Wander Ants!

Hello everyone.. I am taking this opportunity to share the new of the start of my travel company called WanderAnts, which will provide its client with customised packages and end to end travel experience.. We are based out of Mumbai.. So, dont forget to get in touch with us to plan your next holiday! We will be happy and delighted to help you all!

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Thank you all!

Have a great week!

A Day to Life Post- 87!

Finally I am back home, I reached few days back though I never wanted this vacation to get over ever. I was out for over a month and a half. It was full of soul searching, adventure, fun and meeting new people in life. Even the person whom I met on this trip, has returned back.. I think it was time that this person and I returned to our respective countries. The bond of friendship was strong, and hope it remains the same. It’s not everyday that you get to meet such people with whom you feel connected so easily and so soon.

Well, since the time I have come back, I got busy with my Soka Gakkai activities. We had our Soka Gakkai founding day on May 3 and since I am one of the block leaders, I was the incharge of the cultural this time along with 4 other leaders. This was the first time I was given a responsibility of something so big. Obviously initially I didnt know how to go about it, but then suddenly it hit me that I am the whole and soul of this group. First we had some 15 members wanting to be a part of the dance. By the D day, the final count was 17 members, and I had to choreograph the entire dance and teach the others.
Dancing has been my favourite hobby since childhood and I have learnt western forms of dances too, like salsa, jive and jazz. Salsa and Jive I learnt for around 4-5 months, it’s during this time I had met my ex 6 years back. And Jazz was for around 1 year. I have also learnt bollywood dancing, though I dont require it. lol 😀
Being the YWD (Young Women Division member) I realised that the responsibility lied on me.. We put few bollywood songs together into a medley and ended it with a Gakkai song. We performed a fan dance on the Gakkai song. The meeting was on May 3 itself, it went good and so did our dance. Everyone loved it especially the fan dance.

I learnt alot during the rehearsals, especially one thing that was pointed out by one of the cultural incharge. Which was that I am a nice person, but people take advantage of my niceness. Being nice is my strength and a weakness too. When we had this discussion, I realised that he’s right, people do take advantage of me being nice towards them. I think this is one thing I need to work on, I should be nice to a person as long as the boundary isn’t crossed, also at the same time I shouldn’t come as a rude or an arrogant person. There’s a thin line between these two and I am glad it was pointed out. How do I get a balance is what I need to decide. That’s the only reason why I end up hurt all the time..Because I have seen one thing that unhappy are those who are genuinely nice people.. Because this world doesn’t understand nor deserve something nice.

My sudden plan of going on such a long vacation was that once again I was taken for granted in February end by someone who was once very close (my ex). Why? Just because I have always been nice towards him. There was so much of anger in me, this was in a way an act of retaliation. If you try to push the spring, it will always springs back, bounce back, hurting someone or the other.

Anyways, the bottom line is that I had an amazing holiday, met some great people. I guess that’s all that should matter.

My younger brother and his wife are expecting and the due is this month end. So, myself along with 3 of her childhood friends hosted a baby shower for her on May 2. We called her friends and cousins. I had sent out invites and was taking care of the give aways. The 2nd one was taking care of the decor, the other of food and the 4th one of games. We included my brother in it too and asked him to get the cake. So, yeah we divided the work among ourselves and it became easier for us to manage everything. It was a high tea baby shower and dress code was pink and blue, including the decor and the give aways. Due to my rehearsals I didnt get much time to put alot of thought into the gifts, but yet I managed to find small milk bottles filled with candies inside. And along with that I gave small baskets of chocolates. I picked up 2 different colors which were again pink and blue. It was a nice baby shower and surprisingly everything went smoothly.

Have an amazing week everyone!

A Day to Life Post- 86!

“Why do all good things come to an end?
Come to an end, come to an,
Why do all good things come to an end?”.

These are the only lines running in my head. I dont want such a beautiful trip to come to an end. I dont wanna say goodbye to myself. Its been 5 weeks and it feels as if I have found myself, finally! I feel so energised, I feel like a whirlpool and a power house which is packed with way too much of energy. I still have few more days before all this gets over, before I come back to my life back at home, but trust me I would rather prefer this life than the one back at home. Few more days of this trip, or maybe I might just end up extending the trip again. 🙂

The person whom I met plans to extend the trip too, so you never know, I might just end up staying for more days. I like it away from home, away from all the confusion, away from all the stress, away from all the clutter, from the mess up, it’s like out of sight out of mind. Life is way too messed up, well who’s life isn’t. This person hasn’t asked me anything about my past, this person doesn’t wanna know how messed up my life is, this person just wants to see me happy, this person has also started chanting with me.. How amazing is that!

I want to share a picture that I wake up to seeing every morning and chant looking at.

  

 

   

This is what I wake up to every morning and chant, so who would want to go back. Not me! Life has never been so amazing, peaceful and I have never been so happy.

