Whenever I heard about New Zealand from people who were going there for a vacation or working there, my first reaction was a sense of awe. I hadn’t seen many photos of the country, but I had this deep feeling that it would be a beautiful country (might be the effect of Indian movies). The second thought that used to cross my mind was that it would be a costly trip from India and that it definitely won’t happen any time soon. So, I never seriously thought or planned for a New Zealand trip.

When we got to know about our relocation to Sydney a few months ago, I was extremely happy for getting closer to realizing our dream of visiting NZ. Ever since we landed in Sydney, we started thinking about accumulating our leaves and planning our first vacation there, as if being in Sydney was a dream that might come to an end soon.

Luckily, many of our friends in Sydney visited NZ and we could gather good information from them. We chose South Island first, as that was the most recommended one. We heard that North Island is equally beautiful and it is more volcanic in nature, similar to Iceland. So, we wanted to do a different trip from Iceland and hence chose the South Island. New Zealand planning was easier compared to Iceland, with a range of accommodation options to choose from.

We started our journey from Sydney Airport and I was surprised to see how quickly and smoothly our check-in and immigration process happened, with everything automated without any waiting or manual intervention. I think this is the only airport I have seen so far with no officers at the immigration counter. I waited there for a few minutes or so, just to re-confirm if my process was completed.

I don’t understand sometimes how small things excite me the most, like it was the first time we were flying on Qantas Airlines and that was the most exciting thing for me on our travel day, to experience a new airline. The flight was good with bigger seats and a collection of latest movies. This was our first flight out of Sydney and I got a chance to look down at the city views. Sydney felt like a cluster of small islands 🙂

Our first destination was Queenstown, the entry point to Southern Alps. After around two and a half hours, we got our first glimpse of the Southern Alps 🙂 Queenstown landing reminded me of Srinagar landing in between the Himalayas. It was autumn season in New Zealand and there was only little snow left on the mountains. I could just imagine its beauty after winter. Without even entering the country, I wished to go back to this place after winter.

We wondered how amazing the drive would be, looking at the roads below.

We finally landed in Queenstown and got New Zealand stamp on our passports :). We stepped out of the airport in proper winter attire, expecting it to be very cold. It was a bright sunny day and I felt comfortable, not very cold that day. We hired a rental car (Apex car rental), bought a few groceries and started our journey to Te Anau, where we planned to stay that night.

In just a few minutes of drive outside Queenstown, we found a beautiful blue lake (Lake Wakatipu) accompanying us along the drive.

At this point, we felt that we were in a completely different country! The lake followed us for around 50kms and it felt like a river more than a lake.

After the lake, the landscape felt a little different with trees and mountains along the way. Somehow, I couldn’t stop getting reminded about Iceland roads on the drive and missed our cousins on this trip.

After around three hours of drive, we reached Te Anau, a small town which is a gateway to Fiordland National Park and Milford Sound. We planned to stay in that town for the next three days. We tried to reach Te Anau lake by sunset, but we just missed it by a few minutes. We enjoyed the serenity of the place 🙂

We stayed at Te Anau Lakeview Kiwi Holiday Park & Motel, opposite to the lake and it felt like the perfect choice. We relaxed for a while, had our dinner and stepped outside of our cabin to see how it looks like in the night and to check how cold it is 😛

To our surprise, the sky was filled with a huge number of stars that I had never ever witnessed. We could see the entire milky way galaxy glowing like a band in the center of the sky. We drove to a place just outside of the town, a short drive away from our hotel, to check how it looks like in the complete darkness and it was simply amazing.

I felt greedy and wanted to capture a photo of the night sky. I tried it with my mobile, SLR, but couldn’t capture anything. Whatever was captured, it was a bit shaky. We went back to our cabin, searched online to check how to capture the stars and we could find some steps to capture using my mobile OnePlus6 Pro Mode and that needed a mobile stand too. After a couple of attempts, we could capture a glimpse of stars in the sky and it felt ecstatic that I couldn’t sleep for a while with the image of stars in my brain.

Wow, what a day! I expected the travel day to be just a normal day with a road trip, but I didn’t expect to see all these amazing things on our first day itself.

It was a hearty welcome from New Zealand! 🙂