Sunset beach Kanyakumari

There are certain things that bring immense feelings of gratitude for being born on this earth. A beach with a great sunset is one of them.

We decided to drive down to Kanyakumari this time around as opposed to going by flights and taxis. I would have loved to do that on my Kawasaki anyway, but owing to the fact that my wife has never visited Kanyakumari in 45+ years of her life, I had to make a quick dash to show her the place.

Owing to it being a long weekend with a string of holidays, I had anticipated and prepared for the worst with respect to traffic on the highways. But somehow this time the traffic was a bit lesser as the crowds had already dispersed earlier on.

I thought driving 12 hours will be a bit cumbersome, so I decided to halt at the residency karur for one night before I continued onward to Kanyakumari. I have already reviewed the residency hotel in karur in this blog earlier if you want to check out what it feels like being there, you can read that blog post.

I split the 12 hour journey into two parts so that I could drive a bit slowly after breakfast at karur, to Kanyakumari. The second day the drive lasted about six hours and we had a couple of stops for lunch, and at the Muppandal windmill farm, something that I wanted my kid and wife to experience and cherish.

This windmill farm literally has hundreds of windmills, and it is split by the highway going through, which is somewhat of a bypass to Nagercoil town. It’s a site to behold, and once mind automatically feels refreshed, seeing so many windmills turning in the wind. The best time to reach there is somewhere after 2 PM and you can see all the windmills turning with the wind. The wind itself is very very strong and it was quite a cumbersome task to negotiate about 30 to 40 km on the bike. With the car, however, since there was a windshield, there was some amount of protection available.

After spending a good amount of time at this windmill farm and clicking a bit of photos, some really near to the windmills, we proceeded on to reach Annai resorts and spa in Kanyakumari. we had time just to check into the resort, leave our baggage in the room and start our brisk walk to the Sunset Beach, where we could spend the rest of the evening, watching a beautiful sunset.

Being a long holiday weekend, there was a lot of crowd on this beach, making it very difficult to get into the waters as there are very few places where we can get into the water while most of it is rocky and inaccessible.

I still manage to get into the water and be there in the water for a while, and also manage to get some interesting photographs of the sunset. Though in this digital age getting AI generated, Sunset photographs is not a big deal, but still the emotion involved in being at the beach during sunset is always going to be the same curiosity of what technology we are using, and that is what I wanted to enjoy that evening.

After spending almost an hour at the Sunset Beach and also grabbing something to eat along the way in those small stalls there we walk back to the hotel each way being about a kilometre of walk, and we are very satisfied with the way the whole journey went all the way from karur up to Kanyakumari and back to the hotel for the evening. We ordered some food at the hotel itself and 8 to our hearts content before we had to call it a day. I’ll leave you with some of the photographs taken during the visit to Sunset Beach in Kanyakumari so that you can see them and enjoy.

Do dropping your comments if you have visited this beach and let me know what you felt in the comment section below.

The KIA Seltos – the drive, tech and pricing reveal

Introduction

As you would have already read in my previous post I had given you an overview of the Seltos, the latest and first creation of KIA for the Indian market. What is noteworthy of the car is its multitude of variants, the tech within the car and other cool features.

As there were many people waiting for the drive yesterday, it was difficult for me to get the drive yesterday so I was asked to come in the morning at 930am today which I promptly did though it was a tad bit cold and rainy in Bengaluru. Took me 10 minutes to drive there 10 minutes to test drive and 10 minutes back there. Neat eh ?

So what are we waiting for? Let us look at how the drive felt like…..

Drive (1.5 Diesel Manual)

I got the GT line Diesel Manual (115bhp, 250Nm) version. It was a keyless startstopentry model so settling was comfortable. The powered driver seat was comfortable to change positions until an optimal driving position was available. It takes a while getting used to but along with this and a tilt and telescopic steering – in a few seconds I was comfortable enough.

Camera(s)

Switching the car on needs a clutch press and its better to ensure car is in neutral and hand brake on before trying something like that. The last thing you want is for the car to lunge forward by mistake. Once the engine was on, I could access the cameras which showed me all sides of the car (360 degree view) which is well implemented in my opinion. There is also a side lane camera which gets activated by putting on the turn indicator (which by the way is on the most intuitive side as opposed to american cars).

The camera tech is awesome and it would be a boon while taking the car out of cramped parking slots. However on normal driving only the lane camera is more of use on regular basis.

Engine

The engine itself is extremely silent both on the inside and outside and once you are in the car with windows closed, you would barely heat the engine. It is astonishing as to how silent this engine is if you compare it to say the 1.3 MJD in Ciaz. No gruff noise, no fuss, nothing. Just purrs.

Heads up display

KIA offers you a heads up display which indicates speed and navigation details just beyond the steering. The display kind of merges with the road when you drive and its least intrusive. I felt the colours and fonts used in the display were brilliant and is helpful to the driver. However it can perhaps show many more things like mirroring a google map in actuals, or gear information, etc. Just the speed and road names as you drive is not so useful for a seasoned driver.

