The last prompt my first entry....Tea for Two (and a piece of cake) Tuesdays!

Last evening when I visited my library to return a book little did I know that in return I would be able to grab a copy of the latest book of Preeti Shenoy called Tea for Two and a piece of cake. As mentioned in my earlier post I have loved both her earlier books and was waiting to read this one too. She has an amazing writing style. So finally, I started reading the book last night till my eyes hurt and protested to go to bed...cant wait to get back home and finish it off. 

I also love reading Preeti's blog which is aptly called Just a mother of two. She puts up various challenges for her readers to follow and her best was the Ten day Challenge which I did undertake. The latest one she has had is the Tea for Two (and a piece of cake) Tuesdays! I found the following prompt interesting (which is also the last of it) and decided to take it up. So here it goes.....

1. If you had Rs.50,000 to just blow up (you have to spend it on YOURSELF. Giving to Charity or buying gifts for others not allowed), what would you spend it on and why?

Being the person I am, I would have invested it. But since I have to blow it up....would buy shoes, a treadmill, spend it at a spa, buy some clothes or gold...would that all come in Rs. 50,000??? :-)

2. Name three of your closest friends (not family or spouse) and say why you love them.

Kalpesh : For being the person he is and for being able to discuss anything under the sun with him

Santy : For insanely making me laugh whenever I dont feel good or otherwise and for being a really good friend in the true sense.

Pooja and Sarika : All we have to do is make a call and meet up and we are transformed into a crazy group of 3....and then we start behaving like teenagers :-)

Yes I know I have mentioned an extra name but it would be really unfair just to mention one name from both of them.

3. Name three books which have profoundly affected you and which you would recommend to everyone to read.

1. 34 Bubblegums and Candies by Preeti Shenoy

2. A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khalid Hosseni

3. Love Story by Erich Segal

4. If you know for certain that you can never ever fail, what would you attempt to do?

Start my own business.....and make lots of money :-)

5. What is THE ONE THING that you want very very badly?

A fab slim, healthy body!!!!! :-)

Well that is about it....it is fun to take up these challenges and I hope Preeti gets us some more of them :-)

Trip to Bhandardara

It was a long weekend coming up with Mahashivratri falling on a Monday....and the person I am, I was desperate to go out somewhere...some place nice...some place not visited before.

Checked all the weekend getaways (my hubby agreed for just an overnight trip :( so had less options), but there were not many...and I had already been to some before.

I thought of Saputara a hill station in Gujarat but then thought it was too long a travel. So I logged on to MTDC (Maharashtra Tourism website) and came across a place I had always wanted to go...Bhandardara. 

I quickly checked the availability and there was just one room available waiting for me....it seemed so! Without batting an eyelid I went ahead and booked it, got a deluxe room for Rs.1500/-

Now there is something very weird about this place...it has this MTDC resort at a very good location and very cheap...and there are 2-3 resorts which are very expensive with no good view or location. 

Anyway so we set off early Sunday morning by car and reached there in around 3 hours. The Kasara ghat which we have to pass has amazing roads but the inner village roads are quite bumpy.

Once we reached the resort, we were escorted to our room which was huge enough to play cricket in :) The rooms were clean and spacious and perched on a small mountain facing the beautiful Arthur Lake.

We freshened up and headed for the canteen in the resort and ordered lunch which was tasty and more like home made food. After clicking a few picks and having a look around the resort we went back to the room...me to catch a few winks and my hubby to watch the India-Aust match. 

At around 5 pm, after a cup of tea we headed for the lake, there were boat rides which we decided to skip and just sit along the banks of the river and enjoy the sunset and the view.

Once the sun was set and after clicking a few pics we walked back to the resort and relaxed on the bench in front of our room facing the lake.....as darkness engulfed the place we spent an hour star gazing...it was wonderful.

We called room service and ordered dinner....yummy chicken roast and biryani.

Next day we woke up to the calm and quiet surroundings. After having pohe and sandwich for breakfast we checked out of the resort and proceeded for site seeing around the place.

