Scotland

4 days, more than 1500 miles drive, blue sea, huge lakes and mountains, rafting in ice cold water and cliff jumping - these are the highlights of my Scotland trip. We started early in the morning that is around 7am. It was a long drive to reach Scotland almost 10hours and more than 500miles to drive. After a long drive with multiple breaks we reached Forres, Scotland at around 8pm in the night. After dinner we went to bed since we were tired after the long drive.

We reached the place at around 10am in the morning for rafting in river Findhorn. Even though I have done white water rafting in Ganga with rough rapids and Dandeli earlier this was a different experience with ice cold water. The good thing was Ace adventure the organisation which offered rafting for us provided us with wet suits which kept us warm in the cold waters. Cliff jumping from almost 22feet height into the ice cold water and also toppling of the raft throwing out everyone into the water was an amazing experience. We finished rafting at around 4 and then spent rest of the time driving around the place which had beautiful landscape to experience. We had dinner at a Bangladeshi restaurant and went back to local village Bar which was having a Scottish music festival with different instruments being played by locals from the small village.



We started early the next day and headed towards Isle of Skye. This was one of the best day of the trip as we drove along Lock Ness Lake and many other beautiful places across Scotland. Lock Ness lake is one of the biggest lakes and a huge tourist destination in Scotland, however i felt the best of Scotland is in the northern part of Scotland. We also covered 2 castles and a fort enroute to Isle of Skye - Fort of George, Urquhart Castle, Eilean Donan Castle. Fort of George was good however the 2 castles were only good for viewing from outside as I had already gone inside Windsor Castle in England, other castles wouldn't have interested me much.





We checked into the room at Kyle of Lochalsh and after freshening up we started driving further north. This drive reminded me of my trip to Ladakh in India. The landscape was pretty much similar but then the entire drive one side we had mountains and lakes and on the other side blue sea. This is one of the best landscape I have ever visited. Felt like I should have spent lot of time around this place as it had so much to explore. We covered Old Man's Storr rock formation and Kilt rock waterfalls. It was a beautiful waterfalls falling from the height directly to the Sea however it was very difficult to photo shoot this waterfalls.




From here we drove along the mountains of Quiraing, this was the spectacular drive with very narrow roads and beautiful landscape. From Quiraing we headed towards Uig bay. On the way the best thing which attracted my attention was a couple camping on top the peak in Quiraing mountains. Had only seen such things in movies.

Scotland has been one of the best places I have ever visited. I should give a visit again to this place with the idea to trek some mountains, hope I can do that.