Category Archives: Travel

Published : Itchy feet

Posted on July 14, 2012 | 6 comments

This article was published in +977 (a Nepalese Lifestyle Magazine in Australia) in  June-July 2012 issue.    

                                                                                   

I believe everyone in this world likes to travel. I know there are a few people who are scared of flying, like Whoopi Goldberg, but those people still love travelling. They just don’t want to fly so they may drive everywhere. If you ask me, I love travelling; actually I should say I have a passion for travelling. I have a long list of places I want to see before I die and the list keeps growing thanks to travel channels and the internet. My mum told me once that I have itchy feet and I totally agree with her. I will travel at any and every opportunity I can get and I am proud to say that I am living my dream.

If you are like me, you may also empathize with this, the most difficult part of having itchy feet is that every time you travel, it costs lots of time and money. Time, I can manage as I am lucky to have a job which has flexible time off options but money has always been a problem and I am sure it will be so in the future as well unless I win a multimillion dollar lotto. Come on, one can dream and who knows, it may come true.

So today I am going to share a few of my travel tips to allow your itchy feet to wander around the world a bit more.

Budget! Budget! Budget! If you want to go somewhere, start planning for it and start saving ahead of time. It might take months or years but if you plan ahead, one day you will get there. They say – Wish, Plan, and Proceed – and I believe that is what we need to do.

For all of us who call Nepal home, we make sure to visit our family and friends at least once every few years. We may go for few weeks or few months but we always make sure we go as often as possible. Normally we don’t consider that as a holiday but if you think about it you can plan and make it a holiday. Why? Because you are already spending so much time and money on travelling anyway that if you plan a bit , you can squeeze holiday in.

As there is no direct flight to Nepal (I wish there would be one soon, as I hate those long transits as much as you do), we are forced to change planes in either in Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia, China, India or Hong Kong. So if you are going to Nepal why don’t you use this opportunity to take a few days holiday in one of these countries where you have to transit anyway?

Singapore doesn’t require visas for Nepali nationals while other countries have easy visa process. They are quick and cheap. Just think about it when you travel to Nepal the next time. And if you have an Australian passport you probably won’t need a visa, making it easier to visit those countries. Just make sure you check about the visa requirements.

I am sure you will love each of these stopovers. Beaches in Thailand or Shopping in Singapore, Kuala Lumpur City Center (KLCC – the famous twin towers) in Malaysia or the Culture in India, you will definitely have some unique experience every time.

If you want to go one step further, take a hop from these stopover countries with Air Asia (or any other low cost carriers) and you can get to Vietnam, Philippines, Taiwan, Maldives or Laos quite easily. The flights are not so expensive either. Just remember, if you are planning to do this, Air Asia has its counters outside the international terminal in most of the countries. It means that may need to pass immigration to reach these terminals and so you may require visa in your stopover country as well even though you do not leave the airport, so don’t forget to check that with your travel agent and also cross check with Air Asia.

One who plans well always saves money while travelling, so do your research. Don’t be bored about spending a few hours on the internet because this might save you heaps of dollars while on your holiday. My best friend has been Trip Advisor (www.tripadvisor.com.au) for a long time. There fellow travellers share their good and bad experience which has definitely helped me to make a better decision than I might have otherwise. Always look at more than one person’s opinion to make sure that you get a well-rounded picture of whatever you are researching.

If it is possible book your holiday at least 6 months or more in advance, especially air tickets. Most airlines have a number of different ticket types even in economy unless you are used to travelling business or first class. The cheaper seats are sold out first and they are limited. It might make hundreds of dollars of difference in your budget if you act early. This saving may allow you to extend your trip or put money towards other activities.

Sign up to get a newsletter/email from airlines and travel companies. I know it can be really annoying when you get heaps of emails when you are not planning for a holiday but if you are smart, you may get a great deal. Just make a folder in your inbox for all travel emails. Setup a rule in your email options to send this email directly to the travel folder so if you are not planning holidays, you don’t need to look at them but if you are then there may be some offers which you can use for your next trip.

