A few days ago, a cyclist was turned away from the Leela Hotel’s main gate to a side park­ing lot on the road. He was there to attend a con­fer­ence when his “hum­ble” cycle did not pass the “high secu­rity stan­dards” of the hotel. He refused, of course, (even I would!) the secu­rity guard’s suggestion […]

Eas­ily a place I could go back to : again and again. Fort Kochi. Wan­der around. Soak in the sights and sounds. Famil­iar cor­ners. Tashi cafe, the fish­ing nets and the synagogue.

The Tour of Nil­giris mean­ders through the famed Blue Moun­tains of South India immers­ing you in the stun­ning land­scape, bio-diversity, cul­ture and her­itage of Kar­nataka, Tamil Nadu and Kerala.

On July 24/25th, we headed out to Coorg and Wayanad with Mud­dy­Boots (a new adven­ture com­pany) for a spice coun­try cycling trail. Here is an account of the trip.

The weather was hot and balmy. It was our last day in Ker­ala and we were look­ing for­ward to spend­ing the night on a houseboat.

On my pre­vi­ous trips to Ker­ala, I’ve only got­ten within drool­ing dis­tance of a house­boat. It’s a rather expen­sive propo­si­tion. There was one time when Steph was down from Switzer­land and we did some sight­see­ing on a small boat, and then went around in a lit­tle canoe (that was fun!).

I was out last evening and it was pretty late when I was catch­ing up on my tweets when I saw a post about blasts in Mum­bai. After that, there was no sleep for a cou­ple of hours as I was fol­low­ing the reports com­ing in from dif­fer­ent folks.
It’s been numb­ing to say the least. […]