Sun roof and ventilated seats

The showroom guy did open the sun roof and it is like any other car. The usual sun roof nothing much to say actually. What I felt more good was about the ventilated seats in the GT version. Imagine having parked your car in a scorching place and your seats are hot, the ventilation option blows cool air on your bottoms keeping them calm. This would prevent a lot of sweat on long runs and is generally a good to have feature.

Drive

I took a route that did not have patchy roads save for a few broken areas. It was mostly a well tarred section of the outer ring road. It is easy to slot the gear into any level you need to. Except for the second gear where a bit of acceleration was needed, in other gears the car just pulled fine. Engine is smooth at all speeds and you can barely hear it.

The car also feels confident to handle and is particularly also safe inside. You can quickly accelerate to get away from the mad rush or just amble along in any gear smoothly. The car has both the behaviours. Passiveness or aggressiveness.

Annoying bits – reverse gear button, and clutch

If anything decides the drivability of the manual versions, it’s always the combination of gear, clutch, engine power and torque. And here while the gear and power are fine, the torque is not so forthcoming and car needs to be accelerated a bit. This is surprising since the torque on offer is 250Nm and even with turbo lag any diesel car will show some intention to move forward from low speeds.

Coming to the clutch – only one word – annoying. It is rubbery and has pushback each time you press it. This is not great for relaxed driving as it makes you lift your left leg often from its intended position. Maybe over use it will become subdued but it is a huge deal breaker for me. It can mean life and death on choked roads of Bangalore. I felt that the clutch was jumpy even in the Tata Harrier and with a 2.0 engine you can imagine how much inconsistency it will generate on the roads.

KIA, I really feel you need to work on the clutch to make it more reasonable.

The reverse gear slot switch is another annoyance. Maybe I am biased. But let me tell you my story. I was driving a Ciaz until July and an automatic BRV from then on until now. In the automatic, there is a button below the gear knob to move from P to N to S to D to R modes. Now in the KIA they have given the same button to move to R mode. The disturbing part about this is it can be easily activated by a button press. Very easily. So if you are in forward gears and by mistake you press this and slot to R instead of 1, imagine the disaster on the roads.

KIA please please make a change and put a ring like in the FIAT Palio, or Linea. Lifting a ring to put the car in Reverse mode cannot be done by mistake and it will save drivers a lot of hassle. Please look at implementing this in a different way.

I am hoping the automatic version would be a lot better to drive with the diesel and since they did not have it yet for the test drive, I cannot say for sure yet. I am hoping to drive it sometime in the near future.

A word on possible pricing

According to rushlane the prices were leaked at a dealer event for training people on the car. And I am reproducing it here with the link to the original article as well in case you want to read it. If you look at the pricing it starts at 10 lacs for the base petrol and goes upto 17 lac for the top end GT variants in diesel, turbo and automatic. Extremely aggressive as it can kill everything in the way of this price bracket.

(source: rushlane.com)

So now that you know everything about the KIA more or less, what version would you book, let me know in the comments section of this post.

The Batu Caves visit (Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia)

Introduction

After the KL tower visit, our next stop was to go to Batu Caves during the early part of the day. We decided to take a texsi to Batu Caves, and on the way back I was in the mood for experimenting the train part. I was sick since the last evening and was not quite in the mood to use railway on the way to the temple. The texsi (taxi) costed us about 50RM for four people so that was somewhat less expensive.

For the uninitiated Batu Caves is also known as the 10 caves or Hill for Lord Muruga as there are six important holy shrines in India and four more in Malaysia. The three others in Malaysia are Kallumalai Temple in Ipoh, Tanneermalai Temple in Penang and Sannasimalai Temple in Malacca. For more the information regarding the caves, read here.

The limestone rock forming the cave is some 400 million years old according to facts available and that in itself is a reason you must go there if you are living in this era. Although Chinese and Americans recorded the history of the existence of the caves, it was an Indian who installed the statue of Lord Muruga during 1890’s bringing about the meaning of a temple cave for this attraction.

Details

The cave itself is about 100m tall, and has about 272 steps. This is relatively less but what makes it a challenge is how steep the steps are to reach the top. They are rather precarious and it takes a considerable amount of effort to reach the top where the temple is located.

The monkeys along the way although do not disturb people too much unless provoked but they do snatch any eatables that you would have with you if you are not careful. What makes it a bit dangerous is since the steps are at a steep angle you need to be careful not to get disturbed and keep going up until you reach the top.

There are three things to see at Batu Caves – the temple cave which houses the main temple, the Dark Cave which has other underground cave portions plus some species such as spiders and fruit bats and would require that you book the exploration trip in advance, and the Art Gallery where you can find Hinduism related artefacts.

There is a huge Murugan statue at the entrance of the cave which took 3 years to build at 2.5 million ringgit. It is made of steel bars, concrete and gold paint which give it the undeniable aura of splendour. For more you can read here.

Fees, and things to see

As for the temple cave entry it is free for all, though there are some dressing restrictions (you will need to cover your body, specifically waist downwards with proper attire). For the dark caves which I did not visit the entry is 8 USD for adults and 6 USD for kids.