Become a frequent flyer member with the airline you fly frequently. I am a member of Star Alliance as I fly Singapore and Thai a lot. The last time I went to Nepal, I had enough points to spend my 13 hours transit in their lounge with my husband. It was great with free internet, food, shower and a bed as well. Also you may be lucky and get priority for some service or even upgraded seats.

When you are on holiday keep a budget and try to stick to it but don’t count every penny. It may cost you $100 to go to the top of Burj Kalifa (the top of the tallest building in the world) but as you are in Dubai, you might as well do it (by the way if you buy it online beforehand it only costs around $25 so you save $75!). You will never be able to do these once in a lifetime things unless you go back to the same place again. Believe me; you will regret that in the future.

Travel domestically if you can’t go international. Australia has so many beautiful places that you can drive to. Just hop into the car and drive away. Also while in Nepal, just pick a place and have a family holiday. Your family will love it and you will get to spend more time with them as well and your pocket will love it too.

I think every traveller will tell you and I agree with it as well – There is no bad experience when you travel. Just keep an open mind and enjoy what that place/country has to offer. Don’t look for what you have every day. You are travelling because you want to experience something different. Enjoy new places, new people and new culture. Open your eyes and your heart to the world. You will be surprised what you discover around the next corner.

Bon Voyage!!!

Please click here to see my travel photos. 

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Bath, Somerset – England

Posted on July 13, 2012 | 4 comments

The days we did our driving trip, we went to Bath as well. It is a city in the county of Somerset in the south west of England. It took us more than 3 hours to get from Brighton to Bath and the drive was very pleasant through green fields of English country towns. When we were getting close to Bath, we saw rows and rows of terraced houses, they looked so beautiful that I almost lost control of the car in the excitement.

As we got closer to Bath, the only thing that worried me was narrow roads there. They were so tiny that I thought I couldn’t pass through with the small Volkswagen Polo we were on. Then I saw these big tours buses going from both direction and that made me even more sacred. Once we reached Bath, after wandering around for a while, we finally managed to get paid parking and were ready to start our Bath adventures.

 Bath has elegant Georgian architecture and the major attraction in Bath is the Roman baths. The ancient Romans built huge Roman Baths because of the natural thermal springs, leaving behind traces of the largest Roman baths outside of Italy. The Roman Baths are below the modern street level. There are four main attractions in Bath: the Sacred Spring, the Roman Temple, the Roman Bath House and the Museum holding finds from Roman Bath. The buildings above street level date from the 19th century.

From Roman Bath, we then went to Bath Abbey which is a Church of Saint Peter and Saint Paul. The work on the church made me think of Westminster Abbey (which I had only seen on TV but was going to see in London the next day). It was a really nice building both from the outside as well as the inside.

From there we went to the Royal Crescent via the Royal Avenue. The Royal Crescent was really impressive and looked so beautiful with its Georgian architecture. It is a residential row of 30 houses laid out in a crescent. From the convex side the whole complex looks like one long building shaped like a crescent. It was designed by the architect John Wood the Younger and built between 1767 and 1774 and it is among the greatest examples of Georgian architecture. The houses in the Crescent are a mixture of tenures — most are privately owned but a substantial minority of the property is owned by a housing association.

Number 1 Royal Crescent is a museum, which was then being renovated, is maintained by the Bath Preservation Trust. It illustrates how wealthy owners of the period might have furnished such a house.

I really loved the idea of so many houses looking the same. When we went closer to these houses, we saw that they had different coloured door but apart from that everything else looked the same. Even after 300 years they looked solid and beautiful and definitely well preserved. In front of the Royal Crescent, there is a big park and there were hundreds of people basking in the sun. Most of them seemed to be young and having fun with BBQ and Frisbees while others were just lying around soaking up the sun and enjoying the sunny English day.

From there we walked towards the Royal Circus. It is also a place surrounded by large townhouses build in a circle divided into three segments of equal length, each of the curved segments faces one of the three entrances, ensuring that whichever way a visitor enters there is a classical facade straight ahead.

