Top 5 holidays for winter 2007

(Hogmanay in Edinburgh – photo from stuckonscotland)

So you have done well this year. The bonus has been good, your spouse is making good money & the stocks you invested in have zoomed up with the index. It is time to reward yourselves. How about a Mont Blanc Pen? Or maybe a set of fancy wheels? Or maybe a ballooning trip over the African veldt? or book yourself for one of the first sub-orbital flights with Virgin Galactic?

In my regular conversations with users & members of HolidayIQ, many of whom have the classic ‘successful’ profile I outlined in the first para, I now find that unique experiences are taking over from fancy products as the real self-indulgences. And it is clear that in the early 21st century India, unique travel has become THE way of self expression of the successful. Move aside, Mont Blanc & Maserati. Welcome to Masai Mara & the Moon (soon, hopefully).

Over the last few years, I have given up on business travel and got into some serious holidaying. So I get asked this question quite a lot – what are your suggestions for a holiday this season? So, in answer to the key existential angst of our time, here is my personal list of 5 great travel escapes for Winter 2007.

• Watch the whales migrate at Byron Bay, Australia. One of the world’s most scenic spots, home to a great ‘littoral rainforest’ is also the setting for one of nature’s amazing events.
• Soak in the atmosphere of true ‘ancient India’ on the banks of the Betwa and Maheshwar, ancient rivers of Madhya Pradesh. Stay in classily refurbished palaces & forts right on the waters edge.
• Bring in the New Year at one of the classiest cities on earth. Be a part of Edinburgh’s Hogamanay, from 29th Dec 2007 to 1st jan 2008
• Do a ‘Cantonese crawl’ – explore haute chinese cuisine starting in Hong Kong, Shenzen & Guangzhou and taking in various parts of the chinese coast around the south china sea
• Scuba dive in the pristine coral island of Agatti, Lakshadweep. Discover the million shades that lie between Blue & Green.

6500 Indian resorts, hotels, home-stays & guesthouses

HolidayIQ has now listed 6500 resorts, hotels, home-stays & guest-houses across India. About 40% of these properties have got reviews from actual guests who stayed there, which is amazing for our country. This is simply because of the consistent hard work so many travel-crazy folk have lovingly put into this over the last 3 years. I still remember early 2004, when this project started as India Resorts Survey – a travel-lovers initiative set up by a small group of holiday junkies. It has really grown up now and it cannot be easily replicated.

The count of accommodation options at the major tourism states are: Goa Hotels – 384, Kerala Hotels – 642, Rajasthan Hotels – 561, Himachal Hotels - 381

For the bigger cities, the count is : Delhi – 198, Mumbai – 176, Bangalore – 171

Out of this list, 1157 India hotels are in a mountain or a hill setting, 554 are Beach hotels in India, 161 are wildlife hotels and 92 give the traveller an inland waterfront experience.

Byron Bay

Seems this is the best-known “undiscovered” place in Australia – so I decided on a dekko. In any case I had wanted to try out Virgin Blue, so booked with them for the one hour flight north from Sydney to Ballina/Byron Bay.

Byron Bay used to be a hang out for hippies, so it still retains the charms of an ageing hippy. Long hair & wispy beards complement a distinct undertone of vaguely “eastern” influences. But since the 80s, yuppies and international back-packers have discovered Byron Bay. So, yoga classes and spiritual sessions mix easily with hordes of surfers and whale-watchers.

Almost everyone I met in Byron Bay was relaxed & friendly. It could be that I went in the Winter there and without too many tourists, locals had a chance to stand & converse. Or it could be that I had 3 days of no work all, making me a relaxed person to talk to. Either way, they were friendly.

The sea in Byron Bay has this extraordinarily blue colur of water. Jutting into the water is the cliff face of the Cape Byron Headland Reserve. Hiking up & down the trails of the Reserve, along the seaface, with the water on one side and dense tropical coastal forest on the other is something I would earnestly recommend.

Byron Bay is the eastern-most point of Australia and a great place to watch for whales, while they migrate to & back from The Great Barrier Reef.

I spent a blissful 3 days in Byron Bay, wandering up and down. Couldnt get to meet Olivia Newton John though; she owns a resort there and was in town while I was there. Munching battered fish & chips in The Fish Heads was great too. Sure beats getting my head chewed by the rush hour traffic in Bangalore.

Click here & here to get a couple of interesting perspectives on Byron Bay. Or click here for all my posts on beach vacations.

