Upcoming Travels: Monsoon Ride to Bisle Ghat, Karnataka

Finally!! After 3 cancellations due to extremely heavy rains, landslides and road closures, I am finally heading to the paradise called ‘Bisle Ghat’, that is one of the most pristine tropical forests and rainforests in the Western Ghats of Karnataka. It has been a good 11 years since I visited this region and I can’t express how excited and pumped I am about this trip.

It is still raining heavily in the Western Ghats, but thankfully the roads are open and I am all prepared for a wet monsoon ride through green heaven.

On the agenda are:

1) Wet Monsoon Ride through some of the lesser known roads between Sakleshpur, Kukke Subramanya and Somwarpet

2) Malalli Falls – the tallest waterfall in Coorg

3) Bisle Beauty Spot, Bisle Forest and Addahole View Point



4) Kaginahare Forest and Fort for a different green vantage point

5) Mookane Mane Falls

6) Manjarabad Fort

7) Kukke Subramanya Temple and the view of the lush Kumara Parvatha (No trek on this trip, but that needs to be repeated soon)

8) Coffee Estates of Sakleshpur and the railway track between Yedukumeri and Donigal, the green route (one of the best train journeys of India)

9) Stay in a traditional home in a rustic setting surrounded by forests, spice farms and coffee estates. No AirBnB or online bookings, but just a good ol traditional homestay.



…and whatever else comes on our way and looks worth exploring. Nothing on the agenda is set in stone as most of the Western Ghats across Kerala, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu have been battered by heavy rains for the last 2 weeks or so and most of the roads are either blocked, inaccessible due to floods or have heavy traffic backed up. As I am not sure of the availability of roads, I will form a route as the roads make themselves available. I am so looking forward to this three day ride. Look me up if you happen to be in the region or catch me on my social channels where I will be posting regular updates.

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Upcoming Travels: Backpacking to Turkey and Iran

The time has come for me to indulge in two of the oldest empires of the Middle East and two very beautiful countries (I haven’t been there as yet, but am saying this based on what I see, read and hear). This will be my first trip to Turkey and Iran and I plan to stay for roughly one month in each country. The idea is to stretch my visa as much as possible. The initial plan was to take the Trans-Asia express train from Ankara to Tehran, but because of unrest at the border, I have decided to fly this time around.

I have been planning this trip for a long while in my head and I am very happy that I am finally doing it. It took me a while to get the Iran visa, which needed a lot of work and ended up being my most expensive visa ever. Thankfully, the Turkey visa was straightforward. With the visas out of the way and the tickets done, I am all geared to fly into Constantipole and be closer to the erstwhile Roman, Byzantine, Latin and Ottoman empires.

I generally don’t make plans or itineraries, but I do have an idea of the geography that I am going to cover.

In Turkey it would be Istanbul, Cappadocia and Central Anatolia, Antalya and the Mediterranean Turkey,  Ephesus and the South Aegean, North Aegean and European Turkey.

And in Iran, it would be Tehran, Esfahan, Persepolis, Shiraz, Yazd, Western Iran for some cold mountain time and the Persian Gulf.

Since, I have time on hand, I will go with the flow and chalk out itineraries as it comes. I am very excited about exploring both these countries. I hope I will have lots of photographs, stories and experiences to share with you all. More to follow…

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Upcoming Travel: Backpacking to Bhutan

After close to a year of travel in South East Asia and East Asia, I am headed to the exotic Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan in a month. The theme of my travel remains the same: Backpacking and Budget Travel without any particular agenda. I enter overland from India, take available public transport and travel from the western part of this mountainous country to the eastern side in three weeks, before finally entering into India overland.

The high level plan of my trip is to fly into Guwahati from Bangalore, take the train from Guwahati to Alipur Duar, halt at Alipur Duar for the night and then get my permits done at the Phuntsoling Bhutan border area and then move north by bus. I am looking to visit the following places in Bhutan: Paro, Thimphu, Haa, Punakha, Wangdi Phodrang, Tongsa, Jakar and the Bumthang area, Lhuntshi, Mongar, Tashi Yangtse, Tashigang and Samdrup Jongkhar. This is basically the entire country, but I might stay more days in some places and less days in the other, depending on how I feel about the place. On my return, I plan to enter into the Assam state of India from Samdrup Jongkhar and might stay in and around Guwahati for a day before flying back to Bangalore.