In Bath, everywhere I looked, there was a house or shops so rich with history that it made me wonder how the people who lived there must feel. Even the cobble stoned roads still had a classical look. You could see flowers decorating the road sides and in lots of small cafes and restaurants. We stopped at one of the cafés, called The Bridge Coffee Shop, to have some coffee and cake and were very surprised to see the prices. It was £ 2.50 for a coffee and £3.50 for a cake to take away while £3.50 for a coffee and £4.50 for a cake to eat in. We decide to get a take away and then went to a park in front of the Bath Abbey.

After our coffee break we passed through the famous Pulteney Bridge that crosses the River Avon. The bridge had a flower shop, an antique map shop, and a juice bar. In the river below there was a cruise boat and along the river bank, there was a walking track and beautiful gardens.

After walking around Bath for a while, it was time for us to get back to Brighton as it was a 3 hour drive. This time we took a freeway via Oxford and Reading. The sun was setting by the time we reached Brighton and AS took some beautiful shots of the setting sun.

Please click here for more photos.

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Stonehenge : England

Posted on July 11, 2012 | 7 comments

I had always been fascinated by Stonehenge as there is so much mystery surrounding it. So when we were in England, I made sure to go and visit it. We drove through the beautiful landscape of county of Wiltshire, 13km north of Salisbury and arrived at Stonehenge. The day was quite sunny , we parked the car and hurried towards the fence surrounding the henge to look at it closely. As we walked along the fence for a while, we couldn’t find the entrance. I had to ask one of the passerby and he showed me the way, which was next to the parking lot. All the people we had seen close to the fence were not planning to go inside so they were just looking at it through the fence.

While doing my research, I found that lots of people were disappointed that they were not allowed to walk among the stones. From what I read they were not happy that they were really far from the stones and but not so with me. I really loved the place.

As there were no queues to go inside, we paid £7.80 per person grabbed a couple of audio guides and walked through a tunnel under the road that separated the parking space from the henge and a staircase to go up to the Stonehenge. The audio guide can play in several languages and can be stopped and started at each point on the tour which worked well and allowed everying to go at their own pace. As it was a warm summer day, the place looked beautiful with this massive field of green grass around the Stonehenge. There were busloads of tourists everywhere and it was a bit crowed but me and my husband just took our time to look around. There was a path around the Stonehenge which had markers with number for the self-guided audio tour.

It was nice to know the history of the place. Around 8,000 BC, as the early humans discovered agriculture and farming, they dug five huge mastholes near what would later be Stonehenge.  Today, the Stonehenge parking lot covers the location of those mastholes and the only indication that prehistoric activity once took place at that spot is a round white circle which could very well be confused with a roundabout marker.

In 5,000 years, the early human civilizations advanced and developed.  They became nomads, conquerors, architects and sculptors.  They developed communities oriented around farming and hunting, domesticated ancient cows and buffalo, and wandered far across the earth to gather materials and equipment to celebrate their faith and beliefs.  And, it is around this time that the prehistoric humans in England discovered the circle.  Just as the ancient Egyptian monuments were mostly triangular and pyramidal, the henges are primarily circular or oval.

So, what is a henge?  A henge is identified by a circular ditch with an internal bank, with or without monuments in the center.  There are hundreds of henges scattered across England but the most famous are the ones in the Salisbury area.

Stonehenge was the centre of ancient Britain, according to a study which claims the monument symbolised the unification of eastern and western communities. A new study by researchers from five British universities suggests Stonehenge may in fact have been built as a sign of peace between people from the east and west of the country after a period of conflict.

The stones, which come from different locations as far afield as southern England and west Wales, may have been used to represent the ancestors of some of Britain’s earliest farming communities, researchers suggest.

As we follow the path when we got to the area where we could see the stone from closest point on the path, it looked amazing and I can’t even imagine how people thought of making something so massive. Stonehenge looked different from different angles and it still seemed so mysterious with its grand presence.

As we continue to circle around Stonehenge, we came across a large stone called the Heel stone. It is a 16 feet long tertiary sandstone.

 After we finish our walk around Stonehenge, we stopped in front of the exit and looked at it again. It feels as if I was looking at a piece of history which is so mysterious and at the same time so beautiful.

