A Wandering Mind

Christmas vacation is on , and our long vacation has been cut short to just a few days... more about that later... but as of now, we are stuck at home, with only trips to the ration office to look forward to (Ration card verification is on, you see, and there are forms to be filled.... papers to be attested.... and finally documents are to be submitted... amidst many arguments in hindi/marathi of course.....). We decided to take a break  and head out to some temples within Bombay - Siddhivinayak, Phanaswadi (Venkateswara Temple at C.P.Tank), and Mahalakshmi..... While I did click some pics of the first, I was dissuaded from using them, thanks to a couple of the army officers asking me not to click pics, so I am not going to put them up. There were no such restrictions at the other temples, but I stuck to just the outer view, and did not even try for some more.... But here are a few glimpses from our day out.... I have always been fascinated by the old houses and buildings o...

The Christmas holidays are on, and Samhith is pestering me to get a tree and decorate it, and wondering what gifts he is going to get this year..... He missed out on the Christmas party in school, and is rather upset about not being able to meet Santa..... Meanwhile, I read this post today, where Satyabrata Dam recollects his 8 meetings with Santas... Yes, that's 8 meetings....... He writes.... This is the jolly festive season of Christmas and all things good so let me today tell you how and where I met the grand man in red suit and what happened thereafter. To begin with, I have three distinct links to  Santa Claus : (a) Our  first names  start with identical alphabet (b) Quite like him most of my life I have spent in extreme cold and snow laden places and in Polar Regions (c) We both  travel the world  spreading joy and cheer and smiles at strange and dark places. To my knowledge he never went to South Pole and here I actually outpace him. All this defi...

You have been reading my travelogues for around 3 years now, so here's something new for all of you.  That mine was a family of wanderers is something all of you know very well by now. All of us jump at any chance to travel, but I am the only one who has been jotting down my experiences. Recently, one of my maternal uncles has taken to writing his experiences too. He works for the Airport Authority of India, and gets to travel a lot, looking for sites for new airports and sites where work is in progress. Thus, he gets to go to places which are out of the way, yet of tourist interest. When I asked him to start writing his own blog, he suggested that maybe I could use his travelogues on mine. Needless to say, I was thrilled. So here's the first one - his account of his visit to Kushinagar in September. Kushinagar  I had an opportunity to visit to Kushinagar in Uttar Pradesh, in connection with construction of an international airport at Kushinagar. I was surprised to...

The Indibloggies 2008 results are out, and while I am not on the list, it was great just to be nominated among those whose blogs I have been following for quite some time. I have had a lot of fun going through all the blogs which were nominated, and it was a great pleasure to read about those who won. In the travel category, the winner is Lakshmi , and hearty congratulations to her!! Check out all the winners by clicking on the link below.. Indibloggies 2008 Winners Announced | Indibloggies - The Indian Weblog Awards | Indian Blog Awards P.S. I am trying out new things everyday... This has been posted using the Blog This! Chrome Extension...

Here's the kite again..... again with a twig in its beak.. Just makes me wonder how long its going to build its nest. I have seen it carrying twigs and straw for a few months now, and every now and then we are witnesses to serious fights between the kites and the crows. We are left wondering if the fights are for food or the nest, or the eggs in the nest..... Wish I could see the kite's nest! And hey, I am getting to be more enterprising. I posted this one directly from Picasa!!!

The weekend saw u s making a sudden trip to Karjat. No, not to one of the many resorts that line the road, and seem to have taken over the once-peaceful area, but as part of a service project. My husband and in-laws are part of the Sathya Sai Seva organization which conducts Gram-Seva, or village improvement programmes, and one of their activity hotspots is Karjat, since it is quite near Bombay . It is where my husband disappears every Sunday to do his bit, and we travel once in a while to pitch in our efforts too. This weekend, it was a Standard Chartered Bank sponsored “Educare – Medicare – Sociocare Camp”. Here are some images from our trip. We started out as the sun was about to rise. Here are some of the images from the road……… Can you believe this is just about an hour away from Bombay ? So much fog, and that too around 8AM! The natural beauty of the place shows its face as soon as we are away from the noisy highway... Here are some images from the vi...

With the advent of Karthikai , out come the old brass lamps, some of which are family heirlooms…. At our place, we still prefer using the clay lamps, simply ‘cause they look so beautiful, and we can leave them outside without any fear of them being carried away!!! However, our neighbours regularly take out their special brass lamps, and I decided to capture some of the interesting types of lamps on my camera….. This is the typical Kerala type of lamp…. surrounded by the smaller lamps which are unique to Karthikai. Here is an assortment of lamps, the central one being the typical Kuttu Vilakku, a lamp all of us Tamilians possess. Around it is the Kamakshi Vilakku , which has an image of the goddess Kamakshi behind the area where the flame is lit. But the most interesting of the lot is this one…….. This is called the ‘ Aikya Vilakku ’ (Aikyam – meaning attainment). The lamp is so-called since it is a representation of the trinity – the base representing Brahma, and th...