We were on a 4-day road trip in Karnataka. After an exhilarating Bangalore to Jog Falls road trip, we continued our journey on a spiritual and architectural trail through the Western Ghats – from Kollur to Sringeri and Halebeedu, before concluding in Mysuru. The falls were in their full glory and we really enjoyed the views. You can read about it in detail in the earlier blog.
This part of the trip was all about temples, ghats, and history – a perfect blend of serenity, devotion, and scenic drives.
Our day began at the homestay. Parth found another kid to play the ball with. While he enjoyed the yard, we packed our things, had piping hot idlis and poha for breakfast and started.
Morning play time!
Our first stop was within 10 minutes – the other side of the main viewpoint that we saw yesterday. A hidden Jog Falls viewpoint was near the Circuit House, which offered a unique side-angle view of the four cascades – Raja, Rani, Roarer, and Rocket. We were closer to the mist and got a side view of the waterfalls.
Side view of the falls
Here was the biggest catch. The previous day, it seemed like all 4 falls were in the same line when seen from the other side. This side showed that they were all at different depths – like when you discover a different perspective while seeing the front-view and side-view in 3D. We were quite early and there were hardly any other people.
The Spain leg of our Western Europe trip was done and we landed at Lisbon, the capital of Portugal (you can read the Seville and Barcelonablogs after this one). We left our bags at the airport itself and only carried the backpack. We had to get back by night for our flight to Ponta Delgada.
A short day in Lisbon
The plan was to spend the day in the Baixa area of the city. We took an Aerobus from the airport which is a convenient way to get to the city and got down at Martim Moniz.
First sights of Lisbon
The plan was to explore the district by foot. We saw the famous egg custard tarts (pasteis de nata) at one shop and tried it – it was really good!
It might look weird for someone who has never tried it. Once you try it, you’ll look at it differently
We continued walking and saw the old trams – a historical symbol of the city which started in 1873.
Another historic structure which is worth a visit is the Elevador de Santa Justa – an elevator walkway to negotiate the hilly terrain of the city. It was constructed in 1900 and originally operated using steam!
The giant old escalator of Santa Justa
It was a cold, windy yet sunny day and the sun provided relief from the chilly breeze. As we reached the large town square at Terreiro do Paco, we saw that a music festival, Eurovision, was ongoing. On the other side of the square was the Tagus river.
We quickly grabbed dinner from a restaurant called El Rei dom Frango (amazing sangria and lasagna). Initially, we weren’t sure if it was a good restaurant – the tables were empty when we entered. But we finished our meal and stepped out to see a long queue of people waiting to get a table.
Apparently it was a popular place
In case you are wondering why we didn’t just check the ratings on Google Maps, we were travelling without SIM cards and going “with-the-flow”.
With happy tummies, we took the next bus back to the airport for our most unique experience in the Azores. We would be back in Lisbon for part 2 of discovering the city (below).
Another day in Lisbon
We were back from the Azores. The luggage we had left in the airport locker was still there. We unpacked and re-packed our stuff, took essentials for a 1-day stay and put the bags back. It was super convenient to have a system like this – all that lugging around had been prevented. This time we took the metro instead of the bus.
On the way to our guesthouse, we entered a cafe for breakfast – the worst food of the trip so far. We checked into our room and immediately left – looking for better food.
It was 5:08 pm and we boarded our train to Barcelona. We had just completed the France leg of our trip and got on the train from Nimes – a lesser known town in the south of France. The train sped along the coast as we passed the cities of Montpellier and Perpignon and we reached Barcelona at 8:45 pm. It was a trip unlike any we had done before.
Navigating a maze
There was a direct connection between the train station and the metro. However, it felt like an underground maze as we went up and down different floors, crossing platforms and getting into confusing lifts which had doors on multiple sides (you may enter through one door but exit through another one on the side). I had never seen such lifts before and it was very disorienting.
We got into the metro station of Sants Estacio and evaluated getting regular tickets vs passes. Among all the options, the T-10 ticket seemed best for us as we were only here for two days – we could use the same ticket for multiple people.
Our stay for 2 nights
Finally, we were on our way to our Airbnb which was on a street named Carrer del Camp – the closest station was called El Putxet. We checked into our apartment – an old Argentine lady owned it. She lived on one side of it while she had let out the other side – the entire place smelled of cigarettes. We quickly left our stuff and took the metro back to Catalunya.
The train sped past the sun-drenched landscapes of Andalusia at a jaw-dropping speed of 300 km/h. This was the fastest we had ever travelled on land! Despite the speed, everything was calm and stable inside. We were travelling from Barcelona to Seville in Spain for the next leg of our Western Europe trip.
