DocDivaTraveller

So you are excited to bring a new life into this world! Congratulations mommy, you have done a great job so far! But the most difficult part is yet to come..the post partum phase!

We have always read in parenting websites and books the importance of packing hospital bags on time and what all to pack into it. However I was not at all prepared when I had my daughter. I was feeling very sick and had visited my obstetrician thinking that it was false labour (that is what we had been taught in medical school; the first time when we visit the OBGYN is during false labour) and I was admitted for an emergency Caesarian section as labour had started. So I never had the time or oppurtunity to pack my hospital bag.

However this is my second pregnancy and I am 37 weeks already. This time I am mentally prepared that the baby can arrive at any moment from now. So I am ready with all kinds of bags: hospital bag, my daughter's bag for her stay at her grandparents' home, my bag for my parents' home, etc etc. Does anyone agree that the mommy is way more mature during the second time?

So here I have rounded up the basic essentials that I have packed in my hospital bag:

The contents have been categorised into baby things and mommy things. We both would need things at the hospital...won't we? During my first time I was a mess, so this time I am going to be prepared (provided that the surgery goes well and me and my baby are healthy).

Baby things:

1. Diaper: The hospital provides diapers for the baby but you still should have them in your bag in case. Go for the newborn ones because the neonatal bums are really tiny!

2. Baby wipes: Wipes are a savior at every point in motherhood. You need them all the time...from wiping baby's bums to wiping his/her barf, wipes are indispensable. However you need to be assured that the ones you are using on your precious are absolutely safe.

For my first born I relied on Mother Sparsh unscented wipes and I loved them. I used the 98% water wipes for her and they are as mild as pure water and cloth. Since they are #ExtraGentleWipes there is no chance of diaper rash. They are hypoallergenic in nature and contain glycerin and jojoba oil for moisturising effects. These wipes are non soapy and non greasy and very easy to pull out. Also since they are biodegradable, you know that you are protecting our mother earth too.

Last month, Mother Sparsh launched their 99% water wipes. These #ExtraGentleWipes are even gentler than the #FirstWaterWipes ie the 98% variant. Hence they are absolutely safe for your newborn.

They don't contain any alcohol or parabens or sulphates or even fragrances. #UnscentedWaterWipes The wipes are of medical grade cloth and super thick in nature. These #MedicalGradeCloth wipes are also travel friendly, as the pack comes with a plastic lid so that they don't dry up. The lid also prevents entry of dirt and germs. The pack of 72 wipes comes at a price of 299INR. They are available online on Firstcry and Amazon.

I have relied on #MotherSparshWipes for my daughter and have kept another pack for my coming baby too.

3. Baby Clothes: In some cultures, it is advised not to buy any new clothes for the baby before his/her arrival. In the hospital, the baby is going to be dressed in the hospital clothes itself. However during discharge, you need to dress up your baby. So either you can keep a set of clean clothes from an older sibling or cousin or can pack a set of unisex clothes in your hospital bag itself. I personally prefer onesie, mittens and a cap.

For the mother:

For official purposes, don't forget to carry your ID and Medical Insurance papers along with all the previous investigation reports and prescriptions.

1. Sanitary pads: Again your hospital will provide you but you may feel more comfortable in the brand you used before these nine months! (One of the perks of pregnancy!)

2. Clean underwear and Nursing bra: A must have. You many have visitors at your hospital room and you may feel very awkward without a Bra. So it's best to wear a nursing bra while feeding.

3. A set of nice yet comfortable clothes: You have to change from your hospital clothes once you are discharged and you need something that would make you feel great. I suggest a loose dress that does not touch your abdomen.

4. Basic Make up essentials:Giving birth is a gruelling task indeed. You can make the difficult post partum experience better by packing a few essentials.

During my first time, I was looking like a ghost from the post surgical pain as I was sans any makeup. I suggest keeping a few basics like a kajal, lip balm, a lip colour, hair band/clutcher, moisturiser and a hand lotion. Just a pop of colour on your lips would cheer you up!

5. Books/ Magazine/ Earphones: In case you are unable to sleep during the night, you may want to plug in your earphones and listen to some soothing music or even meditate. I remember, on my second day post C sec, I was tossing on the bed because of pain while my baby and my husband were deep asleep in the room. I was frustrated!

6. Phone and Charger: Although we should keep ourselves as well as our new born as far as possible from radiations, your cellphone is indispensable. You may need to catch up with your loved ones announcing the news as well as require it for little bit of entertainment.

These are some of the basics that I have kept in my hospital bag. Do let me know if any more essentials are required!

