Adhitam

China visit

2011-12-22T07:30:00.000-08:00

One of the high points of any visit is to take some been there done that photos and this trip was no better. My feelings of going to China was pretty much mixed and it took a lot of self motivation for me to keep my spirits up when I boarded the 3 AM flight from Bangalore. The reason for the visit was the 25th Anniversary celebrations of NRC (Nokia Research Center). Taking this opportunity, me and my colleagues did some sightseeing of Beijing as well.

Before embarking on the trip there was lot of apprehensions among us such as the kind of food that will be available for vegetarians, whether it would be possible to survive the cold etc. The first part I took care by buying a decent amount of MTR and cup noodle packs that would not have allowed me to starve even if I had been in Antarctica. The later part was taken care by the company which signed a first time travel allowance of Rs 10000 for buying jackets and shoes.

Coincidentally I met two of my old friends in the Airport who were boarding the same flight, one was my college mate and the other was a former colleague, this sort of upped my anticipation that this is not going to be any ordinary trip. ;).

After a super long jog in the Hong Kong airport due to our delayed flight from Bangalore, we finally managed to catch the connecting flight to Beijing. The air hostess who took us on the run from one terminal to the other was pretty plumpy but boy she knew how to cover distances ;), we were almost pretty much panting our lungs out when we reached the other terminal.

The Beijing Airport was simply stunning, with a massive orange doomed roof, it was easily one of the biggest airports in the world. After an uneventful immigration, we managed to board a taxi, the taxi driver took his time in examining the hotel address written in Chinese. Our doubts as to whether he was taking us to the right place or not was laid to rest when we saw our hotel name (Jinghua hotel). Pretty much all the taxi drivers seem to be literate.

Our sightseeing tour of Beijing began with a metro ride to Forbidden city (Tienanmen East station). The fixed charge of 2 RMB (16 Indian rupees) for a one way ride was pretty cheap, the distance covered is immaterial ,all it matters is that you should have a 2RMB ticket at the exit.
The Forbidden city starts of with a tightly guarded gate, there are many military personnel near the entrance and some kind of an army parade was also going on inside the forbidden city. The forbidden city is the heart of Beijing and this is the place from where most of the Chinese emperors ruled. With its multiple doors and multiple layers of walls, the first thing that came to my mind was that the emperors seemed to be a pretty paranoid race. Different levels of hierarchy was setup in the society and the access to the various parts of forbidden city was governed based on this. Every door or entrance had a multiple columns of small blocks that indicated the kind of people who could enter through those doors. With multiple rooms, running to a couple of thousands the emperor had a huge set of wife's and concubines, but there was only one empress. With red being the primary color, the forbidden city is awash with red. Some marble carvings of dragons are interesting and also seem intricate but nothing seems to be outstanding expect for the sheer size and scale of the structure. A small hillock at the back of the forbidden city gives an excellent view of the city. The only issue is that when I went, the whole place was covered in haze and thus robbed me of an excellent view. The detail to symmetry that the chinese treasure so much is very evident from this vantage point.

Inside the Forbidden City

A mythical lion

Emperors throne

A dragon tortoise

After the visit to forbidden city we headed to the summer palace. It was only after reaching the place that I learnt that no summer palace actually exists as it was burnt down during the opium wars. Summer palace is essentially a large park with a lake flanking on one side and some temple kind of structure which is sitting on a hillock. The view from the temple (dedicated to a female buddha) is also worth the effort of trekking up to that spot.
The other attraction was a long walk way which the Emperor apparently used for his evening strolls. The guide informed us that the stone slabs used for building the walk way are capable of acting as heat regulators so that the Emperor was not bothered too much about the temperature. Finally at the fag end, some three of us got separated from the rest of the group and we had to walk back a long way to reach the original metro station. Apparently there was another station which was very close to the exit on the other side.

Taking a hot water shower after some long walks throughout the day was quite relaxing. The hotel room was pretty luxurious to say the least.

Summer palace park

Marble boat at the Summer Palace park

The next day we had booked a mini bus through the hotel reception for taking us to the Ming tombs and the Great wall. A pleasant tour guide who spoke pretty good English started with the history of the Ming tombs. The Ming tombs are situated some 52 kms from Beijing and are mostly un-excavated. Only one of the tombs have been excavated till now and the lone museum standing at the place has some artifacts that was preserved from that excavation. The excavated tomb experience had been a disaster for China as they didn't have the technology to preserve most of the artifacts, further now there is a law in place which prohibits any kind of excavations.
The other interesting thing was the concept of the world of living and that of the dead, an open frame of a door placed in plain ground symbolizes the crossing between the world of the dead and the living, A living person who enters into the land of dead should return to the world of living by brushing all the evil spirits off his body and then jumping over the doors threshold by chanting some words( which I incidentally forgot). But overall there was nothing much to see. The main tomb called the Changling tomb is unexcavated and the guide told that it would remain so because of the general belief that Feng shui of Beijing will get affected if it is touched.

Me at the wall

Great Wall

After a vegetarian lunch provided by the tour guides ( which was pretty decent considering that we were in China) we went to visit the Great Wall. There are many sections of the wall which are open to tourists and we were taken to Badaling which is said to be the most popular. The wall is built on mountain ridges and we have to simply marvel at this engineering feet. Cable car facility takes people almost to the highest vantage position of the wall. A short trek would make us reach a wall which in the ancient times was considered to be the symbol of becoming a man, so a person had to trek to this place and go back to have the honor of being called a true man by his fellow men. After finishing this all important task of touching the wall and taking some photographs we headed back to the hotel.
On the way we also saw the Olympic stadium, the Birds nest and it was really beautiful and imposing. The day long trip cost us 400 RMB with an extra charge of 80RMB for the cable car. Lunch was included in the ticket. There are many fly by night operators who offer the day visit to Ming tomb and Great wall for around 150 RMB but it is best avoided as the facilities provided in terms of travel and food are really bad. I'm quoting this based on an experience that one of my colleagues had on a previous trip to Beijing.
The remaining 3 days were spent in visits to the NRC Beijing center and a visit to a nearby resort for a workshop. But overall the trip was fun with nothing significant to worry about except for the food.
The Ganges restaurant which is a complete Indian restaurant was our savior, they have around three branches in Beijing and we visited two of those. The food was one of the best that I have tested even with respect Indian standards.

Team at the Ganges restaurant

All in all an official vacation :).

The Rupin Pass Diaries

2011-06-27T08:27:00.000-07:00

Fitness is important, so says the doctor. The saying becomes more important when you want to attempt a high pass between two beautiful Himalayan mountain valleys. The Rupin pass is at 15250 feet in the high mountains and connects the Rupin and Kinnaur valley. Even to this day local people use the pass to do their business such as sheep, goat selling etc. The journey through normal roads would be too long and also expensive, so it is the pass that they have to take.

“Look at these pictures of EBC, Oh Man this is simply fantastic”

These gasps of amazement from Krishna comes now and then. Once, such a session begins, it ends up taking a tsunami level proportion and literally throws you out of your feet. Like children dreaming of candies, the rest of the people get totally sold on to Krishna’s fantasies of the mountains. The planning for Rupin began after one such session.

“How about Pin-Parvati” I said

“Dangerous, there are crevasses and it requires proper well trained guides”, replied Krishna

“Annapurna?”

“Best season is October, not now”. Krishna knows everything.

“Ok then ditch, lets go for Rupin pass with old India hikes”

“Hmm, Ok” replied Krishna

“Next year, we will go on our own” I said. Krishna wanted to go to EBC, but EBC is not for me.

Rupin River

Deal was done, Finally we were five people Krishna, Rasool, Sandeep, Arun and Myself.

“Dude Sandeep, book the flight tickets to Delhi”, Krishna asks in the email

“Yeah, No tension I have it covered” Sandeep replies. He goes ahead and books in Go-Air with Non refundable, no date change conditions and tickets costs 3k more than what it normally should. As an icing on the cake, he specifically asks for the plane to be devoid of any female hosts.

After a pretty dull flight thanks to the painstaking efforts of Sandeep we land up at Delhi airport.

Krishna goes to meet an old friend. The rest of us speculate on how friendly the friend is J. The four of us enter a restaurant thinking it is too clean to provide a decent tasting meal. Suddenly a mouse is spotted scavenging under the table and all of us are happy that the food would taste good. Finally the food turns out ok. Catching a noisily gasping and sputtering Marcopolo bus we reach terminal 3 and take the Metro.

“Ooooh, this is super”, Sandeep says

“Wow, this is international class” Everyone concurs. The metro was simply breath taking. On hearing our gasps a Train inspector comes running and asks us to keep our luggage in the racks. For the next 17 minutes, 5 grown adults were sitting like 5 wide eyed village boys who had seen a bus for the first time in their lives.

The Dehradun train was on schedule and we were on it well within time.

“Morning I need to get up early and finish off my daily routine” I thought and went into sound sleep.

I heard some chattering below, It was 5:30 in the morning, “oh let me get up and go quickly” I told myself. But lo-behold, we were almost close to the railway station. I was to be constipated for the rest of the day. With a heavy heart I came down to the platform.

“Where is the India hikes coordinator” I asked

“Who knows”, Sandeep replies

“Call him”, Krishna says

“Who has the number?”

I look towards Arun hoping that he may be better than the ETG specimens, but I was disappointed. No one had the number.

We now hope that the coordinator will spot us at the entrance and make our way towards it. Just before starting we spot Gedde (Literally the name means Root, but in slang language it means a dull dude, we call our friend Satish fondly with this name), coming our way.

Gedde, with his squeaky stop start laugh had decided to give us a surprise by not telling us that he was coming on the trek. His squeaky stop start laugh grows in intensity and vibration as he comes near. Krishna grabs him and tries to give him the boot. I wouldn’t have minded giving a couple of stamps of my own. After bashing Gedde for being a Gedde we decide to go on, but Gedde has the number of the coordinator. Coming alone makes a person more careful J.

“Bhaiya, how much for one room for one hour” Rasool asks

“450Rs”, Bhaiya replies

My eye balls and also the other balls fall off hearing the price. After finding the coordinator we had decided to rent a hotel room to finish off the unfinished business.

“500 Rs is too much, 200Rs is what we will pay”

“Nothing doing, 400 Rs is the last price”.

Looking at our constipated looks, Bhaiya knows that we don’t have any other option. We take the room. 400Rs for a filthy room with a filthy bathroom was too much. But not many options available for us anyway.

The Hotel room

The Jeep/Bolero zips through the mountain valleys, Lush green Yamuna is flowing besides us as we make our way up the hills. With a couple of breaks for breakfast & lunch and one break for a bath on the Yamuna, we speed through to the campsite of Dhaula. In the midst of pine trees was set the beautiful campsite. A quick snack of pakoda’s and soup was waiting and we spent no time in polishing it off.

Lokesh our camp incharge comes and introduces himself. He says a 5 minute briefing session will follow. We are happy that it will be only 5 min and agree to be present on time. I take out my torch and borrow tissue paper to run into the forests as soon as the briefing gets over.

Camp at Dhaula

“I have conducted trekking for 18 years in the Himalayas” Lokesh begins

“We have to respect the mountains or they will get back on to you” he continues

“Tomorrow will be easy trek only 7 Kms, after that I will talk only in terms of feet” he goes on

Blah blah blah

10 minutes gone

Blah blah blah

20 minutes gone

Blah blah blah

The bloody sun light is also gone

“In the Himalayas snakes are present and we should be careful” he drawls

Oh god, Now I have to worry about snakes also when I go out in the dark.

Blah blah blah

10 more minutes gone, before a porter comes and says dinner is ready. Thankfully the porter has saved us the night.

Got to know that plates were not enough and I had to wait for it. Grrrr, I don’t know with what set of organizers I am spending my vacation. After a session of night photography and a forest visit, we were all set for the night in the tent. I, Gedde and Krishna went in one tent and Rasool, Sandeep and Arun took another.

Day 1:

After a restful night, again in the morning Krishna and I went in search of a suitable spot. This problem of searching for a suitable spot is always an issue, the spot has to be completely out of view and it has to be clear of flies and insects. We have spent almost half an hour on an average everyday searching for the right spots.

This time there were no free caps from India hikes and I had to borrow a cap from Arun.

Seeing this Gedde comes and asks

“Mithun, you have not got your cap” Gedde asks

“No, I thought India hikes were going to give” I reply

“Mithun, I think you are becoming like Chethan, depending on others” Gedde says

“hmm”, I think Gedde is talking is too much, I make up my mind to kick him hard in the night when he is asleep.

Trek meanders along the river Rupin, and this river will accompany us for 5 days of the trek. The Icy cool blue waters just rushes past the hills making a hell of noise. We traverse through narrow pathways along the river, sometimes going at significant height and sometimes going just along the river.

The Beautiful Rupin Valley

“Oh man, not again, I don’t need another break,” Sandeep says

“Break, stop…Need to wait till everyone comes” Our Guide says

“Who is left out, I think everyone is here”, Sandeep says

“No, let us wait” Guide replies

We wait, even though all the members of the team are there. This way we took some 4-5 breaks unnecessarily killing time and eventually skipping lunch.

Finally the temple tower of Sewa appears, everyone is busy taking photos when this chameleon comes out and fearlessly comes near me and poses.

The Sewa temple tower

The Bold Chameleon

Finally we reach the camping site next to the roaring river. The scene is picturesque and the rest of the evening is spent in admiring the beauty of the place.

In the tent we sit and chat, Arun opens his pack of kadlepuri and we gobble it up…On hindsight we should have saved it up for higher camps.

In the night, we face some stiff challenges with respect to opening Krishna’s sleeping back and finally the work had to be outsourced to the other tent.

Day 2:

Day2 begins with a pretty bad incident. I had gone uphill to do my daily ablution and unfortunately broke my walking stick while digging a pit.

The starting part of the trek is on a Jeep track. Lokesh decides to make this portion a bit interesting and when we had reached a fork, he took us through a road which was going down. Finally after walking for a couple of kilometers, he takes a steep path to walk up to the other road which we could have taken directly from the fork.