 Here are some facts of Stonehenge.

  • Stonehenge was built between 3100 – 1100 BCE.
  • The circle was aligned with the midsummer sunrise, the midwinter sunset, and the most southerly rising and northerly setting of the moon.
  • The ground plan and structural engineering of Stonehenge incorporate sophisticated mathematical and geometrical understandings on the part of its builders.
  • There were two types of stones used in its construction: the ‘bluestones’ (weighing as much as four tons and brought from 240 miles away) and the Sarsen stones (averaging eighteen feet in height and twenty-five tons in weight).
  • It has been estimated that the construction of Stonehenge required more than thirty million hours of labour.
  • More than nine hundred stone rings exist in the British Isles. Of these, Stonehenge is the most well-known.
  • The megalithic monuments of Britain and Europe predate those of the eastern Mediterranean, Egyptian, Mycenaean and Greek cultures.
  • The Druids had nothing to do with the construction of the stone rings. Druids are known to have conducted their ritual activities mostly in sacred forest groves.

Please click here for more photos.

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Windsor Castle : England

Posted on July 7, 2012 | 6 comments

Castles have always fascinated me as they always make me wonder about the people who have lived there and their lavish life styles. So I was really excited to visit the Windsor Castle. We hired a car from Brighton and with the help of a GPS navigator, we reached the Windsor castle. Unfortunately finding parking proved to be more difficult than expected but we did manage to find parking next to the train station. It was funny to see that the parking meter didn’t take any cash but only card. Luckily, we had one but there were a few other people who didn’t know what to do as they had only cash.

We then took a short stroll toward the Windsor Castle. As soon as we saw the main gate, we realised that there was a long queue for the tickets. I was bit worried as we wanted to do more than one place in one day. Fortunately a guard came and asked us if we were with a group. I told him that it is only the two of us so he asked us to follow him and to join the shorter queue inside as we had unknowingly joined a queue for groups. So in next 10 minutes, we bought our ticket and we were inside the castle. The tickets cost 17 pound per adult.

Here is some history about the Windsor Castle from Wikipedia:

Windsor Castle is a medieval castle and royal residence in Windsor in the English county of Berkshire, notable for its long association with the British royal family and for its architecture. The original castle was built after the Norman invasion by William the Conqueror. Since the time of Henry I it has been used by a succession of monarchs and is the longest-occupied palace in Europe. The castle’s lavish, early 19th-century State Apartments are architecturally significant, described by art historian Hugh Roberts as “a superb and unrivalled sequence of rooms widely regarded as the finest and most complete expression of later Georgian taste”.] The castle includes the 15th-century St George’s Chapel, considered by historian John Robinson to be “one of the supreme achievements of English Perpendicular Gothic” design.[2] More than five hundred people live and work in Windsor, making it the largest inhabited castle in the world.

Inside, in one corner they were handing out a free audio guide so we grabbed them and walked in. After a short wander through the St. George’s gate then onto the Middle Ward, bailey formed around the motte or artificial hill in the centre of the ward, we could see a great view of the Castle complex. We took lots of photos there as that is what I had always seen in pictures as Windsor Castle for a long time. As we were taking the photos, we saw a few guards walking past us and we joined hundreds of people trying to take a photo of the guards.

We wandered around for a while and decided to go inside St George’s Chapel and have a look around. There are lots of tombs of many Kings and Queens buried there as well as many noble men. The chapel is located in the Lower Ward of the castle, which is one of the principal residences of Queen Elizabeth II. The most famous tombs must be of King George V and Queen Mary. They are beautifully decorated and we can see the history of arts of centuries. In one of the side aisles, there is a memorial of Queen Elizabeth II’s parents (George VI and Elizabeth, the Queen Mother) and her sister, Princess Margaret.

 In this chapel, The Prince Edward, Earl of Wessex and Sophie Rhys-Jones were married in 1999 along with many other royals .Also Prince Charles and Camilla Parker-Bowles had a blessing at St. George’s Chapel after their civil ceremony in Windsor.

Then we headed to view Queen Mary’s Dolls house. Unfortunately, there was a long queue so we decided to skip that and instead went to the State Apartments. The Queen was not there so we were allowed to go in.

