ManaManeNa

Location of Cape Tribulation We visited Cape Tribulation in the month of June, 2012 to escape one of those dark cold winters of Melbourne. Cape Tribulation is located in far north Queensland within the Daintree National Park which is a world heritage wet tropics forest (documented in Wikipedia) and shown here in the map. We had been in that area before, probably in 2002. The sheer primitive beauty of the place hypnotized us and we have been since planning to go there. The opportunities came when in 2011 newspapers reported that an all-wheels road was finally built through the Daintree National Park which led to Cape Tribulation. Captain Cook's Endeavor, from BBC images The name Cape Tribulation was coined by Captain Cook as his famous ship Endeavor got scraped by the coral reefs in that area on his way back from New Zeeland (as it was named at that time or New Holland). He was the second European after Abel Tasman to visit the Islands and the first European to land in so called Ter...

Map of Morocco pointing to the various places we travelled to  A few years ago we went to Morocco. There were many reasons behind that trip - the strongest one being a direct flight from Washington DC to Casablanca! We flew to Casablanca (the red line on the map). We travelled from Casablanca to Rabat which is the capital city and from Rabat to Fes by train  (indicated by the yellow lines). We then intended to go to Marrakesh (the purple line on the map) and already booked our lodgings near Marrakesh's central square - Djemaa el-Fna. The keys to the place would be handed over to us by a man who worked in a near by souk around seven in the evening. We reached Fes transit stop around seven in the morning and we felt very confident that come hell or high water we will reach Marrakesh well before we were expected. After all, it should just take at the most five to six hours from Fes! City of Fes We had plans to take a road trip since we had taken the train on our way to Fes. We ob...

  Our trip to Turkey had many highlights however, I am not going to give you a guide book description of where we stayed, what we ate and what we saw. Turkey has a history going back centuries and there are no dearth of palaces and natural wonders. That is why I always wanted to visit Turkey but these were not such a big deal to a little boy. My son was about seven years old when we went there. Before I started writing about Turkey, I asked him what he remembers from that trip and this is what he still remembers - Green Bursa and the huge tree under which we had our afternoon tea! Bursa is a small town which sits in the lap of Uludag mountains. People go there in winter for skiing and winter sports. In summer, it is simply green and pretty. We went there for no reason and heard people talking about a 600 years old tree! We certainly needed to pay a visit to the grand old thing, the Buzurg. The Buzurg Chinar tree of Bursa The town of Bursa reminded me of old Srinagar in Kashmir. T...

Breakfast in our era has become a matter of many debates in the circles of the health enthusiasts. They keep debating about the essence of its existence altogether noting it might give you a fat tummy. Breaking the fast early in the morning with a piping hot cup of tea or coffee to me is like finding a new reason to live each day! The breakfast is always an essential part of our travels which is almost always “budget”. That meal most of the time becomes the only square meal we can have before we reach our destination at the nightfall. So we love our breakfast and pay due respect to it not only when we are travelling but even when we are not. Some breakfasts are very plain and simple by which I mean the buffet breakfasts that come as a package deal when you book a hotel. You can always close your eyes and can see what the spread will be like, however, in some parts of the world they are done a bit differently. For example, while in Malaysia, we were shown to a usual spread of eggs, br...