We got a local guide who took us to the Wilson Dam, Randha falls and Umbrella falls (supposedly the famous song of Mandakini in her white sari in Ram Teri Ganga Meli was shot here at Unmbrella falls as told by our guide)

We then checked out the gates of the dam and had a view of the Kalsubai (highest peak of Maharashtra) and Ratangad Fort. 

After that, since it was the eve of Mahashivratri and the villagers have a style of setting up a fair (Jatra as called by the locals) near the Shiv mandir, we decided to go visit the temple at Taked and pay our tributes. We were surprised by the crowd moving towards the temple and quickly went back to our car and headed for Mumbai after paying our guide (don't have any pics of the mandir as the place was packed with people) .

We stopped for lunch on our way back and were home by 6.00 pm. The weather had got warm by then and if I had to advice anyone who wishes to visit the place, please do go during the monsoons as you can see the real beauty of the place during monsoons and make your hotel booking way in advance cause MTDC is completely booked during the monsoons. 

Gods Own Country....Honeymoon in Kerala

Its been almost a good 3 months since I have been on my honeymoon and I still feel I am on honeymoon hence the delay on the promised pics of Kerala - Gods own country.

The planning, booking, shopping for the trip was all done in a hurry....yeah the best trip of my life and I had just so little time to plan it all.....but it was the best trip I had..well for obvious reasons... :)
We had planned a trip of 6 nights 7 days....dividing the same into 3 nights in Munnar and 3 nights in Kumarakom in order to avoid too much travelling.

We were not too sure if we would reach our destination thanks to the stress created by Kingfisher airlines cancelling flights and the Kerala state strike.

But we did leave on 29th November morning and thankfully the flight was on time....reached Cochin and we had our pre-booked car waiting for us. The driver insisted that we start the journey to Munnar despite the State strike. Our vehicle was stopped zillion times, made to wait for min 10 to max 40 min....we didnt mind it thanks to the pleasant weather and good company :)

On our way to Munnar we visited the Elephant camp, spice garden (very informative, shopped for some garden fresh spices as well). We avoided the elephant ride and spent that time in the spice garden soaking in all the wonderful gyaan from our guide. The garden was well maintained with all kinds of trees, spice plantation, flowers, farm animals.

Once out of there we headed for our hotel which was another 20 km away from Munnar city. Finally after the 7 hours journey from the airport (thanks to the strike, it would have been 5 hours) we reached our destination Club Mahindra Resort.....all we could see was clouds clouds and clouds...and slight drizzle.

Morning came and we set out for our site seeing journey which was when we realised the beautiful location of our hotel which was a valley facing and one of the only 2 hotels in that area. The entire area had tea estates spread all over.

After some quick pics in the tea estate covering some scenic beauty our first stop was the flower garden which was beautifully located on the slope of a hill and had flowers I had never seen before....then came the echo point, the shooting point, a tree full of honeycombs, the Mattupetty Dam.all these points surrounding the vast lake.

We returned to Munnar city to have yummy local food and then proceeded towards Rajamala to watch the Nilgiri Tahrs (a rare mountain goat) at the Eravikulam National Park situated about 2000 m above sea level. Eravikulam National Park also abode Anamudi, is the highest peak (2690 m) in the peninsular India. It was an amazing experience walking with the clouds at such great height. After having a good cup of tea in the cool weather we headed towards Munnar city again to do some shopping and enjoy a kerala massage. After that we headed straight to our hotel. We did skip some site seeing points as we wanted to keep travel to the minimum.

The next day we spent lazing around in the hotel and enjoying the view and weather.

Next day morning we set off for Kumarakom. It took us 5 hours to reach our hotel Saro Lake County which is situated bang on the banks of the Vembanad lake. We had a fascinating view of the lake and the sunset from our cottage. The place was so beautiful that we dropped plans of any site seeing and opted for just a boat cruise (2 hours). This place was more like a homestay with excellent home made food and service. We had the entire cottage to ourselves which consisted of a bedroom and a dining hall with a small library :)....No i didnt get to reading cause I had so many other things to do...after all I was on my honeymoon ....:)

After 3 nights in Kumarakom the next morning we headed to Cohin airport which is much closer from Kumarakom just about 2 hours and took our flight back home which again luckily was on time :)