Also, here is a Byron Bay video I found in Youtube

Unnatural Act

Hungry Jack’s as the name suggests is the trencherman’s fast food. Get a massive bite of beef in a bun and off you go. Except, I didnt go. I decided to commit that most unnatural of acts – sit in an early 21st century fast-food counter in Sydney, Australia & reflect.

The experience was a bit like meditating underneath a moving train – at best an acquired taste. A steady stream of gaunt, famished faces walked in, rapidly chomped and walked out, all in a blur.

So, after a half hour of training I gave up. Modern capitalist society, as Paul Theroux mentions somewhere, practises various forms of natural selection on the reflective. Hungry Jack’s is clearly part of the conspiracy.

Great hamburgers though.

Karnataka : India’s best tourism destination?

(Karnataka map from Totalkannada)

From the rolling, cool country of Coorg to the azure blue seas around Karwar just south of Goa & Maravanthe just north of kerala, from the elephant & tiger reserves of Kabini & Nagarhole in the Nilgiris Biosphere to the historical poetry of World Heritage Sites such as Hampi & Pattadakkal, Karnataka is a state with a hell of a lot of tourism oomph. Unfortunately, the state tourism bureaucracy has managed to keep this one of India’s better-kept secrets.

In spite of which, of late, tourism has blossomed here only because of the desperate need of Bangalore‘s denizens to escape the city on weekends.

While Karnataka’s tourism future has Bangalore as its possible saviour, what about the other strong potential tourism states, such as Orissa or Madhya Pradesh?

Oh, and another thing. Talking of Kannada oomph – Aishwarya Rai & Shilpa Shetty, the 2 most-est current hotties of Bollywood & Deepika Padukone the babe-in-the-making are all from Karnataka. Coincidence or what?

Click here to read all my posts on Karnataka >>

Best Hotels by Travel + Leisure : Where is Aman?

Another ‘Best Of’ list. Travel + leisure magazine has announced the best of tourism for 2007. Included are the Best Hotels, Best Cities, Best Islands, Best Airlines, Best Cruises, Best Car-rentals, Best Tour Operators and so on.

The big Indian story of course is that the Oberoi Udaivilas comes in as the Best Hotel in the world. The really interesting news for the cognoscenti is the absence of any Aman Resort in the World’s top 100 list for 2007. Intrigued, I checked out the 2006 list – Amanpuri had come in at a low 72nd rank last year. Is this a reflection on the properties of Aman or on the readers of T+L?

Nok Nok Thailand

The Indians are coming! And far from circling the wagons, the Thais seem to be rolling out the red carpet.

India’s Free trade Agreement with Thailand is set to happen this year. Already, Thailand is among a bunch of neighbours that have instituted visa-on-arrival for Indians. And now, come the low-cost airlines. Nok Air the hitherto domestic Thai airline, has just gone international with the launch of its Bangalore-Bangkok flight. I did a random search for prices. In end July or early August a family of 4 can get return tickets from Bangalore to Bangkok at about Rs 39,000/-, which is lower cost than flying Bangalore – Delhi – Bangalore.

Given the broad parity in currency values, the low-cost of flights, the compelling prices of accommodation in various parts of Thailand & most importantly, the general tourist-friendliness of the place, I do expect the country to get a sustained increase in Indian tourist arrivals over the next few years.

Here is ad from Nok Air. Since it involves a puppy swallowing a credit card, I presume it is a good ad – cannot make out anything else, as it is in the Thai language.

The world has two views

Just finished reading a recent post from a Kuwaiti blogger. The lady is evidently western-educated, most-likely western-reared and the post was about watching Indian movies. She does not like Indian movies and is forced to occasionally watch them, because all her friends in Kuwait do. Here is a classic case of the western sensibility at odds with the new, increasingly confident, Asian ‘feel’. As many of us have heard by now, Rajnikant, the Tamil movie superstar has a loyal following in Japan – another instance of an Asian-Asian cultural nexus that bye-passes the west.

I have noticed a similar dichotomy in user opinion on travel. On HolidayIQ, a lot of traveler comments are from Indians. I now find it really interesting to compare these comments with stuff on predominantly ‘western’ sites such as Tripadvisor & Igougo. The difference is palpable. For the same destination and often for the same hotel, reviews on HolidayIQ are quite different from the traveler views in these other sites. The sensibilities are different & therefore, so are the opinions.

More than anything else, this brings home to me the reality that the world is no more west-centric; the multi-polar globe has arrived. The old certainities built on a hierarchy that puts everything ‘western’ on top is clearly under threat. Young, confident & well-off people across vast swathes of Asia & (eventually) Africa will increasingly determine a new set of realities.

