I did not fore­see this — my blog totally dis­ap­pear­ing off the online radar. Tried all sorts of things and finally fig­ured out that I had lost the theme of my blog. On a few ear­lier attempts to restore via back-ups, it worked and the blog would reap­pear. But I ran out of luck today. Noth­ing worked! The folder com­pletely dis­ap­peared from my blog direc­tory. Yeah, anything’s pos­si­ble in the online world. Tried check­ing with my host znetindia if they could help me fig­ure out what hap­pened, but no luck from that end. They kept assur­ing me that my domain name was up and run­ning (I know, I know!). But that wasn’t my problem!

This is another set­back after my whole blog dis­ap­peared a few months ago! I did man­age to get it back through the back-up. Any­way, on the brighter side, I guess I now need to come back with a bet­ter, brighter theme and redo my cus­tomiza­tions again. Gives me some­thing to do as a new year challenge!

Some­times I won­der how these things hap­pen — where in the online black hole do these things (files/folders etc.) dis­ap­pear? Being tech­no­log­i­cally chal­lenged doesn’t help either. But then the sup­port team from znet india wasn’t much help at all.

Any­ways, it’s back to an older theme for now. The links seem to be work­ing but I now need to get back to the draw­ing board again. Sigh… here goes!

Trav­els, jour­neys, and a lot of fun — both on land and under­wa­ter… A few for­ays into dis­tant lands. Dis­cov­er­ing hith­erto unknown places. Culi­nary adven­tures aplenty. Ensur­ing that I ended the year much health­ier than I started! But that’s what it’s all about. We all need res­o­lu­tions and I def­i­nitely need to make most of them all over again…

A look back at the event­ful year!

A lady pre­pares fresh hot dosas at a street side eatery in Bagalur, just across the bor­der from Sar­japura town. This is our usual food stop when on a ride to that part of town.

Our lit­tle devil and tom­cat, Tiki, walked into our home and lives in 2010 and con­tin­ues to bring us a lot of amuse­ment and joy, thanks to his antics!

A bird’s eye view of raft­ing down the river, from the Glasshouse on the Ganges, Rishikesh, where I spent a few days ear­lier in the year, chill­ing out.

Con­tinue reading →

Wouldn’t it be nice to eas­ily pack your cycle, load it in your car or bus and then unfold it and ride it again?

Dahon Vitesse

A fold­ing bike makes a lot of sense, espe­cially if you want to use your cycle in a flex­i­ble man­ner. Maybe put it in the bus for a sec­tion of your jour­ney. Or ride to a place and get the bike back by bus.

Here’s an inter­est­ing account of how Sameer tested it out for a week­end trip out of town when he packed it into the bus, unloaded it and then rode up to his meet­ing point in Chen­nai. What a novel way to avoid irri­tat­ing rick­shaw dri­vers, who any­way won’t take you where you want to go!

On the week­end, I tried out the Dahon Vitesse D7, thanks to Rohan, the brain­child behind the BOTs store.

What I liked about the bike:
1) Easy to han­dle and manou­vre through traf­fic
2) Folds quickly and fits into a car/bus eas­ily
3) The gears are enough for rid­ing in a place like Ban­ga­lore where the ter­rain is rolling and you rarely get very steep hills
4) Quite a head turner!
5) Eas­ily adjustable and com­fort­able ride. I did around 40 kms on it around town and didn’t have any dis­com­fort at all rid­ing around.

There an exten­sive review of the bike here, so I won’t get into too many details.

Though I was ini­tially a lit­tle uncom­fort­able with the size of the wheels, it didn’t take me too long to get used to it.

Hav­ing said that, this is prob­a­bly not the right bike if you want to go trail rid­ing or jump over pot­holes or do some rough and tough stunts. I would call it more of a com­muter and leisure bike, over shorter dis­tances though I also know of some folks who have taken fold­ing bikes over long tours. But, it might not be the most suit­able for rough­ing it out.

If you’re look­ing for a com­pact bike, and espe­cially a “one size” fits all for the fam­ily, to run errands and com­mute, this might just be the right one for you.

You can drop into your friendly neigh­bour­hood BOTs store and check the bike out.

Goa is one place which springs a sur­prise every time I visit.

Though I really like the water, after my Decem­ber 2008 cycling tour where I saw a lot of the Goan coun­try­side (which I really liked), I usu­ally make it a point to go inland in search of inter­est­ing sights and sounds. The beaches are where the crowds land up. The inte­ri­ors of Goa on the other hand is really ver­dant and beau­ti­ful and has much more to offer in terms of his­tory and heritage.

