Third time is the charm

Hello, World.
This is my third attempt to maintain a blog. Lets hope third time is the charm :). The first time I started a blog was in telugu. I was a bit excited to see the telugu unicode in explorer and tried my hand at it. Soon I realized, blogging takes too much time and energy, both of which I had very little at that point. The second attempt was 6months ago when I had ample time :) but I realized there are inherent difficulties in blog and had to take a break. I am one of those who vouch for anonymity on net and blog was totally against this principle :( I had to figure out a mid-way. So, what prompted me to start a third time? Well, there are a ton of reasons. Here you go with the first.

Ever since, I came to India I had a desire to travel across the length and breadth of India. Something like what Gandhi did after returning from South Africa :-). But after an 8 year sojourn abroad, believe me its pretty difficult to come back and settle in India and travelling is a whole different gamut. (Ya ya, I know, I was born and brought up here for 20yrs). With so many things happening at once, I kept postponing the travel. A trip to Hampi with P was an exception. Anyways, I decided to do a little bit of travelling now and blog seemed the only way to keep many folks posted at once. So, where am I going?

Top in my list were Kerala, Rajasthan but decided those can wait for a better day and better company :). Next in the list were places like eastern states (had to drop becoz of unrest against non-locals), Ladakh (bad season to go), Temples in Tamilnadu( Southern temples always fascinated me with their grand architecture but called off as its too close to home). Then came Benarus, Amritsir. Towns with rich heritage and history and ofcourse holy shrines. So zeroed in on Benarus. An year ago, when I mentioned my travel plans at home, grandpa asked me if I would take him to jyotirlingas that he missed. So, I clubbed some of them. I had a big enough tour at hand and interesting enough places to visit.

So, there you go. I am travelling to 6 destinations in various states from 12th to 24th March. Trip goes something like Hyderabad -> Allahabad (prayag, Azad park)-> Ayodhya (ramjanmabhoomi)-> Benarus(kasi viswanath, BHU, Saranath) -> Indore (Omkareshwar) -> Ujjain (Mahakaleswar, tansen's tomb, bartrihari's cave etc)-> Pune (Bhimashankar) -> Shirdi -> Aurangabad(ellora, grishneswar). If you have nt figured out yet, there are five jyotirlingas in the itinerary. Travel team includes grandpa, Kaushik and me. If you have nt figured why Kashi? two reasons. He too loves history (Trip to Hampi was a revelation) and he is a great company. A subtler reason is that, 15 days with out Kashi's misadventures is a bit of stretch for tataiah :) (don't u worry..all the digs/jibes will be reported promptly..lol)

Kashi and I realized blog is a great way to share the experience with all you folks. Hopefully, we will find internet kiosks and will be able to upload some pics and blogs on the way.

So Folks, subscribe to this RSS feed, bookmark this URL if you dont know what RSS is and keep yourself posted as I update abt the planning, details and why/how/when/what/where's of the trip.