It is in this world that Indian films and Indian tourism stand to gain. After all, the sensibilities of the billion (largely young) people of India seem to find a resonance in many parts of the globe. All we need to do is to conscientiously service this demand.

For HolidayIQ, I think the opportunity to create a pan-Asian viewpoint on travel is, I believe, very real.

World’s best restaurants

The Restaurant magazine has listed Bukhara at Delhi’s Maurya Sheraton among the world’s top 50 restaurants and the best restaurant in Asia. I have done my rounds of Bukhara & yes, it is a pretty good restaurant; but the best in Asia? Proves once again that nifty ‘selling’ is a key component of such awards.

I consider myself a foodie – for me nothing in a restaurant is as important as its food. Not the ambience, not the location, nothing else. Which is why I believe that the best food in the world is still authentic street food. So, maybe Bukhara does stew its Dal for 18 hours & maybe Bill Clinton could’nt have enough of it. But for an authentic “royal” experience of food in Northern India, I would much rather trawl the streets of Delhi or Lucknow.

Incidentally, India is one among the 15 countries to figure in the top 50 list. France tops with 12 restaurants in the top 50.

Orissa – the next big thing?

Two separate items in this morning’s Economic Times caught my eye. One was a news item announcing a massive road infrastructure project in Orissa to carry iron ore to the new Posco steel project. Anyone who has spent some time in Orissa (I did my time of about 6 months, 20 years ago) understands the criminal neglect of this state that is hopefully now getting slowly rectified. Another was an advertisement by the Orissa government inviting developers for luxury hotels on Shamuka beach in Puri. Seems Orissa is waking up.

It is my firm conviction that Orissa is one of India’s jewels in tourism and needs lots of attention. Is there any Indian (or for that matter anybody interested in India) who can ignore the land of Ashoka, the Konark temples or Lord Jagannath? But more to the point, Orissa’s virgin beaches & multi-hued landscape can be developed into buzzing centres of water sports and other holiday activities – important to all those Indians below 35 years of age, for whom activities on a holiday are important (going by activities offered, all other Indian destinations except Goa, seem to think that tourists are geriatric, has-beens who need only peace & quiet – sorry, this is a pet peeve of mine).

So, is Orissa finally going to happen? Wait and watch..

Australian Outback

I am particularly fascinated by the Aussie Outback and surf often for vignettes. Here is the latest I found – a video. Not what you’d expect..

Niche, influential, defiant

These 3 words were written recently to describe both Adrian Zecha, the founder of the Aman Resorts chain and Steve Jobs of Apple. If I have benchmarks, they are it. Their businesses revolve around building lifestyle services created out of a wonderful personal aesthetic.

Obviously, neither of them run the biggest businesses in their chosen fields. Apple is so much smaller than Microsoft – but, given the Mac, the ipod & the iphone, can there be any comparison? Similarly, all the rooms of all the resorts owned by the resolutely niche Aman Resorts can probably be fitted ito a large chain hotel in one place. But again, no product in world hospitality can be easily compared to an Aman.

Sorry to gush – but that is the way I would want to make products – as things of beauty.

Gates vs Jobs : check out this cool animation video

Choosing an Island vacation

Here is a neat ad made by Barbados Tourism. Like all successful modern destination marketing ads, this goes beyond the simplistic use of superlatives and long nature shots. it obviously has all of that – but it also has a clear storyline that appeals to the well-heeled, well-educated, travellers who are rapidly becoming THE market segment everyone wants.

Would want all our tourism marketing organisations to learn a few lessons from stuff like this.

Buffalo vs Lion vs Crocodile

If you have the slightest interest in wildlife, check out this video I found on Youtube. In additon to amazing scene unfolding in front of your eyes, listen to the comments of the people around the camera. All in all, a perfect vignette of the world of animals; all animals including homo sapiens.

Apparently took place in the Kruger National Park.

Medusa the temptress has a step-sister..

Remember how sea-farers of antiquity fell prey to the temptress Medusa? Well, a little known mythological fact is that Medusa had a younger step-sister who mysteriouly disappeared at birth (a bit like Nirupa Roy who was forever losing Amitabh Bachan or Sashi Kapoor at birth all across the 70s). Many centuries later, Nostradamus – yes, him again – predicted the imminent reappearance of the lost step-sister in a little island in the middle of the ocean, bearing chinense, a temptation of unknown evil.

Last night, the step-sister appeared before me and she gave me what I now realise, was chinense. With less than 8 hours left before I am carried away to the mystery island never to return, I am fighting time to set out the secret of this evil temptation for all to be-ware.

The step-sister is called Lucia, the evil chinense is red and comes out of a small bottle!