The second half is peppered with steep climbs, the mountain scenery is more or less a repeat of yesterday and the never ending walk saps you out of energy.

An Old Lady

Trekkers Busted

Finally we reach Jhaka at around 2. Today there was no way we could be denied our lunch. The camp is in a homestay, finally some shelter and a chance to escape from the cramped tents. 9 of us get into one room which is pretty comfortable with its wooden structure. I just hope that it doesn’t catch fire in the night and burn all of us up.

Lunch is served at 4 and it turns out to be rationed cups of Maggie. Everyone is outraged. You could see Hunger in all the eyes.

Bhagavat (Revolution) starts,

“India hikes were like this when I last came here, I thought of giving them another chance and unfortunately nothing has changed”, Laments Chandra ( a fellow trekker)

“We should do something about this, we can’t trek on empty stomachs”, Sandeep says

“Leave food, I’m more worried about safety, the way they have conducted the trek till now, I don’t have the confidence of going with these guys to the upper camps” replies Krishna

“Ok let’s talk with Lokesh, if he doesn’t give us firm commitments for improvements then let us ditch the trek”, Every one comes to the same conclusion.

Deepak (urf lookalike of Ravi) who is the leader of the next room says that he had the same discussion with his roommates and he takes up the gauntlet of talking with Lokesh.

Evening arrives with an acclimatization walk to a temple which is situated slightly above the camping homestay. With hungry stomach and simmering anger we trek up to the place. I was hoping for a briefing session where we could throw out our discontent. Fortunately/Unfortunately Lokesh chose to skip the briefing. A photo session with the kids ensues, possibly these kids find us strangers fascinating; they always stop at a distance and stare at us.

We walk back to have a good dinner served. There is no sign of Deepak belling the cat, finally I and Krishna go and call Lokesh in to our room. Krishna then embarks on one of the most diplomatic talks that I have ever seen him giving, finally Lokesh agrees to do his best and said he will improve the situation.

Ah ha, finally the issues being resolved, I decide to loose myself in sleep

“Grrrrrrrr, Grawg, Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr”

“Oh my god, what was that” I think

“Grrrrrrrr, Grawg, Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr”

“Bloody, two guys were snoring in a really over the top hooting way and the frequency was also resonating”

“Gawk”, I said good bye to my sleep.

Day 3:

On this day, the trek starts in the forest, before we encounter our first Ice patch. The patch is mixed with mud and dust, but still many of the trekkers who were seeing Snow for the first time tried to hit each other with small snow balls. Only after crossing the patch did I realize that we had actually crossed over the river. The rupin river flows under the ice patch. In the following two days we did this criss-crossing several times and every time it was on an ice formation that hung over the river.

The trek now is on the river bank and negotiating the stones turns out to be the toughest part. Concentration is a must otherwise there is every chance of stumbling across a stone.

A Sheppard is seen with a tent pitched in this god forsaken but beautiful place

The Sheppards sheep

“How is it going”, One of the trekker asks the Sheppard

“Mast, everything is fine” Sheppard replies

“For how long will you be here?”Trekker asks him

“I stay here for almost 8 months in a year”, the Sheppard replies

“8 months !!!, What do you do in winter”, Trekker asks

“In winter, I camp a bit down stream” He replies. He looks quite contented, living all alone in the company of his numerous sheep’s and goats.

The camp site finally comes into the picture, It is on a small grassy patch next to the river, this was Saruwas thatch. Nowhere near the thatches that I have seen till now.

Having reached at around 12 in the afternoon, we had lots of time to kill.

Most of the time was spent with six of us sitting in a tent and talking about Ravi J.

Dhanteras thatch

Evening again comes with the proposition of an acclimatization walk and we climb up to a snow patch which is close to the camp. At close to 40 to 50 degree incline, it looks pretty tough to surmount. I had left my stick back in the camp and I find the going very tough. After an arduous pain staking climb of around 50 meters, I decide to turn back. Climbing down was more fun than climbing up. I had no clue whatsoever as to what to do. Looking at others and experimenting, I safely traverse back 80% of the distance, Taking some oxygen in, I feel satisfied of having come close, then suddenly my feet gives way, I slip and I fall bang on my camera. My back is aching very badly and I zoom down the slope before somebody catches me at the bottom.

“Boss, what happened? Is the camera OK”, One guy asks

“Yeah, I guess”

“Nothing happened to the camera right?” Another guy asks

“Crap, I’m hit badly and these guys are worrying about my stupid camera” I think

“Are you ok”, somebody asks

“Ah finally, some humanity, some sympathy to a living creature”

In the night, I give myself a rub with Tiger balm and hope that I don’t end up with a bad back in the morning. Before I fall asleep, I spell out a parting curse for the acclimatization walk.

Day 4:

Sunny, bright morning greets us. Today Krishna and I end up taking a big walk to complete the morning job. Gedde as usual wakes up at 4:30 and completes his job in the darkness. With this being an all male group, almost no one had any qualms in sitting in the direct line of vision of the camp.

The trek continues along the river bank and we can clearly see the waterfall, the head of the valley at a distance. Clear transparent water greets us as we move upwards. There is no significant climb today and we make it to the next camp Dhanderas thatch without much of a fuss.

Towards the pass

Clear waters of the Rupin

In the distance a mother Vulture is teaching her young baby how to fly. Their lessons go on by climbing up the hill on foot and then flying down. Beautiful small flowers cover the grassy regions of the thatch. Melting water has made some of the regions slushy and muddy.

The call for acclimatization walk again comes, everyone in the tent groans, nobody wants to go, but we know Lokesh will come after us no matter what, so we totter out to climb another snow patch. I’m more careful this time and leave my camera behind in the tent.

Upper and lower waterfalls

After an early dinner we huddle back to the tent, the cold is now getting under our skins.

Day 5:

This was going to be a long day. Rain was pelting on the tent since morning.

“What will happen, are we going to trek in rain” was my question

“No chance, I will not move till the I can see the upper camp clearly” Krishna replies

Morning tea arrives to the tent, we ask the porter for updates and he says wait and watch would be the policy. There is no possibility of moving to the upper camp till the weather clears.

Finally the rain seems to have reduced in intensity and in no time the sky clears out. Deep dark blue sky with shimmering white mountains form the backdrop. Everyone is out and busy packing, I go about my job quickly and the march starts again. Rajmohan our technical guide says “the actual trek starts from here”. My heart sinks a bit, “what the **** had we done till now”

Crossing an ice patch

A steep icy slope had to be climbed, Rope is tied to the other end and hanging on to my dear life I climb. A slip would have seen me 50 meters down but wouldn’t have caused much damage, but still it was strenuous. I had hoped that after the icy steep was conquered the whole thing would be a cake walk. My back was slightly hurting and I was very careful with my steps.

After a couple of more ice walks it starts dawning on me that we were getting higher than the upper waterfall camp. The plan was to camp as close to Rupin pass as possible. Physically, I suddenly felt sapped to the core. I had a cold, but now there was a headache. Huffing and puffing I was still hanging on. Rajmohan was unusually strict today and he would drag the stragglers with ropes tied around their waist. Luckily just before all my reserve energy got used up we reached the camp. The whole camp was on ice and my first utterance on reaching the camp was “S***”

Maybe my utterances didn’t go down well with some of the gods sitting in the mountains and we ended up having a corner tent. The advantage of such an arrangement was we would be in line of fire from the fierce Himalayan winds all through the night. In fact, the winds were so strong that they pulled up some pegs of the tent as well.

A snow storm blew half an hour after we reached our camp and it continued well into the evening. The lunch was served in our tents and we could hardly eat sitting in such a cold climate.

“this is my last >15000 trek” Satish says

“Mine too”, I concur

Krishna also joins in and declares this to be his last >15000. Later at the Rupin pass he retracts the statement. Satish and Myself have stuck to our oaths till now.

Camp on Snow, Image taken by Sandeep Prakash (https://picasaweb.google.com/123sandy)

Sitting in a tent in a high altitude camp is a major torture, the tents don’t provide complete warmth and you end up getting the feeling of being slowly toasted in a freezer. I decide to take a leak and end up staying outside. Being outside proved to be much more comfortable as you would be moving and generating body heat whereas it is not the case when you are sitting in the tent.

In the evening Lokesh calls for aclimitization trek.

Both Krishna and Gedde share their anguish and decide not to follow the orders. I got out in to the cold snowing weather. Wearing my poncho I trudged on the snow, The group had already left and lokesh had not bothered about taking a count of people, so Krishna and Gedde were safe. Most of the group were standing at a distance of around 200 meters from the camp, a small splinter group had gone ahead and they almost went to the base of the rupin pass. The rest of us returned as quickly as possible. After coming back, I decided to stay outside so as to get acclimatized to the conditions.

View from Ranti Pheri, Image taken by Krishna A G
https://picasaweb.google.com/krishna.ag/RupinPassSummer2011#

Finally after a quick dinner, everyone went to sleep, next day was going to be tough but the advantage was that we had already covered a lot of distance so next day technically should be easy.

Day 6:

The Rupin pass day had finally arrived. The weather in the morning looked cloudy without any stars. The morning work had to be done on snow and I’m sure that it will be well preserved for a long time J. The weather soon cleared up giving us clear blue skies and wonderful views. The trek began on an easy note, but still I was not finding it very easy, the cold had again taken its toll and I couldn’t breathe through my nose. Finally after a half an hours walk we came to the base of the pass. Now close to 150-200 meters climb had to be handled. Our Guide Rajmohan a fiery guy divided the group into two with the first group consisting of slow movers and the second comprising of the studs. I qualified very well for the slow movers team and we got the chance of first cracking the pass. No doubt the deadly studs were disappointed. We moved ahead but not before a warning from our Guide.

RajMohan: “Now listen to me carefully, Follow each other properly and don’t leave any gaps, If I find any gaps then I will tie a rope over that person and will simply drag him”

“Boss, and I thought I’m on vacation” were my thoughts.

Attempting the Pass, Image taken by Sandeep Prakash (https://picasaweb.google.com/123sandy)

The group moves slowly and steadily, everyone is afraid of leaving a gap. Some people sound him to stop if they felt tired, but the onslaught from RajMohan was relentless, he was a thorough task master, In the end many of the trek members thanked him for that and I was sitting puzzled with a “What the ****” expression.

Finally heaving and sighing we finally managed to reach the top of the pass. The place for which we had put up so much struggle to reach. We were at the top of the mountain and the border of two beautiful valleys, one side was the kinnaur and the other side being the Rupin.

Guides and porters spent time in praying to the gods who reside on the mountain passes, Lokesh thanks for the flawless weather that we had got while trekking by chanting the Gayathri manthra and finally it all ends with a lot of group pictures.

“One photo please” Arun requests Sandeep

“Wait a minute, I’m busy”, Looks like Sandeep has a bout of AMS, he usually becomes irritable at heights.

Every one is clamoring for a photo but unfortunately the photographers are busy shooting the surroundings.

“5 more minutes and we will start getting down” Lokesh announces

Desperation seeps in and every one starts posing in a hurry to get the photographs done with.

Finally with the object of the trek having been achieved, everybody had a smile on their faces, some had the look of relief and some were like, “this was easy, give me more”

On Rupin Pass, Image taken by Sandeep Prakash
(https://picasaweb.google.com/123sandy)

The climb down to the kinnaur valley was more fun than we had anticipated. A couple of steep slides had our adrenaline kicking in. The guides decided to go as close to sangla as possible since we had negotiated the pass ahead of time.

Once the snow parts started receding the chances of sliding also became nil.

Sliding down from the pass, Image taken by Sandeep Prakash
(https://picasaweb.google.com/123sandy)

Just before our lunch halt one of our porters lost his footing and fell down on a steep hill side. Luckily another porter who was walking below caught him. The porter had suffered a cut on his legs, thankfully it was not very serious and he could walk on his own.

Another incident that shook us up on this day was when two yaks attacked us. Most of our group were in the rear end when we were climbing down and the guides and the rest of the team members had gone ahead of us.

Then from behind, Doctor (fellow trekker) came running behind us without his bag saying a couple of yaks were attacking him. Nobody paid much heed. I was walking at the rear of the small group of 6-7 people when I turned around and saw two gigantic yaks coming running down at us. I yelled and started running, everyone were in a flash running like crazy, two minutes before we were all dead tired after walking for such a huge distance. We all ran at top speed towards a fallen stone home which was thankfully close by. Once reaching there I turned around, Krishna was running like I have never seen him run before and just a few meters behind the two Yaks were chasing him ready to strike, thankfully Gedde took a stone and threw it at the oncoming yaks and they got deflected and went ahead on our route.

After catching our breath, we decided to see if it was safe to go ahead, Gedde volunteered to have a look, he shouted that the Yaks were coming back at full speed. Everyone had picked up a stone for self protection and now we were on the path, looking at the incoming Yaks everyone again decided to run back to the stone hut.

“Lets put up a front here on the road itself” I cried out

Only Deepak was there standing, the rest had fled to the refuge

“We are only two, lets get back”, Deepak mentioned.

I also felt the same and we ran back to join the rest. The yaks came and we threw the stones like hell. Thankfully none of them hit them. They ran up the hill, leaving the route free. By this time couple of people from our trek group who were coming behind had picked up the Docter’s rucksack. Rajmohan also came from the front and he was like what was all the fuss about.

The explanation he gave was that the Yaks like salt very much and usually villagers travelling on this route would feed them with salt, for this reason the Yaks come running whenever they find humans. But we were not convinced, All of us were sure that the ferocity by which the Yaks were running after us clearly indicated some nefarious intentions.

Thankfully we reached our camp in Upper sangla without further incidents. The mobile signal was back and everyone were busy chatting with their near and dear ones.

In the night we had a camp fire and everyone had to sing a song after introducing oneself. A bought of night photography followed with some stunning pics.

