Ooty , the queen of hill stations is located in the Nilgiri district of the Southern state of Tamilnadu. It is the head quarter of the district and is locally known as Udhagamandalam. The Western and Eastern Ghats meet at this place. The surroundings of Ooty are dotted with coffee and tea plantations and rare trees. Nilgiris or the blue mountains , the hills surrounding Ooty have been declared India’s first biosphere – One of the 14 hot spots of the world because of their rich bio diversity.

Ooty was inhabited by the Todas, a tribe of Tamil Nadu, whose home it was . The beauty of Ooty went unnoticed for thousands of years by the rulers of Tamil Nadu and it was only the British who discovered Ooty in the early 1800s, made it their Summer capital and subsequently developed it.

The British laid a rail connection to Ooty. In 1847 The then Governor of Madras , Marquis Tweedale laid out what is now known as The Government Botanical Garden , in an area of 22 hectares. There is also rose garden which is home to 2000 varieties of roses.
There is also a lake park which has many beautiful trees and plants.

In the year 1824 John Sullivan the then Collector of Coimbatore formed the Ooty lake which is an artificial lake , which today is the pride of the Nilgiris. The Ooty lake has an added attraction of a mini train and has boating facilities also. There is an art gallery present in the town.

There are several other interesting places around Ooty like the deer park and many water falls and peaks of the Nilgiris like Doddabetta, the Pykara lake etc.,

Ooty has still retained the old world charm which attracted the British to it in the first place.

Leh, ladakh are situated in the State of Jammu and Kashmir and they are the at the Northern most frontier of India , at a height of 10,000 feet.
This is the story of Leh. Long ago the land around Leh was submerged in the sea. The people of Leh then, were attacked by fierce dragons. With nowhere to go and struck with fear they prayed to the Gods. The Gods answered their prayers and had slain the dragons. The people then prayed to the Gods not to leave. They then emptied the water and took the form of majestic mountains all around their land , which then was known as Leh.

Today science tells us that Leh lies in the region when the Indian Tectonic plate came over the Asian plate the water wass drained and out of the sediment ranges like Zanskar and the Himalayas were forme.
Leh was once an intermediate stop on the now famed silk route. Traders and travellers stopped en route at Leh enchanted by the famed Pashmina wool and it was a very sought after item.
The landscape of Leh makes you hold your breath. It is serene with brown and white capped mountains majestically standing all around . The stark brown mountains pierce the sky, their snow-capped peaks merging with the clouds.

Buddhism is the prevalent religion and close ties with Tibet existed till very recently, the monasteries are almost the central aspect around which life of the people revolves. One cannot isolate the life style of the people Leh and point out which are their religious customs, cultural practices and commercial activities. They are all closely knit and interwoven.

About 160 kilometres from New Delhi towards Ambala lies the city of Kurukshetra — a place of pilgrimage because of its association with the Mahabharata war.

Kurukshetra means the land of Kuru. He was the first king who founded the kingdom here .King Kuru, sacrificed his life for this land. The Puranas sat that Kuru came to the banks of the Saraswati river and was ploughing the area with a plough which was made from a golden chariot. The God of the Suras, Indra , who noticed his efforts, stopped by and asked him what he was doing to which the said that he was founding a land full of virtues.Later, on Lord Vishnu asking him to show the seeds that he would sow, King Kuru put forward his hand which was cut into a thousand pieces with Vishnu’s chakra and sown in the field. King Kuru then had laid down as offering his complete body. Indra was so pleased with the King’s sacrifice that he blessed him with the two boons he asked — that the land would remain holy and be named after him, and that those dying here would go to heaven.
The place served as the abode of the sage Vyasa, the compiler of the Maha bharatha and it was here that Lord Krishna came out with his philosophy of the Bhagawad Gita.

Kurukshetra also has Sheikh Chehli’s mausoleum which is encompassed by a fort in ruins. Within the fort are three mounds covering an area of about five kilometres. It is a strong belief of the locals that the fort at Thanesar was built by Raja Dilip, a descendant of King Kuru, but historians of today opine that it may have been constructed by Harsha Vardhana.

Kurukshetra also has the Brahma Sarovar , a vast tank which is a marvel in itself. Tradition has it that the tank was dug by king Kuru himself much before the epic battle of of Mahabharata. At the entrance of the tank is the temple of Lord Shiva and all along on the island of the tank stand temples and other places of historical importance.

Kodaikana was first discovered by Lieutenant Ward, a British army officer when he was surveying the district of Tirunelveli , in 1821. Kodaikanal is tucked away in the Palani hills ,in the Southern state of Tamil nadu. In the beginning it was the British beauraucracy that patronized and popularized this hill station The year 1845 drew the next visitors, American Missionaries who built the first two bungalows “Sunnyside” and “Shelton”. Soon, the serenity of the place was beckoning people from the U.K and U.S who were making a bee line to this place. Till Independence, Kodaikanal was catering to the needs of the ruling class of India. After Independence it was the neo rich who had the wealth to flaunt and make a statement by their living .

