Tag: vacation

Onwards and towards Mysore!

October 5, 2026 / / 0 Comments

Day 2 – Part 2 :

After our late breakfast and baths, we started for Mysore on the nicest of the roads, the NICE road!

We had already informed our trip driver, who was probably in late 50s that we are vegetarians and he sounded disappointed. (No fancy meals for him on our tour!) Mr. UC, the driver was as slow in his driving, as was he in his talking, probably because he was talking in our language, Telugu and not in his mother tongue Kannada. 

We had booked an innova for our 11 day vacation,  but we couldn’t utilise the last row, as it was flattened out to carry our luggage,  which was huge, thanks to our 11 day itinerary!  (added to it was the suitcase of our driver)

KBee wanted to sit in the last seat and stare at all the vehicles following us on the highway,  but since the suitcases were stored there, he went ahead and sat on the suitcases and had the time of his life.

My little munchkins hate travelling in the car, I have no idea why. I used to enjoy our car trips when I was a child, we made every journey seem like a picnic experience. Touchwood!

Anyway,  they were already complaining half an hour into the trip that they are bored.  I told them to buckle up or shut up! (I am sick of them asking for screen time always) That made them start playing some game about finding alphabets on the road, nameplates, signs etc.

By the time we reached Chennapatnam, both had played more than 3 games and ended up sleeping! Peace, period!

As per our original suggestion,  UC took us to the Kamat hotel at Chennapatnam, a pure veg eatery.

We sat at a table and KBee was not one bit happy about the eatery. He saw cows in the shed and smelled cow dung in the air and he hated it instantly. He asked why we had brought him to a smelly place!

Food supplies hanging from the ceiling – Old World Style

We ordered green pea pulav, Mangalore buns for kids and two North Karnataka thali  for me and Mr.Bee. I had a hearty meal and was completely satisfied with the food. I had extra servings of majjige (buttermilk) and we exited the restaurant. (The kids had neither the pulao nor the buns, but ended up eating the soft jowar rotis from our thaali.)

North Karnataka Thaali – the healthy option

There was a shop in the campus and I bought myself a small terracotta Ganesha and a jute sling bag. My sweet muffins, the kids, reprimanded me that they are sick of my shopping! Shocking!

Who can resist buying such Cutie Pie? My 3cm tall Ganesha.

After our hearty meal, we started onwards, towards Srirangapatnam.

The temple is old and probably made of sandstone. It has been standing strong, all this while. I felt at peace and didn’t  mind standing and staring in every direction. It was a regular beauty! If you are interested,  you can even ride a horse near the temple.

After our temple visit was done, UC, suggested we go to the Nimishambika Temple as well, which is nearby.

We did go there, but since it was 3 p.m. , the temple was closed and would only be open for darshan at 6 p.m. according to one very old lady, who gave me this information in shuddh Kannada! I nodded my head and said ‘thank you’ and she went her way.

UC asked Mr.Bee for the next course of action and Mr.Bee told him our next destination is Payana, the car museum.

We saw many number of cars and some of them reminded me of black and white Telugu movies where the rich heroine would drive one such fancy car and the poor hero would get a lift to college or vice versa!

Inspite of seeing many beauties, the one I loved seeing was the good old Ambassador car and a scooter, similar to my dad’s first 2 wheeler, our Lambi, short for, Lambretta!

Our Lambi was silver and blue in colour and not white. This pic is from open source!

From the museum, we started for our hotel at Mysore. We reached Mysore at 6 p.m. and checked into the Parklane hotel, which had an old world charm to it. As I waited in the reception, for the hotel boy to pick our luggage, I wondered about the colonial past and the days of the Princely rule of Mysore! Deep thoughts indeed!

We retired for the night and asked UC to rest.

Mr.Bee ordered pizza for our dinner.

We ate and slept, having spent the day productively at my love, Mysore!

P.S :

1. The priests at Srirangapatnam are multi-lingual and once they saw that we were Telugu speakers, they guided us in Telugu.

2. I was happy more with the Ambassador car than with the Rolls Royce and BMW at Payana.

Incidentally,  the first car I ever rode was an Ambassador. When I was couple of days old my maternal grandpa had brought me home from the hospital in an Ambassador car. That must be one of the reasons for my love.

3. Pizza was surprisingly good. The hotel had advised us to order food through swiggy and we had no problem with that.

Start of a September vacation!

