Cappadocia: Goreme hot air balloon flight

🇹🇷 🇹🇷 🇹🇷 This is stunning, once in a lifetime experience. The offers a unique vantage point to see Cappadocia's beautiful rock formations, cave dwellings, ​fairy chimneys, and more. We were picked up around 3.30 in the morning  from Foremanson cave hotel. Pick up frrom all the hotels took time and then we were on our way to a field about 5ish where baloons are getting ready. The basket itself is splitted to small cubicle which gives some seperation though its pretty crowded . On the way we were given a light…

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Meghalaya

🇮🇳 🇮🇳 🇮🇳 Day 1 I started from Kaziranga around 12 . Today it was mostly about 300 km drive to the hotel to Shilong. On the way I stopped at Anurag dhaba . Food was amazing , it was traditional Asamia lunch. I reached Shilong in the evening . Rolling hills around Shilong reminiscent of Scotland hence it is known as "Scotland of East". I stayed overnight at Hotel Janeira Day 2 After waking up , I had a bit of morning walk and also had to get some cash out.…

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Assam: Guwahati and Kaziranga

🇮🇳 🇮🇳 🇮🇳 I flew to Guwahati and worked for few days. Guwahati is often called "City of Temples" due to the prsence on numerous ancient and revered temples. Most famous of them is Kamakhya temple . This temple, dedicated to the goddess Kamakhya, is a major Shakti Peetha and a major pilgrimage site, attracting devotees from all over the country. The ancient name of Guwahati was Pragjyotishpur, also hints at its significance as a place of ancient worship, meaning "the light of the East".  Day 1 Kamkha temple I left the…

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Paragliding in Pokhara

🇳🇵 🇳🇵 🇳🇵 Paragliding in Pokhara is an amazing activity . Unlike some other adventure sports its more serene almost felt like spiritual. The Paragliding take-off height is 1592 meters in Sarangkot hills and the ending point is 593 m in Lakeside. It is fairly safe .There was an accident om 2020 Nov in which pilot died and the passenger suffered critical injuries . Though the cause was not reported in the media but local pepole told me this was due to some dare devil stunt  (plucking a flower from cliff wall…

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Puri

Puri was on cards for a long time. So this December when I was in India , I decided to finally go for it. I started in the evening by Howrah - Puri Supefast express. In spite of booking ticket in 2nd AC 1 month in advance, I only got RAC. Nevertheless , We reached Puri hotel in the morning. I booked the hotel through OYO platform but thr hotel did not honur the booking so ended up paying it again. It took months for me to get my money back. Day…

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Annapurna base camp

🇳🇵 🇳🇵 🇳🇵 Trekking in Nepal was always a dream . Nepal is a tiny country, which has 8 out of 14 8000M peaks in the world. However I was not considering trekking in Nepal.  My original plane was to travel in India and spend some days in Uttarakhand / Himachal , but my cheap return ticket from LOT air has been cancelled and tickets to India were very costly. So I bought a ticket to Kathmandu instead. Annapurna base camp trek is probably the only trek with all the glamour and…

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Abu Dhabi in 3 days

🇦🇪🇦🇪🇦🇪 Visiting Abu Dhabi was not in cards but the offer from Etihad was tempting , they were offering free stay for 2 nights  in 5 star hotel. I was on my way to India anyway, so it was a good deal. I arrived at the airport around mid day . Immigration barrier was mostly automated and getting a local SIM in airport was easy. I took a bus from airport to now defunct city terminal and then took a cab to my hotel. Day 1 Today I reached the hotel and…

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Murshidabad … Beginning of colonial era for 200 years

🇮🇳 🇮🇳 🇮🇳 The year is pretty unique in many ways . Corona , national lockdown ,travel chaos and daily changing travel rules all these make travel extremely difficult . Still on 12th Dec after lockdown was briefly lifted I decided to travel to India as planned . After spending few weeks at home and binging on biryanis , I decided to travel somewhere.   Murshidabad was a good option so I booked a ticket to from Kolkata station on a Friday morning. The journey was comfortable for about 4 hours . I…

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Khirai – Valley of flowers

🇮🇳 🇮🇳 🇮🇳 Khirai, a sleepy station next to Panskura Junction is known as Bengal Valley of flowers. Though most of flower cultivation happens few miles down near Dokanda village at lower reaches of Kansai river. A nice day-out . It was sad to see that some farmers were destroying their own corps . Spoke to one and he told me that even the cost of transportation is more then what it would fetch in wholesale market.

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Dhaka

🇧🇩🇧🇩🇧🇩 From Coxbazar we took a local flight to Dhaka. Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh is sprawling but very densely populated . The traffic jam is almost legendary , on the way to hotel it almost felt like getting out of the cab and walking would be lot quicker. I was staying at "Hotel Star City" near Kamalapur. We reached the hotel around evening , as with previous hotels, rooms were barely liveable. Dhaka Ramkrisna misson was nearby and we walked there to watch puja and Sandharati. Next morning we woke up…

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