indian female travelers

Homestays in India – Pros and Cons, Tips, and Tried Homes

wood homes naggar manali himachal pradesh best homestays in india

Finding Cozy, Green, and Affordable Indian Homestays With Amicable Hosts For Short and Long Stays

I wrote in detail on homestays in India in this recent piece on accommodations in India. I won’t repeat all I said there about Indian homestays, but I would share my experience of traveling in India and staying in different places.

I’ve been living in India for more than thirty years (I’m an Indian), but I’ve also been traveling in India for about 18 years. My journey started with living in paying guest houses across Rajasthan when I was fifteen. Then I spent four years in a girls hostel in Delhi, followed by a short stay in a shared Mumbai apartment. Finally, I shifted to living full-time in Bangalore, Pune, and Delhi homes.

Those were my engineering and corporate years. In between, I traveled within India and experimented with various kinds of stays (both with friends and alone). Then I quit my job, and now I travel full-time. After putting up at hotels, resorts, hostels, paying guests, serviced apartments, I often choose Indian home stays over other guesthouses.

A narrative photo essay on street food in Malaysia

Eating Street Food of Malaysia in Kuala Lumpur

My experience with the street food of Malaysia began in Kuala Lumpur(KL). I arrived late at night in KL. I had chosen a hostel close to Chinatown to eat there as often as I can. I checked in the Travel Hub guesthouse and took a bed in a female dorm.

A long transit from Bali to Malaysia had left me famished. Overeating has been my die-hard habit. Now I try to eat less for a healthy and sustained living. But then, I gorged on traditional Malaysian food without a thought. I don’t like to overthink calories when I travel. Who would?

From being baffled by the cornucopia of Malaysian cuisines, restaurants, and dishes to knowing where and what exactly I wanted to eat, I had a long rendezvous with the Malaysian food. This food memoir is my attempt to recreate my month-long food journey in Malaysia.

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Indian Lodging Tips: How to find good, affordable, and clean guest houses in India

Finding good guest houses in India could be as chance-based as cracking a lottery. Amongst the many variables that might work ~~for~~ against you finding a comfortable Indian lodging are location, pricing, facilities, cleanliness, linen and towels, water taps, mosquitoes, cockroaches, (noisy) fans, parking, host and the service staff, their culture, relationship between the guests, and the geography.

In this guide to finding good accommodations in India, I also take you through the history of travel and lodging in India. Because without knowing the evolution of travel in India we can’t understand the current Indian hospitality industry.

Pro Tip: Also read my guide to finding Indian homestays. The article has in-depth information on Indian homestay culture.

From Mandalay to Dee Doke Waterfall

Should I share or hide? While deciding whether I should write about the Dee Doke waterfall, I’ve become more conscious of my responsibilities as a travel blogger.

Dee Doke is a remote and uncrowded waterfall because most people don’t know about it. But if I talk about the Dee Doke falls, more travelers will go there. But would all those visitors keep the place clean and serene, as it is now?

I can only request and rest is upto the people, up to you guys. If I show you some pictures of these turquoise falls, tell you they are about an hour and a half scenic drive away from Mandalay, and the waterfalls are mostly empty, you would want to rush to Dee Doke or Dee Dote, as locals call it. It’s a fair request.

I also went to Dee Doke because I discovered Myanmar travel blogs that suggested me to visit this stunning waterfall. I had an amazing day driving from Mandalay and then swimming in the Dee Dote blue lagoons. So I’m thankful to those travel writers.

I’m just returning the favor now. I only ask for not playing music on speakers there or leaving garbage behind. That’s all. I know you would be good and respectful.

Let’s go then.

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A Myanmar Sunset on the banks of the Irrawaddy River, Mandalay

I saw one of the most ethereal sunsets of my life on the banks of the Irrawaddy River in Mandalay. That Myanmar sunset was enough to convince me to wake up before 5 every morning for my twenty day trip in Burma.

It was the last day of 2019. My friend and I had just spent the day roaming around Mandalay ruins, discovering pagodas and ancient temples in the historic town of Innwa, and strolling around Innwa villages. There was a hot pot lunch in between at a place called the Little Panda Hotpot and BBQ Buffet. It wasn’t one of my brightest ideas to stop for a hot pot when we had hired an auto-rickshaw to show us around Mandalay. But the kind driver waited patiently for an hour. Also, I could not be blamed for the do-it-yourself hotpot for I didn’t know the restaurant would ask us to grill and cook everything ourselves without even helping us light the fire under our wok. Let us blame everything on the language barrier.

First of all, I thank my loyal and kind readers who return to On My Canvas time and again. Without you, this blog wouldn’t be this positive, experimental, and inspirational place it is becoming. I appreciate your company and promise to keep this platform as peaceful, honest, fun, and informative as I had intended on Day One.

To stick around to see for yourself, subscribe to my weekly newsletter. There I send weekly updates, my writing, best thoughts of the week, things I have been reading, off the hook travel tips, stuff I’ve been watching, and my life updates, too. It is the best way to stay connected with me.

