Kalimpong and Baiguney Dec 2021! - Day 1

And as we continue living through another year with the dreaded virus not going anywhere, the four of us decided to go ahead with our yearly trip, ready to brave come what may! 

After a lot of deliberation, cancelling our pre-bookings to Binsar, finally deciding to go ahead with Kalimpong and Baiguney, we booked the air tickets to Bagdogra, the closest airport. This sealed our decision to travel!

Not knowing the exact whereabouts of either of these places, we had a vague idea that they were located North East of India. (Psst... we had mainly booked the rooms here as we wanted to visit North East, and Club Mahindra had their resorts and tie-ups in these places in the North East!)

We browsed through various online reviews to understand where exactly we were going. Intrigued by the fact that both the places were actually in two different states, separated by a river flowing the length of both these places, we managed to get a good idea of what all was recommended to be explored. 

Temperatures promised to be freezing, so we ensured we were well stocked up with winter clothing (or so we thought)

An early morning 2:45am travel to the airport for a 6:00 am flight, into which we were all loaded much before time, only to wait in the flight, all belted up, for the next hour plus!! The visibility was close to zero, and the pilot could move no where, until the fog cleared. Sleep getting the better of all of us, nodding away, waking up intermittently to check if the flight had taken off, which it finally did at 7:40, we slept through most of the journey. 

Bagdogra being a small airport, after collecting our baggage, we quickly found our pre-booked cab with a friendly driver, to take us to our destination for the next few days - Kalimpong. We did a stop at Laddoo Gopal - the only vegetarian restaurant in this stretch - of close to 4 hours travel before we reached Kalimpong. 

After an enticing, heavy brunch of masala dosas, roti bhajis, parathas, chole bature and chats ( He had good Jain options too!), we were a tad disappointed though that tea / coffee available was only the machine ones. I did have a cup of tea to try and stop that dreaded headache that was setting in!! Resuming our journey, after some breathtaking views along the way, which we could not resist capturing on camera, we reached our hotel (tired and just ready to rest it out for the next hour or so. ) The entire journey (well, almost) was along the river Teesta! 

The staff at the hotel told us that we had the room with the best view. She said we will be able to spot the K2 mountain tomorrow. What? Come again? K2? You mean Kanchenjunga? Oh well... We did not really believe her at that point, and did even try for a room on the floor above ours so that what ever mountains were visible, they would at least be without the intrusion of the house right in front of our balcony, in vain though!

After a quick rest, we stepped out for a trek (as the children would like to call it). More like a walk to get familiarised with the area. On our return, we waited for the hotel to be open for dinner. We went in to catch an early dinner of Thukpa (a local favourite), American Chopsuey, and Dal chawal with Bhajjis. Satiated, we hit the sack early, so that we could wake up early and try to catch a glimpse of K2, if that was really true! Ofcourse not before arranging for our tour cab to take us around Kalimpong the next morning. Wait till you hear about our exciting morning tomorrow! 

Paruppu Podi

Another one of my favourites is Paruppu Podi. I enjoy paruppu podi with hot rice and ghee, and my mom, mother in law and my chitti ensured that I always had a bottle of their hand made paruppu podi with me, so that I could use it for any quick fix meal, or sometimes even instead of the cooked tur dal in the rasam!

With lockdown firmly in place, and even if removed, the "No travel" restrictions that we have put upon ourselves has emptied all those stocked up bottles, and so there, just like everything else under the sun, I decided to try my hand at making this by myself too!!!

This time I followed a recipe by the channel - Agrahara Recipes. And I ended up with some super tasty paruppu podi, easy to make as well.

So here goes - a record for quick access -

Ingredients - 

1/3 cup urad dal

1/3 cup moong dal

1/3 cup tur dal

5 red chillies (Or as per your spice requirements)

1 tsp asafoetida

A few curry leaves

1 tsp mustard seeds

2 tsp gingelly oil

Salt to taste

Method of preparation -

Dry roast the urad dal, till it turns golden brown, keep aside. Do the same with tur dal, and then with moong dal. Make sure the colour changes and an aroma wafts for all the three dals.

Dry roast the red chillies. 

Once the dals cool down, grind them to a coarse powder. (or if you like fine powder, do a few more rounds of the mixer, and then sieve the ground powder)

Take a kadhai, heat up 2 tsps of gingelly oil, and add mustard seeds. Once they crackle, add torn curry leaves and finally add asafoetida and turn of the flame. 

