Brief of our Munnar visit - > Click Here

Now coming to the details. When we are going on a trip - purpose would be either to roam around or just be one place and relax. Our plan to munnar is to unwind , relax and roam to some extent. When it is to unwind, the palce you are going to stay matters alot. Always habituated to staying in the rest houses provided by my employer, I stay very rarely in Hotels/resorts. So I always search on internet for long before choosing one. On our train to madurai from chennai, my only work was to search on Mobile for the best place to stay in munnar. So many sites ( i mean websites) - tripadvisor, booking.com, agoda , makemytrip .. list goes on. I spent lot of time reading the reviews, filtering by various options and finally arrived on the choice of Mount Club Resort, chinnakanal. 

It is always better not to spend weekends sleeping all the day. Instead you can go to a sleepy town  On One such weekend when at Vadodara, we thought of exploring the unexplored- DAMAN (UNION TERRITORY). When proposed our group of three were skeptical, because generally people don't know DAMAN as a tourist destination. To encourage people further, I added we can cover silvassa also.

How the tour went on, read further ...

Being born and brought up in (undivided) Andhra Pradesh, I haven't heard that a place called Gooty existed in Andhra Pradesh. It was not until 2008, when my first posting (Indian Railways) was in Gooty - I came to know the correct pronounciation as 'Gutti' rather than what looks like rhyming with tourist Parasdise OOTY. My assosciation continued with Gooty and Guntakal Diesel Loco Sheds for four years from 2008 to 2012 - both in the Anantpur district of Andhra Pradesh. Gooty and Guntakal both railway towns are separated by 30Kms and connected by one of the nice roads of Andhra (rather India).  When I used to ply on the Gooty - Guntakal Highway my attention was always drawn by a rocky structure high up the hill in Gooty. That is the Gooty Fort at around 300m above the sea level. Cupious with the absence of any multistoreyed buildings, except a few duplex houses - the Fort could be seen from quiet long distances in and around Gooty.

Borobudur is one of the greatest Buddhist monuments in the world. Founded by a king of the Saliendra dynasty, it was built to honour the glory of both the Buddha and its founder, a true king Bodhisattva. The name Borobudur is believed to have been derived from the Sanskrit words vihara Buddha uhr, meaning the Buddhist monastery on the hill. Borobudur temple is located in Muntilan, Magelang, and is about 42 km from Yogyakarta city... 

It’s almost a decade the World’s tallest standing Buddha’s statues of Bamiyan were obliterated…An incident which can't be justified on any account . It's inherent human nature to create and destory...

Ancient archaeological remains have been thrust into the cruel world of today's seemingly endless conflicts — the ever-changing aims and alliances of international politics, religions dueling on the world stage, and the ironic trade-off of providing aid to conserve the material heritage of the past but not to preserve the lives of modern inheritors of that past. Arrayed against the tolerant and measured messages of Buddhism, the quagmire of the "Bamiyan Massacre" was perplexing at best.

The 34th session of the World Heritage Committee meeting in Brasilia since 25 July was finished on 2nd of august, its consideration of nominations for the World Heritage List . Meeting under the Chairmanship of the Minister of Culture of Brazil, João Luiz da Silva Ferreira, the Committee inscribed 21 new sites, including 15 cultural, 5 natural and 1 mixed properties. Three countries, Kiribati, Marshall Islands and Tajikistan, had sites added for the first time.