Have an amazing weekend everyone!

A Day to Life Post- 84!

When I was deciding this trip of mine, I wanted it to be adventurous. I planned for few adventure sports that I could do, which were paragliding, river rafting and bunjee jumping. But out of these three just one was possible, which is paragliding. And trust me I have never felt so alive ever in my life before. Seeing the world from a different view altogether. The paragliding point was around 12000 feet high above, yes! The best part was it was from a snow clad mountain. I won’t deny that I wasn’t scared, I was a little but when the flight took off I forgot all my nervousness, all my problems and all the stress in my life. I for once felt as if I could touch the sky. Till today I used to always wonder what it would be to see the world from that height, when you aren’t in a closed airplane. I used to wonder what do the birds feel.. Now I get the point. I felt freedom, I felt alive, the adrenaline rush which I had never felt before. 

Now I why people choose these adventure sport has their life.. Now I know why they love the adrenaline rush so much. 

I did have a professional paraglider along who was operating the flight. But it was worth everything. 

Sharing with you all few pictures of the whole experience. 

   

  

 

The amazing snow clad mountains.  

 

A Day to Life Post- 83!

Travelling is what I love and travelling is what makes me alive. I’m living a nomadic life over 2 weeks now and trust me I’m just getting closer to myself and to Mother Nature around. And I’m loving it. 

Sharing few pictures with you for now. All I can say that the place I’m right now has a lowest temperature of -1 to -4 degrees almost every evening and walking almost 7-8 kms everyday. I’m loving it. I will make a post in detail once I’m back. 

Happy Sunday everyone ! 

 

 

Climbed a mountain of around 3000 metres high.  

  

 

A Day to Life Post- 81!

Hello everyone! I am sure we all love traveling, and so do I. I love going to different places and explore the country/city, get into their roots, know their culture and interact with the locals wherever I go. Keeping this passion in mind, I had an idea of turning this passion into my career, in short I have been tossing with an idea of starting up my own online travel agency. So, today I wanted to know few things which will help me in knowing the market worldwide.

Umm, I know it sounds boring, but I would really appreciate all your opinions. At the moment in the stage 1, I am planing to cater to a couple, or a family or a small group of people traveling to Asia, Southeast Asia, Dubai, Turkey and so on. In stage 2, I plan onto catering to maybe group tours. This is the idea that I have been toying around in my head.

So, for that I wanted to know:
1) When you all are traveling, how do you book your travels? Do you prefer an online travel agency or do you go down personally to an agency?
2) Do you prefer a customised travel or the packages that are already available online?
3) Do you prefer making your own itinerary?
4) Why would you buy a travel package from a particular travel agency?
5) What features do you look for when you are on a X travel website?
6) Would you prefer a known travel agency or you would be comfortable by going with a start up?

I think I will just stick with these questions for now, if you all have anything else to share regarding the same topic, please do give your feedback.

Thanks all! 🙂

A Day to Life Post-69!

Vacations are the best days, aren’t they? It’s all about getting away from the everyday life and make new memories, that’s exactly what I did too. I haven’t written for a long time reason being I was on a vacation for 8 days, creating some amazing memories along with some amazing people. I visited Dubai again, last year in November I visited with my family and this time I went with some amazing people whom I know for a very long time, I am too close to them and I love them a lot.
It was a trip which helped me to get away from a city where my heart was broken once again and it was a trip to move on with my life.

We reached Dubai on the 14th of October and visited many places, even though there wasnt any place which I didn’t see the last time, leaving the Atlantis The Palm Hotel. I felt I was making some new memories because this time I went with different people. We visited the Dubai Mall, the Aquarium in the Dubai Mall, the Bhurj Khalifa, Mall of Emirates, took the Dhow Cruise and last but not the least the amazing Atlantis the Palm Hotel. In the entire 8 days tour we must have walked and walked so much that we never did in our entire life. This time I was able to see almost the entire of Dubai Mall and Mall of Emirates because we visited these two malls at least 3 times during this trip.
Dubai Mall is huge, when I say huge means really huge, no one can see the entire mall in one day. It is spread over a total retail floor of 5,02,000 square meters and includes over 1200 shops. Wow, right! It has an aquarium inside and the mall is located near the Bhurj Khalifa which is a great tourist attraction. Every evening they have the Fountain show outside the mall and right in front of the Bhurj Khalifa, which marks another tourist attraction.
Apart from that, galavanting on the streets of Meena Bazaar was on our everyday to do list for the first 6 days because our hotel called The Royal Ascot Apartment was located near by before we moved to the Atlantis Hotel for the last 2 days. We had the suite apartment and room was big and comfortable.
The weather was unkind to us when we were there. It was hot, not humid but horribly hot, the heat has left me tanned and sun burnt. The sun there hits you like crazy, I tried avoiding getting out in the day especially during the noon time, but I guess once you are on a vacation hiding in your hotel rooms doesnt help especially if you are the explorer one.

