying), the smell of fresh earth after it has rained and vacations, or so I thought. Well, apparently not.

Vacations are all about sleeping, waking up late, and too late to have breakfast but still having it, and then dividing the rest of the day proportionately between more eating, more sleeping and some other equally lovely activities like watching movies, old soaps, reading books, staring at walls, and so on.  Now there’s no reason why anyone in their right minds should not want a day like this. And it’s one thing to have your beliefs proven wrong and another to have them proven wrong by yourself. So you can imagine the shock and denial I went through when I found myself not liking vacations, the way they should be.

Now I am not going to rant about why I don’t like vacations. I would probably have liked to but I can’t figure that out myself. So more on that later.

So that is that and my first post should explain why I am here.  I don’t like vacations and the first thing on my ‘How to spoil a perfectly good vacation’ list is work, any kind. I couldn’t think of anything else so this. Bear with me.