There are nice paintings within the temple cave which depict scenes from the Ramayana. It will take a good half or more to climb based on your physical fitness, another half hour of checking out the temple and other higher cave areas around the top, getting a view of KL town from the top, and about 15-20 minutes to come down. It is advisable you carry a water bottle for yourself as for adults, no extra food maybe needed.

There are shops selling souvenirs up the top but these mementoes are expensive. I did check out other shops within KL for the same things, but did not manage to find something good. If you want the mementoes my advise is to buy it at the temple although it costs a bit more. You will not regret it later. That is of course your personal preference.

There are a lot of pigeons around the place and you can feed them for 5RM worth of purchased bird feed from people selling it there.

Travel

Finally we decided to walk a bit out of the temple towards the Batu Caves KTM Komuter rail station. This is not a high frequency train and one will need to wait for the train for a while, sometimes even up to half hour. The Touch and go card which is available all over Malaysia will work for this train and you need to travel from Batu upto KL Sentral to reach city centre again. Since we were staying at the Vortex Suites, this suited us best. The train itself was comfortable but not as fast as MRT trains. It was very neat and many people regularly use the KTM Komuter service as it connects city centre to suburbs.

There are also at least two or more Indian restaurants just near the temple, so be prepared to shell out about 100 RM for a family of four for some decent food. Cost may go up a bit if you order more. But for Indians the good news is these are vegetarian restaurants, and one of them serves Jain food as well.

The Batu Caves temple is a must visit for people who to go KL as it is easily accessible from city centre and takes just half a day to complete. Moreover it is free to visit the main temple and a unique experience to watch the statue and the colourful steps to reach the top. For the brave hearted, the Dark Cave offers much more adventure if you are going on a guided tour of those. The weather would be generally hot, with occasional spells of rain as is the case in most Malaysian regions, specifically within KL. The air is dry so you may want to keep some nasal saline drops handy to unblock your nose if you feel uncomfortable.

A visit to the KL tower, Malaysia

An evening at the KL Tower, Malaysia

We were tired after a long journey from the airport to the city and after taking sufficient rest in our serviced apartment which I had written about earlier (you can read it here), we decided to quickly make a dash to the KL tower. This was pretty nearby to the Vortex suites and though it is walkable there is a bit of elevation as you approach the tower and it is not entirely possiblet to climb so much unless you are fit.

Taxi is a better way to reach the top and it should not cost you too much. There are two floors to the tower one being the observation deck only and the other having a restaurant and an open air observation deck from where you can see the city much more freely for photography purposes. The observation deck is fully housed in glass and hence provides for very less photography opportunity in a clarity sense.

The tickets are sold on either individual or combo basis. The observation deck for 2 adults and 2 kids must set you back about 150-170RM (1RM = 17Rs) whereas if you opt for other packages you will end up paying more but get to see other things such as aquarium, upside down house, and mini zoo. There is a normal queue and a priority queue for those who booked using booking sites such as booking.com. We thankfully had a priority queue entry though the number of people in normal queue were not many when we went it. However this number had swelled by the time we finished seeing the tower.

We spent a good hour going around and clicking photos of KL’s landmarks including the Petronas towers which is visible from one of the sides and I somehow found taking a photo of the twin towers from KL tower better than the other way round. It was just a choice between the two keeping costs in mind and I chose the KL tower this time.

Besides the KL tower observation deck, there is information and souveniers available everywhere around and you can buy them if you wish. The latest trick of having your photo taken and processed for you will earn those guys a few ringgits and make you poorer by that much as well. These are not photos that you yourself cannot take or process but remember everyone may not have access to good phones or cameras and for some, the moment captured in a pic is just what they need in return for some cash.

Written with StackEdit.

Review of the Idaris Vortex Suites and why it must be your goto place in KL

Introduction

With so many tourists flooding all the places, lots of accommodations have come up lately in all cities and people are spoilt for choices. You fire up any travel website and you will suddenly be flooded with thousands of options for staying in a place ranging from as low as 20$ upto all the way to 400 or 500$ even.

For me it was the same case when I decided to stay in KL. Initially considering my first stop was Batu Caves in KL, I decided to use my favourite app, to book the East Kiara Dex suites (apartments) since it was very near to Batu Caves. Something told me later that it would be difficult to shift when you have luggage from one place to another. So I decided to book The Vortex suites instead. You won’t believe what I got.

Apartments vs Hotels – what to choose?

It is always a confusion on whether to choose hotels or apartments ever since Airbnb type of apps came up on the markets and allowed people to book peoples homes for stays. What is more important to note are the pros and cons of booking apartments versus hotels. To make things simple I will list them here for you

Hotels: Pros

Breakfast is covered in some hotels
Scenic views of surroundings
better room service (both on housekeeping and food)

Hotels: Cons

Room sizes is limited
Only one toilet usually
Rentals maybe high

Apartments: Pros

multiple rooms, feels like home
kitchen for self cooking
Better furnished and larger spaces
Gaming consoles are there in some apartments

Apartments: Cons

You have to prepare your own food or carry food from outside
no feeling of being pampered
sometimes could be in residential localities with access issues, and far from attractions

So its actually more of what you prefer as each has its own pros and cons as listed above. For us since i had never booked an apartment in the past, I decided to book the Vortex to see how it was for our journey.

