Sauvik Biswas

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Day 6: One half of Munnar A standardised organised trip around Munnar # There are four major directions one can take to visit various places in and around Munnar - namely, the Cochin direction, the Mattupetty direction, the Thekkady direction and the Coimbatore direction. Most major spots are in the Mattupetty direction. A day’s reservation of a cab for site-seeing cost us 1600 rupees. In this season, most waterfalls have dried up. We could strike off these places which made up about 30 percent of the tourist spots. As a result, it became possible for us to cover most places in two full days. Day 5: A boat ride at Periyar Lake and moving to Munnar Periyar Lake boat ride was more like a bird watching expedition # This limited seat boat ride is one of the most sought after activities in Thekkady. We went there quite early, so getting a ticket wasn’t an issue. The Periyar Forest Reserve operates four boats simultaneously, for one and half hours, at about two hour intervals. They also release 30 tickets for online booking. These are often bought by the local hotels for their customers. As a result, getting a confirmed booking is near to impossible (IRCTC tatkal might still beat it). For the first boat ride at 7.30 AM, reaching there at 6.30 is sufficient. Day 4: Making our way to Thekkady Alleppy to Thekkady # It is not easy to get from Alleppy to Thekkady. The distance is about 170 kms. The first 70 odd kms are in plains. After that the bus ascends through thin, hilly roads. There are very few direct buses between these two points. We were fortunate (or unfortunate) to get one. There is one bus that leaves Alleppy at 7:55 AM. This bus takes about six hours. The sad part is that we weren’t able to have our breakfast else we would have missed the bus. We survived on biscuits and bread. Day 3: A backwaters boat ride at Alleppy The cheapest way to reach Alleppy from Kochi is the best way # The simplest way to reach Alleppy from Kochi is to take a KSRTC bus from Vyttilla Mobility Hub. For just 40 rupees, one can comfortably reach Alleppy in one and half hours. Vyttilla Mobility Hub In this brief journey, I cam across two interesting things. The first one was a couple of lorries transporting elephants. The second was a board advertising “Shaolin Jackie Chan Matial Arts Academy”, with the trainer’s face Photoshopped on the billboard. The trainer looked more like a South Indian politician than a sensei. Sadly, the bus moved too fast for me to capture these gems. Day 2: Fort Kochi is no more a fort Timing is the key # Here is an important information. Most Jewish places are closed on Fridays, the Synagogue is also closed on Saturdays, most museums are closed on Mondays and all the shops are closed on Sundays. This means that you have effectively three days - Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday - to plan a productive trip in Mattanacherry and Fort Kochi. However, since we had no shopping agenda, Sunday was a productive day for us. Day 1: A leisurely stroll in Kochi KSRTC bus ride from Bangalore to Ernakulam is really long # We travelled on a KSRTC (K=Karnataka) Airavat AC bus. It was supposed to transport us in 10 hours. It ended up taking over 12 hours to drop us at KSRTC bus stand (K=Kerala, not Karnataka). It did not help that the bus played a horrible movie, called Hello Brother, on a bad CRT TV. The Airavat buses leave from the main road in front of a non existent Big Bazaar. A weekend Wayanad trip - in pictures Planning a sightseeing trip in Wayanad # Kerala government has done a lot to promote tourism in their state. The district of Wayanad is exception. The infrastructure, especially the roads, are pretty nicely laid out so that to and fro commutes are not an issue. There is a catch though. Kalpetta and Sulthan Bathery are two towns located at the heart of Wayanad. Most tourist spots are located far away in a hub and spoke fashion at distances between 40-50 km from these towns. We ended up traveling around 400 km (+ 600 km from and to Bangalore) just to cover all the major spots. That did not include the waterfalls as the streams had dried up due to lack of rains. Differential pricing of Cream Cracker in India Two packets sold at the same chain of stores at different places have different pricing. It’s not surprising that it is cheaper in Kolkata. The surprising part is the differential pricing itself. The bottom package was bought at Kolkata and the top one was bought at Bengaluru. Kitchen hacking: The art of divide and conquer in cooking This is a good technique I came across. If you have a large pan, you can work with separate ingredients cocooned in their own little zones. In the picture above, the potato takes the longest time to cook, so it was placed first, once it was time for the carrots, the diced potato was collected in one of the corners (I speak as if a circular cross section has a corner!). It’s the same with the ginger-tomato fry that was exposed to the heat afterwards. Reading through Amruta Patil's cynical Kari Last weekend, I came across a used copy of Kari. I had bought her later work, Adi Parva, about an year ago. When I saw the book for dirt cheap price, I couldn’t help myself from buying it. The story # Kari is a narrative set in the same visceral Mumbai that played the backdrop to one of my recent favourites - Mumbai Confidential. There is a difference though. Unlike Mumbai Confidential, Kari is very introspective in nature and the backdrop forms a minor part of the narrative, albeit an important one.