Kinnar kailash at night, Image taken by Krishna A G
https://picasaweb.google.com/krishna.ag/RupinPassSummer2011#

Day 7:

The final day in which freedom and liberty was to be found had finally arrived. The trek was steep and took us a couple of hours to reach the sangla village. Then after a strenuous climb we finally reached the guest house that was booked for us.

After taking a bath, I felt simply refreshed. The supposedly hot water was just above freezing cold and it gave me a light temperature. I sort of felt disoriented for the rest of the day.

Image taken By Krishna A G
https://picasaweb.google.com/krishna.ag/RupinPassSummer2011#

The jeeps that were to take us to Shimla finally arrived in the noon. The Xylo that we had picked up didn’t have any space for keeping luggage and we had to keep then in another jeep. Totally four jeeps made their way to Shimla.

“Mithun, Video…look at the beautiful mountain valley”

“Rasool, Keep clicking”

Gedde was getting on to my nerves and also that of Krishna and others.

“Nothing of the scenery will come” Krishna kept telling but Gedde wouldn’t listen. I decided to give away my window seat to Gedde as soon as we stopped next. My disorientation didn’t afford me the luxury of keeping awake and clicking photos.

Sangla Village

The valley was really beautiful. The whole scenery is very similar to that of the route to Badrinath. With steep valleys and the river flowing far down below.

For lunch the driver stopped us at a dhabba which he said was very good. Getting inside we got to know that only meals was offered and Rajma-chawal was the only item on the menu. After having suffered in the hands of Rajma chawal for the last 7 days during the trek, we were in no mood for another meal of rajma chawal, but there was no other option. Finally we sighed at our fate and got on with it. Once the meal was served, the whole complexion turned on its head. The meal was simply superb, A simple meal but very tasty. Finally we knew how a well made Rajma-Chawal tastes.

A tyre puncher saw us fall behind the other vehicles, the driver had no idea as to getting the spare tyre down from the Xylo and if it were not for the technical brain of Sandeep, the guy would have taken a long time.

We reached Shimla late in the night at around 10. The others were still thinking of what to do. Even we were caught in the dilemma, Our initial plan was to go to Kalka and stay in a room there, In the morning we had a train ticket booking from Kalka to Delhi. After a whole lot of confusion as to what to do and running here there starting from searching a room to hiring a taxi to taking a direct bus to Delhi, none of our efforts paid any results, finally tired we had our dinner at a small place near the bus stand which was crowded like hell. In the end we ended up in hiring a taxi till Kalka and I had the opportunity of sitting awake with the driver. Finally reaching Kalka at 2:30 in the night, finding a room was a major headache as almost all the hotels were closed down and nobody was ready to open up for us. In the end, One of the watchman at a hotel called up the hotel owner who showed us a decently spacious room.

A temple at Sangla

“Bhaiya, you look decent and well read, what are you doing roaming around at 2:30 in the night” The hotel owner asked Krishna

Our Krishna had the dubious honor of explaining our situation to the hotel owner.

Without any further incidents we reached Delhi by around 4:30 in the evening

“Lets directly go to the Airport” Krishna said

“No, lets go to some place and have some good food”, Rasool replied

Notwithstanding the glare that Krishna gave we proceeded towards Connaught Place. We had only 1 hour at our disposal and getting there itself took around 15 minutes. Finally after having a couple of Bhel puri’s and a Milkshake we were back at the Airport.

And finally by Midnight we were back home, sleeping on my own bed felt really heavenly for a change.

Harvest of Success

2010-12-26T06:34:00.001-08:00

See me there, In the fields of life,
Working hard, harvesting success,
with hard work and great toil,
with immense patience and lot of love

Rains have finally come,
Satiating the parched seeds that were sowed,
Little sprinkling have started to grow,
Turning the barren fields green with life.

I dont seek the fruits, all for myself,
It is for the lord that I toil here,
It is the lords field that I work upon,
Every success will be a flower that is kept at his feet.

Before the fragnance of the flower fades,
Another harvest of new flowers have to be ready,
Sharing the seeds that I sow, with others,
To increase the harvest for my lord.

The ruins of Hampi- Day 2

2010-12-24T05:51:00.000-08:00

Figuring out where to have breakfast, lunch and dinner is essentially an exciting part of any trip as you always try to see whether your intuition of the kind of food that will be available has matched or not. Here in Hampi even though technically there are many spots according to books like lonely planet that serve decent food, we felt it the safest to have our breakfast at the Mayura KSTDC itself. At 7 in the morning we were all ready for one more day of ruin exploration. Unfortunately, breakfast was not yet ready, so we decided to do some ruin exploration to whet our appetite.

On the way to Hampi from Kamlapura we took the first right turn which goes towards Chandrashekara temple. The chilly morning had resulted in a misty expanse over the landscape, Stone structures were scattered around the place, some in disuse and some were well maintained. The Chandrashekara temple was standing all alone without any neighboring structures, had an outside wall to the temple and the inside entrance was locked. A bird had made its nest at the top of the temple's Gopura and was making a screeching sound. Well it looked a very peculiar kind of bird, unfortunately could not get any good photographs of it.

Unknown strange looking bird

Next we went to the Octagonal water pavilion. Probably this was used for the purpose of bathing by some of the powerful people in the Vijaynagar empire, the center of the bath has an octagonal shaped platform, A guy was busy studying for his exams sitting there and thus taking photos of the structure by not including him became a bit problematic finally I hid him behind one of the pillars.

The Octagonal Tank

From here you can see another temple dedicated to goddess Saraswati, but it looked a bit small and didn't elicit enough interest from us after having seen some huge once, the day before.

We went back to the hotel to find out that the breakfast was still not ready and we were made to wait for a whole hour, to be served poori-baaji. We had totally lost our patience before the food finally arrived, a cat purred under our legs and we were forced to share our food with the poor thing that had already dined at a foreigners table some 10 minutes back.

We were back on track and started with the Royal enclosure, the first structure that we encountered was again a royal bath. A guard was sweeping the place and he gave us a broken tooth smile in anticipation of a tip and started reeling the significance of the place. It seems both the queens of Krishnadevaraya used to come here for their daily baths, the place was pretty huge and the water was sourced from an upstream tank. Moreover the water had to be changed everyday. The architecture looked more moghul than south indian, The walls though basically built from stone were plastered with a limestone kind of solution. Each of the gombuz of the enclosure had a different design, but almost all of the work made on this lime kind of plaster has fallen apart. After paying a 10 Re tip for the sweeper for having elucidated us of the place we moved on towards the Mahanavami dibba.

The Royal Bath

commoners inside the pool

The Mahanavami dibba was constructed to celebrate the victory of Krishnadevaraya over Udayagiri which is now in Orissa. The huge platform is engraved with the victorious procession of the soldiers and also depicts the battle of orissa. Krishnadevaraya is said to have watched Dussera processions from this platform.

View from the Dibba

Mahanavami Dibba

Carvings on the Dibba

The view from the top of the dibba is also very fantastic. It covers a wide expanse of the landscape and you can see ruins all over. The sight really overwhelms you, this was such a huge city throbbing with life and one day it was cut short due to the whims of some stupid conquerors. By this time we had found ourselves a self appointed guide, this guy just came to us and started reeling off the history. At first we didn't pay heed but whatever he said was pretty interesting so he joined our exploration troupe. He showed us an underground chamber whose roof had caved in, but the entrance to which is still through a tunnel. This was the room that was supposedly used by the Kings to discuss state secrets.

Path to the Underground chamber

We next visited the stepped tank, this is one of the tanks which shows off the builders knowledge of geometry. The symmetry maintained across the tank is simply phenomenal. The tank is supposedly 7 meters deep but was filled almost to the brim with water. This was a disappointment, the tank has an old stone structure through which water was channeled in in the olden days.

Stepped Tank

We then moved on along with our guide to the Hazararama temple. The 1000 rama temple. The temple has engravings of lord Rama and his life, there is also engraving on Luv-Kusha stories. In some places engraving of some episodes of Krishna's story can also be found. An entrance of 4 big pillars invite you.

Hazara Rama temple Entrance

Engravings on the walls of the temple

Pillar inside the main shrine

The main shrine has four pillars which are completely black in nature and seem to have been imported while making the temple. The sanctum sanctuary has three slots for the idols of Rama, Sita and Lakshmana. The idols are now said to be in a Chennai museum.

Sita, Rama and Lakshmana

Vaali Sugreeva fight

BalaKrishna with Kalinga Snake

After Hazara rama temple we visited the Zenana enclosure where the queens of the mighy kings resided. At the entrance you encounter two big platforms, one at the right and the other at the left. It seems these platforms were the foundations for the palaces of the two queens of Krishna devaraya. The palaces were build using Sandalwood and thus were burnt down during the raids.

Erstwhile Palace of One of Krishna devaraya's Queen

One structure that has managed to survive without any major damages is the Lotus mahal. It is considered to be a socializing area for the queens and other ladies who used to stay there. Huge watch towers surround the place and entrance to them have been barricaded, perhaps to preserve the structure.

The Lotus Mahal

Parakeets on the watch Tower

Watch tower for the Zenana enclosure

The famous elephant stables are just behind the Zenana enclosure and the speciality of the structure is that each of the elephant had the pleasure of enjoying a different architecture in terms of the outside doom and also the internal decorations. A small opening in the wall probably helped the mahout to move from one cell to the other. After paying the guide 50 Rs for the services he rendered to us in improving our knowledge of the place, we went in search of the underground Virupaksha temple.

The Elephant Stables

The temple is strictly not underground but is actually below the ground level. The inner shrine is flooded with water and it is possible to peer in only from the main shrines entrance. I'm not sure whether the water was intentioned to be there originally but since the temple is that of lord shiva, it is highly likely that the they intended to flood the place. But putting feet on moss filled water and that too on slippery stone is not easy and we didn't venture any further towards the main sanctum sanctuary.

The underground shiva temple

The water filled main shrine

Laksmi Narasimha Statue

We were now almost coming to the end of checking out the famous spots in Hampi, the Lakshmi narasimha statue is simply majestic and it is supposed that a statue of Lakshmi was sitting on the lap of Narasimha, the hand which goes to the back of Narasimha proves that it is Lakshmi Narasimha and not Ugra narasimha as it was first thought to be. The Badavalinga is right next to Lakshmi narasimha and has water flooded inside the shrine. An ayappa devotee, was taking bath in the water inside saying that it was holy water and it appeared to be pretty deep. Some devotees were throwing coins inside the water, so there must be a whole bunch of coins down there.

BadavaLinga

With this being a Monday, there was hardly any crowd in the places that we visited. The Krishna temple which is on the way to Hampi depicted the life of Lord Krishna on its walls. This temple is said to have been discovered only in the last decade. Excavation works seems to be going on all around Hampi. A playground which was situated next to our hotel and was being used by kids to play cricket on the first day of our visit had become a spot of frenzied activity on the next day as hundreds of workers had descended down and were busy digging up the spot. A guide said that the government is spending a lot of money in these excavation activities.

Engraving on the Krishna temple

Krishna temple

The Sasive kaalu ganesha's statue is situated on a small hill lock and it is has been built out of a single stone. A trader is said to have built this in the memory of a king.

Saivekalu Ganesha

With loads of sight seeing already done, the only location that was still remaining on our list was the Museum, The museum situated at Kamplapura is a must visit. the place has a pretty big, to the scale model of the complete city. The bronze statues of Krishna Devaraya and his two queens at the entrance is also pretty imposing. The only problem is that no photography is allowed inside the museum.

The Museum Entrance

After having seen and after having had our fill of the great empire, we went back with a feeling of sympathy and sadness to those souls who had strived to build such monuments but unfortunately their skills could not be displayed to the future generations in their full glory.

Taking the Bellary->Hiriyur->Tumkur-> Bangalore. From Bellary the roads are simply fantastic, we stopped at Bellary for lunch and then had our dinner at Kamat upachar on the outskirts of Nelamangala. It took close to 8.5 hours on our return journey which includes both the time taken for lunch, dinner and small breaks in between,

The ruins of Hampi- Day 1

2010-12-10T06:18:00.000-08:00

"Man, it has become very boring to do the same things again and again, I don't understand why don't they give me better work, at least if not the inner walls of the temple, I should be allowed to carve the outer walls". This could have been one of the dialogue of a hypothetical stone sculptor during the times of the Vijayanagar kingdom some 500 years ago. Looking at the large scale construction of temples throughout the town, A sculptors job could at those times would have been the pick of the lot as far as job opportunities are concerned.

The ruins also tell a sad story and with it proves to be a living example of how impermanent this world is. Littered over a huge area covering around 10km's in diameter it practically mesmerizes anyone who visits the place.

My break from the MBA schedule has now become the official family holiday weekend and this time we decided to pay a visit to Mantralaya and Hampi over a period of 3 days. Starting off at around 6 on a cool breezy saturday morning, we headed towards NH 7 which is the Devanahalli airport road on our Maruti 800. Cruising at 110+ kmph the drive was really getting on to me and I pushed hard at the accelerator, until my brother pointed out that traffic police are usually lying in wait for speed breakers at this stretch, at least till the airport. So after the warning, I eased the car to more decent speeds of around 80. Once the airport was behind us, the traffic literally disappeared and it looked like the road was laid there just for us. Speed limits of 50 on a road like this was looking like nothing but a big joke and car went back to the three digits in terms of velocity pretty quickly. the drive was one of the best that I had experienced till now, empty highways, no speed brakers and the weather was almost perfect. We had our breakfast at Kamat Upchar which is on the highway itself and can be found at around 5-6 Km's after the Chikballapur bypass sign board is encountered. There is no need to enter Chikballapur city. For almost 300 Kms till Gooty we travelled along the NH 7. Then took a diversion towards Adoni, mind you the sign boards are almost non existent in these parts unlike Karnataka and it is always best to ask people for the right directions. The journey towards Adoni from Gooty was also pretty smooth as the roads were well maintained. Finally the last stretch from Adoni to Mantralaya was a bit bumpy here and there but still all standards the roads were decent. We managed to reach Mantralaya by 12:45 in the afternoon itself, thus we had the opportunity to have our lunch at the temple.