Vortex apartments, near KLCC

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We booked the Vortex which is a 25+ floors of apartment complex right in the heart of KL city. The apartment is walkable from KL tower, Petronas twin towers, and also many attractions nearby not to forget to mention hotels, clubs, and other small places within town. The speciality of this complex is that it is circular in shape with a dizzying stance if you look at it from below. The whole building seems to be glass facaded and has some fantastic views of the city from whichever location you look at it.

Booking and check-in procedures

I booked this hotel on booking.com from India, and was not charged the full amount until about a week before the actual check-in. The instructions in the booking mail were clear and I had to go to floor 6 for finishing the formalities. True to what was quoted, I went to the floor mentioned and the people managing the apartment were pretty welcoming for me.

Usually when I go to other countries I have to do some initial communication with the reception to make them understand what I need, but here the whole stay was understood and planned for me since they do this day in and day out. I spent less than 10 minutes at the reception to finish my checkin. Please bear in mind that there is a tourist tax and they ask you to deposit 200 ringgit (about 50 usd) for security purposes. This is refundable and will be returned to you later on. However, it is to be paid in cash only and you need to have withdrawn it well in advance.

Other constraints to reach the room

Since this is a high rise with over 25 floors, there are 6 lifts to reach the floors and you need to take one of the three lifts on the side of the apartment you are reaching to. Each set of three lifts service half the area of the overall circular building. These are high speed lifts and what you need to know is that these operate when you swipe the room card on the panel. It will automatically know which floor to stop at and will stop only in those floors for which people are present inside the lift.

Going up is easy, but coming down can mean stopping at every floor where there are people. I did find people smoking in the corridors and throwing cigarette butts here and there though advised not to, so this is something you need to get used to. Having said that you also need to remember that most people staying here are tourists who have come to KL to visit its attractions and hence they will all leave in the morning hours for this purpose. The hours between 9-11 are very crowded and hence the lifts are so full that you will have trouble moving yourself with your luggage – hence its advisable to be early or go later than those hours.

The apartment

In our apartment the furnishing was top notch. It had a dining table, a nice big sofa with a view to the outside of the city buildings, and two bedrooms with cots and mattresses again of high quality. Wardrobes, desks, bathroom fittings and bathroom facilities are all top notch as well. The apartment also had a kitchen with cutlery as well as a washer and dryer. The washer and dryer is perhaps the single most useful appliance for long journeys if you know what I mean. Overall the apartment was really high quality but did not have any balconies.

The air conditioner can sometimes make you feel a bit stuffy inside and the window opening was rather too high. I am not sure about the fire safety worthiness of such apartments and have my own doubts about it. I am yet to see a hotel with large dustbins instead of those silly small ones which serve no purposes.

There were enough towels provided during our stay and these were also refreshed by the time we were back from tourist visits. The housekeeping was seamless.

Other facilities

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The apartment has a swimming pool which you can use daily once for a stipulated amount of time. However since it was on a higher floor it was small and not really a professional one. The apartment also has a small shop which is stocked well with things you need to buy for cooking or eating for quick eats.

There is also a 7-11 shop which is rather congested at the ground level, and a paid car park which is NOT touch-and-go card compatible at the moment.

Since this is in a highly commercial area, there are also banks nearby so withdrawing cash should not be an issue. This apartment is very near to KL tower, Suria KLCC (Petronas towers) and many other attractions nearby including restaurants and pubs.

Check out

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One word : Smooth!

Your deposit money is returned to you, you return the cards to the room, and you are done. Period. Fastest one I have seen!

Written with StackEdit.

Car Rentals in Kuala Lumpur – SoCar vs GoCar

Introduction

As I was headed to Malaysia for a trip for 10 days, I needed an option to commute within the country. While renting cabs with drivers was definitely an option, there was no privacy enough, and there was no way to make my own decisions on where I wished to go when. I was not so keen to rent a cab outside of KL city.

We had plans to visit multiple places such as Cameron, Penang, Langkawi so I needed a vehicle which I was willing to drive myself. It was the best option as it would give me the convenience without burning a hole in my pocket. The trip itself was turning out to be expensive and I wanted a good option for inside the country travel.

Things that I was looking for

As any first time car rental customer, I had some concerns, so I needed these

Easy rental mechanism, including driver sign up and validation of
license
Preferably use local Karnataka (state license from india) – without the need for IDP
App based car handling
Easy fueling
Easy breakdown service if needed anywhere within the country

Options available

Based on the market services available in Malaysia, two common providers of cars had their apps listed – GoCar and SoCar. The former had tie ups with Renault and had new cars such as Captur and Almera (Sunny) while the latter had tie ups with Perodua and Toyota to a large extent and had more exotic cars if required.

While GoCar did not cover fuel for their rental rate, SoCar did. However the story did not end there. In this review, since I rented SoCar, I will talk about only that service. Maybe the next time I would try out GoCar although I do not expect any major differences in terms of what you basically get for your money.

