Journal of our Travel Tales and Photos: January 2011

There was a flower show for 3 days at the Empress Garden, near to the Race course, Pune. We visited on Sunday and it was the last day of the show. The garden has many huge trees which gives much shade to the sprawling garden. I am visiting the garden for the first time. So I don't know how the garden is during the other days. But most part of the garden looked done up as part of the on going flower show. There were stalls featuring flower arrangements based on Kitchen theme, Ikebana, Bonsai plants. A stall had flower portraits too. There were many nurseries selling potted plants, garden related tools, manure, pots etc. For those interested in gardening, this was a good opportunity to spruce up their gardening space. The competition entrees was displayed in a separate stall which had different flower arrangements, fresh produce and cut flowers. I loved the Rasoi Theme arrangement very much.

Here are some shots taken at the flower show.

Rasoi Theme

From the Competition Entrees

Bonsai

Its been a long time since I updated my space here. After Jan-2010, I didn't travel much. I had planned to write about the various temples in and around Palakkad. But it did not take shape into blog posts. And my husband's job brought me to another state. I thought life in a new place will give me some material to blog here. The initial few months went into settling down in the new place and had to travel thrice to hometown in a short span and out of that twice I had to make it on my own. On one of such trips, I extended it to make a surprise visit to my parents at Gurgaon. I decided to make it to celebrate my dad's 70th birthday. It was more of shock than surprise when my parents saw me at the door since as per my version, I should have reached Pune at the same time. So their shock is understandable. Few minutes on, their shock gave way to joy indeed. It was just a week stay. My sister had planned a visit to the Kingdom of dreams. During my last visit to Gurgaon, that was under construction.

The Kingdom of dreams is near to the Iffco Chowk metro station. It is a 15 minutes walk from the station. Auto/cycle rickshaws are also available. We went to the Cultural gully. There are some other live shows also (Nautank Mahal, Showso theatre inside). Each has a separate entrance ticket. For cultural gully its Rs.500 till 6 in the evening and its Rs.750 after that and for weekends too.

Out of the Rs.500, 100 goes as entrance fee and 50 is refundable. You have Rs.350 to be spent inside. For children below 4ft height, its free.

What you see inside

Its an airconditioned gallery with an artificial sky, that gives the feel of an exhibition, on an open ground. The sky is well done.

The cultural gully, as the name signifies, is art,crafts, culture and food under the same roof. 14 Indian states are showcased there. The cultural heritage of each state shines through. The food served is awesome. We sampled food from Karnataka, Mumbai, Delhi and Rajasthan. Few has open kitchens and few have in house restaurant. There are many tables laid in the centre area, which gives an ambience of a food court. The first floor has a massage parlour, plam reader, tarot card reader etc. There is a pastry shop too at the first floor. The paintings, pillars are very exquisite.

Its a wonderful place to have a get-together. The ambience is so good and with finger licking food and good company, you can enjoy a good evening there.

I clicked quite a lot there and here are few snapshots.