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As 2023 comes to end

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 Hi folks,          Wish you all yet another New year that will give you courage and strength to deal with adversities that may lie ahead along with happiness, laughter  and health.  Wish you all more opportunities to travel and explore places around in coming years.               We ended our year with a short visit to Sringeri along with nearby amazing destinations. Instead of making this post long with details of each place, I decided to keep it light by posting more pictures of each place. I hope you all will feel lightness and happiness for sometime while waiting to receive 2024!!                       SRINGERI SHARADAMBA TEMPLE                                Delightful Homestay which was 20 kms from Sringeri temple was such a delight to spend time connecting with nature and simple life!!                                                  Siri Mane Waterfalls                                 Harihara pura Shri Narasimha swamy temple        Some 30 kms away from Siri Mane Waterfalls,

Australia won 2 cups!

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 Hi folks,                After a fall from the grace with a painful thud this world cup, Indians have slowly got back to business of their lives.               Some of you may have guessed with what I meant when I said Aussies won 2 'cups ' this time!! The second cup we gave them without our knowledge!        😡😩😣                It was terribly disappointing and unbearable day  for die hard Indian fans who made the gallery of the stadium uniformly blue to support 'men in blue!' Btw,  how many of us will know or go and cheer 'women in blue ' like this? No one, including me, knows who the captain of women's cricket team is. Nature and biology being partial to men, women can never match the speed and agility of their counterparts of men! Oops,  I veered away from the topic! When India won 10 matches in a row and looked to be invincible and a forgone conclusion, here came the men in yellow with a solid plan right from the winning of toss! And as they say, the

A journey to the tip of India!

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 Hello friends,              Every travel is unique, but a few are more unique due to its geographical location. The border crossings between 2 countries, travelling to one edge of a country are more exciting and evokes more curiosity! Our journey to the tip of India recently was one such. A trip to Rameshwaram and dhanushkodi is not only exciting, but also spiritual!!  Yes, it is on one edge and we can experience the land waning out and oceans taking over and Sri Lanka is so near from there yet so far!!      This Navarathri holidays, it was destination Rameshwaram with our running buddies and their families! From Bangalore to Rameshwaram it is a very long drive by road and so we stopped at Madhurai to have a good darshan of Meenakshi Amman! We planned out in such a way that we did not have to wait in queue for long hours! Because it was Navarathri season, we were lucky enough to see the display of golu bommais ( dolls of deities) stretching lengthwise inside the temple!! Unfortunately

From the present to the past

 Hi,             "In a world where you can be anything, Be kind."                                                    Unknown.         The months of January and February are seasons of weddings, especially in South India. Recently, we attended a wedding of one of our nephews. The celebrations and rituals lasted for 3 days in a resort and there was lot of fun and frolic, catching up with extended family members after a long time. After the traditional nischayathartham (betrothal) in the morning, we expected that the bride will take hours to dress up for the reception. But voila!! Here she enters in a simple saree devoid of heavy makeup, very minimal ornaments making the whole evening look like more of a casual affair. The 'performances' for the evening included bride's father giving a speech about his daughter's qualities, the same from the groom's dad, speeches by the wedding couple on how happy they are to be the part of each others' families, friends

Finally a trip to Ooty!!

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 Hi,         When I informed my neighbour and relative that we were going  to Ooty with our running group, they blinked and confirmed twice when I said I am going to see that hill station for the first time! In my school,  my classmates used to circulate this small poem :              'First do your duty,             Then marry a beauty,             Have honeymoon at Ooty,             Bring back a kutty.(child)'  My husband dismissed it by saying what sub standard poems we were circulating!              Majority of the readers would have gone to Ooty and so I do not feel I should give a grand description of the place! My first and perfect impressions of Udhagamandalam was shattered when I saw many of the places there was spoilt by commercialization and over population which has led to lot of deforestation and building houses and other structures on many of those hills! The houses on those hills looked colourful from the far though there was no uniformity as we see in western na

My ongoing 'running' journey!!

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 Hi,                   This is the post I wanted to write about for a long time.  Most of the runners who are into long distance running  will have lots of stories to tell. But, only the fellow runners can understand that language which a layman will find it boring.                                                I started my running journey four years ago. The inspiration to start running for fitness was from my husband who is an expert and a fast runner and is highly respected in the running groups. Within few days, I realized that running is not easy and it is going to be a long and struggling journey!! My husband is now an ultra-marathoner and I am yet to run my first full marathon (42 km). I have never been into any kind of sports during my childhood. This makes my journey maybe harder than others, not to say that others are having it easy. Long distance running is a sport that demands lot of time and dedication and for ladies in India who are burdened with daily chores even more, 

Of Raagas and Dosas

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 Hi,          I published my last blog post 'Love hate relationship with British monarchy'  exactly 2 months back  but I found this topic lying as a draft from June 24th, unattended. I felt some connect between raagas and dosas but I was wondering how to put them in words.  As a woman, I do cooking. As a Tambrham woman, I've learnt carnatic music in my childhood (something 'mandatory ' for girls in our community to sing before the prospective groom and impress 😂😁).                        I revisited this page after a long time to proceed with this topic. The real learning starts only when we teach and it is true with any field. I started learning more when I started teaching music to children in my neighbourhood. The more I learn, the more I feel that I have learnt nothing. I love dosas just as I love ragas. Just like dosas being my comfort food, listening to Carnatic music everyday and identifying ragas and their characteristics have become my staple food. I don&