Friday, 28 October 2011

Diwali from Chennai



So much of plan and anticipation on this day is finally completed.  After a long flight journey and continuous jet lag, we went on shopping spree for purchasing diwali clothes.  


The weather in Chennai was awesome, much to my surprise, until yesterday.  It was so cool and for sometime I felt like being in Ooty. But today, it was back to normal!


Hope you all had a fabulous Diwali!  Will write back soon...

Wednesday, 19 October 2011

Isle of Arran - Part 1

Its been ages since I wrote a travel post.  Hence picked up the recent most travel experience of drooling over a pretty island.  For a small island like Arran, I thought 3 days is a long time, but it wasn't nearly enough time, especially if the weather is good.

Isle of Arran is located on the south western part of Scotland.  It took us 2 hours from Edinburgh by train travel to reach Ardrossan, a harbour from where we had to take the ferry.   For gods sake, to me it wasn't a ferry.  It looked as big as a cruise ship (one like titanic!!..Ok..that's a bit too much..but it looked like that...see for yourself in the pic).  The ship had a coffee shop, restaurant and a little souvenir shop inside the ferry. We enjoyed our 50 minute travel in the ferry that took us to Brodick.  This is a big village in the whole island with majority settlement and as a principal point of entry into the island.


It was raining on and off all day and we decided just to walk around Brodick.  We went through along this lovely stretch, entered through the golf court.  This was about 2 mile walking and the place was absolutely stunning. 


We saw rainbow quite a number of times throughout our walk playing hide and seek.  Here's some pictures of rainbows..


and rainbow with their reflections...


We spent some more time around the place lazing around, sitting and chatting along the shores enjoying the weather, sea, rainbow all that were overlooking the largest mountain of Arran - Goatfell (picture below).


After lazing around, we left to our beautiful B&B that is located on top of a little hill overlooking the sea and mountains.  


And that's the view from our room that overlooks sea.  It was so pretty to see the sea early in the morning during sunrise. And it's a lovely feeling to wake up to watch sea and mountain rather than buildings and traffic.  


Brodick is a nice little village to relax and have a laid back life.  There are shops around Brodick but not that very many restaurants - just a few of them.  But the fact is...there are more B&Bs in Arran than anywhere!  

Sunday, 9 October 2011

My first publication!

No...not a written publication. Not near to that though!

One of my photo is published in a website. The owner of the website has started a spiritual retreat centre in Scotland and when she approached me to use my picture in their URL, I was so happy.  I said YES right away. 

You can visit the picture here!!


Saturday, 1 October 2011

Golu update!

With Navarathri season, things are pretty busy around me.  A few of them asked from the previous post about parcel and it's condition.


The parcel came in a good condition, but was a bit delayed due to custom clearance.  I asked mum to send some dolls and saree for Golu.  I've always spoken about Navarathri and Golu year after year...How can I afford to miss it this time?


This year's Golu is a bit special(to me, every year is special) because I increased the steps and added few new dolls....thanks to mum and MIL.  I did struggle a bit to create the steps, but surprisingly, they came out really well.  


I wanted to so something different all the time for Navarathri.  And this is the festival I look forward every year.  This year, I made a little invite in paint.net, printed them, hand decorated designs and invited friends!! Got a great feedback about the invite. 


I got the gifts, gift bag and it's all set to welcome the huge crowd that's coming this weekend.  A few of my non-indian colleagues whom I invited were so eager to know more about this festival and were triggering out questions after question at office, out of curiosity.  


Overall, it's been really fun arranging these things albeit the sleepless nights.  


Take a look at this year's Golu festival...




Happy Navarathri to you all...