We stayed the rest of the day at Mantralaya and started out for Hampi early on Sunday morning. Taking the route Mantralaya->Adoni->Bellary->;Hampi. For most part of this journey, the roads were in pretty bad shape and the total distance of 200Kms took us almost 5 1/2 hours thereby reaching Hampi at around 12 noon. One major highlight of this stretch were the big farms growing Sunflowers, The sight of endless rows of flowers was simply beautiful. We decided to straight away start with the exploration of the city without wasting much time in finding accommodation, so we took a diversion around 10Kms from Hospet which directly goes to Hampi. There is an arch and a sign board indicating this diversion. We started off with a visit to Virupaksha temple which is the only major temple which is still being used as a temple, the other temples have now remained just as a sight seeing places. One of the major grouses that my mother had was why such beautiful temples are being left empty :).

The temple can be seen from quite a distance with its majestic Gopuram, This temple is said to have predated the Vijayanagar empire and seems to be the only one of the large temples that has escaped from the devouring clutches of the Deccan confederacy the looted and destroyed the city for close to 6 months.

The Gopuram seems to be made from bricks as is the case with the other temples at Hampi, With its exquisite carvings and many pillars the temple grabs the attention of even naive fellows towards architecture (like me). Many stories of the ramayana and Mahbharata abound the walls of this temple. Even the ceiling had some exquisite painting depicting Arjuna trying to hit the Fish eyes and the Krishna's battle with Kalinga.

A huge holiday crowd had come in and literally it was a struggle to go in and out of some of the small doors of the place. After watching the pin hole camera and the adjoining Manmatha lake we were back in the open. The main diety of the temple was out of bounds for us at that time.

We then headed towards the Hampi bazzar, half of which is already encroached by squatters, only a small portion at the pillar structures at the end of the bazzar still retains the original look. It was said that these Bazaars were famous for their trade in precious stones and gems.

From the Bazaar we headed towards the monlithic Nandi statue which is midway on the hillock of the Bazaar. The statue also looks pretty much untouched. With my parents deciding not to climb the hill any further, I and my brother continued on the path which headed towards Achutaraya temple and the Sule Bazaar.

The Achutaraya temple is said to be one of the most advanced in terms of the level of sculpting when compared to all of the temples in Hampi. This place is away from the prying eyes of the tourist with only a foreign couple hanging around. Probably this was the first time in my life, I had entered a temples Garbha guddi, the cielling was not there, the Garbha guddi was surrounded by two layers of walls, with a facility of doing parikrama of the god by going underground.

Filled with bat smell, but otherwise pretty much well maintained the place is a must visit, given that fact that it is rarely visited by tourists due to the access difficulties in terms of climbing the hill and getting down.

Just in front of the temple is the Sule bazaar or the Courtesan's street. Here it is said that normal trade used to happen along with the red light activities, This was one huge street possibly extending to almost half a kilometer, indicating the amorous nature of the Vijaynagar people :).

Finally circling we headed back to the place where we had left our parents to relax, and then it was decided that it was high time that we had lunch, It was close to 2:30. Heading towards the car, we were surprised to see that one of the tyre had a puncher. This was the first time in our whole travelling experience that we had come across a flat tyre, so figuring out the basics took us some time, finally we managed to replace the tyre. After fixing the flat we headed towards Kamlapura in the hopes of finding a decent place to eat but to no avail, after some initial searches and consultions with lonely planet we decided to head towards Mayura KSTDC hotel. The hotel was serving a Vegetarian buffet lunch for 100Rs and it was a decent and fulfilling meal. We took a room at the same place for almost 2k and decided not to go to Hospet at night. The rooms were pretty decent and had AC as well, oh these creature comforts.

Fixing the flat tyre was of higher priority and so we headed out in search of a puncture wala, after a bit of asking around we came across one near the museum. The guy had put into use all his premordial instincts in shaping himself good tools and the flat tyre was fixed pretty quickly.

Next stop on our iternary list was the famouse Vijaya Vitalla temple, which is around 2 Km's from the Hampi Bazaar but can also be accessed by a circutous route, we chose the later and arrived at around 4:15 at the monument. The temple was shimering with shades of orange and gold and the main structure with its dipilated Gopuram was shimmering pink.

The famous stone chariot which is at the entrance of the temple is one of the star attractions. Crack/fissures are present on the rock structure and possibly it was not carved out of a single rock.

This temple seems to be the one wherein the maximum amount of mutilation was inflicted, but still all the destruction couldn't hide the skills and craftsmanship of the artisans of those times. Intricately carved lions (Not sure about this) being ridden by men seems to be the favorite signature.

Finally after having a look at the inside of the temple we headed towards Kings Balance and towards the platform on the banks of Tunga bhadra river on which Purandharadasa is said to have composed his famous works. A small carving on the stone near the kings balance depicting 4 adults and a child welcoming people was also pretty attractive.

Finishing the day looking at the now fallen bridge of the bygone with a beautiful sunset in the background we headed back to out hotel room for a good nights sleep and an exciting day on the morrow.

Deepavali

2010-11-10T05:57:00.000-08:00

Ranganathittu

2010-10-31T08:46:00.000-07:00

One of my friends had recently bought an SX4 and it was time for us to take it out of Bangalore for a drive. Four of us (Krishna, Ravi, Sandeep and myself) set out at 8:00 in the morning towards Ranganathittu. Ranganthittu is a bird sanctuary where migratory birds from the north of the continent come to roost in the winter months. After the town of Srirangapatana a right turn takes us to the sanctuary. The place is open all days of the week and you can even hire a whole boat for yourself and your family for 250 Rs.

Black headed Iblis

Stone Plover and the Croc

River tern

Nikhil Dey

2010-10-24T08:18:00.000-07:00

“How many of you in the class are Political”, Nikhil Dey asked and only a few hands went up, the next question from him was “How many of you are apolitical”, I raised my hand, after all over the years, I had developed a sage like unattachment to the political happenings of the country except on the day of voting. This time too only a few hands had gone up. Nikhil smiling within himself announced that all of us are political whether we know about it or not. He explained that we are political within our own spheres of life if not thinking about the national level. Equality and the desire to be treated with respect is something that everyone feels the need for, Instances in which we are deprived of this makes us political, and urges us to find ways to remedy the situation.

With his Jola and Kurta, Nikhil looked like the typical social worker who goes door to door educating people on one thing or the other. It is hard to believe that standing in front of us was a man who was very instrumental in getting the RTI (Right to Information Act) and NREGA acts being passed by the parliament. He attributes his involvement in the passage of these acts as a sheer luck and nothing more.

Born and brought up in a well to do family, Nikhil didn’t have much of an opportunity to observe the real

India

which was lying beyond the boundaries and walls of the big cities. He was schooled in some of the best institutions and completed his graduation in

America

. He says that he had a questioning mind and used to involve himself in discussion and debates. Politics was something that interested him at a very young age itself. After coming back to

India

, he decided to observe the functioning of our democracy up close by attending the parliament sessions of the Lok sabha. “What I found there was a group of people who were more interested in themselves than in helping the country to progress in any meaningful way” said Nikhil. He observed that a country which was so political before independence had taken to complete apathy towards politics after Independence, leaving everything to the politicians. These politicians were people who were wholly disconnected with the ground level and made policies and decisions according to their perceptions.

Nikhil then decided to get a first hand feel of the villages of the country and the problems and difficulties they suffered. In 1990, he along with two others Shankar singh and Aruna roy went to a village called Devdongri in Rajasthan, to stay with the villagers, understand their difficulties and to see if they can help them in any way. Adjusting to the life of the village was not easy for the city bred and more so to Nikhil. According to him finally everyone reaches a stage where he/she gets adjusted to the changed circumstances but the time varies from individual to individual. The villagers were very suspicious about these new people who had come in and concluded that they were in league with some mining mafia, but over the days the mistrust started giving way to trust.

Nikhil and his team observed that many of the villagers owned very small tracts of land and thus depended on government supplied jobs such as the Rojgar yojna. Even after working for the full day many of the laborers were being paid only half their wages with the rest being siphoned off by the middle men who were the officials appointed by the government. Materials used for work were of substandard quality and close to 70-80% of the funds were being siphoned off before it reached the farmers. Livelihood was the most important thing for these farmers and protecting it was very essential. The three of them decided to form a group called Mazdoor Kissan Shakti Saganthan (MKSS). They identified that it is very essential to get the information of the government records in terms of bill payment of materials, labor records etc before they could embark on helping the farmers to get their rights in terms of full payment for their labor.

With videos, role plays, village meetings, Nikhil and his friends tried to spread awareness among the villagers on the need for them to know what is there in the government records. Information was the essential and crucial thing in this fight and the villagers had to be educated on the necessity of fighting for information. With the pressure being brought on the government with the help of media and the relentless effort of the group they finally managed to get the RTI act passed by the Rajasthan government. Nikhil admitted to one of the questions that before the act was passed in the assembly there were hardly any supporters on their side and if not for the political situations of the time it may not even have happened.

Armed with the RTI, Nikhil went back to the villages digging up government records and putting them in front of people. In one of the videos, at a large gathering Nikhil calls out different individuals who were supposed to have benefitted from various schemes but were blissfully unaware about it. With forged signatures and unethical means the government officials had gobbled it all up. In the same video Nikhil visits the house of a village panch who is hand in glove with the government officials in making money and shows off his beautiful house aquired through illegal means.

Nikhil says that their activities have today helped to bring the labor related corruption down to a large extent, but still there were other issues cropping up. The maximum labor amount for NREGA was 100 Rs for a period of 100 days in a year. Over the past 2-3 years the food inflation has exploded but this amount has not increased. It would be very difficult for people to survive on this amount in the present macro economic scenario. Currently he is sitting in a dharna protesting this lacuna in the NREGA policy. His contention is that the government servants get to set themselves their own salaries and in-fact the salaries paid to the government servants of Rajasthan was more than the tax collected by the government. Thus a government is propped up to feed itself without any benefits to the society.

His final parting words were, we get to make choices every day in our lives, it is important to first have control over our lives before trying to make an impact on others. Every life is a revolution in its own and thinking on our priorities and happiness is very essential. Summing it up he said don’t try to cheat yourself by your choices, it will not lead to happiness; follow what you really want to do.

Even today Nikhil and his coworkers at MKSS draw minimum wages in a show of solidarity with people they are striving to help.

Haridwar

2010-09-18T23:43:00.000-07:00

In the days of my childhood whenever I heard the mention of Haridwar, I used to conjure up an image of a very holy city in which you would find at every street corner some or the other yagna going on, Sadhus meditating under trees and a silent atmosphere sprinkled with the chants of the mantras. Well when I finally reached there, Haridwar was like any chaotic Indian city busting to it’s seams. Depilating buildings interspersed with new structures, temples surrounded by street vendors of all sorts, an ever present crowd that is in a constant motion on both directions of the streets followed by the Cycle rickshaws and the autos. The loud shrill sounds were a far cry from my childhood imaginations of the sacred mantra sounds, but maybe this is the face of the transitioning India.

After spending the night at Rudraprayag we hired a taxi to Haridwar. Not mentioning our experience in Rudraprayag would do gross injustice to our trip. We arrived from Badrinath at around 7 in to the town of Rudraprayag to find all the hotel rooms to be taken. We finally found a hotel in which there was no water supply and was literally situated out of the city. The guy looking after the place said he would supply us 2 buckets of water from the nearby waterpump and we decided to stay there for the night. The place was really big with many rooms but none of them were occupied, In the night we had to grope our way around in the corridors to get out of the place for dinner. The hotel manager looked like someone straight out of the horror movies, sporting a mysterious blank look and speaking as if he had not spoken for years. Well, in the night all of us prayed that there were no spirits lurking around the place and hoped the time had not yet come to answer for our sins. The morning light allayed a sense of joy and also brought in the stark reality of what man was doing to his surroundings, all the beautiful hills surrounding the place were completely denuded, even though the mighty Alaknanda was flowing just below us the water levels of the area was so low that there was a huge water problem in the town. Finally after having our cheapest breakfast of the whole trip which comprised of Aloo paratha, curds and tea, we left for Haridwar.

We had close to 3 days to kill in Haridwar after having cancelled the trip to the temple town of Kedarnath. The trip got cancelled partly due to the apprehension of bad weather and partly due to laziness to trek the slopes once again. We lodged ourselves in a very comfortable place which was some 3 kilometer to the bathing ghats. Comfort and luxury were quixotic terms when we were climbing on the peaks to reach roopkund, but now we were determined to compensate for the hardship and sufferings one normally forces his body into in a trek, by spoiling it to the maximum.

The three kilometers from the hotel to the bathing ghats is choc-o-bloc with people and street vendors. But one real surprise was in terms of the cleanliness, the place was really clean by our Indian standards. People were not dumping waste here and there as is common in crowded places and even if they did, there was prompt cleaning of the garbage by designated people. The bathing Ghats were also pretty good with very good arrangements ensuring that everyone could bath in the water without having to fall over one another to do it. We could not watch the first days Ganga aarthi properly as there was a huge crowd and apparently people had reserved the best spots from 4 in the afternoon to get a good view of the 7pm aarthi. After having my first holy dip in the Ganges, I came back to my room pretty satisfied. The next day we perched ourselves near the banks of the river by 4 in the afternoon and had a very good view of the Aarthi.

The Aarthi comprised of two stages, one stages had some 4-5 small Aarthis and in the second stage close 12 of the big Aarthis are used to show our devotion to the Ganga matha. Devotional songs kept blaring from the loud speakers and hundreds of small diyas which are let loose by the devotees can be seen floating past in the river at great speeds.

In terms of food, we didn’t experiment too much and stuck to a restaurant called the Choti waala which was on the way to the Ghats. The place served some really good food and the ambience was also pretty great.

