How often you travel? Many people said once in a year going for a big vacation is good. I don’t have a goal of something like that. But try to go for a vacation when I get time off from my work and my budget allows. I don’t mind if it is small or big as per as I find some time to spend with my close ones.

Last year me and my wife was trying to select a place for vacation within India. Because of I like city and my wife likes remote places with natural beauty, we always try to select places where we can enjoy both. After lot of discussions we select ‘Visakhapatnam’ (‘Vizag’ in short).

‘Vizag’ is a port city in eastern coast of India. At November 2017 we were ready to visit ‘Vizag’ for five days. But unfortunately, on the day of journey we missed our train. But despite missing our train we managed to reach ‘Vizag’ one day later of our schedule date. We broke our journey and go to ‘Vizag’ via ‘Puri’ and ‘Bhubaneswar’.

We stayed one day in ‘Puri’ and visit the famous ‘Jagannath Mandir’. We also saw the sea beach and local market there. In the next morning we start for ‘Visag’ and reach there in the evening in the same day.

As I said earlier that my wife like to visit remote places and natural beauty rather than city. But when we reach ‘Vizag’ and drove by an auto through the city from railway station to hotel, she was happy to see such a bright and clean city. We stayed near ‘Ramakrishna Beach’.

Over the next three days we explored the city by bus, auto and walk. ‘Google Maps’ helps a lot us on that time. ‘Vizag’ bus service is very good and not expensive. You can find only Government buses there. Auto is very expensive there specially for tourists. The only problem I saw there is, bus routes are missing in ‘Google Maps’ and for that we could not see real time bus update there.

We saw ‘Rushikonda Beach’, ‘Fishing Harbour’, ‘INS Kursura Submarine Museum’, ‘Matsya Darshini’, ‘Kailasagiri’, ‘Borra Caves‘ and ‘Simhachalam Hill’. One day we took a package trip with ‘AP Tourism’ for ‘Araku’. That was a whole day trip. We enjoyed the hill and forest there but at the same time I would like to say that ‘Himalayas’ has more scenic beauty than ‘Eastern Ghats mountain range’.

The next day of ‘Araku’ trip we started our return journey with lots of memories and gifts for family. This ‘Vizag’ tour will stay in my mind for a long time.

Arnab