Getting into the city of Seville
We exited the station (which looked more like an airport) and went on a short side-quest. We had to get our flight tickets printed for the next day and walked into the nearest tabac shop (yup – tobacco shops often function as multi-purpose outlets selling local transport tickets and printouts). Prints in hand, we took a bus to Plaza de Armas – the main bus station of Seville. Some of you may have heard of “Plaza de Armas” in Latin American countries as well. It is a common term used to refer to town squares and literally translates to “Weapons Square” (no weapons kept here in the modern times).
Seville is a very unique city – with architecture and culture that are different from the rest of Europe. Let’s take a quick look at its history.
As with all my itinerary blogs, I’ll start this one with the origin story – why did we even make a Hong Kong itinerary?
Nam is a huge fan of Imagine Dragons and she was tracking their latest world tour to see if they would pass by somewhere near India. The closest options were Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia), Singapore and Bangkok (Thailand). All of these places had one thing in common – we could imagine them as being part of a larger trip. Then we saw Hong Kong – a place I’ve always wanted to visit!
It was small enough to cover in 3-4 days and was far enough away from everywhere else that we wouldn’t club it with anything else. Also, a close friend of mine lived in Hong Kong and I hadn’t met him in some time. Enough reasons to pick that as the destination! We bought tickets on Viagogo and got started with trip planning!
Hong Kong is a special administrative region of China. In 1997, it was handed over by the UK to China after their 99-year lease expired. Given its strategic location in the Asia-Pacific region, it evolved from a fishing village to one of the financial capitals of the world (like New York and London). It is also blessed with one the deepest natural maritime ports in the world – it ranks among the top ports in the world in terms of activity.
The word Hong Kong means “fragrant harbour” referring to the incense that used to be traded here.
Temples and skyscrapers co-exist in Hong Kong
Hong Kong has the highest number of skyscrapers in the world with the number standing at above 550. The definition of a skyscraper is that the building should be taller than 150 m. The region is also the 4th most densely populated in the world. Enter the contradiction – over 75% of land is not used for development and is covered by dense green cover. This can also be found in the heart of the city – we’ll explore these places in later blogs.
On the north of Hong Kong is the Silicon Valley of China, Shenzhen (the third most populous in China) and Macau which lies to its west in the South China Sea.
Macau is a former Portuguese colony and feels like a bit of Europe planted in China. It is a unique experience as well and something that we were also looking forward to.
Hong Kong and Macau in the South China Sea
I was particularly excited about this trip because of the food and culture. I had never been to China before and Hong Kong would be a perfect fusion of China and a typical global city. This is also the trip where both Nam and I realised that we were both “city-people” – people who are more excited about travelling to cities.
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AI is supposedly taking over every aspect of life. There are custom GPT-assistants for every task imaginable. One of the popular use-cases is building a travel itinerary with AI Trip Planners. I decided to put it to a test for my recent trip to Hong Kong!
I’ve talked about this before in my blog – a well-planned itinerary can make a world of difference to your trip. My definition of well-planned? I’m referring to the hidden gems, the best of local cuisine and truly cultural experiences. It doesn’t mean I exclude the overly touristy places – there is a good mix of both.
With AI trip planners like ChatGPT and Perplexity, it is super easy to create an itinerary. In fact, it is as simple as typing, “Give me a 4 day itinerary for Hong Kong and Macau and include all the hidden gems and authentic experiences”. Or you could just copy-paste the last sentence and replace the destinations. You can sit back and let AI generate detailed day-wise plans for you. While this can be a good skeleton of an itinerary, it falls short. And I mean, VERY SHORT of what I would call an ideal itinerary. All right then, let’s get into the details!
I love how Perplexity shows the sources just above the answer
What AI trip planners do well
I like to start with the positives. And there are definitely a couple of those.
When we planned our trip to France, we were looking for places beyond Paris and Nice. If you read the previous blog on the Azores, you know what I’m talking about. One place that quickly caught our attention was Mont Saint-Michel in Normandy. From a commute and proximity point-of-view, it did not make sense, especially given our 2 week constraint. The next one was in the south of France – an interesting little city called Nimes (pronounced Neem). That’s the one we picked!
We waited for our bus at a junction in Cannes. The city of Cannes is most popular for being home to the international film festival as well as other festivals. We had spent half a day exploring the town, the Walk of Fame and cute cafes. There wasn’t a lot to do here and we had planned to take a bus in the afternoon to our next destination – Nimes.
The Cannes Walk of Fame
Why did we pick Nimes?
If you check the map of the South of France, there are a bunch of cities lining the French Riviera- Provence-Occitanie region – Saint-Tropez, Marseille, Aix-en-Provence, Arles, Avignon and Nimes. Many of these places are famous for lavender fields. Some are resort towns. All of them are nice stops if you’re doing a slow road trip along the coast from Italy to France to Spain.