If you like the kind of ideas I share, you will find that newsletter informative, enjoyable, and compact. So go here and subscribe now, or use the subscription box below. Welcome along in this journey of travel, discovery, and personal growth 🙂

Now let us talk about 2020.

My Backpacking Journey: Mistakes and Learnings

Dreaming About Backpacking: A Wannabe Beginner Backpacker

My first solo international travel was a two-week trip around France and the UK in 2012.

I don’t know why, but I had this urge to be a backpacker on that short journey. India was not high on the backpacking lifestyle then, and not so much even now. So I assume I had been influenced by the foreign backpackers roaming around Connaught Place and the Janpath market in New Delhi. Refusing the advances of the beggars and the hagglers, the travelers strode on. In that ten-minute walk from the Rajiv Gandhi metro station to my office on Janpath, I was transported from the billowing metro crowd to the cosmopolitan Janpath life to my corporate day enclosed within 500 square meters. The free travelers swaying along with their red and blue backpacks mesmerized me.

Curry rich, Asian-influenced, salad-based, unhygienic — these are only some of the phrases that seem to describe Myanmar traditional food all over the internet.

When I visited Myanmar last year, I had high hopes from the Burmese food: a concoction of not only the culinary taste of the hundreds of ethnic groups within Myanmar but also steeped in flavors, ingredients, and recipes from the colorful neighbor China, Thailand, and India.

While you can find fish noodle soups and tea leaf salads at every corner of Myanmar, you can also overeat potato samosas, suck into juicy dumplings, and cry out on spicy curries or run away from fried insects— all the later delicacies can be attributed to Myanmar’s neighbors whose people and flavors both have been generously accepted by Burma.

Three Years of My Personal Growth and Travel Blog On My Canvas

And just like that, On My Canvas completed three thriving years on the internet.

Congratulations to us all who have been part of this budding platform through which I want to spread love, life, and hope. I cannot thank my readers enough for sticking with me all the while, for sending me immensely inspirational messages day and night, and for asking me to write more and more. On some hard days, I could not have done it without your endless emails and witty comments.

We all have been stuck inside homes for about six months now. Though usually, I am planning a birthday trip around this time of the year, as September approached I got anxious that I might want to go somewhere. But would I be able to step out of Bengaluru or even my house?

Then I remembered the article I had written on traveling in the Pandemic. For those who have read the guide know that I only suggested traveling by car to an isolated homestay or a guesthouse near the woods. Thus you can change your view, hike around, be in nature, and even work with the lush forest swaying in front of you.

Remembering my idea, I decided to travel in Karnataka and started searching for isolated hotels in the state. But as I pored over hundreds of hotels and guesthouses over various websites, I decided to dedicate an entire guide to isolated hotels in Madikeri, Coorg as most of the properties I liked were from this area.

Please note: Though I wrote this guide in September 2020, these are still some of my most preferred home stays and hotels in Coorg. Updated 2023. Updated again 2024. The problem is that most places have increased their prices exponentially. Everyone around Bangalore tells me this is the supply-demand model. I say, people are making as much money as they can. They don’t necessarily have to. Please do consider your budget while browsing through the guesthouse.

flags-in-the-salar-de-uyuni-tour-of-bolivias-salar-de-uyuni image used as feature image for bolivia and chile visa controversy for indians

Covid-Related Travel Update, Jan 2024: Chile is open to international tourists. Visit the Chilean government’s official website for travel-related information and regulations. Don’t forget to read the government’s rules to be followed in public spaces here. My guide to Chile visa would be helpful for Indian citizens.

When I Couldn’t Get a Chilean Visa at the Border and Bolivia Wouldn’t Take me Back.

My cheeky Canadian friend Alison walked towards me from the immigration counter at the Bolivia-Chile border in San Pedro de Atacama. Fanning herself with the green Chile tourist card that boasted her free entry into Chile for ninety-days, she smiled.

Now it was my turn. The young immigration officer looked at me and gestured me to come closer. I walked to his desk. He asked for my passport. I slid my blue passport through the gap under the glass that stood erect between us.

Instead of handing me a green card as he issued to other tourists, the officer turned the pages of my passport and squinted to read the various visas and immigration stamps I had collected over the years. When he found my Chile temporary resident visa stamped on one of the passport pages, he asked for my RUT.

A Misty Day at the Ulun Danu Temple, Bali

Located on the shores of the Lake Bratan in the Bedugul region of Bali, the Ulun Danu Beratan Temple, or Pura Ulun Danu, is a popular Bali temple and one of my favorites. The road to the temple undulates up and down with majestic views of the Bedugul highlands throughout— the Ulun Danu temple is at a height of 1500 meters.

When I visited the Pura UlunDanu I didn’t know that the drive would be so surreal and that we were driving to the second largest lake in Bali which irrigates the entire Bedugul region’s rice fields.