Kuala Lumpur: Walk Into The City Of Dreams

Would you like to experience a holiday that is an immaculate blend of comfort, luxury and culture? Do you want to rejuvenate yourself in the city of the famous Petronas Towers? Kuala Lumpur is a city of dreams that will take you into a realm of kaleidoscopic activities. The visitors can come back to their Malaysia Kuala Lumpur hotels after taking part in a range of activities ranging from visiting the famous Batu Caves to the bustling Chinatown and the legendary KL Towers. The architecture of Kuala Lumpur is a wonderful blend of a lot of cultures. Its skyline is so varied and magnificent that it can compete with the likes of Manhattan. The Petronas Twin Towers, Masjid Jamek, Menara Telekom, Menara Maybank, Dayabumi Complex, KL tower are all examples of the lovely blend of architecture. War struck buildings have been re-modeled and made into a long line of restaurants and bars along Tengkat Tong Shin in Bukit Bintang.

The Batu Caves give you a mystic feel with the beautiful naturally chiseled rocks and the monkeys making up for most of the attractions as well. Surrounded by some of the most intricately developed shrines, Batu Caves deserve to be on the top things in your to-do list while in KL. One of the most popular architectural monuments that grab your attention is none other than the world’s second tallest tower, the Petronas Twin Towers. Also known as the Twin jewels, it provides a bird’s eye view of the entire city from the majestic bridge connection the two towers. It is an embodiment of myriad activities and is bound to keep you on your toes with the sophisticated brands and Petronas Scientific Centre.

Explore an Exciting Destination

A visit to Kuala Lumpur goes incomplete without the experience of viewing the legendary Menara KL Towers. Its spindle-like apex is visible from almost anywhere in this city. It is built atop the Bukit Nanas Forest Reserve and also boasts of a revolving restaurant, an amphitheatre and plenty of souvenir shops. Chinatown paints a bigger and better picture of the heart of this city that never sleeps. It is immersed in a bevy of mystic Chinese culture and bustles with activity all through the days and nights. It is a shopper’s paradise with all the bargain and stores that one can find. Chinatown offers a myriad of choices to the tourists and the locals, right from the delicious street food to the reasonably priced merchandise and much more to all and sundry.

The Central and the Chow kit wet markets are known for their supermarket Carrefour and reminiscent to the SohHo flea market with all sorts of traders bustling with enthusiasm to allure customers. The Kuala Lumpur Bird Park is world renowned for the variety of species of birds that it houses. It boasts of over 3000 birds, ranging from the hornbills to the flamingos and the flamboyantly colored parrots. Visitor can walk away their day admiring these gorgeous creatures and their well-maintained habitats. Visitors can relax and have a great time at a Kuala Lumpur hotel and enjoy an unforgettable vacation in one of the most famous cities in the world.

Will Your Face Look Better Using Facial Exercise?

Looked in the mirror lately only to see a haggard, tired face peering back at you?

Are you asking yourself, "What happened to that young face I used to wear?" If so, you are the perfect candidate for a facial exercise makeover.

Without anything harmful or invasive, facial exercise, using isometric contraction with resistance, will begin to lift the stress and tiredness from your face.

Rather than resorting to injections that plump and paralyze or a surgical procedure that can empty your bank account, you can easily begin to engage those sagging facial muscles using proven techniques that will deliberately and systematically change and update your appearance.

How exciting is that?

Opting for facial exercise has many benefits - first, there's no cutting of perfectly healthy tissue. You probably have already figured out that when tissue is cut, excised and sutured that you set yourself up for infection and a physical result that may not be to your liking. Statistics have stated that over 30% of plastic surgery users do not care for their results. Why is that? Is it because neither the patient nor their family recognizes that face they used to love? Maybe the family doesn't really know how to broach the subject of your new look because it is a glaring and startling departure from who you were.

The very same thing happens when you see your favorite aunt with her cheeks so wildly puffed that her eyes are barely apparent and conversation is strained because you know you cannot blurt out, "What in the world happened to your face?!!?"

One of the best features of using facial exercise is that you look like you looked years ago with a fresh, vibrant complexion while your once sagging muscles that produced hooded eyes, a double chin, downturned mouth corners, jowls and pouches definitely improve day after day. Most facial exercise users purport that they look five, ten, even fifteen years younger after only 9 to 12 weeks of exercise.