The State Apartments are amazing and was very huge.  As the self-guided audio tour took as to many rooms, it explained about its history and they were really fascinating. The rooms we were allowed to go into were the King’s Drawing Room, the King’s Bedchamber, the King’s Dressing Room,  the Queen’s Drawing Room,  the King’s Dining Room , the Queen’s Ballroom,  St. George’s Hall Paintings  and the Lantern Lobby . I also came to know that they were completely gutted in a fire in 1992 then subsequently rebuilt. There were lots of artworks and many by Van Dyk, and also a self-portrait by Rembrandt. Then there are rows in the wall full of family portraits of the royal families from many centuries.

Also in some rooms there were lots of other priceless pieces from the years ago including guns, swords, crowns from everywhere in the empire as well expensive china dinner sets, clocks. There were also displays of shields of the previous knights of the garter AS was so interested to look in detailed in this room; I literally had to drag him away from there. If you look into detail, you can spend the whole day in the castle but we didn’t have so much time so we had to go around quickly.

In one of the rooms, there were displays of 50 different photos of Queen Elizabeth II celebrating her Golden Jubilee this year. It was really crowded and me and AS go separated. I panicked for a while as I didn’t have a mobile with me so didn’t know how to find him. But I was relieved when I saw him again looking at the photos oblivious that I was not with him. 🙂

It was a really nice and sunny day for our visit to the castle and it was fun to go inside the rooms and walk the pathway which had been walked by famous kings and queens including Queen Elizabeth II.

On the way out we went to one of the shops in the castle and bought a souvenir exclusive to Windsor Castle. There was lots of souvenir merchandise like jewelleries, clothing, books, housewares, toiletries, children’s gifts

There was also a post box of royal mail where we took photos.

From there we made our way to the exit and handed over the audio guide. Outside the castle we saw two police officers equipped with big guns. The palace itself was surrounded by small period houses and looked beautiful.

Please click here for more photos.

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Brighton and Devil’s Dyke : Sussex, England

Posted on July 4, 2012 | 6 comments

After we left Dubai, having an awesome time, our next stop was England. We meant to go and visit AS’s cousins for a few days in Brighton and then off to London.

So we bid our goodbye to Dubai and hopped on the plane to UK. We flew Emirates and they had AIRBUS 380 to London. It was 8 hours flight so we had lots of time to watch movies and sleep.  Being small is sometimes a blessing as the seats in the plane was big enough for me to sleep comfortably while AS could not sleep at all. After what seemed like forever and 3 movies and 2 meals later, we landed in Heathrow International Airport.

We had booked a coach to take us to Brighton so it was going to be 2 more hours before we could rest. We went to the coach stop and still had 20 minutes for the bus. I was feeling really cold coming from Dubai. It was a bit windy as well but luckily no rain. I was really glad when the coach finally came and we hopped into the warm coach.

At around 10pm, the coach pulled up at its last stop in Brighton and we make our way out with our suitcases. Within a few minutes, we saw his brother in law waiting for us to take us to their place. Brighton is a famous seaside resort and charming city on the south coast of England.

The family we were meeting were AS’s cousin and her husband ( U didi and N Bhinaju) and her kid. I had never met them before so I was a bit wary about staying with them but as soon as we met I felt my doubts melt away. They made us feel welcome and made sure that we were comfortable.  As it was Monday evening, they had to go to work the next day so we had dinner and went off to a warm bed. It was really nice to eat home cooked meal after so many meals in restaurants and hotels. They told us that it had been raining for the last few days and they hadn’t seen proper summer yet. I was really tired but at the same time I was praying for the weather to clear up for us for the next day at least as I didn’t want to stay home and waste a whole day if it rained.

