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Pristine Swiss's Italian Charm - Lugano-Luzern Trip

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It was another of the weekends during the fag end of my internship period and we surely could not have it gone without a visit. So we headed for a couple of small towns in the south of Switzerland – Lugano, and Luzern. Switzerland shares its southern boundary with Italy and hence the Italian impact on the culture, language, and architecture is evident as one moves south. Though the natural beauty is still purely Swiss! As per the usual protocol we had established by then, we reached the beautiful town of Lugano on the morning of 7th June of 2008 by train. The city of Lugano is situated on the shore of Lake Lugano similar to how most of the Swiss cities have grown around water bodies. The mountains of Monte San Salvatore on the South and Monte Bre on the Northeast frontiers of the town give it a unique charm along with splendid viewpoints for the tourists. The city center is almost only 8 km away from Italian borders and the feel of affinity to Italy can be seen across every aspect of l...
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Wettest Land on Earth - Capital of Rains - Cherrapunji

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After covering the attractions in Shillong, we continued our journey towards Cherrapunji – The Wettest Place on Earth for a long time. It was an absolutely marvelous weather when we set on the road towards the next destination after a lovely time spent in Shillong. Another day in the company of gang with the day ahead full of masti had us excited. For sake of completeness it would be best if you read the first part of this excursion – the Shillong Visit at Scotland of the East amidst Abode of Clouds - Shillong .   Shillong to Cherrapunji is about 60 kilometers in distance and the hilly terrain takes it around 1 and a half hour time in general. However, it was going to be a different case with us who seemed to be determined on the saying that journey is more important than the destination. We took our own sweet time through the distance having frequent breaks for enjoying the picturesque scenery all around. Hills and valleys with clouds hovering across was simply a breathtaking view...
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Scotland of the East amidst Abode of Clouds - Shillong

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I guess everyone would agree that trips with friends are unforgettable, especially ones during college times. Recently flipping through the college pictures I was reminded of one such trip which left me all nostalgic. So here I am taking you on a long weekend trip to the hills in North-East of India. I would be covering this trip over two posts first of which is to Shillong.   We had been bored out of the rigors, or so to say, of the college life and were actively looking for a vent. It was then during one of our post-dinner bakars that we realized that we had been there in Guwahati for more than a year and hadn’t ventured out of the city and so were sown the seeds to the planning of this trip. Various options were explored and considerations – economic and logistic – led us to decide on a trip to Shillong and Cherrapunji. We began doing the headcount and before we began we already had in our group the usual suspects – Me, Mantri, Chadha, and Nishant. However, we knew this was not ...
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Black-buck and endangered others - Tal Chhapar Sanctuary

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Amidst the widespread Thar Desert of western India is a small yet key wildlife sanctuary which is known for keeping black bucks in their natural habitat – yeah the same ones who got some of the who’s who behind bars!! Today, I take you on a trip to this beautiful reserve in Churu District of Rajasthan – Tal Chhapar Wild Life Sanctuary. This wildlife reserve is located around 130 kilometers from Bikaner; the divisional headquarter for Churu District. Tal Chhapar is actually geographically a flat saline depression locally called a “ tal ”, which makes it a unique ecosystem in midst of a vast desert. This confluence of varied environmental factors makes it an ideal place to provide a natural habitat for a variety of flora and fauna. The entire wildlife sanctuary is developed on over 700 hectares of land. I had a chance of visiting this protected land twice during the tenure of our stay in Bikaner as our abode. One of them was a family visit during April of 2011 when the summer heat was co...
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City of Einstein in Lap of Nature - Bern, Switzerland

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Taking you to a tour through this city which is the seat of political power in Switzerland, which was once the house of great Albert Einstein (the E=mc²  guy) and which is bestowed with enormous natural beauty. Come let's take a bike ride across the streets of Bern, Capital of Switzerland. Another weekend and another trip on the card – this was truly the mantra of our stay in Switzerland. So the only question before this trip was simply to choose the destination. And after some deliberations, we had realized that we were still to visit the capital of the country we have been staying in for some time now. So it was decided that destination that weekend would be Bern. This capital city of Switzerland is a city in the western half of country covering over 50 square kilometers of land. While Zurich is the economic capital of sorts for the country, Bern is the seat of political power. This city is known to be the most relaxed capital among its European counterparts. It is a beautiful ci...
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Lake Geneva Region : Geneva, Montreux & Golden Pass Train

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  Taking you to a visit to this city built on the shore of Lake Geneva and divided by the Rhone River. A city which is bestowed with natural beauty, the center of diplomatic activity, built with best architectural structures and a gateway to French experience. It was part of our weekend visits during summer intern at ETH Zurich and was indeed an awesome time spent with friends. So come with me and explore the charm of this Swiss-French region.  The great Big-bang experiment was trending on the News and it was this time when we were visiting Geneva for a day trip. The great CERN lab where the experiment was undertaken on the gigantic Large Hadron Collider situated in this region of the world. We took the Bahn – train - from Zurich Hauptbahnhof (railway station) on the beautiful morning of 2nd August. Again it was the usual gang of me, DU, Akhil, and Nitin. As you know from my other posts on Switzerland trips, we used day pass for our travel and hence we always tried to take the earliest...
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Picturesque Pokhara - Enchanting Nepal Part 2

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After some sightseeing and time spent in Kathmandu, it was time to get into the depth of Nepal and so were our forthcoming days aiming to get to Pokhara and spend some time there. I hope you all have had an experience of first part of the Nepal trip with the post on Kathmandu . If you haven’t by now, go back and probably you would enjoy this post a bit more about the context from there. Anyway, in short, we reached Kathmandu on 29th of April 2014, Amit’s birthday and spent a day seeing the city. Now the next leg of the journey was a visit to Pokhara. While Kathmandu is like a rushed, populated and metropolitan capital of the country, Pokhara is a getaway scenic city in the lap of Himalayas with an awesome view of its peaks. On the 31st morning, we got up, as usual, a bit early because of the excitement of what was in store for us as we get out of the capital of Nepal. Honestly speaking, though Kathmandu was good, we were really looking forward to getting out of the city to have an expe...
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