On January 1, 2020, we returned to Bangalore from Doha, Qatar - a long layover to thaw from Christmas 2019 in Budapest. Little did we know, this would be the only time that we'd be outside of India all year. Late in 2019, we'd been spit-balling 2020 travel to two or three other countries, one of which - China - rapidly became unlikely given the epidemic rippling out from Wuhan.
With COVID-19 cases in India still paltry and concentrated in a few locations, we went forward with our early March Holi trip to Jaipur, followed by Hola Mohalla in Anandpur Sahib - traveling via the bizarre planned city of Chandigarh. This trip would be our last by airplane for 2020. Mid-March was when the virus started to be viewed as worrying, and, by late March, an extensive lock-down would be implemented that would keep us home until mid-summer.
There was a bright side to the restrictions. India has many sights that are difficult to get to, but which are worth seeing, including many in our home state of Karnataka. Therefore, when restrictions eased and intrastate travel became possible, we focused on seeing some of the South Indian sights that we'd never gotten to before - mostly because they were relatively inconvenient to reach.
Our first, tentative, explorations were just outside Bangalore at the beginning of July. One of which, Ramanagara Hill, we'd visited on previous occasions. The other, Chennagiri Hills, was new, but it was right next to Nandi Hills - a place we'd visited previously. All went well, except that, as we hiked down from Chennagiri Hill, an irritated official griped at us that it was closed (since said official apparently didn't get to his post 'til about noon, we - and numerous other trekkers - had already passed through without knowledge that it was "closed.")
For the rest of the year, our travel focus would be on reaching some of the fruit beyond the low-hanging bits we'd already seen. In late August, we traveled to Gokarna and Jog Falls, the former is the most popular beach destination in coastal Karnataka and the latter is the second highest plunge waterfall in India.
On Saturday our 2021 travel is supposed to begin with another KSTDC tour of Nagarhole (a national park that is home to tigers and elephants) and Bylakuppe (the largest Tibetan settlement in southern India.) After that, who knows?