September 22, 2026 / / 1 Comment

Hai to all my readers,

I had been in and out of hospital in June and had to take some time for myself. So, naturally,  the blog took back seat. Now that I am up and about, I am getting my blog game-face on and back here.

Now for the actual post…..

What with lots happening in our lives, Mr.Bee, who has the most cortisol in our family, since he is the central pillar post, decided we need a long overdue vacation in September. (Both the kids have schools and all, but we decided to take a chance at going on vacation!)

Since Mr.Bee has always been a fan of Coorg like almost all software engineers, we charted our plans, made itinerary, jotted down the list and finalized our tour plan.

Day 1 :

We had Mr.Bee’s cousins visiting us and our house was buzzing with activity.  We made some last minute additions to our luggage,  went to my parents house to bid them farewell before our 11 day vacation.

Initially, the bus we were travelling was supposed to start at 9:30 p.m. at Kukatpally, Hyderabad. But, they called us at 7:30 p.m. to inform us to reach the stop at 8:30 p.m., as the departure has been pre-poned! (The sudden change in time meant we had little time for dinner!)

We got ready, made it on time and occupied our seats. Mr. Bee and KBee, I and GBee divided into teams of two. Thanks to the bus driver  constantly reminding us of the existence of the break pedal, I felt nauseous! Mr.Bee bought me some mango candy and Kurkure at the first stop after boarding, to help me beat nausea, but it didn’t help me at all.

The only idea I came up with is to sleep and that subsided my nausea. (Since it was MIL’s birthday, we had biryani for dinner and that caused me nausea. Word of advice, eat atleast an hour before travelling and eat light!)

Before sleeping, KBee , GBee and I had played ATLAS game, which was like Antyakshari, except here we tell any nouns starting with last letter of a word. So if we start the game with ‘S’ as in (A-T-L-A-‘S’), a word like Singapore,  the other player needs to think of a word with E (last letter of the word, Singapore), like an Elephant and so on.

Later, GBee and I chatted and played “country flag” game, where we guessed the flags of different countries.

We called it a night at 10 p.m. and slept.

Day 2 :

The next morning, at around 6 a.m. we reached the outskirts of Bangalore and GBee and I enjoyed looking out of the windows at the windmills, hills and the tiny towns, which were in the midst of nature. (The townsfolk don’t even know that some people like me are envious of them!)

By the time we reached our stop, at the Silk Board, it was already past 10:30 a.m.!

We reached R’s house, who is a close friend and colleague of Mr.Bee. He wondered why we had booked a bus service, which had been recently involved in a major fire accident! The bus driver was going slow for a reason,  their service was under scrutiny, thanks to the fire accident  and Mr.Bee had booked us in the same service, without any idea!

I should say I was actually worried about fire accidents in buses, but I refrained from sharing my concerns with Mr.Bee. Interestingly, I didn’t recall that the fire accident had been in the same bus service we were travelling in. If I had known, I wouldn’t have slept the whole night, like a scaredy cat!

Anyway,  we had a hearty breakfast of idli sambar, had our baths, because it was nearly 11 a.m. and eating breakfast after bath seemed stupid.

We bade goodbye to R’s family, got into the taxi we had hired for the whole trip and started for Mysore.

P.S :

1. I admire the outskirts of Bangalore, with a tiny town, hills in the background and wind mills doing their job! It looked so beautiful that, it reinforced my desire to visit Mount Fuji, Japan. Once I visit Mt.Fuji, I can check it off my bucket list. (I checked off Australian Kangaroo in 2016, which had been in my list since my 10th grade.)

2. Although I admire the scenic beauty, I wonder how it would be to live in a scenic town.

3. I pity the Generation Alpha. Even when the scenery outside our bus window was exquisite,  GBee wanted nothing to do with it. He kept demanding for the Samsung Tab, to play his Minecraft! (He got good many scoldings, so early in the morning)

Bengaluru Beckons!

June 19, 2023 / / 2 Comments

Mr.Bee and I had planned a short vacation, way back in November 2022. But LIFE happened and we cancelled our trip at the loss of some hard earned money. So this time, we wanted to travel, but with a flexible itinerary, to avoid cancellations and to not be disappointed. That is how we started our 14 day vacation, with 2 year old KBee , 6 year old GBee on our nearly 6 year old Vento!