SoCar

There is something you need to know during your registration on both the apps. You need mainly three things.

Your passport copy
Your driving license copy
Your own selfie of you holding your driving license

Please bear in mind that item 3 should be taken in such a way that you stand far away with the license in your hand. If you take a photo too close to you, that would be rejected. I faced multiple rejections before I got it quite right. If you face a rejection its only because both you and you holding the license is not clearly visible. Correct it and you should be through.

Some things about the app

The app is well defined. You find the common options that you expect to see. You can choose source and destination options, timings and even use the map to find where you want the car from. There are also some options for home delivery of the car for some extra money which can be a boon at times.

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The makers of the software have ensured finer options such as clock entry, drop downs, display of car choices are perfectly available on the screen making the app good enough to use to get the job done.

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Car control

This is the best part of the app. You can control the car directly from the app. You can unlock or lock the car from the app itself.

Other than lock and unlock there are also buttons for horn, and hazard lights in case you need the support of these means to locate your car. There are also two icons for roadside assistance and support call if you would need those. Personally I would say that this is the most important screen as far as driving the car around is concerned. I undertook a trip spanning Kuala Lumpur, Cameron Highlands, Penang, Kuala Perlis and back – which was almost 1500kms and never once did I feel anything in this screen did not work properly.

Profile section

The profile section of the app provides options to refer and earn, details on your reservations, payment options, promotions, notices from SoCar and help topics. It also provides an option for contacting support where you can “ASK” questions. You must be aware that the replies take typically a few hours to a few days so it is not that straightforward from the app. Better thing to do will be to call SoCar support if need be.

Promos

The last screen of the app provides promos as per the season and the occassion. These are either discounts or referral based bonuses as seen below. It is upto you whether or not you wish to use these and sometimes there are good deals in terms of discounts.

GoCar

The GoCar app is similar to the SoCar one, but GoCar has aligned with the Renault Nissan alliance in Malaysia so they have more Almera (Sunny) cars and Renault Captur besides the usual local brands and others like Toyota. These cars have rates that do not include fuel rates so its only the rental rate per day. But the car choices are good here as well.

The app is a bit basic compared to SoCar, and since I did not hail a car, I am not sure if the car can be remotely controlled from the app for lock/unlock etc. However I did notice that there were options to look for cars and call their support staff, besides options for making and viewing reservations, payment options, and promotions and deals.

In a later post I will talk about a few nuances of driving rental cars, but for this post I will leave you here with these details so you can take your pick of which car rental service you wish to rent while in Malaysia. Let me know your comments.

How to cover Malaysia in 10 days – full details on a self planned trip

Some history

Ever since 2016 my wife and I decided that we want to do one international trip (though not necessarily one country) every year. We made it to Singapore in 2016, and Dubai in 2017. It was time to explore and take my family to Malaysia this time around in 2018.

The fact that I was working in Malaysia in 2002 and could not get time in the short one year that I stayed there to see many places only meant the urge to go there was pretty strong in order that I could get another chance to cover all the places I did not see this time around.

Also 15 years down the line with a lot of instrastructure and convenience improvements happening around the world, surely the trip would seemingly put me at more ease than earlier on. So it was time to decide how to plan the trip.

My logic for planning trips

I usually do my own booking and planning for everything for my trip. I look through places to visit, I look through multiple sources of reviews, I look through the best times to travel to maximise effeciency and minimize costs at the same time.

Based on these criteria I then use some of my favourite apps to look for flights or hotels and go on with the booking part. Let me share with you how I managed to do that for Malaysia. One of the questions I wanted to answer before I flew there was whether I just wanted to visit Kuala Lumpur (KL) or something more than that which everyone does in a packaged deal – such as Cameron (like our Ooty), or Penang/Langkawi types of ventures. This is when my friend suggested to me that I could not cover all places for just 10 days. I still wanted to be a bit ambitious.

Flights

For flights my preferred destination is Cleartrip portal/app. I am a man of simple UI designs and those kinds of apps that get job done rather than confusing people. Cleartrip has been my favourite for many years and also somewhat the cheapest even though only by a few hundreds of bucks. Still, search is simple, user interface is intuitive, they remember all my values I filled in for previous trips, so booking as such is a breeze. I would still prefer that these sites show the total amount upfront to avoid any confusions but Cleartrip adds the convenience fee only at the end. I believe so also MMT and other sites do the same thing.

The logic for flights is simple. If X is the cost of the flight, X will again be the cost of airport taxes, then about Rs.500 more than 2X would be the insurance cost per passenger, and about another Rs.300 would be the convenience fee. Since we are four of us in my family, I would always be scouting around for deals worth about 15000 Rs. all inclusive for a person. If I am able to get it lower, all the more merrier. Also you need to start at least 2 months prior to the date of travel. Especially so if your travel is on the week during the year end. This is exactly what I did. I booked my travel during September-October for a travel in December.