On 20th October we moved in for our 2 nights stay in the Atlantis the Palm Hotel, and I was awed by the size of the hotel. This was something which I didn’t do on my last trip to Dubai. It is located on the apex of the Palm Jumeirah and is themed on the myth of Atlantis including distant Arabian elements. There are over 1500 rooms and the hotel is divided into two wings, the East Wing and the West Wing. The view from my room was mesmerizing, all I could see was the vast sea till wherever my eyes could take me. The best view was the sunset, and I managed to capture an amazing picture.
The hotel also includes Aquaventure Water Park along with a man-made beach. The resort has a stretch of beach facing the Dubai skyline. The beach has over 700 sun beds.
Across the Aquaventure water park is the Dolphin Bay, a 4.5 ha (11 acres) dolphinarium. A place where after booking a slot you can be with the dolphins in the water, touch them, dance with them, hug them and play with them. It’s amazing how well they have been taken care by the experts over there. Well, the charges for per person is little bit on a higher side, but I think the experience of being with them is worth it. I loved it.  Here you have the opportunity to swim with dolphins, choose from a range of dolphin experiences suitable for all ages and swimming abilities. We had to go in for an orientation in the start where we were given bit of knowledge about the dolphins, their behavior and how we are suppose to stand when in water with them. Dolphin Bay house the bottle nose dolphins, and they are so cute.

Our trip came to an end on the 22nd and I reached back home just in time to celebrate the Festive of Diwali which goes on for 5 days, the main day of Diwali where we have a pooja at home and pray to Goddess Laxmi Maa was yesterday. I don’t burst crackers but love lightening the diyas (small clay lamps) because Diwali is the festival of lights. It spiritually signifies the victory of light over darkness, knowledge over ignorance, good over evil, and hope over despair. This is one festive where I love to dress up in Indian clothes and this time I decided to wear a saree.

Well, I am posting few pictures from my Dubai trip which I clicked from my iPhone. I hope you all enjoy seeing them. 🙂

The amazing Aquarium in Dubai Mall

 

The Bhurj Khalifa

 

The Fountain Show

 

The Atlantis, Palm Hotel at night time

 

The view from the beach at the Atlantis Hotel

 

The amazing morning and evening view from my room at the Atlantis Hotel

 

A kiss from the dolphin to me at the Dolphin Bay in Atlantis Hotel

 

A good bye picture

 

 

Wishing everyone a Very Happy Diwali and an amazing Weekend! 🙂

A Day to Life Post- 52!

We all like road-trips especially when planned at the last minute. That’s what we did, took our little road-trip to a near by hill station called Lonavala which is less than a 3 hour drive from Mumbai. I was as it is tired with the city life and was wanting to go on a break of some kind so yesterday was my one day mini break since we had to return back today.
Lonavala is a town and a hill station in Pune district around 96 kms away from Mumbai and it’s the favourite place for all the people living in the states of Maharashtra and Gujarat. During monsoon season this place is no less than heaven. This place looks more beautiful with greenery everywhere. During rains it gets foggy here making it very difficult to drive and that’s what we experienced today on our way back home. It was pouring and we were driving through the clouds/fog making the visibility almost to zero. We couldn’t even see whats ahead of our car and where the road was turning. There were mini waterfalls on the Expressway, resembling a scene from a painting. I have been to lonavala many times but I think I was visiting for the first time during monsoons. Now I know why people come from here especially during the rains. Yesterday when we were reaching there we could see cars and cars parked on the side of the highway and people getting out of their cars just to click pictures. People come here for a day trip on a Sunday morning and return back by evening.
It was a nice, relaxing and a refreshing short trip. I clicked few pics while returning uploading them for you all to see. 🙂

A Day to Life Post- 47!

