A Princely State of India

New Palace, Kolhapur, Maharashtra

First blog entry of 2014. 2014 so far has been mmm.. pretty shitty, to be frank.

Worked non-stop except for the breaks, with some days extending till 2am! Getting tired… Maybe because age is catching up. The writing creativity’s gone for sure. Not only that, the English’s going down the drain fast! Can’t come up with the words that I need. And I hate my sentences. But what to do? I gotta deliver. It’s the quantity and deadlines that count nowadays, not the quality of the writing. That kind of attitude has rubbed off on my blogging, but I only have …this little time. Anything’s better than nothing.

Haven’t wished anyone a Happy New Year except thru whatsapp. As a matter of fact, haven’t even checked my personal emails since the end of last year. So to anyone who still reads this blog (I doubt there’s any), here’s to wishing you a great grand 2014! Hope this year, and every year after that, will be better than the one before. God bless all of you. May your wishes come true, and may the force be with you.

For the time being, here’s how we spent the New Year last year, in 2013. With a visit to Kolhapur, a former princely state of India. There’re hundreds of princely states in India once upon a time. They have their own kings (Rajas, Sultans, Nizams, Nawabs, you name em, etc.), own territory, own flags, own palaces, ministers, etc. Before India gained independence from Britain, Kolhapur was ruled by a Maharaja who is a direct descendant of the kings of the Maratha Empire. Kolhapur is in southern Maharashtra, near the Karnataka border. It’s about 270km from Daund, and took us 5 to 6 hours to reach (this is India after all, …5 to 6 hours is considered pretty good for a 270 km journey, OK? It'll probably take 10 hours if it's Assam)


A roundabout in front of the New Palace at Kolhapur (doesn’t look very New to me now)


Mahalakshmi Temple, Kolhapur – a famous temple in the region, dedicated to the Hindu goddess of wealth, and is supposed to bring good luck. If my Malaysian Chinese empat-ekor friends know about this, I’m sure there’ll be a throng of ‘em here.


Flowers and fruits for the temple – at the gate to the Mahalakshmi Temple, Kolhapur


Street leading to the gate of the Mahalakshmi Temple, flanked with shops selling religious stuff


Finally managed to catch a picture of Justin, running all over the compounds of the temple


Bhavani Mandap, used to be a palace court or something, and now a temple


A Jain Temple (I presume), near the Mahalakshmi Temple – this is only my guess ok, coz Jain Temples all look like this, intricately carved white marble structures


Rankala Lake, Kolhapur


A mosque of some sort, near the bridge crossing Panchganga River – no names so don’t really know what it is


A group of temples beside (or more like inside) the Panchganga River – again no names in English, so dunno what they are. Kinda bumped into it while driving around Kolhapur






More views of the Panchganga River Ghat