Apart from roaming around streets and going to the ghats for bathing and having rich food dipped in butter and Ghee, we didn’t do pretty much. We didn’t even visit the famous Mansa devi temple.

After having a disappointing sojourn to Rishikesh on the last day of our trip, we caught the morning train to Delhi, to fly back to Bangalore.

Sufferings of the poor

2010-09-11T23:55:00.000-07:00

My tears are no answer,

To the pains that you have suffered,

So large is the world,

And so large is its suffering.

From your deep eyes,

I can fathom your hunger,

The slow churn of losing hope,

And the dark embers of growing despair.

I have been a miser,

Throwing away money at your face,

Hoping your illusion will go away,

Hoping I have done my duty.

It is my love that you seek, not money,

A hope of a future is what you really want,

Alas, I’m going on the path that many before me have tread on,

To keep my eyes shut and blame it on fate.

Peepli Live

2010-08-18T08:23:00.000-07:00

The last time I had seen a comedy that was fun and hard hitting in its message was a long time ago, It was the legendary Jaane bhi dho yaaron. Peepli Live is a satire on the way farmers are treated by the brood of politicians and that of the hungry media. Many people who had seen the movie had given a thumbs down to it, probably they didn't have the right expectation before walking into the theater and they might have helped me in bringing down my expectations to the bare minimum. The movie opens by following the travails of the two farmers Natha and Budhia, both have lost their land and are at their wits end as to how to survive. A wily politician recommends them to commit suicide, saying the government would give money to their family. Natha decides to take the leap, the news leaks and the mayhem begins.

The dialogues are rustic and has a generous stream of expletives thrown into it, but many times these expletives are simply hilarious. On one layer, the film is fun but on the other layer, it makes you realize that how difficult the life of a marginal farmer is. One of my friend made a comment that it is fun to watch the movie but really hellish to imagine oneself suffering through the travails faced by the main characters in the movie.

I would recommend this movie to everyone, but don't enter the theater with the hope that this will be another run of the mill comedy. It is a very serious subject told in a comic way. The stamp of Aamir Khan has not let us down in the recent times.

Badrinath: Abode of Lord Vishnu

2010-08-09T10:29:00.000-07:00

Sitting in a valley surrounded by huge mountains on all sides, Badrinath is considered to be one of the holiest places for the Hindus. Adi shankara during his pan India voyage established the temple of Badrinath which has become a must visit pilgrimage center. The Alaknanda river emerging from the glacial waters of the Chaukamba peak flows through the town before finally becoming the Ganga, miles away from here.

Legend has it that there is a short cut between Badrinath and Kedarnath and in the olden days the same priest used to perform puja at both the temples. In 1930’s a couple of Englishmen taking a break from exploring the Nanda devi sanctuary decided to check out this legend. The expedition group took a path crisscrossing the glaciers of Chaukamba starting from Kedarnath, It took the harried team more than 20 days to cover the 40 mile journey. A Bengali team which tried to do the route in reverse exactly 50 years after the first crossing were caught in a snow storm to be never heard off again.

After finishing the RoopKund trek, I and my friends boarded a jeep towards Karnapryag, we started off from Loharjung at around 1 in the afternoon, it was not possible to reach Badrinath on the same day. We decided to reach Joshimath by night fall and continue towards Badrinath the next day.

The journey to Karna prayag was pretty uneventful; from Karna prayag we hired another taxi for Joshimath. The driver of the jeep was one hell reckless, he was literally throttling on the full, over the dangerous curves of the huge mountains. One wrong move and everyone would have been counting the stars sitting in heaven. Satish who was sitting in the front got more and more jittery as time went on. All our requests to slow down were falling on deaf ears. The height of madness was reached when the sun had gone down and it was literally dark. This guy was driving without headlights and we could barely make out the path ahead, apparently the driver was trying to conserve the battery to the maximum extent possible. Finally we reached Joshimath by around 8 in the night. The driver was so pissed off with us that he didn’t even bother to get us into a hotel room. We thanked our stars for having survived the terror filled journey and got down. I and Sandeep went in search of a decent lodging place. We found a decent hotel room very near to the taxi stand. After having our dinner we hit the bed.

The next day, we again hired a taxi to Badrinath. The driver luckily was good unlike our yesterday’s hero. Joshimath is a common base for Badrinath, Hemkund sahib and the valley of flowers trek. Since this was the chardham season there was a huge crowd of vehicles going on towards all these places. Finding a taxi was a bit difficult and we had to part with a decent sum to get one. The driver agreed to take us to Mana before drooping us in Badrinath. The road journey from Joshimath to Badrinath is very scenic with huge LOTR kind of mountains on all sides and thin streams of water falling here and there. The river runs parallel to the road and we encounter Vishnu prayag in this stretch.

Mana is situated after Badrinath. It was drizzling a bit when we reached there and hence had to scurry to check out the Vyas gufa. Overall we were not impressed with Mana, the Vyas gufa didn’t exude any of the aura that you would expect the place where Mahabharata was written. It has become more of a commercial hotspot. Same was the case with Bhimpul.

The rain started gaining strength and we soon made our way to the taxi. After finding a suitable lodge near the temple, we went in search of lunch. Hotel Saketh which has a superb view of the temple served us good palatable food. While having our lunch the waiter mentioned that today there was no queue in the temple because of the continuous drizzle and advised us to have the Darshan if we had not done so already. After having lunch we went to the temple, our plan was to take bath in the hot springs just outside the temple before entering it. The place around the hot springs was choc-o-bloc with innumerable number of people. We just managed to pour a few drop of water from the springs on our head.

The darshan was smooth, to the loud chants of Narayana the crowd moved inside the sanctum sanctuary slowly but steadily. Lord Badri was completely decked in flowers and ornaments and it was not easy to discern the lord from his ornaments. Half of the offerings that the devotees carried in were kept for the lord and the rest was given back to the devotee.

After the darshan, we came back to our room since loitering around the town was not an option as it was still continuously drizzling. In the night we again plodded through the rain to Saketh hotel to have our dinner.

The next day the clouds had parted and the weather was perfectly clear. The mountains peaks of Neelkanth was clearly visible. We thought of having a darshan once again if the crowd was less, but to our dismay there was a huge queue extending into kilometers. We thanked our stars for having had a queue free darshan yesterday.

We booked a taxi to take us to Haridwar, but had to curtail it to Rudra prayag as we started off a bit late, thus ended the visit to Badrinath. Since this was the peak season there were people everywhere, It would be best to avoid coming here during the Chardham yatra. A peaceful and calm Badrinath would have been just right for any spiritual seeker.

Dream away

2010-07-31T22:41:00.000-07:00

Dream away, my teacher used to say,

Dream away, on the lands that are far and away,

Passing every stone on the way,

Touching every blade of grass that sways.

Dream away, shedding the pursuit of lucre,

Dream away, the life of a broke,

Toiling under the sparkling light of day,

Sweating out in the hot winds of May.

Dream away, those beautiful eyes,

Dream away, the parting of a beautiful smile,

Suffering the pleasures of a longing heart,

And the pain of the dividing chasm.

Dream away, the pursuit of the holy,

Dream away, a life of meaning,

Cleansing the mind through silence,

And pouring out the soul to the world.

Summer 2010 Video

2010-07-25T03:08:00.000-07:00

Made a 10 min clip on my recent summer holiday, watch it with the audio. Apologies for some not so good editing at the end since I had run out of videos and had very less content to indulge myself.

Language Troubles

2010-07-18T01:14:00.000-07:00

I have never been a language person; Even though I’m supposed to be eloquent in four languages and have the ability to understand a couple more, the hideous creature of language has always haunted me. Like the devils in the Calvin and Hobbes cartoons, my life has also seen many imaginary battles between the devils dwelling and hiding behind the letters, grammar and words of various languages.

The language which I first learnt, Tulu luckily has no script. Otherwise god only knows for how many more days and nights I would have had to be awake studying it. This being my mother tongue, I never had to put in a sweat to speak it, but this was just the beginning of the story. When I was sufficiently grown up to engage outsiders in a conversation I found out to my horror that there are many versions of Tulu. The version that I had learnt so seamlessly was known as the Shivalli tulu which is hardly spoken by less than 10% of the Tulu speaking populace. In fact with this statistic I was as good as dumb when I stepped out of my home. Even to this day the Tulu that I know is only Shivalli Tulu and I shamelessly use the same whenever I speak to the 90% of the startled non-Shivalli people. It is not only me who had this Tulu trouble; even my parents had a taste of it. My father is from Udupi and my mom’s home is near Sullia which are separated by about 100Km’s from each other and due to the theory of evolution the Shivalli language had also evolved into different branches. My parents could not make much sense of each other with their respective versions of Tulu after marriage and had to switch to Kannada, To my beautiful luck it was only a few months before I was born did they switch back to a newly created version of Tulu, freshly minted by combining the two versions and me being the first disciple of the new language.

English and Kannada suddenly started making their appearance in my life when I started attending the nursery school. Again speaking Kannada was never a problem but the written script had my head in splits. I with my simple mind could never figure out as to why and when I should go for the big letter compared to the smaller ones, the small streaks of lines which are put at the bottom of the letters always baffled me. I literally always took my chances on these underscore letters and used to get royally beaten up both at home and school. My best performance in Kannada came when I got 98 out of hundred in my first standard. Courtesy of this performance I also got the first rank which unfortunately was my last as well. My tryst with learning Kannada ended soon after I completed my fifth standard as my father got transferred to Ahmedabad. To be frank only once in these past 18 years, I went as far as writing a sentence in Kannada. One of my non-kannada friends in office had a Kannada maid at home and he wanted a note addressed to her saying that he didn’t want her to cook dinner for that day. Suddenly my mouth went dry and the old days of confusion and tension came flooding back. After a struggle of more than 5 minutes I did manage to write something. I guess the maid must have got the idea since my friend didn’t complain the next day. Even though my affiliation of writing in Kannada is almost dead and buried, this is not the case in terms of reading. I sometimes pickup the Kannada daily that comes to our home and I’m able to read at a pretty good pace. Over the last few years due to the influence of some pro-Kannada friends I have been reading Kannada novels. I have found them to be very different from the English ones as they are set in environments which are much familiar to us than the English ones. I hope to continue this association with Kannada over the course of my life.

I don’t exactly remember when I first learnt my ABCD’s but most probably I must have learnt it like a duck taking to water. It was only later in my life that English, which I was considering as my pet, started raising its ugly head. The world of tenses had me in a complete maze before twirling and twisting me into the endless realm of vocabulary. After studying in Bangalore at a pretty good school I went to Kendriya Vidyalaya in Ahmedabad. With the limited capabilities that the students possessed as far as English was concerned I soon became a star. I used to sweep all the debate and essay competitions. But nobody knew my dark secrets; I was a dud in terms of grammar. This mask was ripped apart when a harmless question in the class exposed me to the core. Our English teacher was asking a student to identify the tense of a sentence in the class; the student put his head down. Then came another students turn and the same posture was repeated. Finally the teacher after de-riling the class asked me to tell the correct answer, it seems I missed the mark by a very long shot since the teacher was flabbergasted with my reply and the whole class had to endure some 5 extra classes on the tenses. My affinity to the language grew with my interest in reading novels. Near my home in Ahmedabad there was a library called the Karnataka sangha, this was the place where Kannadigas who were feeling home sick used to have a get together. On one corner of this library there was a collection of English books. I started off my reading career from here. The first book that I read was the Arabian nights followed by the Hardy boys, the Nancy drews, Famous five and many of the Enid Blyton stories. She was my favorite writer at that time. After completing my 9^th standard we shifted back to Mysore and accordingly I shifted to the bigger Novels. My father had a small collection of Novels and among them was David Copperfield. As a young kid I was fascinated by the size of the book but could never go beyond the first page as the language was too heavy. It was in Mysore that I got into the world of Dickens, reading David Copperfield was like reading about a boy who was so like me, I was hooked. My dad had studied in the Mysore University and he still had his library card. After some persuasion, my dad took me to the library and got his card renewed. From the hallowed halls of this library I borrowed books ranging from Dickens, Dumas to Narayan. The world of books took me and swallowed me completely. Later on with the advent of internet and e-books, I used to download free novels on the net from Gutenberg and read it on the computer. I had read several big novels on the computer, looks almost impossible to me now. After joining my job, I started buying books. Now 7 years later I have a pretty good collection at home. This is a treasure I cherish a lot and get lost into whenever time permits.

Hindi was more or less a step-motherly language to me. I started swimming into the alphabets in my fifth standard in Bangalore but was soon thrown into the sea of Hindi when we moved to Ahmedabad. Staying afloat was getting difficult and had to struggle left right and center with endless beatings from my parents and late night studies. Finally I reposed whatever faith my parents had put on me by passing the mid-term exams. The struggles of choosing the right letters etc continued but it looked a lot easier to navigate in Hindi since it didn’t have the killer underscores unlike Kannada. Even after coming back to Mysore, I stuck to Hindi till 12^th standard.

Finally the language that gave me the shudders was Sanskrit. This was one language which used to puzzle me a lot, gave me nightmares and even after endless toil I was nowhere near understanding a proper sentence. After we moved into Ahmedabad in my first Sanskrit class I was asked to read a passage, I was rambling through the passage when the teacher showed me the stop signal. For the next 5 minutes, I was bombarded out of my wits and would have crawled through a mouse hole if I had the capability. Later my father had to come to the school to convince the teacher that I was starting fresh in the language and asked her to give me time, from that day onwards she didn’t point me out for any passage reading. It was only after some 3 years that my turn to read a passage came under the same teacher’s class, I pulled out no stops this time and rammed on the accelerator. The teacher was stunned and praised me like hell; she didn’t know that I had no idea about the meaning of the sentences though. With my sprouting but growing desire of reading the ancient Indian texts such as the Gita in their original form I have now in fact decided to give Sanskrit another chance. Hopefully this time I will be successful in grasping the language which is considered to be one of the ancient and the most complete languages.