Since Hyderabad felt like a sauna, we decided on a cooler destination and immediately zeroed in on Ooty. (I have fond memories of Ooty from my teens and Mr.Bee had never been to Ooty.)

Our trip started with buying loads of healthy snacks for our drive, a 10 litre Milton cooler for water needs of the kiddos, emergency medicines, medical kit and 4 suitcases full of clothes for all the 4 of us!

Day 1:

…..Started with our drive from Hyderabad to Bengaluru . We started at around 6 a.m., (originally planned on starting by 5 a.m.) drove to Kurnool, on time to have our breakfast. (Both the kids had fallen asleep on the car-bed we had installed on the back seat. ) I had masala dosa and it is the best I had in recent times. GBee demanded cell phone to have his breakfast, but thanks to the dozen or more police officers having breakfast at the Hangout, he stayed away from throwing tantrums and had his plain dosa in silence. (GBee is afraid of the police.)

Even though it was still 8:30 a.m., the Sun was already showing his might. So we kept ourselves and kids hydrated by drinking water and Gatorade in alterations.

At Ananthapur, we bought the juiciest and sweetest guavas ever. I ate two in a sitting. They were awesome. Thanks to the seller, we also had some guava leaves, which I placed on top of the dash board, to test my theory. Plants and flowers attract heat and cool the surrounding areas, so the leaves on dash board meant, they took the heat and the passengers have none. (If you are going out during peak summer heat, place an onion in your hand bag or shoulder bag and get on with your business. The onion prevents sun strokes by absorbing the heat, especially in tropical climates, it is very helpful.)

We reached the outskirts of Bengaluru at around, 1:30 p.m. and had our lunch at Nandi Upahar, near the road to Nandi Hills. There was a waiting line and although the restaurant needed a face-lift, we had our lunch and started our drive into the City of Traffic, Bengaluru! (Don’t get me wrong, I love Bengaluru and its pleasant climate, which is similar to that of my second home, Charlotte, NC,USA.)

We reached Mr.Bee’s colleague, R‘s house, at BTM Stage 2, took our time to freshen up ourselves and by the time it was 5 p.m., we went to the nearby park. GBee and KBee had a blast playing there. Once it started drizzling, we ran out of the park and rushed home. Our dinner that night was Dominos Pizza, because, the food delivery showed a waiting time of more than 1 hour, thanks to the heavy rain that night. We had a Vegetarian Gourmet Pizza, with added basil seasoning and it was good. GBee was over the Moon thanks to the junky dinner!

We slept, for a night of peace. Both the kiddos slept like logs, a long drive can do that to anyone!

I woke up at 7 a.m., as usual and was mesmerised by the silence of Bengaluru. I saw atleast fifty people going for walks, jogs in fitness gear. A retiree continued with his stretches, all the while, nodding his head to one or two familiar faces. Everyone was going about their business in silence. This pleasant scene tempted me to ditch Hyderabad and move to Bengaluru. But then, I am a pukka Hyderabadi.(Also, I had temporary lapse in judgement!)

R even tempted us guys by saying that the plot nearby was ready for sale! As if! We just enrolled GBee into a new school and that’s when it hit me, how easy it is to take decisions before having kids and after! We moved to India, in the blink of an eye from Charlotte, but something like that is unthinkable now.

Anyway…..

For breakfast we had scrumptious thatte idli (first time eating it) and medu vada with tasty pudina chutney.  

Thatte Idli –  Image Courtesy Google Search Engine

With that done and stuffing some Mango leaves onto the dashboard, Mr.Bee, I and the kids bid our farewells and started for Ooty! Chalo Ooty! That’s how we started our Day 2!

P.S:

  1. Interestingly, if you want to convince your mom that you don’t want to go to school or college, an onion in one’s armpit, raises the body temperature and causes fever! Now take a blood oath that you won’t tell your mom, this is where you read it. I don’t want any mothers cursing me!
  2. It is always better to check leaves for caterpillars. Thankfully, GBee was quick to observe that the mango branch of Bengaluru tree had a very active caterpillar. I jumped out of my skin, car came to a sudden halt and the branch went right out of the window! No one was hurt by the above incident!
  3. I couldn’t post for more than 3 weeks, because, we were busy with the vacation, the return, the laundry, the school induction programs, the books, the uniforms and the likes.  Hopefully, I will bore you guys silly with more posts. The next post will be about Udhagamandalam, Ooty for short!

Cheerio till the next post.

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