Is a facial exercise routine cumbersome in regards to time spent exercising? Not at all. Once you learn how to execute, anchor and contract the muscles and muscle groups you can easily complete the routine in just minutes a day and once you have completed the initial program, you can maintain your new look by exercising only three times each week.

Imagine, no recuperative time, no stitches, no drugs and best of all - No Surprises!

Choosing facial exercise over surgery and injections will keep you looking much younger than your peers. You have probably realized that facial plastic surgery and the accompanying lasers and injections do not necessarily make people look younger; rather, those man-made procedures can make a person look distorted, done and even over-done.

Facial exercise is natural, it works for everyone and there are no regrets. What could be easier? And, the best part is that you keep your beautiful face and people will recognize you! You'll just keep looking better than you have in years without spending and spending a lot of money or regretting your decision to let someone have control over your face.

When Nice Is Not Enough

One of the most attractive words used to describe the person of interest with whom we want to enjoy an intimate relationship is the word "nice". When we decide that our love interest is pleasant, good, kind, polite, or fine (yes - I'm talking about good-looking), there is little that can deter us from pursuing the relationship we desire. We believe that "nice" is the confirmation needed in order to proceed to the next level. Once we define him or her as nice, the sense of entitlement enters the picture even when we're desperately trying to exercise restraint. He or she is "nice", so we must have this person in our lives. If they are attractive and nice, then we must definitely have them close to us. When they tell us they think we're nice -- Jackpot, it's a mutual attraction and visions of happily-ever-after burst onto the scene. If for some reason, there is the threat of competitors, some of us become panicked and believe nice is good enough to seal the deal before someone else steal Mr. or Ms. Nice away from us. We may make the hasty decision that anything else needed in order to sustain the relationship will come later (big mistake). If someone asks us what this person is like, we are anxious to lead off with the response, "Oh, he/she is so nice". The word nice, for a lot of us, sums it all up. Well, what happens when nice is not enough? This may be a difficult pill to swallow, but nice is not always enough.

Let me point out something very interesting. When you consider the word "nice" in terms of its most basic definition, it can be quite ordinary. If it is pleasant, good, polite, or fine, there is nothing that speaks to passion, extraordinary, awesome, or great. There is nothing that speaks to substance or longevity. "Nice" does not describe the ultimate pleasure. Yet, whenever we're trying to convince ourselves or others why "nice" is good enough, our reference to the word is used as if it's interchangeable with passionate, awesome, great, out-of-this-world, or anything else that goes far beyond ordinary. We take the leap from defining someone or something as "nice" to catapulting it into a sphere far beyond the scope of its definition. For some of us, "nice" is the assurance that the relationship will be everything we fantasized about. This notion is contradictory because "nice" is basic and our fantasies are never basic. No one gets excited over a basic fantasy.

So when is "nice" not enough? I can think of a few scenarios: When two people desire a commitment that goes far beyond casual; When you want your love-interest to have no regrets, reservations, or questions about spending the rest of his/her life with you- especially if you're planning on living a very long life; When you need the comfort, care, and support of the individual to whom you have entrusted your well-being and you are not well; When you need unwavering support during a period of test, trial, or tribulation; When you want the slightest touch from your partner to convey far more than the touch itself - the kind of touch that reaches the soul; or when you want to see a smile on his/her face that matches the wonderful feeling you have inside just thinking about the time the two of you spend together. This level of commitment, depth of love, degree of stamina, soul-stirring touch, and mutual passion calls for far more than "nice". Be honest with yourself. When you started out by describing him or her as "nice"; when you envisioned where the relationship was going, when you decided to forsake all others and commit solely to this person, you expected much more than "nice". So don't hold back. "Nice" is a wonderful attribute to have. It tells you that you at least have something to work with. But when you want much more, "nice" doesn't hold a candle to an awesome, soul-stirring, passionate, and love-of-my-life kind of experience.

Pruning Weeping Cherry Trees and other Grafted and Budded Plants

What do the terms grafting and budding mean? 

Budding is a form of grafting. Grafting is the art of attaching a piece of one plant to another plant, creating a new plant. Grafting is usually done because the desired plant is extremely difficult if not impossible to propagate through other means. Dogwoods, for example, are easily grown from seed, however, it is next to impossible to grow a pink dogwood from seed. The seeds from a Pink Dogwood will produce seedlings that are likely to flower white. 