RoopKund Trek: Day 5, 6 & 7

2010-07-11T00:07:00.000-07:00

Day 5: Ghora Lotani to Bhaguva basa

Far over the misty mountains cold,

To dungeons deep and caverns old,

We must away, ere break of day,

To seek our pale enchanted gold.

These lines from a Tolkien’s poem aptly sum up the mornings on our trek. Today it was no pale of gold that we were searching but a good spot to answer the natures call. We were up by 5 in the morning and after a mini trek of sorts finally found a pretty secluded spot away from the line of sight of the camp. From our YHAI experience we knew the best technique was to dig a pit, do the job and cover up the pit but unlike sarpass trek the ground was very hard here and digging a small pit turned out to be a very laborious effort. Breakfast as usual was served pretty early and finally after a round of warm up exercises the trek to Kalu vinayak temple began. The path from Ghora Lotani to Kalu vinayak is pretty steep and there is no letup of any sort in terms of the ascending gradient. Sandeep who had been trekking till now with his sandals due to a shoe bite continued doing the same.

We got some wonderful view of the Bugyals after climbing up for a couple of hours. The air was getting thinner as we moved up and the wind was also to an extent gaining speed, the weather started getting worse and a drizzle started. Cursing my luck, I took out my rain sheet and tried my best to cover myself and my bag. Krishna and Satish had slipped on their ponchos and were comfortably walking around without any kind of bother. The drizzle thankfully stopped after a short while and the sky cleared out to an extent. We encountered some villagers on the way who were collecting some roots which grew in these altitudes, apparently each root could fetch them more than 100 Rs. We reached Kalu vinayak in pretty good time and after paying our obeisance to the lord who presided on the Roop kund trek route we climbed the small hillock which is next to the temple. You could get an almost 360 degree pan of the area from this spot.

From Kalu vinayak we had our first view of Roopkund and Junargali, Of course we couldn’t see the lake since it is located in a depression on the top of the mountain but we could make out the saddle of sorts in the mountain in which RoopKund was present.

The trek to Bhaguva basa from here is pretty easy and is a gradual downward sloping stone paved path. I was wondering as to the reason for paths to be paved with stone at such a height and then I came to know about the Homkund Yatra, this is a Yatra that happens once in 12 years and thousands of people from the surrounding villages go to Roopkund and cross over Junargali to Shila samudra and then make their way to HomKund lake which is under the feet of the Nanda Ghunti mountain to make their offerings to Nanda devi. On the way we encountered our first snow patch of the trek and some of the trek members who were seeing snow for the first time in their lives were pretty excited. This stretch of the trek I did it alone along with the company of the mountains and the mystical nature of the Himalayas started to seep in through my pours. The mind finds a lot of peace when you listen to the silence of the mighty mountains.

We reached the camp by around 12 in the afternoon and promptly got into one of the Green hut like structures which were built by the forest departments for the trekkers. After resting for some time we got to know that we had to vacate one of the huts as it was booked by another group, being the relatively young guns of the group we had to vacate out the hut and move into tents. I had a bad feeling that the night was not going to be easy and the tent was not looking sturdy enough to braze out the night at an altitude of 4600 meters. For lunch we had maggi and everyone was very happy to have broken out of the Roti-Sabji routine.

During lunch our camp leader proposed doing Roopkund on the same day as the weather looked great but most of turned it down as it would have been very tiring to climb further up after having trekked so much, instead we spent our time exploring the places near the vicinity of the camp. One small group decided to go to a waterfall that was visible in the valley facing the Roopkund lake but they soon turned back as the way was too steep for comfort. Some of us just sat around taking in the beauty of the mountains and nature.

The weather suddenly changed color and it started to rain, we ran into our tents and within no time the rain had turned into a snow fall. Many then ran out to enjoy it; I spent some time enjoying the snow and then made my way to the relative safety of the tent. Snow had started accumulating on the top of our tent and we had to shake it off at regular intervals fearing the tent would collapse under its weight.

The snow fall finally stopped late in the night and the temperature had dropped to very low levels by then. Dinner was served around 7:30 today and I decided not to make use of the plates, instead took three rotis and put Bhindi sabji on top of the Roti and had my dinner. There was an egg curry as well but being the holistic person that I was, I stuck only to Bhindi. Sandeep graciously offered to share his plate and we both ate some rice from the same plate and which he later washedJ. Krishna was not feeling well and he decided to skip his dinner. The sky had not yet cleared up and the possibility of further snow and rain was very high. In the night, the rain again started and the temperature had hit rock bottom outside the tent. I snuggled myself into the sleeping bag and was completely oblivious to the surrounding until the next day morning.

Day 6: Bhaguva basa to RoopKund and then to Bedni Bugyal

The morning outside looked very bleak, the night’s rain had not yet stopped and the Roopkund area was completely shrouded with clouds. This was not an ideal weather for the trek and it looked like Roopkund was not possible today. We had almost given up hope of making it to the top when at around 7:30 the weather cleared out and the sky turned into its characteristic shades of deep blue. Ajoy decided that the weather was perfect for the trek atleast till Roopkund and since it was already 7:30, Junargali was ruled out.

In a hurry we started off without having our breakfast since it was not yet ready. The path was damn slippery due to yesterday’s rain and thin sheets of ice had formed over the stoned paved path. The initial part of the climb is pretty easy but after some time we started to encounter a number of small glacial crossings. Crossing over these snow patches is never easy and it is important to exercise your utmost caution. After the glacial crossing of more than 7-8 the path starts taking a gradual upward accent, at many places the mountain requires you to use all your fours.

The sheer drop on one side of the path sometimes rocks you back. Even without our bags this stretch was getting tough. I was having crampons which my brother had brought from his Korea trip but didn’t use it during the accent thinking that they will get damaged as there was not enough snow. After huffing and puffing on the high altitude for oxygen I finally seemed to have made it to the top. The last stretch was the most difficult as the oxygen levels here seemed to be pretty low and I was left gasping for it.

Finally I was there at the lake, the destination for which we had given six days of toil to reach and at an altitude of nearly 5000 meters. The lake was completely frozen and there was no signs of the innumerable skeletons, all of them were covered up by the snow on the lake. We spent close to 25 minutes sitting at the lake as the other team members were slowing making the final assault. The breakfast which was supposed to be carried by the porters was nowhere in sight. Finally after shooting some photos of the skeletons kept near the small temple, we decided to move back. Some of our team members had not brought their sun glasses and they were suffering because of the blinding light reflected from the snow.

The weather started to turn cloudy and we feared the worst, the breakfast had by then arrived but I was in no mood to eat it and then be stranded somewhere on the dangerous curving paths. I took out my crampons and decided that my life was more important than the crampons. With the new gear the climb downwards was pretty easy, many of the curves which had looked dangerous while climbing up looked less imposing during the decent. We had made a major mistake of not carrying our water bottles and hence I had gone without water during the accent. While climbing down we ripped open the frooti tetra pack which was given to us along with chocolates by the trek organizers and used it to drink water from the many streams we encountered along our path.

By 12 in the noon we had made our way back to the Bhaguwa basa camp, without food I was completely exhausted. After taking some rest we had our lunch and then we soon packed up to reach Bedni bugyal before night fall. We took the same path which we used for the ascent. For most part of this stretch I did it alone again enjoying the Himalayas all by myself.

Except for a place near Bedni bugyal where the wind speed became so fast that I had to hug the mountain, it was pretty incident free. By around 5:45 I had reached the Bedni camp and soon crept into a tent for rest. Others also made it in pretty good time and every one were in pretty high spirits after having completed the trek successfully. During the night we also had a camp fire in celebration.

Day 7: Bedni Bugyal to Wan

The four of us had decided that we would try to make it to Joshimath by nightfall and hence embarked with another group of 4 to Wan by 6 in the morning itself. The other group members were scheduled to start at 9.00. After saying our goodbyes we hit the road.

The path from Bedni to Wan is completely on a downward gradient except for a small stretch where you need to climb up. This trek was mainly through the dense forests and didn’t afford us any view of the valley or the mountains. It took us close to 5 hours to reach Wan and seemed to be an endless walk. The Wan village itself stretches by around 2-3 kms and our initial joy of encountering a house turned into despair as the walk continued to stretch on and on. Finally around 11:30 we reached the motor-able road and one of our porters who had gone ahead of us had a jeep ready. We reached Loharjung base camp after a ride of close to one hour on the curving roads of the valley. Lunch was ready and we had a sumptuous and delicious meal. After collecting our certificates from Ankit we embarked on the jeep which was arranged by Ankit to Karna Prayag.

Thus ended the memorable RoopKund lake trek. The organizing of the trek by India hikes had been good except for one complaint, about their habit of serving the dinner very late in the night.

Roop Kund is not an easy trek and it is necessary to have good physical and mental strength to be able to enjoy the trek. There is no fun in reaching the destination unless you enjoy the journey. I had a heavy heart while climbing down from Bedni to Wan as I was going to miss these mountains which had been my silent companion for the last 7 days.

Adieu, I say to the majestic Himalayas,

With a heavy heart and keeping tears at bay,

With a soul rested and mind at peace,

I walk back into the world after having been healed.

RoopKund Trek: Day 3 & 4

2010-07-04T22:02:00.001-07:00

Day 3: Didna to Bedni Bugyal

The sun in these parts of the world comes up at an unearthly hour of 4:30 but since we were sleeping in a big room which had only two doors and no windows it was not possible for us to determine if the day had begun. Reluctantly I came out of my rajjai and had a peek at the outside world, already some people were up but the makeshift toilets were free. Going for the natures call in a makeshift tin structure with the wind outside always banging on the door is not a very comfortable feeling. Today, choice was available to select between veg and non-veg for the packed breakfast, the non-veg consisted of two boilded eggs whereas the veg pack had two boiled potatoes. Swapnil the camp leader made us do some stretches with Naren adding some punch lines from the shilpa shetty videos. Now finally it was time for us to embark on the most difficult part of the trek, Swapnil divided us into three groups, the slow, the medium and the fast. I and Sandeep had become trek buddies after we completed yesterdays trek together. At first both of us opted for the medium group but suddenly it started looking to me that the medium group was going to stick to group discipline to the T and would not tolerate anybody breaking the flank and moving ahead. Finally at the last moment both of us switched our allegiance to the fast group which was led by Rohit, a freak in no uncertain terms as he was freaking out all the team members with his audacious climbing which was bordering on madness on many occasion. Surely there was not going to be any team play here and that is exactly what we wanted also, to be able to go at our own pace.

The slow team was the first to leave, followed by the medium team and the fast team was allowed to take off only after 10 minutes from the medium team. The trek started off on a path which passed along a small stream and then in no time the Oak forests began. The path like yesterday was again very uphill and meandered through the thick foliages. From the gaps between the trees we could get glimpses of the valley now and then and based on that we were making our own assessments as to how much distance we might have covered.

Our leader’s life ambition now was to overtake the slow and the medium teams as soon as possible and took upon the ominous job of motivating the team members by running up and down the track, man this guy was looking really inhuman, where was he was getting all that energy from. The forest nevertheless was a bit monotonous and we took almost close to three hours to see the trees around us thinning out. The landscapes suddenly started changing and behold in front us stood the famous Ali-bugyal. After an uphill trek of about half an hour we reached the Ali bugyal. The fast team had reached the top first to the utmost satisfaction of our leader.

We took a very long break of more than an hour here as we waited for all the team members to join us. The majestic peak of Trishul was in sight and would remain to be so for the next 4 days of our trek. I had my breakfast of Aloo paratha and boiled potatoes and then explored the flora of the Bugyals. Apparently during the months of September these Bugyals are decked with countless flowers, unfortunately we were a bit early to witness this event. From this point onwards the trek was to be an easy walk on the Bugyals till we reach the Bedni camp which was situated on the Bedni bugyal. The landscape was straight out of the Microsofts trademark wall paper.

After everyone had had their food we started out for the Bedni camp. The path is more or less flat except for one region wherein we had to climb up a hillock. On this path we had our first glimpses of the Himalayan vultures, the Lammergeier also called as the Bearded Vulture. Apparently these vultures disdain from feeding on rotting meat and their diet consist of mainly bone marrow. They break open the bones by dropping them from a height.

On our path we also encountered some wild horses. There was also a foal grazing among the herd. Some people in our group even got their photos shot with the foal. Clearly these horses had gotten used to the human presence and were the least perturbed on our being there and taking photographs.

Finally at around 2:15 in the afternoon we reached the Bedni bugyal camp. Bedni had some man made structures and was not as untouched as Ali-bugyal. The reason for this is the fact that there is no water source at Ali but in Bedni a water source is present. For the next three days we were supposed to stay in tents and we could spot around 5-6 tents here.

Ajoy was the camp leader for Bedni and he welcomed us in. Tomato soup was ready on our arrival and after drinking loads of water we had our soup. After all the members of the team had arrived we were allowed to get into our tents. The tent was more or less perfect for the four of us and looked capable of withstanding rain or bad weather. After our lunch we went and sat on a grassy path overlooking a beautiful valley. The Himalayan vultures were full of activity in this valley. Naren and Jaggi joined us here and we got to know that Naren was a Para-gliding instructor also, he had an in depth knowledge of these vultures and it was great listening to him. Finally it started getting cold and we lumbered into our tents, in the horizon we could see clouds accumulating and after about half an hour it started raining. Our main worry now was, how will we have our dinner, since we were almost chilled to our bones inside the tent itself. Everyone was peeking through their tent flaps to check whether the food was ready. The rain finally stopped before dinner time and we had our dinner in the biting cold. Washing your plates is not very easy when the water is close to freezing. Krishna and Satish slept near the tent flaps whereas I and Sandeep were safely and snugly located in between. The reason for the arrangement being Satish usually gets up very early and Krishna was supposedly the last one to wake up, little did he know that he was going to go sleepless for three consecutive nights. The night was more or less eventless except for some water condensing on the tent ceiling, and Krishna stepping on Satish’s feet while trying to get out of the tent for a leak in the middle of the night. The sleeping bags given to us were also very good.

