Posts tagged adventure

The Culture of Chile – 13 Chilean Conventions You Should Know Before You Visit Chile

in South America travel on November 21, 2018 December 11, 2018 with 3 Comments

While we strolled through the artistic arcades of the magnificent Angkor Wat temple, my Chilean friend Valentina, whom I had run into on a train from Bangkok to Siem Reap a month before my trip to Chile, asked me if I knew how Chileans greeted each other. I shook my head expressing my ignorance of the question and the culture of Chile.

I didn’t know anything about South America or Chile in that hot month of June, even though I was flying to Chile in July, if my visa went through, which I hadn’t applied for by then. Without noticing my obliviousness, Valentina went on telling me about Chilean greetings and other customs I should have known before going to her country.

While traveling in Chile, her insights helped me throughout my six-month-long solo adventure through the passionate land. Returning the kindness, I am aggregating all those unique conventions that left an impression on me so that you are prepared to visit this beautiful land of some even more beautiful people.

A Day of Playing Around on the Deserted Nyang Nyang Beach of Bali– With Blue Postcards of Memories

When we descended the stairs of a cliff to reach this turquoise beach visible in the distance, my nut-brown eyes first quickly scanned through the different colors that had spread themselves onto the landscape, and then they insisted on exploring each hue for prolonged periods of time and stopped listening to me.

White cottony clouds floated in a light-blue sky, which gave way to a deep-blue sea, whose green waves rolled towards us, and then they washed over the brown moss to run into the fluorescent-green corals and mix with the ink-blue pools in which black and golden stripped tiny fishes darted to and fro from one rock to another.

My Bali Travel Guide – Some of the Best Things To Do in Bali and Beyond.

in Southeast Asia travel on September 23, 2018 October 5, 2018 with 6 Comments

Bali has been a relief from the chaos of the overcrowded and the ever-rushing world. Though I had heard really touristy things about Bali, I love the place.

I have spent most of my twenty days in Ubud, old Bali with a modern twist, a village called Laplapan, which is close to Ubud, and also biking my way to far away floating temples, hidden beaches, and rice fields whose pictures were able to enchant me enough.

Before I came here, I thought Bali would be a tourist jungle packed with hotels, restaurants, tour shops, yoga centers, and bike rental shops, along with some greenery. But Ubud and Bali are places that have all these things and also have artistic temples that the Balinese people visit every day, lush paddy fields in the heart of the city, cute ducks wobbling around in open pastures, deserted turquoise beaches, hidden jungles, a cool river cutting through the middle of Ubud, splashing waterfalls, a colorful underwater world, and all with the backdrop of a gaping volcano.

My First Glimpses of Bali, An Island for Everyone – And Some Essential Travel Tips

in Southeast Asia travel on September 16, 2018 September 25, 2018 with 7 Comments

I write this piece while sitting on the balcony of a beautiful Balinese home, with a lush green garden, with the blooming frangipani canopying over the sunlit courtyard and its tiny temple, and with towering palm and coconut trees swaying in the distance. And as I listen to the water falling over an artistic fountain while drinking tea, I know that there is nowhere else I would want to be in this moment.

Having been in Bali for ten days, my wanderlust soul and ever-wandering eyes have experienced and seen a lot.

I Am Going Nomadic.

in travel travel inspiration on September 3, 2018 September 25, 2018 with 10 Comments

I have given up my apartment, packed my bags, said my goodbyes, and off I go with my backpack, a pen and a notebook, and a one-way ticket to the world.

I have been in namma Bengaluru for a year now. Before that, I was in South America(SA), teaching, living, and traveling. After having been nagged by my family to return, I came back last year.

During my nine-months-long adventure in the passionate continent, I did more than I could have done in a few years. I hiked active volcanos, made friends from all over the world, learned Spanish, taught English and realized that I might have a few traits of a good teacher, stayed in a tree house, stayed with local Quechua communities on the remote islands of Peru, got mugged, held monkeys and sloths in the Amazon, night trekked to stumble into the deadliest frogs and snakes, lost myself in the Inca ruins, wandered in the fathomlessness of the Atacama desert, and struggled to get job interviews and tried to prolong my stay.

9 Months and 3 Countries – Golden Highlights of My South-American Adventure

in South America travel on August 11, 2018 December 6, 2018 with 7 Comments

In the nine months that I was backpacking through South America (SA), I visited three countries: Chile, Peru, and Bolivia.