2/14/2019 No comments

When Kedarnath released last September, it had created quite a buzz for multiple reasons. The movie launched Saif Ali Khan’s daughter Sara Ali Khan in Bollywood. Songs like Namo Namo had got people humming. However, the biggest reason the movie caught eyeballs was its backdrop - the 2013 Kedarnath floods. Now, with the movie getting a digital release on ZEE5, I thought it would be interesting to delve into the real incident that inspired the movie and its depiction.

What did we see in the movie?

The movie revolved around Mukku and Mansoor. Mukku is a young Hindu girl whose father is a Brahmin priest, running a hostel for pilgrims in the temple town of Kedarnath. Whereas, Mansoor is a Muslim porter who carries pilgrims to the temple for a living. The two fall in love but being from different backgrounds, their relationship faces stiff opposition, especially from Panditji, Mukku’s father. However, chaos ensues when Kedarnath is hit by flash floods, one of the worst the country has seen. Thanks to spectacular CGI and effective direction by Abhishek Kapoor, the flood sequences, especially the climax, keeps you on the edge of the seat.

The real story

While the movie primarily was a love story at heart with the floods coming in the second half of the movie, the real story is a tragedy that affected thousands of lives. The flash floods, in questions, that hit Kedarnath had swept throughout Uttarakhand in 2013. Throughout the state, the floods resulted in the loss of numerous lives with thousands still missing, according to the National Institute of Disaster Management’s India Disaster Report 2013.

What actually happened during the floods?

Between June 15 and June 18, 2013, Uttarakhand received 375 per cent more than the usual rainfall, according to the data from the Geological Survey of India (GSI). Not only did the rainfall cause the region’s water bodies to reach dangerous levels, but it also caused the Chorabari Glacier to melt. The gush of water from the glacier led to the flooding of the Mandakini river. All these factors led to waves of water sweeping through places like Kedarnath and Rambara. Another factor that proved to be deadly was the loosening of the topsoil (the movie showcases it in its climax too) and the mud, rocks and boulders (nine to thirty-two feet in diameter) that flowed with the water.

The town of Kedarnath, itself, was hit by two waves of floods. The first wave came with the flooding of Saraswati and Dudhganga rivers on June 15 and 16. The second wave came on 17th June caused by the overflowing of the Chorabari Lake. These floods pretty much wiped out the upper parts of the town and led to many pilgrims being stranded.

In order to rescue the stranded people, the Uttarakhand government and central government initiated a joint rescue operation. As part of the operation, Army, Air Force and Central Paramilitary Forces were brought in to airlift people, reliefs camps were set and around 900 trucks with essentials with sent to affected areas. As per the National Institute of Disaster Management report, the Kedarnath rescue operation was one of the largest evacuation and rescue operation executed by a civil government.

The Kedarnath floods is a story that one would expect to feature in a Nat Geo documentary. But it is interesting how director Abhishek Kapoor and writer Kanika Dhillon are able to weave a poignant love story in the backdrop of this devastating flood. With Kedarnath released on ZEE5 on the 14th of February, you can relive this epic of love and zeal for survival. To watch Kedarnath movie online click here.

2/13/2019 No comments

Every good thing comes to an end and our Italian viaggio was no exception. After a fortnight of non stop travelling, it was time to go home. Back to our toddler and our responsibilities. I start feeling sad right from the penultimate night. Our last night in Bari was spent lost in the cobbled streets in the dark. I mean we were literally lost! Anyways, we had our flight to Rome the next night and it was going to be a real long journey.

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Our last day started with our much awaited day tour to Alberobello. We returned from there at around 5 30 pm, ran helter skelter to our B n B from the railway station, picked up all our luggage and then again huffed our way to the bus stop. Our host at the B n B was too sweet to accompany us to the bus stop and carry one luggage. We boarded the Airport Express bus and reached Aeroporto Di Bari in around one and half hours. The passengers in the bus (and the driver too) were really unfriendly. At one point we started doubting whether we had boarded the right bus or not!

Our flight from Bari to Rome was by Ryan Airways. Ryan Airways is a Europe famous budget airlines; based in Britain. Now since we were on a shoe string budget we could not have afforded the national carrier Alitalia. Ryan Airways have tickets at throwaway prices and hubs took advantage of that. However they did not have any baggage allowance. We had to buy it. Since we were on the last leg of our trip, we had real heavy luggage. Finally we paid more more money to buy luggage allowance than the total cost of both our air tickets!

As soon as we reached the airport, we got worried about the weight of our luggage. We did not know how much we were carrying! So we started weighing them one by one. And then we started moving our stuff from our check in baggage to our carry on baggage. Firstly hand luggages had 10 kg allowance. Secondly, they were not too strict with that! Finally we manage to lower down the weight of our two check in baggages just within the permissible limit.