The jewel of Kodaikanal a lake that is sprawled over an area of 24 hectares. The road is encircled by a road of 5 km length. This lake was created in 1863 bye Hendry Levinge, who served as the district collector and was subsequently knighted. Soon boats began to ply in these placid blue waters which led to a boat house coming up in the lake. This was subsequently opened to the public and the tourists.

Other places of interest in Kodaikanal , the Princess of hill stations, include Bryant’s park, the Solar Physical Observatory, the Shenbaganur museum , the Silver Cascade water falls, the Tallayar falls and the kukkad caves.

In between the 14th and 17th centuries thrived the Vijayanagar Empire which was the bastion of Vaishnavism in the South of India. Today their capital Hampi , lies in ruins on the banks of the river Tungabhadra in Ballari District of the State of Karnataka.
Vijayanagar was the genesis of modern Karnataka. Three powerful dynasties, from the 14th to the 17th Centuries, revived Hindu control of southern Deccan and effected a revival: economic activity, trade with the Far East, Africa and Europe, the arts, literature and music. Accounts of the two Portuguese travellers, Domingo Paes and Fernao Nuniz, reveal a grandeur that matches everything people associate with the Mughals. Their capital at Hampi is an extraordinary township built over 10 kilometres on the banks of the Tungabhadra.
Amidst the ruins of Hampi still stand the temples with their majesty and grandeur ,the most important ones being the Virupaksha temple. There are also some Jain temples cluster with idols of Ganesha and Lakshmi Narasimha.
The Eastern end of Hampi has the temporal centre with palaces, court, Zananakhana and a victory platform.
The Vithala temple in Hampi is famous for its association with music. It is believed that Purandharadasa once sang and danced here. There is a whole building devoted to music next to the main temple. The columns of this temple produce accurate swarams when struck and others produce the sound of mrudangam.

Kota is the fifth largest city in Rajasthan is on the banks of the river Chambal. It has acquired significance post independence mainly because of the industries that have been set up here. It   has Asia’s largest fertilizer plant, both thermal and nuclear power stations,  chemical, synthetic fibre, textile, sophisticated instruments and a number of industrial units.

The town is also a tourist’s delight with palaces of architectural splendour, forts which once stood high watching across the plains and guarded the people from invaders, monuments built in remembrance leaving a trace of the legacy and museums that have preserved the cultural heritage of the Rajputs.

The Kota Fort jutting out of the brown sands of Rajasthan majestically is  one of the highest forts. One can easily visualize why this place was chosen as a strategic vantage point by the warriors here 800 years ago. Subsequently Rao Madho Singh strengthened the structures around and turned it into an impregnable fort..

It is said five of the  sons of the king here died on the battlefield fighting on behalf of Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan against his son Aurangzeb. Only the last survived after being badly wounded

Time has seen blood shed in the feuds with the Mughals , the Marathas and then the British.

One wonders how the rulers still had time to leave behind architectural marvels like the Jag Mandir that appears to be on the Kishore Sagar Lake. The Madho Singh Palace, which is now a museum has preserved collection of murals which narrate stories of the kingdom

Kerala now known to the world as “God’s Own Country”, is the tourism success story par excellence of India. Other states which have been traditionally popular tourist destinations, are now wondering how Kerala has overtaken them

Kerala always had the necessary ingredients to make it a tourist magnet-high mountains close to the sea , a relationship of harmony and no friction between its people with different faiths and ethnic groups . Many years of Communistic and socialist rule had created a quality of life that is comparable to the developed countries and also a strong cooperative movement.

With the return of Malayalees rich with money from the Gulf, there was a need to channelise these energies and the Government and beuaracracy jumped in with the vision of making Kerala the tourist destination for the rich and the famous of the world.

The selling feature of Kerala are its backwaters which have been formed rivers that flow from the Western Ghats into the Arabian Sea. These have formed a serene and placid network of lakes, canals and estuaries. These waterbodies have been traditionally used for the export of spices to Europe in the past and are still being presently used as a means of transportation of goods and people between the interior areas and the ports. Today they are transporting the visitors to a lovely , calm , and an enchanting blue world and the tourists are yearning for more..

One can take a boat and travel in these cool backwaters . When one notices the blue sky bending into the water and splashing it blue with the gentle trees adding a dash of green the tourist is mesmerized. One of the places where boats ply is Kumarakom. The boats usually travel from Kumarakom to Manaltheeram, which is a distance of 11 km. Today, Kumarakom, which is at a ddistance of 60 km from Kochi is on the world tourism map.
Foreign tourists usually prefer Thiruvananthapuram, Ernakulam, Idukki, Kottayam and Alappuzha and Indian tourists are known to prefer Thrissur, Ernakulam, Thiruvananthapuram and Kozhikode .

Posh resorts have come up at all these places. Ayurveda is a must experience at all these places although, the purists scoff at this as just a body massage and that the actual treatment needs to be given some time.

Other attractions of Kerala include the expressive dance form, Mohiniyattam and the indigenous martial art called Kalappiriyat