There are lots of factors which determine what price is shown to you, so be aware of them

how many times did you access that app using your own phone?
are you accessing the app over multiple networks or only at home?
did you also access the portal on the same wifi network or not?
did you try booking via portal or via app (the discounts are more on the app sometimes)
did you access the app continuously with your login ID every day of the week for a week or so
how desperate you are on those dates you want to travel, were you looking for same dates each time or different dates to find it cheaper
are you trying to book all four people at once or only one person at a time

These are some of the things that determine pricing to a large extent. So it is upto you how to outsmart the app. Use different phones or PCs, use office PC / home PC combination, use different locatios, etc. Beyond all this the price won’t vary too much until you start reaching the deadline for booking itself. So you need to be careful of that.

Sometimes the pricing also varies based on location. It is always better to board the journey from a smaller civil airport than a place where the transit passenger density is too high such as metros. But you must also bear in mind that if you want to board at a smaller airport, then it also means if you are living in a metro you need to first go upto the smaller airport by car or train or bus or air, which will set you back by 5000 to 10000 Rs. more. It is important to understand the cost addition to make your decision.

I booked my trip from Trichy to KL just because the trip from Bangalore to KL was 90k and the one from Trichy to KL was 53k. But I also ended up spending about 10k more to go to Trichy and back which you need to understand. This is because you need fuel for driving upto there, some place to stay, food costs, etc. But this time it was still lesser by 30000 Rs. to do this journey. The 30k saved is better spent on the journey elsewhere while in Malaysia. However if you frequently get tired of driving, then this option should not be chosen.

Hotels

For hotels, I believe in booking hotels where Indian restaurants are nearby if possible. I am particular about food and hence this mode of booking. Also among the multiple options that I have tried with respect to hotel bookings (booking.com, trivago.com, tripadvisor.com, makemytrip.com, etc) – I was most comfortable with booking.com for the following reasons. Now before you read below, you may say after reading that some other portal provides you with same or similar options which I will not deny. For me it is about ease of booking that helps me go forward with the portal more than the cost of the hotel itself. The whole experience has to be seamless.

Booking.com provides me with photos of the hotel. The way it would be when I land there. Nothing more, nothing less. It provides the full inclusive prices except the taxes which also it prints an approximate of below the full price just so that I get an idea how much extra it would work out to. It also shows rooms that are going to house two semi-adult kids and two adults in comfort and in line with the policies of the hotel which would not throw a surprise on me when I reach there.

The good thing about booking.com is that it also provides me with passes to attractions which help me skip the line and go into the priority queue at different places. I tried this out at the KL tower, and it was pretty useful although the queue itself was not so much. If it were Petronas towers or for example the Burj Khalifa, then the real benefit of these passes would be well understood. I decided to visit four places on my travel, KL City, Cameron Highlands, Penang Island and Langkawi Island. Based on these choices, I booked the available hotels by either giving my credit card details and in some instances, paying a nominal fee to ensure my booking held good.

You need to be tactical about these bookings and must surely make the trip to ensure best price and avaiability. In the event that you feel you are not going to make the trip, be aware of the last possible date on which you would be able to cancel and always have a reminder around those dates to help you cancel. You will mostly be charged only when you land up at the hotel or a day or two earlier to that depending on the hotel policy. So no worries there.

Visa (Entri Malaysia)

Once you have your air travel and hotels secured, it is time to make the visa. For Malaysia, the visa is called Entri visa and you can choose tourist type and either single or multiple entry based on how your planning has been done. If you plan to say go to Singapore and enter Malaysia again on non transit mode, you will need the multiple entry visa, else a single entry visa would suffice. For the most part, it was a breeze to get the visa, sitting at home, filling in a few details online, paying the visa fee online and taking a print of the resulting visa grant form.

Visa and fees

paying online is safe no issues with that
indicate your travel date properly so that the visa would be granted for a month from there for tourist option
choose the visa type properly (single or multiple entry visa)
always ensure, double check, proof read and ask others to read all the fields you enter properly for correctness, a little time spent on this will save you lots of trouble at the immigration counter
if any data is filled wrongly then you may face rejection when you enter malaysia and this can put you into lots of trouble, so take care of this.

The visa fee was about Rs.1500/- per head, so for a family of four 6000 in total. Be advised about this additional cost in addition to flight charges.

Luggage fee

You must also be aware that all flights do not offer the standard free 7kg cabin and 20kg check in luggage options free. In fact some flight costs do not even allow one cabin bag. In my case I opted for standard 7kg for each of us as cabin luggage, and additionally paid for 20kg x 2 suitcases for check in. It was a deliberate choice since I knew I will be carrying that much of weight already.

For all you know you will return with an additional 20kg over and above this, so bear these in mind. The charges were about 700-1000 extra per 20kg baggage, so depending on your plan you will need to pay accordingly at the time of flight booking.

Given you completed until this step, the only other things pending are to plan what you want to visit while in the country, and how you are going to travel there. I will cover more on this in my next post.

The Desert Safari desert camp experience (with videos)

In my last couple of posts I discussed the buggy rides and dune bashing experiences in Dubai. To conclude the journey in this post I will take you through the evening camp event.
After the sun down we settled into the evening camp for an evening filled with a short performance and dinner. The camp has a restroom area, and some stalls for food, henna, and hookah facilities for the visitor. As is the case all over Dubai, you are treated like a VIP if you have the money. The more the money you pay, the better the treatment. This is evident in everything – from the vehicles that get you to the camp, to the food offered, to the seating, to special photographs with eagles, etc. The food for VIPs is unlimited and is served at the place you are seated, and typically with a quanity much more than you need.