Map of the south of France
We were looking for something unique however. Nimes had a bunch of Roman monuments – in fact, it was often referred to as the most Roman city outside Italy. The Nimes arena is considered the best preserved Roman amphitheater in the world. It is still used for concerts. The Maison Carree, an ancient Roman temple, is also considered to be one the best preserved in the world. The best part however was a sight just outside the city and was one of the main things which prompted us to visit here.
I opened Google Maps to check where we had reached. We were supposed to take a cable car to the Tatev monastery. I could neither spot the cable car nor the monastery. I scanned all the surrounding hills but they only had trees. Why did we enter this parking lot 15km away from Tatev in this village called Halidzor?
Where is the cable car?
It was day 4 of our Armenia trip and we were at a remote village in the south of the country. Zaven took us towards the ticket counter and showed us the platform that stood above it. This was the starting point of the cable car. That’s when I realized that the cable car was going downhill – that’s why I couldn’t see the monastery anywhere.
The cable car is called the Wings of Tatev (Such a cool name!!!). It is the longest reversible aerial tramway in the world. At the ticket counter, we were told that we had a set time for boarding and returning on our ticket. The cable car would arrive every 15 minutes and the last one was at 6:45 pm.
Some stats about the Wings of Tatev
Where is the monastery?
Once it arrived and we boarded, I started looking for the monastery. It was still nowhere to be seen. Soon, what I noticed was that the cable car line was shaped like a “U”. We were first going down, then up to the top of the next hill. And after the pillar on that hill, there was another “U” to the next hill and that is the one which had the monastery! We were actually crossing two hills to get there!
We could see cars snaking their way along the hairpin bends on the roads below. I was glad we didn’t spend an extra hour navigating those!
At the edge of the cliff
The monastery is a short walk away from the cable car. It is literally standing on the edge of a cliff. There were many hidden rooms and halls and it was a lot of fun to explore the entire place! Our cable car back was at 6 pm – so we got to spend a good hour here.
Exploring the hidden rooms of Tatev monasteryThe monastery stands on the edge of a cliff
When we got back, we asked Zaven to take us to our hotel in Goris – the town where we were spending the night. Tatev and Halidzor only had basic homestays and would have been difficult with the kids. It turned out to be a good decision.
A remote Soviet town
We stayed at a place called Khoreayi Dzor. It was a castle-like building on a hill overlooking the town. The view from the room was really nice! We could see the mosaic Soviet-era buildings strewn across the town. This would be the most remote part we visited on this trip.
The town of Goris as seen from our hotel
For dinner, we had dolma – lamb and rice wrapped in grape leaves. It was amazing!
Yummy dolma!
Next morning, we had breakfast at the hotel and started on our way back. We said goodbye to Goris! First stop was Shaki waterfalls. We hoped it wouldn’t be as difficult to reach as the Gveleti waterfalls in Georgia!
Waterfall time!
The hike was not very steep to begin with and thankfully, we got to the end quite fast.
A relatively easy hike to Shaki waterfall
We turned around the corner to see the waterfall gushing down with its spray rising almost as high as the waterfall itself. It was a beautiful sight. We took off our shoes and went into the water – it was ice-cold and the kids quickly had enough of it. Parth was quick to ask for his cap to cover his ears from the spray and sound.
Super refreshing experience
We spent a lot of time here, enjoying nature. It was the most underrated experience so far. And there was no one there except us!
Our next stop was for an early lunch at the same food court. The kids were fast asleep after playing in the water, so we packed lunch for them and left for Noravank monastery.
Another unique monastery
This monastery is unique in its shape – it’s a two-storey structure unlike the others we had seen so far. It was also surrounded by brick red cliffs inside a gorge which gave it a very different look as compared to all the monasteries we had visited. I guess the others were tired of monasteries by now but I couldn’t get enough of them as each was different.
Posing in front of the Noravank monasteryThe two-storied red monastery of Noravank
That’s how the trip was planned so that we wouldn’t be repeating stuff. We got back to Yerevan by evening, explored the Cascade area, had dinner at Rehan restaurant and slept. Our flight back to India was the next day. We had finally completed the trip that originated with the Air Arabia vouchers left over from our Uzbekistan adventure!
Researching is one of my favorite parts of traveling – apart from the actual travel of course. I look for the most unique experiences possible in a place and try to accommodate it into the itinerary. After all, if I am traveling all the way to another country, I don’t want to come back and find out that I missed something good. This is not to say that the trip should become a long check-list. Rather the contrary – know everything that the place has to offer and then make an informed decision – pick only those that appeal to you. This process led me to Khor Virap, Mount Ararat and Areni in Armenia.
It was Day 4 of our Armenia trip and we found out that it was Zaven of Hyur Service, once again, who would be taking us. This was a 2-day trip which meant he would be staying overnight with us and then bring us back the next day. There he stood next to the Mercedes Vito with his black sunglasses and white shirt – sharp as always.Our two-day excursion to south Armenia started with Khor Virap, Mount Ararat and the Areni winery.