Our flight was at 10 30 at night. We were dead tired. Our plane came from another destination, quickly loaded us passengers and took off! I mean there was no other delay. Are not there supposed to be some sort of fuel check, air pressure check, cleaning, blah blah? Maybe there were some mandatory actions (I don't know) but not a jiffy more was taken to unload and load the passengers, the take off was really fast too. The rear end of the plane was loading passengers while the ones from the previous flight were getting down from the front, simultaneously. And the landing? Don't even get me started. It was so sudden that it was dead scary! After the almost crash landing, there was a round of applause from all the passengers.

We landed in Roma at around 12 30 midnight. We wandered all around the Leonardo Da Vinci Airport. Our flight to Amsterdam was at around 6 AM. We had some quick packed dinner and I wanted to doze off before all the check in hoopla.

However my chatterbox partner did not let me sleep. Soon it was time for boarding. Just before entering the boarding gates, we quickly played a round of Air hockey. I won!!Then I called my parents to inform them about our flight status. It was morning already there in India.

We landed at Amsterdam at around 8 30. There was too much hustle bustle at the Schiphol Airport. We romped all over the place and shopped a bit. It all seemed so familiar...having explored it 15 days back. We went out of the airport and inhaled the fresh Dutch air. We had time to go downtown, but did not take any risk. Our flight was at around half past two in the afternoon.

We landed in Delhi at around 3 AM. By the time we cleared immigration and reached home, it was almost 5 30. I wanted to rush to my munchkin, but she was with my parents. I had to wait till human hours. It was the end of our dream trip and back to hard reality.

Dress: Globus

Pink Tote: Victoria's Secret

2/11/2019 1 comments

Hola people! The month of love...February is here. But along
with the month of celebration, comes a lot of expenditure too. !
Your date expects to be pampered and taken out to fancy places everyday during the Valentine fortnight and you are destined to suffer a hole in your pocket. But fret not, I have some great news for you. You can save a lot through Dineout!

Sign up and get Rs. 500.
Refer and get Rs. 200.
Get an extra 5% when you add money.
Pay your bill through Dineout Pay and get 20% cashback upto Rs. 300.
Buy deals and get 20% Dineout cashback.
Use your HDFC Debit/Credit card to buy deals and get additional 50% cashback -- upto Rs. 75 per transaction and Rs. 150 throughout the month of February -- on the booking fees.
Get Gourmet Passport membership at half the price. Flat 50% off on GP throughout GIRF.

Let’s try and understand this through an example.

You are planning to take your girlfriend/boyfriend out on a date. You choose the best place serving amazing food and you also choose the finest wine there is. Everything is set. The plan is on and right at that moment, you suddenly start calculating the bill roughly in your head.

Hello guys! Things are about to take an ugly turn but then it is the #MonthOfMore and we got you covered. So here’s what you have to do.

Firstly, sign up for on the Dineout app and get Rs. 500 in your wallet. Now you refer a friend and get Rs. 200 more. Go on and add, let’s say, Rs. 2000 in the wallet, you get 5% more of that amount. So now you have Rs. 2800 in your wallet (500+200+2100). So now, after spending Rs. 2000, you have earned Rs. 800 extra.

Second step - buy two 50% off total bill deals of, for instance, Rs. 50 and use your HDFC Debit/Credit card to pay for that to get 50% cashback upto Rs. 75 on the booking fee. Wait, there are more savings to come.

Next, you pay the total bill through Dineout Pay and you’ll get another 20% cashback of upto Rs. 300 on that.

So now if your bill is, let’s assume, Rs. 5000, you’ll just have to pay Rs. 1575 for that. Here’s the math:

Total Bill: Rs. 5000

You spend:

Price of the deal for 2 (50+50) Rs. 100

(-) 20% Dineout cashback Rs. 20

(-) 50% HDFC Cashback upto Rs. 75 Rs. 50

Your Rs. 100 deals cost you just Rs. 30!

After the 50% deal: Rs. 2500

(-) Pay 25% of your bill post the deal through earnings: Rs. 625

(-) 20% cashback upto Rs. 300 when you pay through Dineout Pay: Rs. 300

Bill to be paid: Rs. 1575

2/10/2019 No comments

If you are a frequent watcher of Fox Life or TLC, you must have definitely come across trulli. Basically trulli are small houses made of stone roofs. Okay not exciting enough? You have to see it to believe it. If you are a Bollywood fan, you must have seen trulli in the song Khuda Jane from the movie Bachna Ae Haseeno. The base of the house is stark white while the roofs are conical and made of small stones. Trullo is a single house while trulli is plural. In Italiano, you usually add i at the end to turn it into plural (just like we add s at the end) there is a single village in the entire world in Italy that has trulli. Since this is kind of an endangered construction, it has been declared a UNESCO World Heritage site. All this had badly wanted me to visit them. Now the cardinal question arose: Where are these?