After a really long day five, day six was a relaxing day for us. Every Wednesday’s Anjuna has a flea market, where you can see people from different places getting together and putting up a market. Here you will find all sorts of things, clothing to shoes to accessories to artifacts to silver jewelry and so on, you name a thing it will be there. If you are a good bargainer, then it’s the perfect place for you to shop. The market is put up in the morning and continues the entire day till evening. We didn’t know the timings, so we reached there in the evening by then most of the people had already packed their stuff. We went around for sometime, seeing things, walked on anjuna beach and then decided to head to Baga.
Baga and Calangute beaches are on one big stretch, and these two places are commercial places. Here even at 10pm you will see the shops are open, unlike anjuna. Anjuna has a pretty laid back attitude. These two beaches are some 20 to 30 minutes ride from anjuna. My first reaction towards Baga was it is any day a polished place than anjuna, yet I loved Anjuna. We went riding for a bit, saw a river meeting the sea near Baga beach, then decided to eat something. My youngest brother had bragged a lot about Britto’s in Baga, even before I was leaving for Goa, he reminded me again to go and eat at Britto’s, so that’s what we did. Britto’s not only has the best ambience on Baga beach but the food have to say was amazing as well. We just tried the starters since we were still tired from our previous day and just wanted to go back and sleep. All we ordered was the sea food platter and it won’t be wrong to say that it was the best sea food platter I must have ever had. It had cocktail prawns, a grilled fish, calamari, a crab, mussels, some french fries and salad. I love sea food but I am not a calamari fan, this was cooked in burnt garlic sauce and to my surprise I loved it. It was cooked perfectly. I even loved the cocktail prawns and the grilled fish, the crab and mussels were nice too.
We winded up early and went back to our hotel. After drinking couple of more beers, lot of thoughts started running in my head, I made some decision which was very difficult for me to make, but I had to. I know that decision is going to hurt me a lot but guess didn’t have another choice. With that thought I called it a night along with a feeling that only tomorrow is what I have in Goa, day after I will be at home by this time.

Hope you like this small post about Goa. 🙂
Here’s a picture of the sea food platter I had in Britto’s

A Day to Life Post- 46!

In my previous two posts I shared the three days of my Goa experience. So it’s time for day four. Day four again started on a late note. After lunch all we did was relaxing, didn’t go anywhere. How could we, since the birthday boy was asleep himself. It gave me time to be with others from the group. We hanged around in the hotel itself and once everyone went out sightseeing I started watching back to back episodes of The Big Bang Theory on the laptop along with beers. I just love that show. Day four was all in a slow day for us and an argumentative day as well.
The day we reached Goa, we found out that there’s an old Mahadeva Temple, near Tambdi Surla, which is a 12th Century Shaivite temple of the Lord Mahadev, and it is situated in a Wildlife Sanctuary called Bhagwan Mahaveer Wildlife Sanctury. We believe in Shivji a lot, so we decided to go. We had the advantage of resting the previous day, so day five started early for us. We wanted to leave in the morning, because it would take us around 2 to 2 and a half hours of ride from Anjuna. The temple was on the border of Karnataka. Setting our destination on Google Maps, we began our journey at 10 am on the bike and the entire experience was amazing. Seeing so many different internal parts of Goa, different villages was nice. We had to ask people our way, and every village had their own accent of talking. As we were few kilometers away from the temple, the Wildlife Sanctuary started and on both our sides all we could see was dense forest. We were a bit off since we didn’t get to see any animals except a big kite that flew right above us. Trust me, if you want to dare someone, you should dare to ride on that route at night. During the day we found it spooky, I am sure at night it’s going to scare anyone. Even the road before the sanctuary is all spooky, with not even a single soul walking or passing from there. When we would see someone riding a bike, we would feel little better knowing that we weren’t the only one there.
As we reached near the temple, we kept wondering that this temple is so old, hope it’s well maintained and we were right. It was very well maintained and we found out that it belongs to one of the archaeological site of India. We were very happy seeing the temple, surrounded by a well maintained garden. The carvings on the stone of the temple was so nice and ancient, still looked the same.

Sharing few pictures of the temple.

After the temple, we had to come back and the sun was right above us, and it was getting hotter and hotter. We left from there and the ride back was now full of eagerness, eager to reach back to our hotel. In all we took around 6 hours to go and come back. We were tired but we still had rest of the day five ahead of us.
After dinner, we thought the day was over, but it wasn’t. We had this group of people in our hotel, Russians, and we would share a hello everyday. Today, the group invited us for a party which was happening at Anjuna beach. They told us it was just 10 minutes away, trust me it was not 10 minutes away. We started walking from our hotel around midnight, we reached the beach and started our walking again, it was dark, luckily we had a torch light with us, that’s all the light we had. And the party that seemed to be 10 minutes away, took us almost an hour to reach. We realized that the party was at the end of anjuna beach after reaching the place. It was my first ever trance party. I won’t say that I didn’t like it, but at the same time it was ok for a first experience. I do listen to trance music, and have never disliked it, so it was in all ok. Seeing soo many people just dancing to the music made me even dance to the music. After a while we came out and just sat near the sea shore. The soothing noise of the sea, the sky full of stars and trance music playing behind took me to a different place. We sat for almost an hour there, talked and then just stared at the sea and the sky. Goa is amazing, that’s all kept running in my head, I knew my trip was almost to an end and I didn’t want to go back. I was living in my fairytale, and didn’t want the story to end.

After realizing that it was 2am, we decided to walk our walk back to the hotel. Thankfully we had the torch light. It took us one hour to return and boy what a day we had. End of day five ! Finally ! Lol ! 🙂
Hope you all liked reading it as much as I loved sharing it with you all. Happy Weekend !