Travel Bandar

Curiosity: 1
Comfort zone: 0

Started the week freezing at -20°C on Pangong Lake.
Ended it sweating at 37°C in the Thar Desert.
Just 6 days, a few hundred kilometers, and an entire climate spectrum later…
Not flexing… okay maybe slightly flexing — but mostly just showing off the ridiculous diversity of this country…
If this much can change within one country in under a week, imagine what the rest of the world has waiting…


-20° on Pangong Lake ➝ 37° in the Thar desert in 6 days.
India really said pick your climate…
What’s the biggest temperature change you’ve experienced while travelling?

once upon a time, a tiny human was born who could make people laugh, cry, and surrender all in five minutes flat…
four years later, she’s cuter, sassier, and even more powerful…

Happy Birthday Gorgeous… keep flipping, swinging and cart wheeling through life
9 years old 9000% awesomeness

535 km, 5 days, 1 sore butt—totally worth it!

When you wait 3 years for something, you know you’re gonna love it. And this Mumbai-to-Murudeshwar ride? Absolute wheely good times! Here’s a quick recap of the rollercoaster (literally, thanks to some roads) of a trip:

Day 1: Kicked things off at 4 AM because adventure doesn’t wait! Route 66 was a mix of butter smooth and bone-rattling—like .sahani1 says shoutout to Mr. Gadkari who’s found a pile of cement for. A classic Maharashtrian brekkie, gallons of hydration (read: watermelon, tea, coffee, juice—anything liquid), and a dreamy Goan sunset to wrap up the day.

Day 2: Left Goa at sunrise (why does everything outside Maharashtra instantly get better?). No potholes, just palm trees, pit stops for coffee & coconut water, and the most drool-worthy brunch at one of the many “Fish Land” eateries after Honnavar. Ended the day speechless at the 127-foot Shiv statue in Murudeshwar—divine in every sense!

Day 3: A no-nonsense dash back to Goa because, let’s be real, my glutes were filing complaints.

Day 4: Solo ride mode! Took the scenic coastal route through Vengurla, Kudal, and Malvan before hiting Route 66 and then back to the rural for some winding, beautiful backroads where road rules don’t exist. Stopped at every place that had food or a mirror-worthy backdrop, and ended the day at the cutest homestay—Surve’s Coastal Homestay.

Day 5: Still on Day 4 while posting this in Chiplun... will probably make a dash to Mumbai

A Table of Hunger, Hope & Misplaced KOTs

So, after hearing endless good things about and I finally decided to see what the hype was about. What followed was a masterclass in how not to run a café.
Step 1: Wait 20+ minutes to place an order – understandable, it’s a Sunday. No biggie.
Step 2: Wait another 45+ minutes for two sandwiches and two coffees – now the fun begins. We kept checking in, only to be met with the classic “just 2 minutes” response. A server assured us it was coming, then a senior gentleman checked in, then the manager himself swooped in for damage control – yet, magically, the food never appeared.
Step 3: One lonely sandwich finally arrives after nearly an hour – on asking why, we were told our KOT was misplaced. Fantastic. But here’s the real kicker – the sandwich was cold, the melted cheese had transitioned from gooey to existential crisis.Meaning, it had been ready all along, just chilling (literally) while we sat there, hangry and hopeful.
At this point, we gave up, complained to the manager, and walked out. The apology was there, sure, but no real effort to make amends. No urgency. No care. Just another day at work for them, I guess.
I work closely with the food industry, and I know mistakes happen – everyone f@ks up*. But the best places own it, fix it, and make sure their guests leave happy. however, was just… indifferent. And that’s the worst part.

Very rarely do you switch on the TV and find yourself glued to it for the next 4 hours and 48 minutes. July 6, 2008, was one such day in my life. Thankfully, I was off work… not because it was a Sunday, but because I was lucky enough to have the day off while working at a 24-hour news channel where Sundays were often just another workday…

That day, a rather good-looking bloke with a boyish charm was playing some God-level tennis against, well, God himself. Yes, it was Rafa Nadal in the Wimbledon final against Roger Federer. My decent English vocabulary fails me here because I have no words to describe that match or what Nadal was doing on the court that day. Five hours later, Rafa Nadal became my all-time favorite tennis player and my second favorite sportsperson ever.

Since then, I've been a die-hard Nadal fan, cheering, defending, and reliving almost all of his matches. One person who’s been there with me through it all is my junior and close friend, . Even when we weren't working together, we'd still message each other before a tournament, after a match, or following one of those insane down-the-line lasso shots or the amazing return to a deceptive drop shot or going around the net… that Nadal pulled off in almost every match.

I can't help but take a leaf out of his book to never give up and to make the most inspiring comebacks, like his 21st Grand Slam victory against Medvedev at the Australian Open. Following him has meant so much to me that his retirement has literally made me stop work just to write this post. Because, after all, it is Rafael Nadal…

happy birthday to our little tornado and devil in disguise…

first, we had Byzantium, named after the Greek guy Byzas… then came Constantine the Great in 330 CE, who decided the city needed a makeover and called it Constantinople… fast forward to the 13th century, when Greek speakers started calling it Istinpolin, which literally means “to the city”… because who needs a catchy name when you’ve got a straightforward phrase?… during the Ottoman Empire, the city of Istanbul was known as Ḳosṭanṭīnīye in Ottoman Turkish.
finally, in 1930, the Turkish Post Office stepped in and said, “Let’s make this official!”… thus, Istanbul was born
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[turkey Istanbul HagiaSofia BlueMosque Bosphorus Anatolia]

roaming aimlessly around capadoccia and returned just in time for fabulous sundowner
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the inside and the view from a cave hotel
while the inside looks all romantic and sexy and feels like the couple staying in it will jump on each other as soon as they check in, the reality of a cave hotel is that there’s a weird dusty smell, no fans so God bless you in the summers, thankfully the cave hotel we stayed in had unmatched views in the whole of
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