The most common method for producing Pink Dogwood trees is to remove a single bud from a Pink Dogwood tree and slip it under the bark of a White Dogwood seedling. This process is known as budding, and the seedling is known as the rootstock. This is usually done during the late summer months when the bark of the White Dogwood seedling can be easily separated from the tree, and the seedling is about 1/4” in diameter. 

A very small “T” shaped cut is made in the bark only, and the bud is slipped in the slot. The actual bud itself is allowed to poke out through the opening and then the wound is wrapped with a rubber band both above and below the bud. By the following spring the bud will have grafted itself to the seedling, at which time the seedling is cut off just above the Pink Dogwood bud, and the bud then grows into a Pink Dogwood tree. 

Budding is usually done at ground level, and often times the rootstock will send up shoots from below the bud union. These shoots, often called suckers, should removed as soon as they appear because they are from the rootstock and are not the same variety as the rest of the plant. Flowering Crabapples are also budded and are notorious for producing suckers. When removing these suckers don’t just clip them off at ground level with pruning shears, they will just grow back. Pull back the soil or mulch and remove them from the tree completely at the point where they emerge from the stem. 

Most people clip them off a couple of inches from the ground, and then they grow back with multiple shoots. This drives me crazy! Get down as low as you can and remove them completely and you will keep them under control. On older trees that have been improperly pruned for years I take a digging spade and literally attack these suckers, hacking them away from the stem. Sure this does a little damage to the stem of the tree, but when a plant is let go like that I figure it’s a do or die situation. The trees always survive and thrive. 

Other plants are grafted up high to create a weeping effect. One of the most popular trees that is grafted up high is the top graft Weeping Cherry. In this case the seedling is allowed to grow to a height of 5’, then the weeping variety is grafted on to the rootstock at a height of about 5’. This creates an umbrella type effect. In this case the graft union is 5’ off the ground, therefore anything that grows from the stem below that graft union must be removed. 

Many people don’t understand this and before they know it they have a branch 2” in diameter growing up through the weeping canopy of their tree. Before you know it there are several branches growing upright through the canopy and the effect of the plant is completely ruined. 

The two photos below show exactly what I'm talking about in this article.  You can clearly see the weeping effect that the Weeping Cherry tree is supposed to have, but then up through the middle come these branches that are no more than just suckers from the stem, or the rootstock as it is known in the nursery industry.

Looking closely at the above photo you can see that these suckers originate from below the graft union.  This problem could have been prevented if someone had just picked off these buds when they first emerged on the stem of the tree.  Then they would have never developed into branches.

This tree can still be saved, but there will be a large scar on the stem when the upright branches are pruned off.  But under the canopy of the weeping tree these scars will never show.

Another interesting plant that is grafted is the Weeping Cotoneaster. In this case the seedling that is grown to serve as the rootstock is Paul’s Scarlet Hawthorn, and Cotoneaster Apiculata is grafted onto the Hawthorn rootstock at a height of 5’. Years ago a nurseryman found through experimentation that these two plants are actually compatible, and a beautiful and unique plant was created. I have one of these in my landscape and we love it. 

Once again since the graft union is at 5’, any growth coming from the stem (rootstock) must be removed. In this case the growth coming from the rootstock will be Hawthorn and will look completely different from the Cotoneaster which is what the plant is supposed to be. The easiest way to keep up with this type of pruning is to keep an eye on your grafted plants when you’re in the yard. As soon as you see new growth coming from below the graft union, just pick it off with your fingernail. 

If you catch these new buds when they first emerge, pruning them off is as easy as that. Walk around your yard and look for grafted or budded plants, and see if you can find any that have growth that doesn’t seem to match the rest of the plant. Look closely and you may find that the growth is coming from below a graft or bud union.

Chardham Yatra Distance Chart and Importance Of Holy Places

Chardham yatra is one of the most famous yatra among the Hinduism. Usually the Hindus visit Chardham yatra to wash their sins. There are four places in Chardham yatra. They are Gangotri, Yamunotri, Badrinath and Kedarnath. Pilgrims start to offer their prayer in clockwise circulation or we can say Parikrama as per Hindu tradition.

If you are going to start your journey of Chardham from Delhi then the first destination after Delhi is Haridwar which is at a distance of 205 kms. It almost takes 6 hours to reach Haridwar from Delhi. After taking rest in the hotel at Haridwar, in the evening you will get the opportunity to visit Mansa Devi temple and the famous Har Ki Peri Aarti. Then night stay will be at any of the Hotels in Haridwar only. The most famous activities for the pilgrims at Haridwar are the worship of ‘Aarti’ of Ganga after the sunset and the moving ritual of floating ‘dia’.