Pour this tempering onto the powder, mix well. Add salt as per your taste. Mix well. Cool. Store in an air tight container.

Add this powder to steaming hot rice and have it with a dollop of ghee!!

Kadalaparuppu Payasam

It's August, and the start of festival season. One of our first function is the annual "Avani Avittam" where the men change their sacred thread. I was tickled to hear my chitti call it the "Annual renewal of license".

The day after the men change their poonal, they need to chant the Gayatri Mantra.

Each of these days is dotted with traditional specialities offered for neivedyam. The specialities differ in different households. In our family, on the first day we prepare urad dal vadai and nei appam. The day of the Gayatri mantra chanting is characterised by a payasam.

I decided to make Kadalaparuppu payasam this time. I have tried out Semiya payasam and pal payasam many times before. However, I have never ventured into making the dal and jaggery payasam ever before. For festivals and religious functions, the dal - jaggery payasam is the one that is supposed to be offered to the Lord.

Whenever my mother made kadalaparuppu payasam, I absolutely loved it. So I quickly buzzed her for the recipe, and here it is. (Wanted to share it right when it's fresh in my mind! Just made it this morning!)


Ingredients -
Chana dal - 1/2 cup
Jaggery (broken into pieces) - 3/4 cup
Cardamom powder - A pinch
Coconut milk - 1 cup (or even more based on your taste)
A few cashews roasted in ghee.

How to make -

Roast the chana dal in a dry pan, till it gives an aroma. Don't wait till it changes colour. Once done, wash the chana dal. Pressure cook it with 2 cups of water for 3 whistles. It needs to cook very well. Once pressure releases, you need to mash it well.

In a separate pan, take the powdered jaggery, add one cup of water and let it melt. Bring it to a boil. Add the mashed chana dal into this jaggery water. Let the mixture boil till it starts to thicken to payasam consistency.

Grind coconut with water to extract one cup of coconut milk. (To extract the coconut milk - You can transfer the ground coconut onto a muslin cloth and squeeze out the coconut milk from the cloth)

Add this coconut milk to the jaggery and chana dal mixture and immediately turn of flame.

Add cardamom powder, and the cashews roasted in ghee - and your payasam is ready to be served!

It tastes divine! :)

Temple Style Sambar

During this "2020 Lockdown", everyone at home has ended up becoming a chef, and started to explore various cuisines, various styles of cooking and so on.

One request came from the husband to make "Temple Style Sambar". The request came along with a youtube video link as well to make things simpler for me :)

We tried this sambar recipe from "Namma Adige" - A Kannada Cooking Channel, and it was simply delicious, exactly like the Sambars served in Temples of Karnataka.

I wanted to make a note of the recipe just in case I miss it next time I want to make it, so here goes -

Ingredients -

1 tbsp Dhania seeds
1/2 tbsp jeera
5 regular red chillis (guntur) and 3 byadige chillis
Few curry leaves
One tsp fried gram dal
2 tbsp Grated coconut
Boiled tur dal - 3 tbsp
One lemon ball sized tamarind soaked in hot water and juice extracted
1 tsp Oil for roasting
Salt to taste
Vegetables of your choice (I have used Tomatoes, yellow pumpkin, potatoes in this recipe)
Mustard seeds and hing for seasoning
A small ball of jaggery.

How to make -

Boil the tur dal with a bit of turmeric and keep aside.

Roast the Dhania seeds and cumin seeds in one tsp of oil. Once you notice the colour change, add the red chillis and curry leaves. Transfer to a mixer. Once the mixture cools, add the fried gram dal, and coconut and make a nice paste with a little bit of water.

In a pan, add a bit of oil and toss in the tomatoes. Roast well, and then add the other vegetables. Once the vegetables are cooked, add in the imli water. Let it boil for a while for the smell of the imli to reduce. Then add the cooked tur dal and the ground paste. Add water to make the consistence a little watery. Temple style sambar is generally much more watery than the regular sambar.

Add a small round ball of jaggery, and also add salt to taste.

Once it boils well, turn off, and enjoy with idlis or even hot rice with a dollop of ghee.

Note: These byadige chillis are added to enhance the color of the sambar. Their property is to give colour to the dish mainly, and spice levels of this type of chilli is very less.

