Port Blair
I took a trip across to Port Blair a few years ago to look at a Hotel for a colleague and give a few suggestions as part of my consultancy, and then stayed for three days having a look around. A short flight away from Chennai and it is also the gateway to various island resorts. A nice little place to have a look around and some photos from that trip are below. A few years later at fika Cafe we also undertook some cross-training for one of the young Chefs there, always willing to lend a helping hand to our colleagues!
Bangalore & Mysore
Bangalore is meant to be one of the nicest cities in India, and it once was! With near perfect weather, nice and cool and an abundance of plants and produce available, it was also quite an easy city to drive around a few years back. Close by is Mysore and few other major tourist attractions and Marg and I have visited Bangalore on a number of occasions. The main one was when we had planned to go to Africa for our Safari and canceled the trip just after 9/11 happened, deciding to stay in India and visiting Kerala, Bangalore and Mysore instead. Bangalore is also the home of the Leela Palace Hotel, the sister concern of the one I worked with in Mumbai, and the property that drained all available funds out of our Hotel to bring about its completion. It made it a little difficult for us in getting supplies and produce, when a lot of the suppliers were not being paid for months on end, while another piece of marble or a light fitting or two was purchased for Bangalore instead. However, now that the Bangalore Leela is finished, it is certainly one of the greatest hotels I have seen, being modeled on the Mysore Palace itself and today, commanding the highest room rate in the country. A good friend of mine works there, along with a few of my staff from here, so we still have a bit of an affinity with the place. We also have a Park Hotel in Bangalore, a smaller concern and the first one to be built with our modern, contemporary styling as a boutique hotel. Chennai came afterwards and built on Bangalore’s success.
Jai Prakash observatory New Delhi
Shillim
I went to Shillim in 2005, traveling down the new Pune highway and stopping at a MacDonald’s just before the start of the freeway after navigating through Navi Mumbai. Navi Mumbai is the new satellite city coming up on the southern side of Mumbai where the overflow is going. Actually, it is going to be a very modern city, well laid out with all the amenities available in an orderly and efficient manner. The new international airport is being placed there as well as the new Park Hotel, which is opening January 2007. To facilitate movement between the new and the old, there is an extremely long sea bridge being built at present that, while it is not the environmentalist’s friend, will cut traveling time to the new airport considerably. We trave4led through this area, marveling at the new buildings and the well laid out infrastructure on our way to the Pune highway and the Western Ghats. I was traveling to look at a proposal to take up if I was leaving the Park in early 2006 on my contract completion, and we were heading into the wild wonders of the national park areas of the Ghats. Apparently the road was a gravel and dirt track for a good part of it, and this turned out to be the case which was lucky for us in that it was the dry season! Once turning off the highway, we proceeded to Lonavala, past its lake and the very picturesque dam situated nearby. Lonavala is located in the western part of the state of Maharashtra and is set amongst the slopes of the Sahyadri mountain range. Also known as the “Jewel of The Sahyadri”, Lonavala is a place of this region where nature is present in its entire splendor. It is justly famous because of its beautiful valleys, hills, milky waterfalls, lush greenery, and pleasant cool winds. It is also the closest stop on the railway line to Shillim. The rest of the journey will be by bone rattling four-wheel drive! Shillim itself is located within the tropical rain forests of the Western Ghats with the Shillim valley a rural setting of rice fields and villages surrounded by forested ridges and open grasslands. A good couple of nights were spent in the cool climes of Shillim, in basic amenities as the project had not started by then, looking around the slopes and the surrounding forests in such a peaceful setting, it was hard to imagine the world going by. There is a lake nearby called the Bhushi Lake I think, not too big, but blue and refreshing in the heat of the Maharashtra day. If you ever have the time to take a few days in the peace and calm of the Western Ghats, look up the new Hilton Resort in Shillim and chill out for a few days. Highly recommendable!
Kanheri Caves at Mumbai
The National Park and Kanheri Caves are 42 kilometers from Mumbai city center and are situated on Salsette Island amidst wooded hills and valleys. We first came through this part of India in 1995, as part of our trip around the country and having a few days in Bombay. One of the side trips was up to Sanjay Gandhi Lion Park and the Kanheri Buddhist caves outside of Bombay. Both are in the same location and are traveled to through the Bollywood area of Bombay! We had a great trip up for the day, stopping in and having a lion “safari” before heading onto the caves. With just the guide and the two of us, it was a nice way to see another part of the city and take a break in some peace and quiet! The atmosphere and scenic beauty on this road is extremely nice and it is easy to forget that you are still so close to all the traffic, chaos and noise of Bombay so close by. But be prepared, until you leave the city itself, you can still be very much tied up in traffic jams and sitting amongst fume spewing vehicles for an hour or more! The park itself, called the Sanjay Gandhi National Park is a well-preserved green oasis in the center of Bombay’s vast urban sprawl. Archaeologists believe that around the 1st century AD Buddhist monks began using these caves as their residence. As these caves were in the middle of the forest and were in between the old trading towns and ports of Sopara, Kalyan, Nasik and Ujjain, plus there was enough water available, it become more and more popular with Buddhist monks.
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