Some recent pictures from a post-New Year's trip to Bharatpur, Fatehpur Sikri and the Taj Mahal. Stayed at the Udai Vilas Palace Hotel in Bharatpur - which was not as grand as the name sounds, but being the only hotel of some repute in Bharatpur, was packed with foreigners nevertheless (who were constantly entertained by the usual troupe of fawning ( Read more... )

I ran the Airtel Delhi 21km Half Marathon on 9 November 2008!

The mind was willing, but the body walked, crawled, creaked and groaned the last 6 km to the finishing line. 3 hours, 10 minutes - woefully slow, but I finished it - Yippee!

Over the past two days, I have become a pipeline. Thanks to an ill-fated outing at a salad bar some days ago, whatever I eat now miraculously passes through my digestive system in about 16 minutes. In other words, a particularly bad bout of Delhi belly ( Read more... )

We decided to splurge on shopping at the airports, on the way back and picked up a whole host of alcoholic drinks, cosmetics, perfumes and chocolates. The layovers at the airports, therefore, seemed to hardly last! We reached New Delhi at 3am and sleepily headed back home, after which we unpacked. Most of our shopping - including the Turkish lamp, ( Read more... )

We had planned to visit the heart and capital of Santorini, Fira, today and (as was customary by now) headed there after rising late and having a breakfast suited for champions! We parked our car in one of the (slightly faraway) public parking lots (policemen fine errant parkers upto 60 Euros) and walked into Fira. A maze of narrow, stony streets ( Read more... )

We woke really late (10am, by our standards!), and headed up for breakfast at our balcony restaurant at Uranos. We had some awesome crepes, along with more fresh fare - bacon, ham, eggs, feta cheese, tomatoes, lettuce, olives and juice. The previous day had been a little cloudy and rainy, but today promised to be perfect, as the sun shone brightly ( Read more... )

It was to be yet another of those early morning dashes to catch the 7.25am Blue Star ferry from Piraeus (the port at Athens) to Thira (the port at Santorini). We lugged our (by now, very heavy) bags down into the metro and boarded the blue line to Piraeus. Thankfully, on arrival, the walk to our ferry was relatively short and after depositing our ( Read more... )

This was to be our last day in Athens, and we decided to visit the few sites left to see. Our first stop was Hadrian’s Arch. Built in the 1st century, A.D. to honour the Roman emperor Hadrian for his many contributions to Athens, the great emperor himself passed underneath this arch way back in the day! The arch is located right beside the Temple ( Read more... )

A UNESCO World Heritage Site, the ruins of Delphi are situated on Mount Parnassus, located 2 hours (by road) away from Athens. We had a full-day group tour to visit Delphi and got off to yet another early start, at 7.45am. On our way, we passed the town of Marathon, from where Pheidippides ran 240 kilometres over two days (to announce that the ( Read more... )

Greece has a population of 11 million people, around half of whom live in Athens - this makes the capital a very crowded city. Moreover, with most of the country being a seismic region, no buildings taller than eight storeys are allowed - hence the lateral expansion of the populace further adds to the density of Athens. On our way to our hotel ( ( Read more... )