A journey becomes memorable, enriching and fun when one trusts that everything is being taken care and one has an awesome company - my trip to Japan in 2018 with WOW has been one such experience.

Japan has been on my travel destination for some time now and right at the beginning of this year I made an intention to visit and celebrate my birthday in this country. After going through various itineraries of few other travel partners I zeroed down on WOW because of two reasons: The delightful attitude of my buddy Vithika & The itinerary looked promising, the way it was designed

Japan is a country that provides a blend of modernity and tradition along with lots of politeness and humility. I thoroughly enjoyed the traditional city of Kyoto and visited beautiful and majestic temples like Kiyomizu, Kinkakuji, Todaji along with the Nara Deer park, Itsukushima Jinja Shrine along with the giant Tori Gate. Here I also got to learn the difference between a temple and a shrine

I appreciate and am grateful to both our high energetic and spirited wanderers Vithika and Eileen for always being pleasant, patient and grounded with all the other wanderers, they truly are inspirational

I started on my dream vacation to Japan on the 6th of April.

The tour with Wow group was an amazing journey of exploring the beautiful locations in various places.

Osaka was blooming with Cherry Blossoms, its temples, castles and shrines were an out of the world experience! Kyoto city had an old world charm to it especially at the quiet Prince hotel where we stayed for three days and savored Japanese meals as also enjoyed the convenient, independent train rides to the city. The visit to Hiroshima city and Mount Fuji brought about new emotions of awe, wonder and quiet admiration for the Japanese people who have always been brave, strong yet so quiet in their resolve against all adversity! We all paid our respect and offered our sincere prayers for this wonderful nation at that time.

The final ride in the bus back to our hotel as we all knew we had to fly back to India the next morning was indeed difficult. The emotions choking us we barely managed to wish goodbye to our friends as well as the wow buddy Vithika and Japanese guide Eileen!

The travelogue wouldn’t be complete without my mention of these two lovely ladies who made our experience totally worthwhile! Vithika, the Wow buddy is a sweet, patient and very composed young lady who stood her ground so gently yet firmly bringing about the discipline and regularity during the tour at all times. She was extremely helpful and yet thorough in her conduct in making the tour sail through successfully. The narration is not complete without the special mention of the Japanese guide Eileen who made tour totally wholesome and meaningful for us.

All in all, my ten days in Japan made me richer and wealthier in wisdom, humility and admiration for the wonderful nation who are standing with their head high among the super powers of the world