We came upon this piece of trea­sure when we were hol­i­day­ing in South Goa. The hosts of the guest house we were stay­ing in rec­om­mended a visit to this Por­tuguese man­sion located in Quepem, a town near Margao.

We fol­lowed instruc­tions and landed in Quepem town, after which it wasn’t too dif­fi­cult to find this land­mark — the Palá­cio do Deão.

Beau­ti­fully restored and sit­ting pretty amidst lush green­ery, this is one place that comes much rec­om­mended if ever you’re in that part of Goa. You need to call ahead and also make sure you inform them that you want to have a meal there as they only take prior book­ings. The own­ers will give you a detailed tour of the inte­ri­ors and exte­ri­ors so keep enough time to browse around at leisure. They do not have accom­mo­da­tion though — it’s only open for a tour and a meal.

The prop­erty is reviewed on the Best Home­s­tays web­site, so read it here!

Pala­cio by the River

So this is actu­ally my dream… open­ing a tea shop akin to the lovely TPot at Fort Kochi. I can pos­si­bly sit at this place for hours on end, sur­rounded by ket­tles, pots, mugs, and mem­o­ra­bilia — all related to tea. And of course, a steam­ing cup of the brew in front of me to keep me com­pany.

Some­body seems to have beaten me to it — which is just as well because it would have prob­a­bly taken me a while to realise this par­tic­u­lar dream. I am not too fast in the imple­men­ta­tion depart­ment. So it’s been a long time com­ing, and it’s a wel­come addi­tion to the city’s bev­er­age scene. After all, there’s a lot of options for cof­fee drinkers with Cafe Cof­fee Day, Barista, Costa Cof­fee and Cuppa, but what hap­pens to us tea drinkers?

Well, tea lovers can rejoice — we have options now!

Chai Point: A friend lugged me to this com­pact, no frills chai place, which is designed more like a road­side tea shop, but with a lit­tle more shine. Every­thing looks fresh and clean. The ket­tles are large and shiney and the equip­ment all looks rather interesting.

They serve chai in the tra­di­tional glasses and you can opt for tea in any way you pre­fer — kadak, masala, lemon or kali — and enjoy it along with an egg puff or a quick snack. Chai Point has stand­ing space and a few stools — at least the one I went to in Ulsoor. But it’s more of quick stand and enjoy your chai and move on kind of a joint. And price point is very rea­son­able — you can get your chai between Rs 10–20 bucks, which is quite rea­son­able. Chai Points are at around 9 dif­fer­ent loca­tions in the city.