Day 4: Bedni Bugyal to Ghora Lotani

At around dawn I heard Satish shouting to us from outside that he was getting an excellent view of the mountains around. Cursing him for having woken up so early we went out to catch a part of the action. The view was really fantastic. We could clearly see the peaks of Chaukamba, Neel kant and Trishul as the whole region was cloud free.

Today’s trek was supposed to be a very easy one; in fact the guides were saying that it was nothing but a simple walk. One of the highlights of my previous trek was going out in the open for natures call, out here we had makeshift toilets at all but two of the camps, and hence literally we missed out on the fun. After having our breakfast we again divided ourselves into three groups and this time Satish also joined us in the fast group. As the guides had stated earlier for most of the walk there was only a very gradual accent and hence didn’t bother us much. Everyone was in very high spirits and we encountered groups returning from the top, who had completed the Roopkund trek, after exchanging some pleasantries we moved on. Most of the walk was along a mountain and about some 50 meters below its top, hence we could have a view of only one side of the valley. After about a couple of hours of easy walk we came to some kind of a pass wherein we could cross over the mountain and could get on to the other side. At this point the view was simply fantastic; it was one of those moments, when you are least expecting to find anything and suddenly in front of you appears a beautiful vista. The team was asked to take some time out here, we were told that the camp was very close by and it was a gradual decent from now onwards. Everyone were surprised as to how can the trek get over so quickly, anyway I was not complaining. After yesterdays climb this was turning out to be a very welcome rest.

After more than an hour’s break we started for the camp and reached the place within less than an hour. The tents were being set up by the porters and most of us roamed around the place gulping in the fantastic view that the mighty Himalayas was presenting to us. The weather was perfectly clear till now and probably all my worries for the poncho were now turning out to be completely unfounded. Ajoy, the camp leader from Bedni had accompanied us here and he would come further up with us till Roopkund as well. For lunch we had Kichdi which was spiced up to the extent that it tasted like our south Indian Bisi-Bele Bath. In the afternoon the wind started blowing heavily and all of us huddled back into our tents. One disadvantage of having a clear sky is that you cannot sit in your tents, the sun beats down on the tent and we literally start getting cooked up under the sheets. Finally braving the wind was considered to be a far better option than sitting inside the tent. Ghora lotani is almost at the end of the Bugyals, the Bugyals which had started at Ali terminates at Ghora Lotani. The horses were supposed to turn back from this point onwards, but the poor animals were not given their due rights and the mules were made to climb up till Baghuva basa which was the final camp of this trek.

The four of us roamed around the area admiring the place, it is a completely different as well as humbling feeling to be standing in front of these mighty mountains, the mind feels a lot calmer under their shadows. Everyone were plotting and thinking on the course that we were supposed to take tomorrow and the temple of Kalu vinayak was visible from this camp, it was like a tiny speck on the top of the mountain. Krishna was furiously thinking on his strategy and the other members of the trek team also had some anxious look on their faces considering the difficulty of the task ahead.

The dinner was served pretty late here too and washing the plates was again a very big pain. After every one had gone back to their tents, I decided to indulge myself in some night photography and took out my tripod but unfortunately it was not possible for me to take good snaps with my camera. Finally Krishna also came out after hearing my loud lamentations that they were missing a really good opportunity, With his Canon 50D we were able to take some decent pictures of the night and the stars. The silence of the Himalayan night was really beautiful, It was like a poetry but very difficult to explain. After this short photography session, we called it a day and Scooby dived into our sleepy bags.

RoopKund Trek: Day 1 & 2

2010-06-27T01:51:00.000-07:00

Reaching Loharjung : Day 1

We (Satish, Krishna, Sandeep and myself) were in Nainital for two days trying to get acclimatized to the hills before embarking on the trek to Roopkund. I don’t know about acclimatization to the hills but we certainly got acclimatized to the long shrill honks of the taxi drivers on Nainital’s roads. These guys made us Bangaloreans look like heavenly angels strumming on our harp when we take to the roads.

On May 31 early morning we took a taxi from our Hotel in Nainital to Kathgodam Railway station, the other trek members of Indiahikes were coming by the Ranikhet express. We reached the station just in time.

The bus, a blue color Maxicab was waiting for us. After loading our luggage on to the vehicle and exchanging pleasantries with fellow trekkers we were ready to go. Unfortunately three more from our team were yet to come and they were travelling by bus from Delhi, so we checked out the local chai shops. I wonder how these guys with access to such limited ingredients are able to concoction such tasty tea, maybe being on the street adds a separate flavor to the items being prepared there. I’m no street foodie and usually have them when I’m with friends on an outing such as this; nevertheless I try to savor them without getting addicted to them. Finally when we were having our Breakfast at a restaurant which was some 2 Km from the station we got the news that the three have arrived. The driver was in a foul mood by now, first the three people were missing and now the whole group had gone scouting for breakfast without informing him. Nobody bothered to convince him though and quietly got on to the vehicle.

The vehicle meandered through the hills of the Himalayas and puffed up and down through some of the hill stations like Almora and Kausani. The unfolding deep gorges and the thin steak of river flowing down in the valley was really wonderful, the only discomfort was with the heat and the sun. We had a second round of breakfast on a road side dhaba and lunch was in Kausani, again at a pretty humble looking place. The driver gave us a break near the Pindar river and the place was really magical. By now the sun was shrouded with clouds and the whole valley with the Pindar River flowing down below looked stunning. This looked like a perfect beginning to the trip and then the rain started. With our entire luggage packed on to the top of the vehicle we were not sure as to whether we will be left with anything dry. We managed to reach Loharjung by around 6:30 in the evening and luckily none of our bags were wet. The vehicle stopped in front of Patwal lodge, more than a normal lodge it is some kind of an orchard where different kinds of fruits such as apple, cheeku etc are grown and the rooms are spread out among these trees. Ankit was the camp manager of Indiahikes and he gave us a warm welcome. His enthusiasm started rubbing on all of the trekkers as he started telling stories about the place, how he first did the trek and how the things are now etc. We were finally allocated to our rooms which were some 200 meters uphill from the kitchen area. The bathrooms are also located some 200 meters, so it is very important to have your torches with you. After completing the trekking formalities we went to Loharjung to see if we can get hold of the elusive poncho. We came across a general store which had stocked itself with all the trekking gears to cater to the Roopkund trekkers. Unfortunately for us he was out of stock as far as poncho was concerned. We bought 15 rs plastic sheets thanking our stars to have at least found this. It is said that when a man is desperate he is ready to hang on to the last straw of hope and I had become that desperate that day, my last trek in Sarpass saw me getting completely wet, literally to the bones and it is a horrible feeling to start missing some of your important parts in the body. ;). We were able to call back home at only one spot on the street of the Village, this knowledge can be easily obtained by talking to the villagers.

After a good dinner which consisted of Roti and Rice we huddled back to our rooms as the cold had started to take its toll on us. We were chit-chatting in the room when I saw some light peeking up in the horizon, all of us got excited and for the first time in my life I saw the moon rise. Given that the moon was on the higher side of being full, it was a beautiful site. The tri-pods were out and we tried our best to capture the moment, but unfortunately the camera cannot see what the eye sees. The whole valley was lit up with streaming silvery light. Finally we decided to call it a day and snuggled into the sleeping bags provided to us.

Loharjung to Didna: Day 2

The day started with everyone busily sorting out their stuff and deliberating as to what should be carried and what should not be. Naren was having a blast of time as he poked every item in his trek bag to see the value of taking it to the top. Since I had pretty much completed the task in Bangalore itself, I went out to take some pictures of the trees and fruits. The sky was now completely clear and had a shade of dark blue. The weather was perfect and everyone was raring to go.

We were given a snack of pav bread with Jam and were handed a packed lunch of Parota and biscuits. The trek starts along the Curzon trail and takes you down into the valley. The route is a continuous climb down but it still took us close to 2.5-3 hours to reach the bottom of the valley. The river making its way in this valley is known as the Raun baggad and there is an iron bridge that makes the river crossing easy at the bottom. On our way to Raun baggad we get a wonderful view of the Kulling village. My knee joints had by now started complaining since there was no let off from the downhill path. The trail was littered with trees bearing rhodendron flowers and the forest started getting thicker and thicker as we got down. Some places with streams flowing down among the thcikets of green were sights to behold. We passed a small settlement, where we were offered bark juice. Apparantely the juice was made from the bark of a tree. We had a swig of it and it was very refreshing.

People were now asking the guides to stop for breakfast, but the marching orders didn’t stop. We had to reach the Raun baggad bridge before we could settle down for breakfast. Finally the bridge came in sight, Even though the bridge was made of iron, we didn’t find it very impressive as was mentioned in some of the other blogs. I found a dead monkey’s carcass near the bridge probably picked clean recently by the vultures.

We settled down near the river bank and had our breakfast and before starting off filled our water bottles. From this point onwards the trek was a continuous climb upwards. Krishna had talked about a girl in his previous trek, who used to trek very slowly but never used to stop. I had decided to adopt the same strategy for climbing. Since I had done some jogging before coming here, I was decently confident about my fitness. The never ending climb took off and Sandeep and I broke flank with the team and started moving upfront, albeit with a very slow speed but without stopping anywhere except for a swig of water here and there. During our climb up we could see Loharjung village far out in the horizon, we couldn’t believe we had covered so much of a distance. In fact the downhill trek not only took us to the bottom of the valley but also made us cover a lot of distance along the valley as well. The climb-up is pretty vertical though and is littered with only zig-zag upward path.

During our climb our trekking mules which carried the rations for the next camp and also the trek bags of people who were finding it difficult to carry them, passed us. The guy who was herding them decided to take a break and went to a grass patch and slept. I and Sandeep decided to have some fun and starting herding the now peacefully grassing mules along the path. The task was so exciting that it took our mind off from the trek and we had lot of fun and in no time we reached Bedni, the Mule herder had caught up with us by then and he took charge of his animals. Later we got to know that the Mule-herders name was Gabbar singh, thankfully the resemblance ended with the name compared to Sholay’s Gabbar.

The camp was again on a grassy patch and is located in the village of Didna, This village is habitat ed only during the summer season when people come down to farm from Loharjung or Kulling. Even though we had trekked a lot that day, we were more or less at the same altitude as that of Loharjung. We reached the place around 12. Swapnil was the camp leader and he welcomed us into the camp. After drinking the welcome drink we waited for the whole group to join us. Room’s are allocated only after the whole team arrives.

Finally at around 1 we occupied our rooms. The place was like a large dorm with more than 10 beds, the roof was pretty low and I bashed my head a couple of times on to it. The lunch provided here was one of the best during the trek and this is the last spot from where you can call home.

We spent our time after lunch chit-chatting and then decided to explore the village in the evening. The village is pretty big and consisted of neatly maintained houses with concrete paths winding up and down the hill. We came across a village house where a lady was threshing the wheat. Sandeep decided to be gallant and went and asked the lady permission to photograph her doing the job, he was promptly refused. Our Satish who walked in later went in and made friends with the whole family and asked the man of the house permission to photograph the lady doing the threshing job. The permission now was promptly given. Finally after roaming around the hill side for some time the wind started to pick up speed and we hurried back to the camp. We had great time in the camp listening to the stories told by Mullax, an experienced trekker about the various trekking expeditions and the dangerous situations he was involved in. Finally after a dinner in the biting cold we got back into our rooms and slept peacefully pulling over the thick Rajjai. The next day’s trek was to Bedni and tomorrow was considered to be toughest day of the trek with more than 108 zig-zag turns whereas we had done only 57 today.

Nainital

2010-06-18T02:00:00.000-07:00

Nainital, the land where it is believed Parvati's/Sati's eye fell when Shiva was taking her charred body to his abode after she immolated herself in the agni kund at her fathers place. The eye is said to have transformed itself into a beautiful lake. The place apart from the main mall areas is of pristine nature and a beautiful spot to spend your time in the lap of the nature. The current settlement is said to have begun around the year 1840 when the lake was discovered by P Barron, an English sugar trader. Another legend talks about the fact that the lake contains the same water as that of the Mansarovar and taking a dip here is considered to be sacred, though I couldn't find many who were interested in taking a dip.

I with three of my friends started off from Bangalore on 28th Evening and reached Delhi by 7:30, we then took the Ranikhet express from the Old Delhi Railway station. The Railway station was one of the worst maintained stations I have seen till now. We were unable to see the reservation charts as well, since people were lying all around the platform. After the initial cultural shock we managed to locate our compartment and got in. Getting our dinner was now another concern and we had to endure some more of the crowd to locate some decent food, finally we sited a IRCT outlet and got packed food for a cool 85 bucks per pack. The food was good though.

Our destination was Kathgodam the nearest Rail head to Nainital, coming out of the station, we were surrounded by a bunch of taxi drivers asking us where we wanted to go, finally we hired a Qualis for 400 Rs to take us to Nainital which is around 36 Km away. We reached Nainital in around 45 minutes and made our way to the Hotel which was unfortunately situated on a hilllock and we had to do a mini trek to reach it. The hotel's name was RajMahal and was pretty rickety. I guess these guys make business only during the peak season and shut shop during other times. The cost of a three bed room was exorbitant at 2000Rs per day. One lesson learnt from this experience is never go to a tourist place in peak season.

We started our tourism with a cable car ride which takes us to the snow view. The cable car was good albeit very short, but the snow view was a complete disaster as there was no view to be had. The place is a motley mix of all kind of street vendors and road side shops. The snow view was deserted since it was cloudy, A shopkeeper told that on a clear day we can get excellent views of Nanda devi from this spot. Finally after loitering around for some time we went back through the cable car to the town.

We headed in search of a decent hotel for lunch and entered Nanni Nann restaurant which is situated on the first floor on the main Mall road. The Gourmet was very good and we had a fulfilling time.

