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The Mystery of Angkor Wat Temple – How I Experienced it
I have a thing for ruins. I don’t quite understand why. Something about the echoes of History I think. When I see a ruin, I try to imagine what it looked like in its prime. The years of neglect fall away and in my mind’s eye, I see the place come to life. I picture people inhabiting the place, going about their daily lives, oblivious of the fact that it would one day lay barren. I think of the activities that could have taken place there, the laughter that echoed in its walls, the rage it endured, the tears it absorbed and the secrets it held. I see the sunrays…
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Our 12-Day Vietnam Itinerary: A Budget Trip for Two
Last updated: September 2026 TL;DR: Our 12-Day Vietnam Itinerary at a Glance To help you decide if you want to read the whole thing, here’s a gist of what you’ll get in this blog: We spent 12 days travelling from North to South Vietnam in April 2024. Our Vietmam itinerary route: Kolkata → Hanoi → Hoi An → Da Nang → Ho Chi Minh City → Kolkata Day Location Activity Day 1 Hanoi Walking tourThang Long Puppet showHoan Kiem lake Day 2 Halong Bay Day tour Day 3 Ninh Binh Day tour Day 4 Hanoi Ho Chi Minh MuseumTemple of LiteratureTrain Street Day 5 Hoi An Fly to Da Nang…
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Forest Stay Near Kolkata: I Stayed Three Days & Three Nights in the Neora Jungle Camp
In early 2023, I stayed with my family in the Neora Jungle Camp Resort, located deep within the Gorumara Forest near Kolkata, West Bengal for three days and three nights. Read till the end of this blog to discover my forest stay experience filled with two unexpected wild elephant encounters, hikes to the Neora river and experiences at Chapramari jungle safari. I also talk about slowing down in Nature. Please note, this is not a conventional Gorumara Forest guide. It’s my personal experience of staying at the Neora Jungle Camp Resort and how I spent my three days there. Neora Jungle Camp: Our Forest Stay Near Kolkata at a Glance…
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12 Days in Vietnam Cost Us 1.7L INR for 2 People from India. Say What!
Last Updated: September 2026 Our 12-day Vietnam trip cost ₹1,71,500 for 2 people travelling from India (Kolkata) in April 2024. That included return and domestic flights, hotels, food, transportation, visas, and tours across Hanoi, Hoi An, Da Nang, and Ho Chi Minh City. In this blog, I’m sharing our actual expenses, how we planned the trip ourselves, and what the same budget could get you in 2027. It has now been five months since I’ve returned from Vietnam. But it feels like yesterday. Vietnam has that effect on you. Or maybe it’s because it was my longest vacation. Vietnam had been on my radar since 2019. That’s precisely a year…
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Our Biggest Travel Mishaps | Part 2
Sometimes the best-laid plans can come undone – especially in travel. When that happens, even though it gets really stressful at that moment, it gets funnier with time. Tathagata and I are meticulous planners. We plan everything down to the T so that there are no surprises that we can’t handle. When we went to Pattaya for our honeymoon in 2018, it was our first trip abroad. So we were extra careful. We went over the entire plan a million times to make sure we weren’t missing anything. We double-checked our tickets. Virtually checked out pre-booked activities. All the transits in between were accounted for. Bags packed and re-packed. All…
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Our Biggest Travel Mishaps | Part 1
They say – The only real failures are the ones from which we learn nothing. They also said – You gotta fail at something to have a good laugh later. Actually no one said that. But you know it’s true. And we took it seriously on all our travels. In fact, we’ve jumped on the travel-mishap bandwagon way too many times than we care to remember. I put up a poll on my Insta story recently asking you guys whether you would like to read about some of these mishaps. I received a unanimously positive response. And here we are. When you are on vacation, every second becomes a story.…
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COVID Caught Up With Us – Two Survivors’ Tale
It has now been a month and a half since my first symptom. I remember the day before vividly. It was a regular working day. I had wrapped up work by 9 pm or so, dinner by 11, watched a little TV and then went to sleep by 12:00 am. Everything was fine till then. The next thing I know was waking up at around 7:00 am next morning with body ache and a throat irritation. I sprung up on bed with a déjà vu of my dengue experience last November. As my sleepy self tried to find its bearings, a number of things started running through my foggy brain.…
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Darjeeling Couple Trip: The Story of My Love Affair With Darjeeling
This is not a conventional Darjeeling itinerary. This is my personal experience exploring Darjeeling as a couple. You will get to know about our quiet, slow walks and wonderful discoveries along the way. Experiencing Darjeeling as a Couple: What Made Us Fall in Love With Darjeeling This was our second visit to Darjeeling. The first time we went with family and this time, we went to Darjeeling as a couple. Since we had covered the top spots in our last visit, we weren’t interested in ticking places off a list this time. We wanted to wander, get a little lost, stop when something caught our attention and let the day…
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A Family Picnic by the River
Sorry I’ve been AWOL here for some time now. There has been a lot going on the last couple of weeks. Pending bank work, family medical troubles, delayed appointments and so on. You know the drill. Outstanding responsibilities, anyone? I’ve been feeling all sorts of burnouts from that. Mental exhaustion is a bugger, guys. While that’s no excuse for my absence here, I decided to temporarily switch off my low priority engagements to keep my sanity intact. Now that things are beginning to fall into place, I found this short pocket of time to write a long-pending blog post. Many of you who follow me on Instagram or Facebook know…
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The Great Shopping Detox – I Went a Year Without Buying Clothes | Takeaways
I have been a legit shopaholic since the beginning of my career. I remember burning up my entire salary on clothes, shoes, bags and what not. I went full-on Rebecca Bloomwood on my wardrobe. Who else can relate to – “My heart never beats as fast as it does when it sees a ‘reduced by 50 percent’ sign”? Every piece of clothing on the rack or on my mobile screen looked like something I needed. I never seemed to have enough. You know how it is. Those sales Emails and Facebook ads made me weak in the knees. Hitting the ‘Buy Now’ button felt like a sugar rush. A new…