I will not be doing any multi-day trekking, but will indulge in short treks. This is primarily a backpacking trip and I intend to keep it that way. Unfortunately for me, there will be hardly any festivals when I visit Bhutan, but fortunately, the crowd will be lesser due to colder conditions, which I prefer. I am so excited about hitting the road again, but have to wait a month before the Dussehra (Navratri) and Diwali holiday season pass.

Giving me company are two friends. If you want to join too, drop me an email and I will share the exact details and the ticket information. Note: I don’t organize such trips like a travel agent. If you join me, you travel like a friend and pay for your own bills.

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Upcoming Travel: Wild Kenya

I have always been amazed whenever I saw the great migration on National Geographic/Discovery/Animal Planet or other wildlife television channels. The sheer numbers and the diversity have always bamboozled me. And as I kept seeing more of such wildlife series, my yearning to see this spectacle in real got much stronger and finally that day has dawned as I am headed towards ‘Wild Kenya’ tomorrow.

The ‘Great Migration’, which is often dubbed as the 8th wonder of the world is the special component of my trip. This is when the animals from the Serengeti National Park in Tanzania make the annual migration to the greener pastures of Masai Mara Game Reserve in Kenya. The migration season is from July through September and starting October, the animals start the reverse migration to Serengeti. I am spending 4 days at Masai Mara Game Reserve where the action takes place (The Big Five + millions of wildebeest, millions of zebra, hundreds of thousands of gazelle and lots of hungry predators: lion, leopard, cheetah, hyena, Nile Crocodile and others). 2 of these days will be located in the center part of the reserve and next to the Mara river to be close to the wildlife frenzy and the other 2 days will be on the eastern part of Mara, which is where most of the camps and lodges are located. I am hoping that I will also be able to take a hot balloon safari over the Maasai Mara and get an aerial view of the spectacle. Though I have not finalized on this hot balloon ride as it is working out quite expensive on an already expensive trip. So I am on a ‘Let’s see’ mode on that.

Apart from the Masai Mara, I am planning to spend 2 days at Lake Nakuru National Park in the Rift Valley, which supposedly has the biggest congregation of flamingos in Africa. It is also famous for the black Rhino.The Great Rift Valley is also known to be the place where mankind evolved from, but I am not exploring that side of the Rift Valley. 2 other days will be spent in the northern part of Kenya in the Samburu National Reserve. Northern Kenya is more drier and desert-like than the rest of the country. Samburu and Buffalo Springs are also known for great game and again a lot of wildlife can be sighted here.

The wildlife component of the Kenya trip lasts 8 days and 13 safaris. In between, I plan to explore the tribal life especially the Masai and the Samburu tribes given that I am going to be located real close to them. And an additional 3 days in Nairobi to explore the fast-growing East African city, sample its special cuisines, a definite visit to the famous Carnivore restaurant even though I am a vegetarian and to may be do some shopping.

A short trip in my standards, but hopefully it will be a sweet one. I am hoping that I will have great experiences and photographs to share when I am back.

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Upcoming Travel: A Solo Ride after close to three years

My last solo motorcycle ride was my ‘India on a motorcycle’ trip. And it’s been close to three years since that trip.  In fact, I haven’t gone on any solo trip since then even though they are sometimes the best form of travel as you can explore to your heart’s fill without any commitments or distractions. Apologies to my fellow travel buddies if you find this statement a bit harsh, but I think you would tend to agree with me at some level.

This time around, I have 5 days with me from April 5 through the 9th. I plan to leave home tomorrow morning around sunrise and head west into the cooler climes of the Western Ghats. Initially, I wanted to go visit Dandeli Wildlife Sanctuary, Anshi National Park and Nersa on the Karnataka-Goa border, but then later, after putting in some thought, I have decided to go aimless (no sense of destination planning). The reason is pretty simple. I have been to most of the places in Karnataka and have traversed through all of its highways. Hence, this time around, I intend to travel west and drop by any interesting place that I find on my way to the western ghats and back. A simple thumb of rule would be to follow the Karnataka Tourism signboards, but then a session with the locals opens up more options.

And regarding the route, I am planning to take the really small roads that pass through the smaller towns and villages of Karnataka. I simply hate to ride on the 4-lanes and hence this decision. I hope that this will be an interesting trip for me in spite of the increasing temperatures. Hopefully, I will have loads of stories and photographs to share once I am back. Cheers till then…

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