In this inter­est­ing arti­cle, the founder and CEO Amuleek Singh talks about how the whole idea of Chai Point came about and gives an insight into the start-up story.

~~~~

Chaipatty: I heard about this new place through friends and finally dropped in the other evening. It has a bit of a col­lege hang out atmos­phere — whether it’s the low “mud­has” (bam­boo seats usu­ally made in Assam), or the bam­boo mats lying on the floor. The shop is very close to the main road — maybe also one rea­son why the music is kept so loud.

Chaipatty serves chai in tra­di­tional glasses and “kul­hars”. And there’s a vari­ety of tea to suit your taste and mood. There were also snacks like pako­das, momos, chicken sausages and nuggets and Maggi, which goes quite well with a cup of tea. We whiled away quite a few hours there and the owner, Chi­rag Yadav, was nice enough not to throw us out. The loca­tion works well for Chaipatty, it’s on the main road and it has a steady flow of cus­tomers, as we witnessed.

The store also wants to host activ­i­ties and already has a cor­ner ded­i­cated to show­cas­ing dif­fer­ent prod­ucts. So there’s jew­ellery, art, paint­ings, clutch purses and knick knacks you can browse through and pick up while wait­ing for your tea.

While the dis­ad­van­tage is the noise from 100 feet road — it will be dif­fi­cult to have a meet­ing here for exam­ple — the loca­tion also seems to be an advantage.

Tea prices start at Rs 50 and snacks are between Rs50-100. And there are also enough baked items to sat­isfy your sweet tooth.

Check out Chaipatty.

I’ve been a reg­u­lar cus­tomer of Navadarshanam’s organic prod­ucts for a while now. I usu­ally fre­quent the Mother Earth or Namd­hari Fresh stores to stock up on my unpol­ished rice, pulses, jag­gery and spices.

So when I came to know that they are located near Anekal and allow inter­ested vis­i­tors, one Sun­day my sis­ter and I drove down there for a visit. It was a pleas­ant drive on Hosur Road with a diver­sion at Chan­da­pura, towards Anekal. The vil­lage is Gan­gana­hally, located after Anekal town. We fol­lowed the direc­tions given to us by Nagara­jan, our host. At the vil­lage, there was a sign­post on the main road with the name painted on it and from there it was around a 2–3 kms drive inside.

The com­mu­nity is located in a very small part of the 100+acre land, the rest of which is for­est, shrubs etc. Around 10–12 fam­i­lies make their home here and dur­ing our visit we get to meet a few of them.

Over a cup of refresh­ing black tea in his patio, over­look­ing the woods (and the sound of chirp­ing birds), Nagara­jan tells us a lit­tle bit about the back­ground of how the con­cept and this place started off around the 1990s. Its ori­gin can be traced to a Study Cir­cle that used to meet in Gandhi Peace Foun­da­tion and the Indian Insti­tute of Tech­nol­ogy at Delhi in the 1970s and 1980s. From study and dis­cus­sions amongst a group of indi­vid­u­als, it was observed how the urban indus­trial way of life was tak­ing away from the indi­vid­ual, the self and result­ing in eco­log­i­cal destruc­tion, poverty and violence.

To get away from this vicious cycle, the group felt the need to explore alter­na­tives to the mod­ern way of liv­ing and think­ing. To give these ideas prac­ti­cal shape, in 1990–91 they cre­ated a Trust and bought 115 acres of land next to a small ham­let about 50 km from Ban­ga­lore. Amongst their exper­i­ments, the Trust looks at alter­na­tive meth­ods in the areas of eco-restoration, nat­ural farm­ing, health and food, energy and hous­ing.

Most of the trees around, Nagara­jan tells us are nat­ural species that started grow­ing once they fenced in the prop­erty. Ear­lier, it was just arid land. Now, they exper­i­ment and try to grow dif­fer­ent crops and plants, though the soil qual­ity is not good enough to sup­port large crops.

The com­mend­able thing that the Trust has done is set up a self help group con­sist­ing of women from nearby vil­lages who are involved in the mak­ing, pack­ing of dif­fer­ent prod­ucts that are then mar­keted under the Navadar­shanam brand. All prof­its are ploughed back to the work­ers. Some of these are largely organic prod­ucts, while oth­ers are kept as nat­ural as possible.

We talk about how food has become such a dif­fi­cult choice these days with the amount of preser­v­a­tives, pes­ti­cides etc. being used. We’re never really sure of what we’re eat­ing. We buy fruit flavoured prod­ucts, lit­tle know­ing that it’s all arti­fi­cial. We buy rice that has been robbed of all it’s nutri­ents, honey which con­tains added sugar syrup and spices which have coloured addi­tives to make it more attrac­tive. We def­i­nitely need to be more care­ful and dis­cern­ing about our food choices and what we pick up at the super­mar­ket nowadays.

What we really enjoyed was the com­mu­nity kitchen at Navadar­shanam. Every­one lends a hand to cook the meals and eats together. The food is sim­ple, but tasty and whole­some. Which is really nice and not some­thing we expe­ri­ence often these days, when meals are often alone or on the run. I even know of folks who boast that they have no time for break­fast and have to snatch food on the go or even give it a miss. If I have to miss my break­fast because of paucity of time, I’d really ques­tion what I was doing wrong…

