Travel Tales of Molly and Monty
After 1 month stay in Dubai as a Tourist, the time has come for me to renew my Visa, some nationalities can gain another 30 days Tourist Visa once you leave Dubai and return. There are a few ways this can be done:-
Our Round The World (RTW) -2 trip came about after surfing the net on Skyscanner. With my approved annual leave and work trip scheduled for San Francisco, I spent some quality time figuring out the best travel itinerary to explore the globe once more.
Here is us MnM visiting the The Great Wall of China on 19 June 2015 .
Monty visited temples in/around Dwarka (in Gujarat, India) with mummy along with Somnath temple. Here a few pix. Read more
5 days in BodhGaya
~~ Why Bodhgaya – Background ~~
While booking train tickets to visit Puri in east of India I came across the list of places where the train stops. One of them was Gaya. On mentioning this to my mother there was an instant smile on her face. She wanted to visit Gaya to perform a hindu ceremony. And my interest in Buddhism has longed me to visit Bodhgaya since 2010. It was a perfect deal. So I decided to split our return journey from Puri to Delhi via Gaya. Initially I booked 2 night stay in Bodhgaya but when I found option of living in a monastery I changed the plans and increased the stay to 5 days. Read more
November 2014 : Puri trip for me was a mixed experience. On the positive side I was glad that my mother was satisfied and content on visiting the Jagannath Temple in Puri. That was the whole purpose of the trip anyways – to get mum to visit the 4 Dhaams at 4 corners (direction) in India – this being the first one. Seeing my mum happy and understanding what it means to her was for me the most satisfying thing which makes this trip worth.
My Experience
On a personal front it was a eye opener in many respects. The trip to the Jagannath Temple in Puri (one of the dhaam) started with me being questioned before entering the temple. My straight long hair, grown up beard and possibly a different dressing style made the security guards think I man not be a Indian/Hindu. I was asked for my name, my father’s name, place I come from and my gotra. I replied in a typical hindi accent confidently. And this is how I succeeded in entering the temple. Perhaps I shouldn’t have. It is well known that only born Hindus are allowed inside the Jagannath Puri temple. And silly me I always thought everyone is equal in the eyes of god.
On an early Indian winter morning of Nov 2014 I travelled with my relatives to meet my cousins, to a village 60 km from Delhi. Our intention to leave early to avoid Monday morning Delhi traffic did not prove to be useful. At any time of day Delhi traffic is manic. It took us just over an hour to reach there in good old Hundai Santro. Read more
This is when the reality hits. That you are going to be away, away for quite a while. September and October 2014 were the ‘tell’ months. This is when we disclosed our travel plans to family and friends. The results were a mix – from astonishment to excitement and from silly to brave and encouraging.
Molly and I had meetups with friends and relatives planned for most of the weekends in Sep 14 and Oct 14. This was also the time when we spent a majority of our time in completing the checklist of all items that need to be completed before we leave. As Monty have 2 months planned stay in India while Molly in UK, few items from our planning checklist were moved to last few weeks.