Coming up next - Vangi bath powder (Which is also used as Yennegai powder) :) :) 

Shivgange trek - Refresher - with Kothi Cheshte!

A small group of the five of us (3 adults and two children), left our homes at HSR at around 4:30 am on a Saturday morning. We took the Hebbal - Mekhri Circle - Yeshwantpur route and joined the Tumkur highway. Being early, we had hopes of beating the traffic and enjoying a nice drive in the Hyundai Creta. However, our dear friends, the truck drivers, ensured that our speedometer could not cross 60 kmph. So, much to our frustration, we trundled through the beautiful highway, and finally took a left at Dobbaspet, and took the winding road-way which led to our destination. After a narrow escape (a crazy driver dashing down the single lane narrow road took us totally by surprise and a sharp swerve ensured we escaped a major crash!), a shaken lot of us reached the foothills of Shivgange at around 6:30 am.

The breathtaking view of the mountain peak from a slight distance made for the best picture of this trip. With the clouds covering half of the peak, it looked like we were getting ready for our walk in the clouds. The kids could not wait to go touch the cottony clouds. So after parking at a newly constructed car park, and a quick breakfast of idlis later, we started our climb at 7:00 am.

The temple at the foot of the hills was not yet open. We took a left turn to get on the trail to reach the peak. The trail started with steps cut out in the rocks. As Shivgange was known for its notorious monkeys, we took minimum snacks (a packet of biscuits, some cut fruits, and some chikkis, and some tetra pak juices) and we split it across all our backpacks. We took around 4 bottles of water between the five of us.

In high spirits, we worked on the trek, the children their happy and fast selves. We adults were more so in our own world, feeling our legs and knees do the climb and wondering how they would withstand (or come out with bright colours :) ), this test. We did have a companion in a huge monkey which give me a fright as I turned slightly to find it just at my elbow, climbing up hanging on the railing. I almost choked, holding back a squeal, and before I could get my courage back to warn my SIL, she saw it too, and thankfully, the two of us acted nonchalant and let it pass by. We were lucky as it did not suspect anything in our bags and continued its journey.

With not much of an event to speak of, we reached what I like to call the half-way mark of the Shiva Parvati statue, after completing the easier part of the trek. This was around 8: 10 am. On the way, we passed the Olekal Teertha, and Basavanna atop a steep rock. Being still early hours, none of the little shops on the pathway were still open.

After this came the steepest part of the trail. The children went ahead with swift steps under the watchful eye of their uncle. The remaining two of us took it slow, taking in the wonderful sceneries below us, feeling and watching the clouds passing by us, breathing in the fresh morning air, feeling the strong gusts of fresh winds, holding on for dear life to the railings, lest we get carried away with the winds ... phew ... this seemed like heaven.


This dreamy phase of our lives, though, was extremely short lived. As we turned a corner, we saw a gang of 10 monkeys. I warned my SIL this time, and both of us decided to just walk by without giving them as much as a look,  thus not attracting their attention. However, as soon as I reached a feet away from them, one of the huger monkeys jumped in front of me and growled. I yelled out and tried to shoo it away, but it persisted glaring and growling at me. Meanwhile, another one swiftly moved behind me and started tugging at my bag. Before I could react, pull out my bag and throw it at them, another one, sat on the railings and pulled at my hair! Yikes! I yelled and shooed them and quickly pulled off my bag and threw it at them. My SIL was a few steps behind watching all of this and giving me some pep instructions.


These, now infamous, creatures, then took the bag and laid it atop a rock in a puddle of water (Oh no!) and tried to loosen the draw string. My SIL quickly joined me and both of stood there, watching the Monkey movie. Very importantly, my wallet, with my cards and license and some 2000 odd bucks, were sitting in a little pocket in that back-pack! Aaaargh ... we watched, with nothing other than that to do, hoping the creatures would quickly go away leaving the bag safe for us to take our wallet back and run!

Oh - but was that to be? Out came the chikki packets, slashed at - and the yummy chikkis were devoured within no time by stronger of the lot. The weaker set jumped all around waiting and growling for their turn. Then - search search - yes there was more - a packet of good day biscuits .... they were thrown at the weaker set for them to munch on. What else??? Cap - Flick away, Hat? flick away ... Water bottles - ummmm ugggghhhh - cannot be opened - flick away - towels? what the hell - flick away .... And here we are holding our breath as each item came out and was flung away - hoping against hope that they do not find the wallet and throw it away - down hill into thin air!!! Exactly at this moment, I chose to remember the story narrated by my friend about how his wallet was snatched away by a monkey and thrown out into thin air, at the exact same Shivgange peak, and he mentioned that he never was able to locate it ever!!!!! Oh my!


