I’ve chosen these Himachal Pradesh images from thousands of photos I clicked during my four-month travel in the state. I hope you enjoy.
It’s almost afternoon. We have taken a corner table in the restaurant of our Agonda beach (Goa) guesthouse. Sunlight is abundant but we aren’t under direct sunlight.
Indian ocean rush to the sandy shore. When the high waves crash against the beach, I get transported to the balcony of my parent’s home. I close my eyes. Standing in the verandah of my two-storey childhood home, I see our neighbor’s roof. Since I was little I have seen a mound of dry wooden logs and cow dung cakes kept under a blue plastic sheet on their cemented rooftop. In my lucid dream, I hear the sheet rattle in the wind. The covers writhe and clatter under the brittle branches and rusted metal junk but they can’t let loose. Soon my father calls me inside.
I open my eyes. The ocean is free.
Best Articles Published During On My Canvas’s Fourth Year (August 2020 — August 2021) My blog On My Canvas just turned four. Congratulations to me and to all you brilliant readers who give me a reason to write every day. Read the above link to know about the indefinite travel journey I’m on, another big news, …
Phew!
It has been four years since I published the first article on On My Canvas. From then on, these four years have been a non-stop roller-coaster ride. From the first year of impenetrable determination but absolute ignorance to helping out other bloggers from my two years of blogging journey, and the third year of accomplishments, I’ve come a long way.
The journey started with writing. But every artist needs an audience. I want to thank you all — my beloved readers — who have helped me make the blog the meaningful resource it is. Though I know On My Canvas has to reach a lot more people, I really appreciate the love and support I’ve received so far. At least, I have not been hit by spoiled tomatoes or stinky eggs.
So thank you!
Anyone who knows my love for hiking would understand how important shoes are for me. In a tragic incident in 2020, I lost one of my Merrell shoes. I had purchased hiking boots in Chile in 2017 and since then my shoes were my loving companion on every trip and sometimes within cities too. (This Chile travel tips will prepare you well for your trip.)
When we returned from Chikmagalur after our one-month 2020 birthday trip, I started cleaning our rooftop shed. My partner promised he would bring up all the stuff from the car. I told him please bring the bags a couple at a time. But he loaded all the stuff onto him and finished unloading the car in one trip. I think he did go back to the car to see if he had left anything behind and came back satisfied.
A couple of days later when he was putting the shoes into the washing machine, he shouted he couldn’t find one of my Merrell shoes. We looked around. Under the bed, in other bags, and in every corner. My heart sank. Oh, it sank! I still skip a few beats when I realize I will never find my shoes again (the linked shoes are similar to mine but just purchasing a new twin pair won’t do it). They kept my feet warm even on ravines and wouldn’t let me slip if I tied them tight. In dry and wet, we walked together.
We first heard about Tattapani village when we arrived in Mandi District. After staying in Shimla villages for two months, we drove to Pangna village of Mandi, then to Chindi, hiked to Shikari Devi temple and Kamru Nag, explored around, and are now staying in a small highway village near Karsog.
Tatapani — literally meaning hot water — was once an important village for not just Mandi people but for all Himachal folks. Located 52 km from Shimla, 120 km from Mandi, and 45 km from Karsog, Tatta Paani was visited by devotees on every Makar Sakranti festival in hundreds of thousands of numbers (I can tell by old Tattapani images). The religious villagers used to bathe in the village’s natural hot water springs rich in Sulphur. (Natural hot springs remind me of Manikaran village in Parvati.)
As my partner and I left our rooftop terrace in Bangalore to start our indefinite road trip, we started searching for budget hotels in Bangalore. Our car was still not delivered (more on the chaos in a separate piece), and we had to stick around the city a bit longer.
The most challenging thing about finding a good guest house in Bangalore is that in big cities hotels are expensive, even if poorly maintained. I have run into a lot of guesthouse owners who overestimate their property’s worth and charge exorbitantly. They calculate their property’s per day rent in terms of how much the building values but not on the services they provide and the current state of the hotel or homestay.
I stayed at a homestay in Bangalore where we almost went crazy fixing the place and handling the hosts. You can read more about this Bangalore Airbnb experience in my family-run guesthouses of India guide. At times, some of the stays at Bangalore were so dirty we checked out from the place the same day.
This Indian accommodations guide has extensive write-ups on my hotel experience in India.
And I understand the hosts’ apprehensions about Indian guests. A lot of us are notorious for making the place dirty, breaking others’ stuff, being rude and noisy, and not caring at all. But if we look beyond, the Bangalore hotel industry is run by staff most of whom aren’t trained in the hospitality industry. Well, that’s a problem in all of India I guess.
In a big city like Bangalore, I have realized it makes more sense to stay at a known or reputed hotel. Smaller and cheaper hotels in Bangalore offer poor services (maybe because their costs are high but can’t be recovered in budget pricing? or they just don’t know any better). And star-rated hotels in Bengaluru have to function well because they cater to a wide audience. Homestays in Bangalore are a gamble.
In the above two guides, you will read me discussing more on such Indian hospitality problems. Today I want to write about these three guesthouses-cum-best-hotels in Bangalore I loved staying at. I booked them on different occasions and here sharing my honest reviews.
Please note: This is not a sponsored post by any of these accommodations in Bangalore. They don’t even know I’m writing about them.
Spread symmetrically around parks and temples, Basavanagudi in Bangalore was a surprise to me. I was taken to this old locality of Bangalore by a dear friend Julia.
Julia is a French woman who married an Indian man mostly for her love for Kolkata (sorry Sudipto) — she met her husband there. As destiny had it, Julia happened to move into the flat below our rooftop abode in HSR Bangalore. From my terrace shed, we stalked the blood-red moons together. Christmas was celebrated at her home and Diwali was at mine.
In December 2020, when the lockdowns had been lifted and the cases were receding, Julia took me to Basavanagudi. I hadn’t explored the locality. If Julia hadn’t suggested, I may have never visited the ancient lanes, intriguing parks, and the historic temples in Basavanagudi.
I cannot give a guide to Cubbon Park Bangalore. I mean why would I? One has to explore a park at her speed and manner.
What’s there to a park anyway? You may ask.
Hiking to Shikari Devi Temple Mandi Without a Guide At the Onset of Monsoons Deciding To Do The Shikari Devi Trek Since we arrived in Mandi (our trip began at Pangna going through Chindi) we kept hearing about the Shikari Devi temple. Locals religiously believe in Shikari Devi and used to walk to her temple …
Pangna village blew my mind. Before visiting this Mandi village in Himachal, I knew the rough history of Pangna.
I had read that the Suket dynasty had Pangna as its capital for a few hundred years. The Suket kingdom was of the Sen kings who were originally from Bengal. First, they moved from Bengal to Punjab. But when one of their rajahs was killed there, they fled to the hills. Here they made their first palace at Kunu Dar (near Karsog) in 778 AD. Then they shifted to Pangna and made the village their fort. Until 1240, the Sen’s ruled the Pangna area.
Somewhere there was a fleeting mention of the Suket King’s daughter who had committed suicide because the king trusted a Brahman’s words over her. And in her memory, the tall Kathkuni temple, more popularly known as the fort, was constructed.
I have spoken a lot about my writing and exploration days in Mashobra Shimla. You can read the linked guide to get a closer look at my life in the village. But even though Mashobra is becoming the next Maldives (Vir Sanghvi says) travelers don’t know so much about this picturesque town of Himachal Pradesh. I didn’t know about these stunning temples in Shivpur, a small village near Mashobra.