Serendipity, Saunter and Faux paz

 In an attempt to be organized about our blogs, CC and I ended up with multiple blogs,; none of which really took off.  Trivandrum tidbits  was to be about Trivandrum but  Nooks and Crannies  was about other places we visited. I spent all of early 2008 visiting Kollam district where we had a project going on. So I would spend two days every week there and travel within the district. Towards the end of the project I had learnt a lot about the place. CC and I decided to explore some of the places we were informed about in Kollam. One was the elephant camp at Paravur where we spent an afternoon and then had a parotta and egg roast meal at a road-side hotel on the way back. This is the blog resulting from that trip - Tuesday, August 4, 2009 Paravur - Elephant camp One morning we set out to visit the elephant camp at Paravur. A little disappointing! Six elephants and all chained...Dashed hopes of gentle elephants roaming around in grassland! We noticed that they were...

One of the other trips from our  Nooks and Crannies  was to Punalur in Kollam. This place is dense with rubber plantations and heats up in May. The meter gauge railway through Punalur was converted to broad gauge so we could not do the train trip on meter gauge but we did take the same route to Punalur when I had a work trip to Sivakasi. You can read more about this here:   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kollam%E2%80%93Sengottai_branch_line This is the blog post from  Nooks and Crannies  Monday, July 20, 2009 Kollam- Punalur One place we visited in Kollam district was Punalur. It was late May when we visited Punalur and it was really very hot. We learnt that Punalur has the distinction of being one of the hottest places in Kerala. The rubber plantations lining either side of the roads are lovely and as evening falls you see dappled light on the floors. There is an old bridge (built in 1877) which cannot be used but can be photographed over the gently flowing...

Elephants are the most majestic creatures! Brilliant and gentle, huge and swift! And here are some of my favourite elephant stories – For work within Kerala I’d leave by cab or train early and come back in the evening. One of my earliest memories is leaving house in the dark, coming on the NH47 and seeing a light like on cycles at a strange height, making me wonder what the vehicle was. As we came closer and the sky slowly lightened, we saw this huge elephant walking slowly; It had a tail light! Well, how else would you identify an elephant on the highway in the dark? Unless it sang while walking!  😊 This was in Ludhiana and Sharmaji was driving me around that time. I’ll dedicate a separate post to Sharmaji later. We stopped at a particular place on the outskirts of the town where there were a few eateries and tea stalls and Sharmaji wanted us to wait. He said he’ll go and get me some tea but I was to sit there and keep looking at the old-fashioned fire hydrant like tap that had a...

I’ve been bitten by the blogging bug a few times. The inspiration is high while all the other perspiration means that this becomes low priority. The blog was called ‘Trivandrum Tidbits’ and was meant to capture little insights about living in Trivandrum. As you can see the post was by Shuffles and Ripples. So it was a joint venture and Ripples and was to play the blog photographer’s role and I was to be Shuffles ( a nickname by an old friend Nandan from college days) to rhyme with Ripples. Ripples moved on to writing her own blog soon. But this was the first blog post ever. April 16, 2007 Wish you all a very happy and prosperous New Year! We have just celebrated "Vishu" the regional New Year here and the festive atmosphere is still lingering. I thought it was a nice day to start and here goes... It was one of those enlightening moments (perhaps the effect of local homemade grape wine) which all of us have - "Well, I should put up this blog and here it is". Frances M...

This blog was published after my first trip to Jorhat at-  https://ritealot.blogspot.com/2014/05/majuli-in-brahmaputra.html     I would be a guest writer, every      once in a while for the blog. Majuli IN the Brahmaputra! Our guest writer is back, this time with an experience from her trip to Assam :) The ride to Nematighat near Jorhat was uneventful. The birds were just waking up and a few clearing their throats in the freezing cold. We reached the jetty at around 7 am to discover that our passage was not booked as promised and we had to wait for an hour for the next ferry. The double decker ferry piles people on the lower deck and cars, jeeps, cycles, goats and cows on the upper deck. There are no barricades on the upper deck and the vehicles are held in place with big stones. Since we were advised to take our rented cab across to the island I kept asking the driver if he was sure ours wouldn’t roll off. The lower deck was crammed with loads of people an...

  I’m late because I was stuck in a landslide!' When I first heard this, I was not quite sure I’d heard it right. When I heard it a couple more time over the next few days, I thought it must be some local lingo when you don’t want to disclose the reason for not being punctual perhaps... (On the way to Khonoma - photo courtesy CC) Kohima was a beautiful place;, the hotel situated near the war cemetery was centrally located and the staff were all very friendly. They organised a guide to accompany Ripples* who was then quite small all over Kohima as she had her term break and had come along with Meeta* and me. In the evening the whole town looked like fairy-land covered in tiny , twinkling lights spread over the hills.It was light very early and dark very early and we couldn’t see the market as it closed by the time we finished work. The whole group assembled early one day so that we could leave a little earlier and see the local markets. The officials invited us home for di...

  Staying grounded Nothing like having a teen around to keep one very firmly grounded.  The first time I traveled in a vehicle with top lights, I was all excited when I saw it.  I was thinking,  Je  suis arrivé! I t was late evening and as soon as I was in, called my daughter CC. Almost jumping up down in my seat I told her –  I’m in a car with top lights ! 'Oh!, she said, ‘are you driving?’  Suddenly deflated, I said,  No . OK, she said, and hung up!

  Protocol: Athithi devo bhava This was in a small town between Ludhiana and Moga one wintry, January afternoon. Wrapped in warm shawls we were having a great discussion on challenges in rural Punjab as compared to urban Punjab when lunch arrived. Two bowls were set in front of each of the people sitting around the coffee table. Dal was poured in one and some delicious looking potato, tomato, peas curry in the other. Curls of wispy steam were wafting over the bowls and teasing the nostrils with the smell of delicate spices and the unbeatable aroma of hot dal. Then a large plate, stacked with a pile rotis was kept in the centre. All this distracting food on the central table and the discussion politely continued.  In my mind, I was thinking -  Am I drooling? Hope it’s not too obvious . Then Ravi* who had accompanied me asked - Do you need a plate? Familiar with holding the roti in your hands and dipping pieces of it into your set of bowls and eating I politely declined....

 Hello all,   You wanted stories and anecdotes and to hear of serendipitous events and of sauntering and strolling and the one too many faux paz along the way! You know who you are! So here is a humble attempt to do just that! You might be able to identify some people here and meet some you don't know! And of course, read about some places and experiments and laugh at some of the embarrassments!   You're welcome! 😊 You might be reminded of something I've missed or you might want to share a story of your own! I'd love to hear that! And so from today, here goes...   With love, Shefali