After a long movie of 20 minutes (which seemed like eternity!) the monkeys satisfied that there was nothing more in it, slowly moved away to the next terrain. Okay go on quickly guys .... oh no! The last one was just leaving, but the smart fellow, decided to be extra smart, and before jumping off the rock, flicked the bag away! Standing where we were, we had no clue what was on the other side of the rock, was it another rock, or was it a deep drop down, or were there bushes beyond! We quickly made our way down and tried checking and found that thankfully, there were bushes beyond the rock, But there still seemed to be no clue of the bag. Finally, my SIL climbed atop the rock and spotted it in the bushes below. I went hunting for a stick to pull it out of the bushes, when, just at that moment, the near by stall keeper came up the trail and happily obliged us by pulling out the bag. Phew!!! Drenched in water and dirt - I pulled out my wallet quickly and told him to keep the rest of the stuff in his safe-keep till we returned from our trek.

Finally, totally fed-up and tired of this experience, we continued our trek uphill, the pathway becoming tougher as we moved up. Finally we reached the magnificent Nandi atop huge rock jutting out of the mountain. A couple of turns later, we reached the mountain top, and were relieved to have gotten there. This was exactly at 9:00 am.

We were amidst the clouds flowing by, and the entire feeling of having reached the top left us exhilarated. The view all around was fresh, green, and out of the world. Though we just did not feel like starting the descent, the hunger pangs of the younger fellows pushed us to get back up on our feet about half an hour later, and we started our way down the peak.

The tired legs this time wanted more rest, so though the gravity pulled us down faster, we took more stops and got down at a slow pace and finally reached the car park at 11:40 am. And - before I forget - another excitement to end the eventful trip - we spotted a snake climbing up the stairs to reach the temple!!! The snake was a thin and small one with a face as small as half of our thumb. It was completely black, with a white stripe running right across it's side.

All the hard work was making all our tummies rumble - so we rushed to the closest Kamat upachar, had some good meals, pooris et al. We then headed back to Bangalore (at  around 1pm) and reached HSR layout at around 3:30pm.

Tired legs but happy minds - fitful sleep at the end of the day! A must do trek - Shivgange - also given some beautiful History attached to it. Look up the stories of Danseuse Queen Shantala and Hoysala King Vishnuvardhana - I was taken aback to find out after my trek that this was the peak from where Shantala was believed to have jumped off and ended her life, as she could bear no heirs to the throne to succeed King Vishnuvardhana! The story of Shantala is my next interest and I am waiting to get hold of a book to quench my interest!

The last week of December 2016 - Day 1 and 2 - Ahmedabad.

Hello there! It's been two years since I wrote here, and it definitely feels good to be back with a bang! What an eventful week it was - the last week of December 2016. It's been a week plus since we returned, and I decided I definitely need to do a little travelogue to record this trip such that it remains etched in our memories.

A gang of 21 of us from Bangalore, comprising of 10 kids and 11 adults, decided to do a trip to Gujarat, covering a tiny bit of Ahmedabad, moving to Veraval to cover Somnath, Diu, then Porbandar and finally Dwarka. The age of the kids ranged from one and a half years to 9 year olds!

24th Morning, we took a flight to Ahmedabad from Bangalore. Ahmedabad welcomed us with a map of Gujarat and it was a beautiful one, giving us a clear picture of what was in store for us around Gujarat.

By the time all of us convened at the Ahmedabad airport (we travelled in two different flights as we didn't get tickets in the same one), it was 12:30 pm. Deepak had arranged an awesome 20 seater mini bus to take us to our hotel. We decided to stop on the way for lunch as we were famished. And what better way to start our trip than with a super awesome Gujarati thaali at "Toran"! Here's what it looked like - and we couldn't wait to dig in! It was heavenly.

After a "Meetha Paan" to end the delicious meal, we checked in to our rooms at Lord's Inn. An hour of freshening up, and we got set to visit Akshardham.