It is all about satisfying guests as per what they pay but I sincerely wish the people providing all these facilities do think of the needy as well. I am a strong believer that food must not be wasted and the situation at the desert camp is somewhat on the contrary.

Performances (fire and belly dance)

Coming to the performances, there were two performances one by a male and the other one by a female. The dance by the male was something involving colourful clothes and tricks with fire – the whole stage is lit up with the light and its a spectacle to watch and enjoy. There is a lot of spinning in the dance and also doing lots of tasks when that goes on which is in itself not so easy a task. You can take a look at the video below

The performance by the female is also one of the main reasons people sign up for the camp evening event – the famous belly dance. And for those of you who think it is very sexy and the likes – let me tell you one thing – it is simply not easy for a normal person to do this dance. Even for the talented in this field it is an enormous level of energy burn and the level of composure and fitness needed to finish off with this for a whole 15-20 minutes is nothing short of humongous. You can take a look at a part of the dance in the video below. One look at the hair spin the lady gives will give you a dizzy feeling.

Food options

As you would have guessed, the food options for vegetarians is pretty minimal. At best there is the sweet (like a jamun) dipped in date sauce. Add some salads made from veggies, and some really bad mixed rice (not the biryani types) and of course Pepsi/coke & some dessert in the desert that gets over even before it starts being served! You know what I’m talking about now.

Toilet facilities

In one word : SAD.
In many words the toilets aren’t maintained properly. There doesn’t seem to be proper drainage system making the whole place stink. It’s really bad and the management of the place can certainly look for better bio toilet options.

Other facilities

There are other things to do at the camp. Like a bit of camel ride, or smoking some hookah. Plenty of coke on the floor. If you are willing to pay more you get corn etc. There are obviously some mehndi stalls which help you to sport some good designs on your hands or feet. There are also photo opps with Arabic clothing which would cost you a bomb.

Conclusions

The entire desert safari experience is a one off experience that will let you enjoy the desert in its raw and full glory. It will give you a glimpse of some fantastic buggy riding, some scintillating dune bashing that’ll leave you mesmerised. Further the glorious sunsets and the evening performances will leave you dazzled at the end of the journey. Although you will be tired while returning home, rest assured these set of adventures will be etched in your memory forever.

The desert safari sand dune bashing experience – an event that you willforever remember!

Some history …

In my previous post you would have read about the buggy ride experience that we had at the Desert Safari tour. The day continued towards the late afternoon when the sun went down a bit and after the buggy rides, we rode our hummer onward to the dune bashing area.

Dune bashing landscape

When you reach a certain region of the desert you can notice that the landscape automatically changes to drifting sands which form small mounds and the whole region looks a bit hilly with some small mounds leading to larger bigger slopes. By the time our earlier buggy ride was over, the driver had by then reduced the air/nitrogen in the tyres of our hummer substantially which made the car adaptable to being driven in the sand.

With lesser air/nitrogen in the tyres the hummer suddenly swerved from the main highway right into the sand dunes. And before we knew it, the famous “Boushret Kheir” song from Hussain Al Jassmi, the Arab world’s proclaimed artist, was rocking the hummer already. And then began the roller coaster ride.

For first timers this would be nerve wracking a bit, but you must understand that these drivers drive here every single day of the year mostly and they are extremely well trained.

All you need to do, just like me is to hold on to the vehicle and enjoy the ride. Of course I was terrified of having a slide into the sand mounds on the hummer and I did not get a chance to drive it either due to obvious reasons of safety. But then after few seconds it was just pure joy. Up and down and up and down a convoy of our hummer with a few other Toyota land cruisers dotted the sand dune landscape for a whole 10-15 minutes till we cried in joy just wanting more of that over and over again.

Sunset point

After the mood changing sand dune bashing was over we reached what is known as a sun set point. Here we can spend a while to see the sun go down although we needed to get away before it became too dark lest we could not see where we were going.

It is not recommended to drive here alone during night and it is very easy for someone to get lost here. And without food or water you are inviting trouble. At this sunset point, we can see how the wind shifts the sands from one place to another. If you are the types who enjoys the small things in life then you will enjoy this.

Camel camp

From here we drove to the camel camp where we spent a while looking at camels feeding and being taken care of. It is not much of stuff to see but you do get to see a camp overlooking the highway from where you can see stunning desert sunsets like nowhere else.

After this most interesting drive was done, the hummer tyres were inflated again to full capacity and we made our way to the final part of the evening – the desert safari camp for an evening filled with food and performances. Look forward to my next post where I will bring to you glimpses of those events!

Stunning views of the sunset across the highway …

A journey to Sheikh Zayed Mosque, Abu Dhabi (plus tips on do’s and dont’s while visiting the place)

Introduction to the monument

We landed in Dubai via Oman Air pretty early into the morning. If you wish to read about that experience, you can click here. Most of the next morning was taking rest due to a lengthy and unnecessary air travel which I will explain in another blog post.