Delhi to Haridwar (205 Kms)& Haridwar to Mussoorie (215 Kms)
From Haridwar you have to reach Barkot via Mussoorie which is at a distance of 215 kms from Haridwar. In Mussooie you will get the opportunity to enjoy lunch and on way you will get the chance to visit Kempty fall of Mussoorie. After enjoying your travel through Yamuna Bridge finally you have to stay in the hotel at Barkot only.

Mussoorie to Barkot(115 Kms)
From Barkot you have to proceed for Yamunotri which is at a distance of 42 kms from Barkot. In order to reach Yamunotri, you have to go for 6 kms trek from Janki Chatti. In order to reach Janaki Chatti, you have to hire a local jeep from Hanuman Chatti which is on way from Barkot. From Janki Chatti, you have to follow a 6 km trek to reach Yamunotri. At Yamunotri you have to take Holi Dip in Garm Kund before offering your Puja of Shree Yamunotri Ji. From Yamunotri, you have to move back to Barkot for your overnight stay in hotel there. At Yamunotri, you will get the opportunity to visit:

Yamunotri temple- which was built by Maharani Gularia of Jaipur.

Suryakund-which is one of the most important thermal springs in the vicinity of the temple.

Divya Shila-it is a rock pillar which is to be worshipped before entering into the temple.

Barkot to Jankichatti(45KMs) & Jankichatti to Yamunotri(6 kms Trek)

From Barkot, you have to move towards Uttarkashi which is at a distance of 82 kms. This place is situated at a bank of river Bhagirathi and here you will get the chance to visit numbers of temples especially Shakti temple and Vishwanath temple. Here again you have to stay in the hotel to spend night.
From there you have to proceed towards Gangotri which is at a distance Of 100 kms. Offer your prayer there after taking a holy dip at the sacred river Ganges. Here you will get the opportunity to relish yourself in the natural beauty of this auspicious and blissful destination of Char Dham Yatra and after that you can come back to Uttarkashi by taking an afternoon drive.

Yamunotri to Jankichatti to Uttarkashi (145 Kms); Uttarkashi to Harsil (75 Kms) & Harsil to Gangotri (25 Kms)

From Uttarkashi again proceeds for Guptkashi via Tehri Dam which is at a distance of 223 kms. Here you have to stay in hotel and later on you can visit various temples like Ardh Nareshwar, Kashi Vishwanath temple etc. You have to spend your night in a comfortable hotel here.

Gangotri to Tehri dam (155 Kms) ; Tehri dam to Srinagar Garhwal (30 Kms) ; Srinagar Garhwal to Rudraprayag (35 Kms) & Rudraprayag to Guptkashi (50 Kms) 

From Guptakashi, you have to reach Kedarnath via Gourikund which is at a distance of 35 kms from Guptakashi and from there you have to follow 14 kms trek to reach Kedarnath. After refreshing yourself in the hotel here you can participate in the evening Aarti here in the temple which is built by Adi Shankaracharya in the 8th century.

Guptkashi to Gaurikund (35 Kms) & Gaurikund to Kedarnath (14 Kms trek)


From there, in order to reach Badrinath, you have to first travel to Pipalkoti which is at a distance of 14 kms and from there you have to travel 72 kms. Here you can visit Tapt Kund, Narad Kund, Mata Murty Temple, Mana Village, Bhim Pul, Vyas Gufa etc.

Kedarnath to Chopta (14 Kms trek total 75 Kms) ; Chopta to Gopeshwar (70 Kms); 

Gopeshwar to Chamoli (20 Kms); Chamoli to Joshimath (50 Kms) & Joshimath to Badrinath (44 Kms)

From Badrinath you have to proceed for Srinagar which is at a distance of 190 kms. After visiting few temples and spending overnight there, you have to proceed towards Rishikesh which is at a distance of 100 kms. It is a beautiful place .Here you will get the opportunity to visit Laxman Jhula, Ram Jhula, Raghunath temple and Geeta Bhavan apart from various sightseeing of Rishikesh city. You can also enjoy evening aarti at Triveni Ghat. After staying in the hotel at night proceed finally for Delhi which is at a distance of 230 kms.

Badrinath to Devprayag (132 Kms)

Devprayag to Rishikesh-Delhi.(192 Kms)