At Akshardham, one is not allowed to carry cell phones, leather wallets or bags stuffed with one's belongings into the temple premises. We either need to leave it in our buses/cars or drop it off at the entrance where they give you a token to collect it at the end of your trip. The temple premises are beautiful with long walk ways and gardens all around and lots of places to sit and relax. The inside of the temple was massive and had the history of all prior Gurus written all around, with plenty of place to sit around for a moment of peace.

The highlight however, was the Vadilal ice creams that Deepak uncle treated all of us to! And then the wonderful laser show depicting the story of Nachiketa and Yamaraj. It was a wonderful combination of mythology with the current technology, and was mind-blowing. All of this left us famished and the temple campus itself had a good canteen with some super awesome khichadi dahi, and other interesting items. Dinner done, we headed back to our rooms and hit the sack.

Next morning, relaxed breakfast after, we checked out from our hotel and proceeded towards Adalaj Ki Vaav. This was around an hour's journey from the Lord's Inn. Adalaj Ki Vaav is a stepwell which is five stories deep. This was built in 1499, when such step-wells were used for storing water in the arid regions of Gujarat. The temperature at the bottom is told to be 5 degrees lower than the outside temperature. Beautiful intricate carvings adorn the walls leading to the bottom. You could read more about the history of Adalaj Ki Vaav here - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adalaj_Stepwell

At Adalaj Ki Vaav, there was a huge garden with a lot of open space and green grass for children (and the forever young adults) of the group. We (yes, adults and kids) spent a good hour and a half playing polo, running catching, hide and seek and whatever not. Woh bachpan ke din yaad aa gaye!

We still had some time for lunch, so we headed to the famous Sabarmati Ashram. This was a beautifully maintained place, with a lot of information, pictures and details about Gandhi Ji. We sat around a little, allowing the information to seep in and letting the kids get their share of fun in the pebble pool as I liked to call it.

It was definitely time for lunch now. We headed to Neelkanth's Patang - another famous restaurant at Ashram road in Ahmedabad. This restaurant is located on a tower which is 221 ft above the ground. It is also a revolving restaurant and gives a 360 degree view of the city right from where you are seated! What an out of the box experience. To top it all the view includes the Sabarmati river front! The buffet was a huge spread as well and as we had to spend the entire day till we get onto the train at 11 pm, it was a totally "RELAXED" affair!

After the lunch, we went to a famous park where we thought there might be trees and some shade to sit around. But it was not to be! The hot sun followed us where ever we went. There were lot of play things for kids though, and they had their share of fun in a chota bheem "tora tora" and a lot of other games. After this, we did some shopping in the National Handloom house (I got an experience of how crowded a store can actually get), and then hit the food street at Ahmedabad. Superb arrangement of street foodie joints complete with tables and chairs outside each joint. The food and the different kind of ambience was just unbelievable. The lassi that we ended our meal with was heavenly.

Now to the railway station to board our train to Veraval. With the help of porters, trolleys and transporting luggage across tracks, we were excited to finally reach the platform. We looked at other people like us with bedspreads on the platforms and comfortably settled for the night. We chatted around and wondered at how they could just sit there on the platforms! After a few minutes, we were told the "delightful" news of our train being behind schedule by an hour and a half. What!???? Ofcourse not... Ofcourse yes!!! Oh well, let's just settle on the platforms. And now it was our turn. Forget the bed spreads. We just sat right there on the bare platform floors and arranged suitcases together for our kids to sleep on them and huddled and waited for the train to arrive. So much for commenting on the other folks!

When finally the train arrived, we had some really "COLD" issues to handle. 2nd class compartments, with each of our seats spread across from s3 to s11 (yes!), and all of it being Side upper berths, and none of the shutters closing properly for the nights, and all of us running really low on winter clothing and bed spreads and last but not the least - kids ranging from one and a half to 10 years - you can definitely imagine what an eventful the train journey to Veraval might have been!! :)

Learning - Load yourself with winter wear and blankets when you travel by train. Definitely carry a pair socks, and something to cover your ears as well!

I will stop here for now (December 25th night) and continue the next few days' account in my next article. 

Trip to Chitradurga

A weekend trip to Chitradurga turned out to be so refreshing, the highlight being exploring Chandravalli Caves, which has not gained much popularity due to the historical importance of the Chitradurga Fort.

Here's a link from The Alternative, an e-magazine which published my article on the same:
Chitradurga Fort and Chandravalli Caves