And the extent of its evil power has finally been found – somewhere between 150,000 to 325,000 scoville units.

Weekend breaks

As the monsoon sets in and summer holidays become a memory, urban India goes into the short-break mode. Soon HolidayIQ will be flooded with users trying to find weekend getaways from various cities. When we put togethe the Weekend Getaway option on HolidayIQ, we did not anticipate the huge following this feature would get.

The Weekend Getaway feature on HolidayIQ lets users find holiday options around 18 cities of India. The best part is these can be searched by distance from the city, upto a distance of 350 kilometres. I have great fun playing with this feature even when I am not planning a holiday. Dreaming.

Here is the list of 18 Indian cities from which weekend breaks can be found on HolidayIQ:

Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Chandigarh, Chennai, Cochin, Coimbatore, Delhi, Hyderabad, Jaipur, Kolkata, Lucknow, Mangalore, Mumbai, Mysore, Nagpur, Pune, Thiruvananthapuram, Vizag

Slow Travel

Next time. For me, these two words have saved many a trip from degenerating into catatonic nothingness. An initial experience was in Paris many years ago. I was a rookie on my first visit to Europe and with me was a person who had lived over a month in Paris & who wanted to help me “do Paris”. Phew. For two days we whizzed about from place to place, quickly glancing at a famous painting here and running through a famous garden there. (If you are old enough to remember Lil’ Dot and her Uncle Rush, you will get the picture). Anyway, it was on the 3rd day that I caught my breath, stood on the kerb and decided to become immobile. I wanted to “absorb” – I would see the remaining sights “next time”. After that my trip improved although the relationship quickly went downhill.

Slow travel is catching on across the world and is steadily creating inroads among Indians too. My friends in the trade tell me that the “10 nights / 12 country packaged tour” of Europe, so popular with many of us in the last few years, is slowly giving way to a more independant & leisurely form of travel.

Yes, let us not hurry. For, there is always the next time.

Here is a video of a bicycle trip – a great way to slow down & connect with the host land

Royal Time Machine

Finally. I used to often wonder why we never have a city bus tour that goes beyond the mundane. Here it is (or at least that is the promise). The Royal Time Machine is a tour operator that has started luxe tour coaches for sight-seeing in Delhi. They have pulled out the usual 50 odd seats from the bus and transformed it into a 19 seater with interiors done in Mughal/Rajput motifs. All of this does not come cheap. All their tours cost about Rs 7000/- per person. The good news is that they offer booze (including cocktails) as part of this price. They promise to soon roll out this service in all other prominent Indian tourism destinations.

Now, we need to see whether they can deliver consistently on their promise.

Cruise city

(Here is an intro video of a one of the world’s largest cruise ships – not the one I was on)

I was on a big cruise ship on the busy Caribbean circuit last month. With almost 3500 guests & 1100 staff members and a power plant generating a massive 62 Megawatts, the thing is a veritable floating city. Facilities were appropriately over the top. 1800 rooms, 3 theatres with the largest seating 1400, 8 fine-dining restaurants, 3 swimming pools, a casino, spa, art auctions, golf lessons, duty free shopping, stand-up comics, the list goes on & on…

This was my first cruise – so here are the first impressions. Irrespective of the great number of blandishments on board, the real fun is in going ashore. As I had suspected all along, the idea of travel without connecting with alien cultures & people is not too much fun for me. Dont get me wrong – I loved the indulgent luxury of the ship. It is just that I cannot handle it for too many days.

But on the other hand, the plus points of your room moving with you as you travel to different places are hard to ignore. For instance, you can unpack and store away your stuff just once and then bother about it only when you are ready to disembark. For those of us weary of too many hotel room nights and packing/unpacking sessions, this is absolutely seductive.

Maybe, smaller cruise ships with a more intimate atmosphere and tailor-made shore itineraries are more my thing. For instance cruises by Seabourn & Silversea.

Swimming with turtles

Tried it in Barbados a few days ago – highly recommended. The day after the World Cup final, we hit the Paynes Bay beach in western Barbados. One of the attractions there was snorkelling with sea turtles. The routine goes like this : you clamber aboard a boat that takes you a little way into the sea, you pull on your snorkel and fins and jump into the water, the boatman throws chunks of fish into the water and soon you find a number of very large turtles swimming gracefully around you. Awesome.

The last time I saw sea turtles at such close quarters was in Lakshadweep. These creatures that look so ungainly on land are a delight to watch in the sea as they glide effortlessly past. They belong there and we dont.

Here is a video I found on Youtube which should give you an idea of what I am talking about