The next morning when I woke up, the room was pitch black. In my mind I was thinking it was so dark because it was raining outside. I realised later that the curtains in the room were really thick and good so as to block the sunlight in the morning. I couldn’t stop smiling when I saw the sun shining up in the sky when I opened the curtains. As I was a sister in law (buhari) in the house, I was worried in case  I had slept in late but I was really relived to see it was only 7am. I went to freshen up and then for the first time I got to meet our niece, little N. She had already been asleep when we reached the house the night before. She was a bit surprised to see a new person in the house and was a little shy when I approached her for the first time but within a few minutes we became best buddies  🙂

I helped U didi cook breakfast and we started making plans for the day. N Bhinaju was taking a half day off while didi had the day off. So until mid-day we decided to walk around Brighton and then when Bhinaju caught up with us, we would go somewhere else. They reminded us that we were lucky to have such a good day in our first day there.

While I had been packing for the trip, in Sydney, I had packed some of my winter clothes for England; but I was happy to be able to wear my summer dress to go out that day. It was our first time in Europe so I was really, really excited.

So the first stop was the famous Brighton Beach. While making our way there I noticed that the roads there were really narrow but big double-decker buses were travelling in both directions. Also, compared to Australia, the houses looked so small reminding me of doll houses. I really enjoyed the walk looking at old buildings and small shops before we reached the beach.

The first thing I noticed at the beach was that it looked nothing like the beaches in Australia. There were pebbles on the beach instead of sand .The beach area was really small so once the pebble area is finished, it is straight into the deep water, unlike in Australia, where there is a nice slope going into the water.

We went to the beach just to feel the water and my feet really hurt due to the pebbles. The water was very cold so we decided not to stay there long.

The beach was busy, little shops and bars with food were to be found throughout the length of the beach, and various other activities were going on too. We thoroughly enjoyed walking along the seafront, admiring the period buildings and stopping along the way for a drink. The building were really old and most of them were apartment buildings at least a 100 years old.

At one end of the beach there were remains of the burnt West Pier. Didi explained to us that it used to a concert hall once but due to an unfortunate incident the place caught fire. Now it is just sitting there.  After walking for a while, we decided to go shopping so we went to Churchill Square Shopping Centre.

I was surprised that the shops were cheaper than in Australia so I ended buying some stuff. If our suitcases were not as full as they already were I would definitely have done more shopping, but that is for the next time  🙂

After a while N Bhinaju caught up with us and we went to have a typical English lunch at a pub. Didi and I had burgers while AS had fish and chips and Bhinaju had a steak. It was in a really nice pub with music playing in the background and people enjoying their beer in the very elusive UK sun. We had some rest and then we went to our next stop, the Royal Pavilion.

Royal Pavilion was built by Prince of Wales which is an extravagant Regency building. It is often referred to as the Brighton Pavilion. It was built in the Indo-Saracenic style prevalent in India for most of the 19th century, with the most extravagant Chinoiserie interiors ever executed in the British Isles. It cost £9.80 for adults and £5.10 for children to get inside. There was a very long queue so we decide to just enjoy its garden and the sun.

There were lots of people in the garden even though it was a weekday. We saw lots of young people in their bikinis getting tanned. Little N was also loving the outdoor.

After that our next stop was Devil’s Dyke in Sussex. N Bhinaju wanted us to go there as he loved the place and I am so glad he took us there. Devil’s Dyke is a 100m deep V-shaped valley on the South Downs Way in southern England, near Brighton and Hove. The Devil’s Dyke V-shaped dry valley is the result of solifluction and river erosion. It was such a beautiful place that makes you feel like you are in English town with such a wonderful view. The hills surrounding the valley offer views of the South Downs, The Weald, and – on a clear day – the Isle of Wight. It is the site of ramparts, all which remain of an Iron Age hillfort, and a pub. At nearly a mile long, the Dyke valley is the longest, deepest and widest ‘dry valley’ in the UK.

While we were walking along the green path, I noticed that there were so many butterflies all around. It is also one of the most popular hang gliding spots in the country. There were so many people in the sky, gliding, that it made sky very colourful. I really wanted to take a photo with one of the gliders so we asked one of the guys who had just finished. He was nice enough to show us how the things work and even let us wear the equipment and take photos.

We went for a long nice walk after that and enjoyed the fresh air before getting back into the car to go back to U didi’s house. We had a really great time on our first day in Europe.

Please click here for more photos.

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