Scotland - The Haggis Experience

Scotland is my best travel experience till date, not just because I love mountains, silence and single malt.  It so happened that I was suddenly alone during the 2004 Easter long weekend in the UK.  A splendid (well, almost) Italy trip got cancelled in the last moment.  I sincerely think Italy would have been splendid since I chalked out the itinerary after hours of Googling.  We planned to cover Venice, Florence, Lake Garda and Rome -  travelling in trains and staying at quaint little B&Bs.  But, never mind...

Ok.. So I had 3 days left to plan a long weekend and I somehow stumbled upon this company called Haggis Adventures.  I blindly went and booked a package for 269 pounds for 5 days and had a superb holiday.  
The guy met me (and a bunch of wild backpacking girls) at London’s King Cross station on Thursday morning.  Put us onto a train to Edinburgh (EdinBurrraaaa ).  Picked us all up at the station in the trademark yellow bus and drove us down to Bruntfield’s Youth Hostel.
And drove us all around Scotland for the next 4 days, taking us on trekking trails, staying in a castle, having a bon fire, arranging Scottish folk music & dance at the cute little Scottish pub in the village at Carbisdale, tasting authentic Malt throughout, spend a night on the Isle of Skye and educating us all the while on the ancient geography and tragic history of Scotland.

Not to forget the tour guides.  They were mad. And made us play all sorts of games and made it feel like a college trip.

Next time you see a whisky whose name starts with Glen,  think of me.  Because Glen is the scottish word for mountain.  Any Speyside whisky is good because the water from the river Spey has the peaty taste imbibed from the coal in the land.
I made some great friends from all over the world – US, Brazil, New Zealand, Yugoslavia, South Africa, Canada and Australia.
I can devote a whole page for this trip, but in short :
Go for Haggis adventures when you go there next time.

Tour operators information

Information:

Hope you’ve read my previous post evangelizing tour operators. Here is the list of companies I’ve bought packages from and reasonably happy.

Haggis Adventures – Scotland – http://www.haggisadventures.com
Amazingly creative and ‘honest’ people in the business. Will write later about my Scottish experience (yea, it was not just a tour, but an experience).
Rating : 4.5 / 5

Eurostar packages – Belgium & Holland
Eurostar maybe running into a tunnel of losses, but for tourists it is still a great chance to get a great, inexpensive ride in the under-sea tunnel connecting England and France.
Train from London to Brussels is about 3 hours and you can book hotels & packages from affiliated operators. Very reliable.
Rating: 4/5

Orbit Tours & Travels – India – Himachal trip: http://www.orbit-world.com
These guys specialize in business tour packages (of the conferences & exhibitions variety). But of late they are into “Discover India” packages to all the popular destinations in India and abroad.
Recommendable, considering the price and the scale of operations: Rating: 3.5/5

Travel in 2005

Well, the travel mania didn’t stop with my European conquests in 2004. I returned to India finally in April 2005 and did travel quite a bit. June-August were just about Bangalore-Hyderabad trips, but then, if you do it every consecutive weekend for 2 months, I guess that counts as “travel” (
And real travel started when I got married on August 11. We traveled to Vizag, Tirupati, Bangalore and finally the big one – Himachal Pradesh..

The how and why of all my travelling
I’ve always believed more in DIY than ‘outsourcing’. But as I get older, I am able to see value in not doing everything yourself. It is not about one thing being better than the other. Both the approaches offer us a “different value” and we have to choose one of them.

Before I lose track of what I am talking, the point I’m trying to make here is: Choose travel packages from professional tour operator.
The idea behind travel: People have various motives in going traveling/sightseeing. Following are some of them, not necessarily in this order:

• Curiosity


• Adventure – do something exciting


• Get away from the crowd/routine


• Introspection

You go for a package tour if your motives are the last two and you go out on your own if it is the first two. Simple :-)

Himachal Honeymoon

Awesome !

Rush Hour in Manali

Idyllic - that is the word.
Rush hour in the mountains of Manali, Himalayas. 

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Mind and Matter

Good one