White roses, pink bougainvilleas, golden marigolds, and red hibiscuses bloom throughout the day in my parent’s garden, but then comes night, and the queen of the night takes over. These memories from SA waft through my being as the scent of the queen of the night drifts through my parent’s garden and settles in our wistful dreams.

Hope you enjoy these amazing memories from the time I was traveling in South America.

San Pedro de Atacama – A Bustling–yet–Quaint Gateway to the Driest Desert

in South America travel on June 6, 2018 November 27, 2018 with 1 Comment

Sleeping on the semi-sleeper first seat in front of the wide glass window on the second floor of the bus, which was driving from Santiago to Calama, I woke up to find ourselves driving next to the Pacific under a star-studded, deep-blue sky which was complimented by a shimmering rotund moon. Even the contour of the immortal rabbit that Ruskin Bond says was dropped on the moon was difficult to trace on the bright moon. It was like a painting.

Having admired the scenery, I dozed off again and kept waking up intermittently until we arrived in Calama. That was when I pulled myself out of hibernation and, an hour later, I was riding on another bus to San Pedro de Atacama, Chile. At the end of this blended twenty-five-hour journey, I stumbled out of the bus like a zombie and the glowering February sun focused all its anger on the first-time visitor. Luckily, my hostel was a five-minute walk from the bus terminal. I strapped on my blue backpack and strode as I had loaded the directions to the hostel in Google maps.

My Worst Travel Experience – When Two Teenage Boys Snatched my Phone and Ran Away in the Delinquent Santiago

in South America travel on May 31, 2018 September 25, 2018 with 4 Comments

I donned my white formal dress, painted my lips red with my matte-look red lipstick, lined my eyes with Kajal Magique, brushed my hair and let them fall loose, strapped my G-Shock on my right wrist, checked my wallet for some Chilean pesos and put it in my bigger black leather purse, picked up my black Lenovo phone and earphones, launched Google maps, and walked out of the Airbnb to go for my interview at the English teaching center located in downtown Santiago. I had had to visit the center a few times to secure an interview with the English owner of the promising institute.

I took the lift to the ground floor of the building and having exchanged pleasantries with the joyful guard, walked out, and found myself face-to-face with the glowering January sun. I strode through the almost-empty roads towards the closest bus stand which was frequented by the bus that would have directly taken me to the cosmopolitan center of the town.

The Historic and Breathtaking Angkor Wat – Wrapped in a Photo Essay and Mystical Mythology

in Photo Essays Southeast Asia travel on May 26, 2018 November 21, 2018 with 2 Comments

Mythology has always fascinated me. As a child, I used to read all the thin and thick Hindu mythological books kept in the rectangular wall-hooked showcase temple in our mandirwala or the temple room. I grilled my mother about Shiva and Lakshmi and Parvati and Vishnu and Hanuman and the snakes and the elephants and the monkeys and the Ramayana. Then I visited college and opted for literature courses and read all the different versions of Mahabharata that I could put my hands on.

So while walking around Angkor Wat or the City of Temples, when I saw that the fellow international travelers were mesmerized by the temple but also confused, I donned my narrator cloak and recited tales of the Hindu mythology and exposed the personal lives of the millions of gods and goddesses that Hinduism has.

One of the stories that I narrated was the famous tale of the churning of the sea or the samudra manthan that has been depicted at the entrance of the temple and has been engraved beautifully on many of its walls and columns.

Now I am not that cruel that I would devoid you off this bewitching story. So here it goes.

A One–Day Road Trip From Bangalore to Panchapalli Dam and Bettamugilalam Village – Driving Through Wilderness and Rejoicing in Nature

in India travel on May 22, 2018 September 25, 2018 with 6 Comments

One needs to control his or her mind to do anything in this world. Even the most enlightened of us all, Plato, Seneca, Marcus, Aristotle, Buddha, Socrates, valued this virtue. I do not possess this quality, yet, and hence couldn’t sleep the Saturday night before the Sunday drive. At 4 am, when I disabled the alarm and dragged myself out of bed, I felt as if a hundred pins pierced my eyes.

Determined to hit the road, we packed our country-egg-omelet and Amul-butter-pasted sandwiches, that I had already prepared the night before, in tiffin boxes and then in a backpack, along with bananas, water bottles, and Unibic protein bars. We wanted to hike the world. Soon, we sped on the road in search of a green and sunlight-lit golden Sunday in some distant hills or next to a lake or a dam, may be accompanied by an elephant or two.