When we were planning our trip to Italy, I was adamant about visiting two places:

the trulli are found only in Alberobello, a tiny town in the state of Puglia, near Bari, its capital. It was a one and a half hour train ride from the Bari local railway station. However the train was not that frequent so it meant that we had to execute our plan intelligently.

We boarded the nine thirty train and reached there at around 11. However it was quite a walk from the station to the 'Trulli village'.We had our flight back to Rome that night and that's why I had pack everything before leaving for Alberobello. That is where we slacked. the train was at eight in the morning and then at 9 30. In order to catch the 8 am train, we had to leave at around quarter past seven. I was already tired from the past few days and this was the last leg of our trip. So the option was the 9 30 train and when we reached there we realised that it was a blunder.

There are two villages : Rione Monti : the larger village and Aia Picollo, the smaller one. We reached Rione monti at around 11 30 and it was crazily crowded. Most of the tourists were local. But the hustle bustle was maddening. Hubs got really furious with me for not boarding the 8 AM train and reaching there early. It was a task even navigating around, forget clicking pictures in peace!

I, however was very content. I mean I had dreams of visiting this place since I was a kid and there I was, in person! The village was serenely beautiful. Stark white houses, conical stone roofs, stony pathways with green creepers here and there. It looked liked it was kind of an exhibition/ make believe village.

Hubs was dissatisfied as he could not take pictures without any photo bombing. I got angry because he was not letting me sink in the heavenly feeling and continually grumbling. Finally we decided to run ahead of the maddening public. It was say to get lost there. But we managed to dodge the major chunk of the crowd and sneak into a comparatively peaceful lane. And then our photoshoot began. I could not really decide how to take pictures. I mean everything was so beautiful. Before we could actually settle there, the crowd reached there too. Again we ran to a nearby lane. The whole of Riene Monti was explored like this.

As soon as it was 1 pm, we decided to go to the other smaller village : Aia Piccolo (picollo means small) I somehow loved it more than its touristy, more famous cousin. the lanes were quieter and the houses were prettier. Okay I am wrong. The trullo itself is very beautiful, everyone of it. There was particularly one house that had pumpkins all around it and it was a magnet for photo crazy tourists.

Actually what used to be actual houses of villagers and farmers are no longer that. In order to preserve this rare heritage, these are being maintained by commercial people and had been converted to resorts and homestays. I wish I could stay there but neither we had time nor the money. My wish got fulfilled a bit when we had our last meal in a trullli restaurant.

Top: Forever 21

Skirt: Forever 21

Blazer: H n M (Italy)

Sunnies: Forever 21

2/06/2019 9 comments

2/05/2019 8 comments

As you know already, famous landmarks are something that decide our travel itinerary. After exploring the state of Victoria, it was time to discover New South Wales. Before venturing into Sydney, we went to the Featherdale Sanctuary and then left for the Blue Mountains, a famous hill station in that region. We stayed in Katoomba and restricted our voyage till this town only. Blue Mountains is a vast region and trying to Rummage the entire area on such a short trip was not feasible. So we stuck to Katoomba because of obvious reasons. As soon as you type Blue Mountains, an image of three peaks crop up. They are the famous Three Sisters and they are in Katoomba.

We decided to hike from our beautiful home in Katoomba city to the Three Sisters. The hiking trails in Australia are nothing like the ones in Italy. They are very well maintained with proper railings and public conveniences free of cost unlike in Europe where you have to pay 2€ for peeing! Ridiculous!

So we walked up and down the slopes of the town and reached the Dense jungles of Blue Mountains. The Three Sisters can be seen from far but our target was to go and touch them.

There is a very interesting Aboriginal tale about this peak.

There were 3 sisters in the Katoomba tribe Meehni, Wimlah and Gunnedoo who lived in the Jamison valley. They fell in love with 3 men from the neighbouring Nepean tribe but marriage was forbidden by the tribal law. The brothers were unhappy with this law and decided to capture those three sisters which resulted in a major tribal war. An elder turned the three sisters into stones in order to protect them but he was killed in the war. Hence no one could turn the rocks back. This is how these three peaks are named.

How to reach?

From Echo point, there is a stairway of 800 steps that leads to the base of the Three Sisters.

Entry fee: Free

Closing time: 5 PM

Closing time in Australia refers to the time when the public conveniences and the Information kiosks close and all the staff leave. But the attraction remains open. We reached the base at around half past seven.

The hike was tough. Descending the stairs not so much but climbing them back was an exhausting experience. However the view from there is unparalleled. I totally suggest hiking all the way.