Any­way, back to the prop­erty where dif­fer­ent activ­i­ties are going on, while my sis­ter and I take a relaxed walk around and then take it easy for the rest of the day. We don’t have any agenda and it’s pleas­ant just sit­ting in the patio of the cot­tage (our home for a day) and doing nothing.

Their prod­ucts retail at dif­fer­ent stores and we see boxes being packed, marked and sent out for the weekly deliv­er­ies. Inside the main work­ing areas, the women are pack­ing lad­dus made from sprouted wheat today. I pick up some unpol­ished rice, organic jag­gery, peanut but­ter (which I love!), dalia, non-detergent soap and chilli powder.

These are some of the places in Ban­ga­lore where you can buy their products.

Navadar­shanam is open for vis­i­tors, but they encour­age folks who are inter­ested in know­ing more about their prin­ci­ples and mis­sion. This is not really a “touristy” week­end. Every­thing is solar pow­ered. And of course, no televisions :-)

As the web­site says: “We would like only those who share an inter­est in the val­ues and life-style of Navadar­shanam to come here, and we wel­come such vis­i­tors.” They encour­age folks to visit for a day or more to get a bet­ter under­stand­ing of what they are doing.

The num­bers to con­tact:
Nagara­jan on 92430–49163 or Gopalan on 92436–15470 or Anan­thu on 92436–05053.

Loca­tion:
An expanse of 110 acres of hilly land bor­der­ing the Thally reserve for­est, 50 km south of Ban­ga­lore along the TN-Karnataka bor­der, pro­vides a serene and inspir­ing set­ting for pur­su­ing the aims of the Trust.

Web­site:
Navadar­shanam

What strikes you most, when you step into Counter Cul­ture, is the space. No jostling for tables and talk­ing above each other, lis­ten­ing in to neighbour’s con­ver­sa­tions (inter­est­ing as it might turn out to be) which is com­mon in many restau­rants in the city. Instead, with it’s unique set­ting in a restored fac­tory, and with the tables placed at good dis­tances from each other, the long win­dows and cur­tains falling almost from the top, the feel­ing of space is a wel­come change.

Located in an indus­trial area in White­field, Counter Cul­ture tries to keep alive the feel of one. There are inter­est­ing and quirky murals and sketches on the walls, includ­ing the rest room which has a very cre­ative sink and tap.

The place has been designed to host art and cul­ture events and saw the Ban­ga­lore band TAAQ per­form there recently. There’s also enough open space out­doors for kids to play and roam around while the adults indulge in con­ver­sa­tion. An eat­ing space out­doors will prob­a­bly be more pleas­ant in the evenings, what with the sear­ing day time tem­per­a­tures in Ban­ga­lore these days.

We tried a round of appe­tis­ers, rang­ing from chicken satay, french fries to tuna salad, and weren’t dis­ap­pointed at all. After our round of wel­come drinks, we got our­selves a few cock­tails (includ­ing Le Loft, Manga Rosa) and beer. (I per­son­ally like my cock­tails in gen­er­ous sized cock­tail glasses and well made and sadly, I find very few restau­rants which make me happy in this department).

For the main course, we tried the pas­tas – a basil and a tomato based one. A veg­etable and spinach can­neloni, which was the only dish that didn’t get a very good feed­back. And a bacon wrapped mush­room (starter) which was good enough for a meal. The pas­tas were very well done. I hope they can keep the qual­ity up as I tend to notice it’s what suf­fers a few months after open­ing. And the drinks become less and less potent. Let’s hope that doesn’t happen.

They have a chang­ing list of desserts that should keep your sweet taste buds happy too. We tried the kulfi and the water chest­nuts in coconut milk.

The only thing is the loca­tion, which proved quite far for us but it was a Sun­day, so it didn’t really mat­ter. But for those in that area — White­field, Mahade­vpura, Lin­gara­japu­ram etc. — this is located quite con­ve­niently and def­i­nitely worth a visit. Espe­cially for a lazy long lunch on a weekend.

Cock­tails: 6/10
Food: 7/10
Address: Coun­ter­Cul­ture Hos­pi­tal­ity Pvt. Ltd.
2D2 | 4th Cross | Dyavasan­dra Indus­trial Area
Land­mark: Xylem Build­ing
White­field Road | Bangalore-560048
Phone Num­ber: +91 080–41400793 / 080–41400794

Though Sameer, who runs Linger Leisure, insisted that we could pretty much do noth­ing when we reached Linger at Balur Estates, we were spoilt for choice.

We went there in Feb­ru­ary and had an extremely enjoy­able time trekking, walk­ing around and best of all — gorg­ing on local del­i­ca­cies served hot from the kitchen by Ratnamma!

Balur is in Chik­ma­galur dis­trict and around a 6–7 hour drive from Ban­ga­lore. The high­way is in rea­son­ably good shape, though we did encounter some patchy roads in the last stretch of the journey.

The cof­fee estate itself is steeped in his­tory. The views out of the main bun­ga­low, dat­ing way back to the 1800s is beau­ti­ful. The plan­ta­tion unfolds in front of you and in the dis­tance are the hills you can trek up to. Just get your­self a cup of cof­fee or tea, sit back and take in the fresh air and the lovely vis­tas. The owner of this 400 acre estate, Chan­drashekhar, had some more inter­est­ing bits of his­tory to nar­rate when we met up with him. He took us back to the time when he used to visit the estate and how he was deter­mined to buy it some­day. Which he did.

I’ve reviewed Linger at Balur on my Best Home­s­tays web­site. Fol­low this link for more…