Bluestocking

Finding Christ is the story of snorkeling, the magic of Disney and a hostel misadventure in Florida. It had been less than 5 months since I moved my world from India to the US and I was itching for a holiday. I was about to turn 28 and with the experience of 1 solo vacation behind me, I planned my first American solo trip to Florida! Whenever it’s my first traveling to a specific town, city, state or country, I usually tend to book the earliest flight in. So Day 1, I landed in Orlando at 9 am and was fully prepared to keep my luggage in the hotel storage before heading out to Universal Studios . To my delight and the kindness of the staff at Holiday Inn Express, Florida Center , I received an early check-in by 10 am! They have grab and go bags at breakfast which is an amazing concept in addition to their delicious buffet breakfast spread. The hotel is a Universal Partner Hotel and they had complimentary shuttles running every hour to Universal Studios. I was at the studios by 11 am and...

1: Be good at keeping secrets. 2: Don't set your goals by what other people deem important. 3: When you expect less, you get more. 4: You will get served the exact opposite of what you'd hoped for but in the end, you'll realize that that is all you ever wanted. 5: Speak well about someone behind their back, or just don't talk. 6: Life, is not fair. It never will be. You will run out of luck when you most need it & hard work doesn't always pay off. 7: Possess the ability to find humor in even the tiniest of incidents during hard times. 8: You don't necessarily have to grab every opportunity that comes your way. It's okay to be picky. 9: Prioritize people. Your time is too precious to spend on the ones that don't really matter. 10: You can always do & apologize after, rather than ask before. But the same theory doesn't apply with words, it's always best to think through instead of having a shoe in mouth. 11: Neither success nor failure sho...

I always found ratios fascinating, How somehow it amounted to perfection after equating. Soon I realized our days aren’t easy as maths, Trying to find a solution to all our problems would turn us all into psychopaths! I picked yellow nail paint on a bright summer afternoon, For a nice day with manicured hands would certainly be a boon. Ran out of the sunny color with a fingernail still left naked, That, is when this poem was created. As we transition into adulthood with responsibilities on our mind, Are we as content as we show ourselves to be, or is it simply a blind? A little inch always holds us behind with the baggage we carry, In the end, we are truly only nine parts happy !

The Three Muskeneers is a story of 3 cousins with an annual ritual of taking a vacation together. All 3 of us are the only child of our respective parents and we’re actually second cousins, but the bond has grown over the years due to our closeness in age, our siblinglessness and of course these yearly vacations we’ve been going on for over nearly a decade now! 3 years ago, we took a trip to Kerala. It was a 4-day vacation planned around Dussehra. Kerala is huge so in this trip we did Thiruvananthapuram, Varkala and a few places around these locations. My cousin and I took a night bus from Bangalore to Thiruvananthapuram – to be honest I don’t vouch for this because our flight back was so much more comfortable. The bus takes 11 hours and for reasons unknown to us it rerouted to Kanyakumari in the morning which further increased the journey by about 2 hours! From Thiruvananthapuram we drove down to Varkala where we stayed at the InDa Hotel . It’s a lovely hotel with an earthy feel to it...

Having taken 3 different solo vacations for 3 consecutive years, I want to provide tips on how to navigate travelling all by yourself, if you're ever so brave to take that step. Quite honestly, my decision to do these solo trips happened as a result of friends or cousins not wanting to take that trip or not having the time to. If there's one lesson I've learned living this very lovely life is that either you can wait for experiences to happen to you or create them yourself. When riddled with a choice, always pick the latter. So, I chose to do it all by myself and looking back, I have zero regrets. My all-time favourite movie Zindagi Na Milegi Dobaara released when I was 16 years old, and like many other teenagers, I was also bitten by the bug to attempt scuba diving. But it did take a whole decade for that vision to come to life. I was 3 months away from turning 27, and woke up one morning to the thought, how cool would it be if I learnt how to scuba dive on a solo trip thi...

Buongiorno is a story of Italy's cuisine, architectural styles and gorgeous landscapes. You may use Google Translate in a foreign land, but you'll know Italy's greeting soon enough without any need for translation. Buongiorno! has to be said out loud with the same zest every time you greet another, no matter what your mood. I traveled to Italy last year with two other friends. The whole process of planning out an international trip without guidance from a professional tour organizer can be quite tricky, but also exhilarating. Start off with booking your flight tickets. We did this about three to four months ahead of our travel dates to get a good bargain, and also because once your tickets are in place, there is good motivation to not cancel the trip and plan ahead. Skyscanner is a decent website to begin with, as it will route you to various flight booking sites, comparing each based on price and other factors. Don't forget to look out for discount coupons! You can eas...