The Sheikh Zayed Mosque is about a 45 minutes drive from the Dubai International Airport, it is located at Abu Dhabi which is the capital city of United Arab Emirates.

We went on an afternoon drive with a private vehicle to the mosque. At the time of arrival there were not many people there and we could get parking pretty easily but the fact remains that too in the evening hours getting parking could be a bit troublesome.

There are a lot of people who visit the mosque in the evening and the place gets pretty crowded there. Still there is ample space around the mosque and it never feels very congested.

Features of the mosque

This Mosque can sometimes hold up to more than 41000 people for prayers at any given point of time. This Mosque is well known for its minarets and the architectural beauty it encompasses through its construction.

Built between 1996 and 2007 this mosque was designed by a Syrian architect, and employed about 3000 people and 38 companies to complete the construction.

World’s largest carpet

The carpet in the main prayer hall is supposedly over 60000 square feet in dimension. The carpet itself took around two years to complete and was done by more than 1000 workers.

The world’s third largest chandelier

This Mosque has seven imported chandeliers from Germany including the world’s largest that incorporates millions of Swarovski crystals.

The chandeliers are awe inspiring and people usually slow down to spend some time staring at the beauty of the architecture. At one point in the hall all the three chandeliers can be seen one behind the other.

Highlights about the mosque

The minarets of the mask and the central courtyard make the mask and astounding beauty to look from far away. No matter whichever angle you are looking at it from, you can never seem to get enough of seeing the mosque.

There are wide walkways with small lights on both sides which illuminate the pathway during the night. There is also an area where there are small fountains which make it very nice to see and spend some time around, specifically for kids.

As you enter the main hall there are cupboards and shelves where you can leave your footwear before going inside (socks are permitted). In general most people maintain silence and are busy with photography since photos are allowed within the mosque as an exception.

There are toilets around the mosque and specifically facilities for women are better.

Photographic opportunities

This monument presents a lot of photographic opportunities for the photo enthusiast. The gardens & the fountains lighting the monument with the sky behind, the afternoon and night views of this mosque and a view of the mosque from the highway are some excellent photographic opportunities.

You don’t really need an SLR for enjoying all of this even a mobile camera would suffice. All photos of this mosque in this blog post are taken with the Samsung Galaxy S7, the best in the camera department (until the Google Pixel trumped it)

One can easily spend up to two hours in this environment enjoying the beauty of the place.

Do’s and don’ts while visiting this mosque

It is important to bear in mind some of the regulations before entering his mask so that you are not surprised when you arrive there. This part of the blog post will try to explain as much as possible how to be prepared while going to see this place.

[ ] security: since this is a monument of national importance there is a layer of security around the mosque and at the mosque entrance which you need to clear before entering inside. The security will do a baggage scan and also offer the traditional burqahs so that people can cover themselves completely.
[ ] it is essential that women are covered from head to toe and as long as you are wearing a dress which is like that it should be okay. Even for Men shorts are NOT permitted and it is preferable that you wear full pants and shirts. It’s not really clear when the people at the security might ask you questions about your dressing but generally if you are fully covered it should be fine.
[ ] Women do get all sizes of burqah at security entry point so it is not a big deal to be worried about.
[ ] as far as I understood food is not allowed into the mosque so it’s OK to just carry a water bottle or so with yourself and keep the rest of the food in your car for later.
[ ] Since the whole visit is going to take less than two hours you are not going to be so tired that you need food very often.
[ ] there are no entry fees for getting into this mosque it’s free for everybody.
[ ] try to follow the queue system as much as possible where applicable and try to remain silent while going about taking photographs. This whole place is very elegant when it is silent and you should enjoy the beauty in such a situation rather than making noise.
[ ] stop by the lawns or the fountains and take some rest by sitting down whereever you feel like nearby.
[ ] don’t forget to see the carpet and the Chandeliers, these are most important parts of the inside of the Mosque.
[ ] you can leave between 2 and 3 p.m from Dubai so that it’s a good one hour drive to reach the mosque
[ ] sometimes the mosque may be crowded so be patient
[ ] you will not be allowed to go into the central area of the Courtyard so stay away from there and just follow the pathways. There are plenty of photo Ops even there among the pathways
[ ] as far as possible do not touch any part of the monument but just enjoy the beauty while walking past.
[ ] inside the main prayer hall it is extremely important for women to keep their head covered and hence they should ensure that the clothing does not fall of the head to avoid reminders from the staff. It is against the religion for women to show the head within the prayer hall so please take care of this and stay clear of this controversy.
[ ] it is essential that you keep moving forward from the entrances as there are enough places to stand and take photos from rather than crowd the entrance itself.
[ ] finally when you exit the mosque it is likely that lot of people have come in so you need to remember where you put your car in order to find it more easily.
[ ] when you exit you are supposed to give back the clothing given by the staff upon entry.
[ ] in general when questioned by the staff be courteous and be specific with your answers.
[ ] the big bus abu dhabi has a stop here in case you are opting to come by bus so they have you covered for this destination.

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