Looking Back at 2005

Bangalore became more of my home this year, with me moving into my own apartment. I was based in Bangalore throughout the year with a bit of travel thrown in here and there.

Travel wise I happened to visit a lot of places where I had traveled earlier but had not spent time exploring those places, like Ahmedabad, Lucknow, Pondicherry, Goa. In my last year’s looking back I had mentioned Hyderabad and Mumbai were mysteriously missing from my travel map last year and this year made up for that, I had six trips to Hyderabad and 3 to Mumbai. The new places that got to see in India were Puttaparthi, Lepakshi, Nagpur, Indore and Ujjain. And my objective to see new a new country a year took me to Sri Lanka. Based on my travelogues received a lot of queries about places I had written about.

Read about 22 books, most of which are reviewed on this blog, though the no. of books that I bought is much more. While unpacking my books in my new house, I realized that I have almost 100 books that are yet to be read, of all sizes and shapes. Let me see how many of these I can read before I retire and how many of these become a part of my retirement activity plans.

During the first eight months of 2005, I tried exploring the food joints in Bangalore and write small reviews of them all. Now when I see the statistics of visitors to my blog, most of the visitors come looking for reviews of restaurants on my blog. I had reviewed about 30 restaurants / eating joints in Bangalore, but towards the end of the year, Indore took away the credit for best place to eat.

With Bangalore becoming a global destination, I saw a lot of my old friends visiting Bangalore and few of them moving to Bangalore, providing me with an opportunity to re-connect with them after years. And more I meet my old friends, more I realize how the length of a relationship gives the depth and strength to the relationship. Did not make any new friends this year, does this mean this is an area I need to focus on. Probably Yes. I also need to focus on having some personal life.

Stepping into 2006, would like to travel a bit more, read a bit more and probably get in touch with some new people. If possible would like to try doing some serious writing.