I visited Ladakh close to two years ago with my parents; since we went there close to beginning of winters, we had to keep our trip short and that left us with less time to acclimatize ourselves to the weather. Out of the 4 days we planned to spend, my parents felt a little sick on the second day and could not join us for the sightseeing. On that day, we had planned to visit places around Leh which included the visiting the Thiksey Gompa (Monastery). I liked the place so much that I wanted my parents to visit the place - so on the next day, after we finished our day long itinerary, I insisted we take a shot at visiting Thiksey again. As luck would have it, we reached the monastery just when it started getting dark (after which usually the doors are closed to visitors), but chanced to get entry into the main gate. However, to my disappointment, the doors of the main temple were closed by the time we climbed up. We were about to turn back when my brother spotted a young lama, in h...

My life has been running at express speeds for more than the past 6 months and I mean it quite literally. It started in December when my cousin got married in Nagpur, a day after my third wedding anniversary (which we celebrated with the whole of my paternal extended family on the eve of my cousin's wedding). We returned from the wedding and within days proceeded to Pune for the Baby Shower, which was immediately followed by Divya moving over to Indore for the next few months. I went to escort her to Indore, and directly flew to Kolkata to a close friend's wedding. Since then, my schedule has been pre-decided for every weekend - a compulsory travel to Indore every fortnight, and spending many (or rather most) in between weekends in Pune with my parents (except the few when they came over or I had too much office work piled up to manage a Pune trip). So much so that, this Friday, when I told the maid to come on a Saturday, she gave me the look for the boss who asks you to w...