After lunch we headed off in search of the elusive Poncho, but couldn't find it anywhere but instead came across a bookstore and all of us barged in. Satish from our group has this uncanny knack of mixing around with locals with ease, he stuck a conversation with the bookkeeper and this turned out to be very informative. The bookkeeper said that Jim corbett used to buy his books from the very place and he used to stay at a House called Gurney house just across the lake. We mentally decided to pay the place a visit. After the bookstore we ambled across the circumference of the lake and took a path going towards Tiffin top. Tiffin top gives a wonderful view of the city, the path meanders through old bungalows before running up through forested areas. On the path we came across Gurney house, the house looked well maintained from the outside and we rang the calling bell placed near the gate. An old lady without asking anything indicated to us from the front porch to come in. The old lady was the house keeper and the Owner was away at that time. All four of us loaded with our cameras went in and took pictures of each and every corner of the well maintained place. Finally while leaving, the owner of the house came in his Honda city, We thanked him for maintaining the place so well and continued our trek to Tiffin top.

The trek to Tiffin top is around 4-5 Km long and is not very easy by usual standards, Almost all the tourists do it on horse back. Luckily the horses were taking another route and we had come up by a different route, this saved us from the pain of making way to the horses whenever one came in sight. The trek was a good acclimatisation for our Roopkund trek which was to begin in two days time. The view from Tiffing top/ Dorothy sit is really beautiful. The vast expanse of city and its myraid lakes with schools and kids playing on the grounds was stunning. We made our way back to the city before the sunset and spent some time talking near the lake. It was also time to indulge in long exposure photography under the twilight. For dinner we went to another restaurant called Purohit and didn't like it much, we then decided to stick to Nanni Naan during our stay here.

The next day we hired an Alto for a trip to the three lakes Sattal, Bhimtal and Naukuchia Tal. We reached Sattal after more than an hours drive, the lake looked green and beautiful. There were not many tourists since we had started off very early. We had our breakfast of Gobi and Aloo paranthas and they were one of the best we have tasted till now. The hotel we had them is the first one of the many you encounter after you get down from your car and walk down to the lake. We hired a boat for 45 minutes which cost us around 190 Rs, The lake is far from human activities and is still surrounded by beautiful forests. We spotted a huge number of different kinds of birds and took our own time in photographing them.

The next stop was the Bhimtal lake, this lake is also very beautiful but is not as untouched by human activity as the Sattal lake.

We had to skip the third lake because the driver started making lot of noise saying he had to be back in Nainital by 1. After reaching the town we again revisited Nanni Naan for our lunch. After lunch we lazed around the lake and went to our rooms for a nice snooze. The planned trip to the Zoo was cancelled because of growing laziness and after visiting the Bara Bazaar we had our dinner and headed back to our room. The next day morning we took a cab to the Kathgodam station to join our trekking group.

Overall Nainital is a very beautiful place, I can only imagine what Barron must have seen when he first came here. The 6-9 ban of traffic on the Mall road is not correct, as Vehicles honk their way throughout the day. The honking can turn a pleasant stroll to a horrific one so be prepared for it.

Divine Light

2010-04-23T08:39:00.000-07:00

The Aura surrounds her,
Like a light moving in the stream of darkness.
The mind goes numb,
In a thoughtless state of joy.

Words may fail,
But the heart is filled to the brim.
Just the sight of her,
Nothing more than that is what I crave.

Flowers bloom,
In varied colors during spring,
Her simple smile
Has shown me the path of the supreme.

Colors of Spring

2010-03-20T23:05:00.000-07:00

Today morning, I decided to take out my brothers bicycle out for a ride on the Kanakpura road. These are some of the Photos shot on the way. Though I have to admit that I didn't go very far given that I do cycling once in a month nowadays. :)

Puducherry (Pondicherry)

2010-03-13T07:14:00.001-08:00

This post got stuck in the rocks for a long time. This trip was done three months ago during the quarter breaks of my MBA. The breaks between the quarters are always cherished as though as if it is worth more than gold. This time we decided to drive down to Pondicherry and Mahabalipuram. The plan was to leave Bangalore in the early hours of Saturday and to return by Sunday night. We started off from Bangalore at around 6 in the morning and headed off to Banerghatta road, from Banerghatta road we took the NICE road towards electronic city and then were soon cruising at high speeds on the golden quadrilateral. From Krishnagiri we need to take a turn towards Chennai and after a couple of kilometers drive we get a deviation to the right which is the Pondicherry road. This road is a state highway and is not in the pink of its health. Pot holes are very generously littered along the entire stretch till Pondicherry. It is not possible to maintain an average speed of more than 50 kmph. The road traverses through forests and villages with typical south Indian sceneries of farms and huts. One more important thing to note is that there are no decent eateries along this stretch. If you are starting early then it is better to pack your breakfast.

On the way to Puducherry there is fort called Ghengee fort. The fort is right next to the road and would require some climbing to reach the top. It looked very inviting from the entrance but we didn’t attempt the climb since my parents were not too eager.

We reached Pondicherry around 1 in the afternoon and headed straight towards the beach area, this area has the road running parallel to the beach. We got a hotel room in the by lanes of the beach area and the beach was only a 5 minute walk. The rent for the room was in the range of 600-800 Rs.

After lunch at a vegetarian restaurant we headed towards the Puducherry museum.

Then we headed to the beach, the beach near the city is fortified with rocks, perhaps to stop the soil erosion. After consulting a coconut seller we headed towards the Auro beach on the ECR(East coast road). The road going to the beach is right next to a place called Surya beach resort.

We had lot of fun on the beach, soaking in the breeze and having fun with the waves. Finally late in the evening we headed back to our room for a bath. We decided to give our car a break and set on foot searching for a vegetarian restaurant.

The city near the beach is spick and span with all the colonial old buildings properly maintained, but this is present only for a radius of about 2 Km after which puducherry takes the shape of any other bustling Indian city. We found a good Vegetarian restaurant called Bilva on MG Road, the specialty of the place is the unique way in which they present the food. After the good dinner we ambled back to our room to find out that there was a good vegetarian restaurant just next to our rooms, only thing was we should have started in the opposite direction.

The next day we woke up early to catch the sunrise. The hotel main gates were locked and the person responsible was deep in sleep, probably after having spent the night on booze he might have gone to bed very late, anyways we managed to wake him up. The sunrise was marred by a lining of clouds on the horizon but nevertheless it was a wonderful.

We left for Mahabalipuram after seeing the sunrise. Pondicherry is a great place to laze around, with a good beach.

Road, Movie

2010-03-07T07:26:00.000-08:00

People may expect a lot of things from this movie, after the likes of DevD and Oye Lucky Lucky Oye, Abhay deol has become synonymous with the alternate cinema trend. One of the best movies that I have seen of Abay Deol is Manorama Six Feet Under.
Road, starts of with the Abhay’s character looking for a direction in life. His fathers failing oil business beckons him but he willingly grabs an opportunity to take a rundown Truck which is a moving theater to be delivered to a museum across the desert. His escapism isn’t for real though since he keeps a count of the number of days that will keep him away from home. On the way he encounters different kinds of people with their own issues and problems, a young urchin trying to a find a better job, An old mechanic who wants to reach a Mela which no one knows where it is and a sultry Banjarin girl who is searching for water in the desert all by herself and joins the motley crew without a second thought.
The film maynot have a very smooth flow but the director tries to capture a lot of things in a very symbolic manner. The scene wherein the Water Dacoit leader falls for Abhay’s staterment that by applying his hair oil, the Dacoit will become a real Mard looks very superficial and he exchanges hair oil for water. It was only later when my friend paresh gave his take on the scene did I appreciate the fact that this is what the real world marketing is all about, Water being the most sought after product is the currency and Abhay comes to his elements by selling his fathers hair oil in the most difficult of the places.
Cinematography as well as the music is very good. A decent watch, but only to those who appreciate such movies. The script could have been made more realistic though.

Move on

2009-11-09T09:08:00.000-08:00

Move on, there is nothing here
Move on, you scrummy beggar,
The bleary eyed beggar goes on,
Seeking alms in the same passive tone.

Some give it to him grudgingly,
some give it to him with a sense of duty,
Some hate and spit at him,
Some despair at his fate and move on.

Work was something he couldn't get,
theft was something he couldn't do,
Still life demanded things he couldn't forget,
thus Seeking alms drowning in the river of shame.

Hunger often knocked at his doors,
Laughing madly at his shame,
Days were now just a motion,
Daily eating out a part of his own soul.

Finally his life was no more
A mere lifeless form,
rotting in the dark retches of the city,
Ah..A meaningful life of repentance.

Memories of Travel in Bangalore

2009-09-06T01:11:00.000-07:00

When I lived in Bangalore as a Kid in the early 90’s, traffic was never a problem. I used to always reach my destinations without ever having to bother about a traffic hold up. It is another matter that I wouldn’t have bothered about it anyway, what with all the tensions and problems a 9 year old kid faces in his school and home. My school was located about 5 Km from my home and was considered to be a highly reputed one going by the amount of donation they collected. My daily means of travel to school was an Auto-Rickshaw which was stuffed with kids to the brim. Back then most of the roads were potholed and our Auto-Rickshaw driver would diligently run over all of them giving us a thrill which is unfathomable to this day. I used to call him Auto-man whereas the other kids called him Raju uncle, I don’t know why I chose the name Auto-man over uncle but he didn’t seem to mind it, probably thinking that I adored him with the likes of He-Man, Superman, Bat-man etc. Well, a highly unlikely possibility considering that the only man I really adored was Newman, whoever it was. A classmate of mine had described Newman in grotesque detail as having a steel body and laser eyes and I fell in love with him.

Auto-man had a chain of 3 Autos using which he catered to the students living in all parts of the city. He used to run one of the Autos himself and for the other two he had hired drivers. Even though he was always short of money, he used to occasionally treat us with a snack of raw mangoes or an Ice cream from the road side vendor. My mother would have fainted if she had seen me lapping up the ice cream with gusto. This was one information that I always kept out from the “What did I do today” speeches that I gave to my mother in the evenings. On rare occasions I was given the honor of sitting next to the Auto-man when he was driving. That was one of the most cherished locations in the Auto and every kid would die for a chance to sit there. Usually the high chair was reserved for the big boys but on a couple of occasions I did manage to corner it.

On quite a few occasions Auto-man didn’t turn up on time, putting into disarray the peace and tranquility of my family. I not wishing to lose out on a chance to get back on the adults and seeing the possibility of a holiday would scream that I would be punished for being late. Finally I would be bundled of into another Auto, pouring cold water on all my plans.

Sometimes my father would turn up on his Bajaj Super scooter to pick me up and to surprise me. On those days I was the envy of all the kids in the Auto, there was no comparison of riding on a Bajaj Super to that of an Auto. Couple of kids who stayed near my home would invariably jump ship to the scooter.

One fine day we moved into our new home built at the outskirts of the city. Auto-man didn’t have a network for this area so I ended up in a mini-van. The kids in the van were not kids but they were all mini-devils, fighting and bullying was common place. One day a kid brought a syringe with a needle attached to it inside the van. He sucked up water into the syringe from his water bottle and then declared that he was a doctor’s son and he can treat anybody. Finally it was the unlucky me who ended up getting treated, with the syringe stuck to my thumb. At first I cried and the others started laughing, seeing this I flew into a rage and banged the boy black and blue, the driver had to stop the vehicle to separate us. That was the final day for me on the mini-van. I’m sure that if I visit any jail today I will come across one of those guys there.

Next came the BMTC bus travel. With only the mini-van catering to my area this was the only option available. My mom would give me two 50 paisa coins for the to and fro journey and would instruct me to get in and out of the bus only through the front door so that the driver can ensure that I have climbed in or out safely. The bus conductors as usual were as unpredictable as they are today. Some of them used to give me tickets, some of them would just take my money and would not give me the ticket and some of them would take the 50 paisa coin and would give me in return a 25 paisa coin. I loved this third group of conductors the most. In a week I used to save a couple of 25 paisa coins this way. With this money I used to buy stickers from the forlorn sticker seller who used to sit outside our school gates or sweets and toffees from a nearby sweet shop. I started to love this arrangement more than anything else because now for the first time I had money power.

Finally as they say, all good things must come to an end. After only three months of enjoying the BMTC travel my father got transferred to Ahmedabad. It was time to say good bye to a phase of Bangalore, which I never found again when I returned back.

On the Top, Over the Hill

2009-08-01T22:49:00.000-07:00

With joy and vigor in our steps,
we start off towards the far mountain peaks,
The cool breeze, the forest air and the silence,
coaxing us into a reverie unmatched.

Sometimes a river runs along for company,
humming its tune to the silent world around,
Sometimes it is just the dead leaves crunching,
creating illusions of danger from all directions.

Sometimes the rain drenches out the tempo,
bringing out the lecherous leeches for their share of fun,
Sometimes running out of our stock of water,
tempera-ting our wills to more human levels.

Sometimes the humidity saps us,
drinking and gurgling as if from a large open keg,
Sometimes it is just our minds,
that starts playing its own little games.

Finally the forest opens up to grassy planes,
bringing with it the relief of fresh air,
The sun now starts to shimmer and dazzle,
swooping down on our necks with tyrannical intent.

Every step is a barrier that needs to be overcome,
Every breath is a nectar to be relished upon,
The body is creaking and groaning with the passage,
Zombie like swaying and stumbling over the path.

The mind is all ready to give it up,
But the heart keeps us all going.
Taking in the natures beauty, and
applying it as a soothing balm to the frayed mind.

Finally the destination is reached,
The objective has been achieved,
It was not a competition of reaching here first,
It was a competition of beating our mental barriers in the company of others.

BMTC Volvo Payana (Travel)

2009-07-01T08:29:00.000-07:00

It has been almost four months now since I started going to office by BMTC bus. My office is situated at Varthur which is near Whitefield and my home is at Chikalsandra which is 2 k.m from Devegowda petrol pump. Thus the total distance from office to home amounts to around 28 k.m. For the last five years I have traveled out this distance on my Bike, but with the introduction of the Volvo services and also with the increase in frequency of the Buses, I decided to give it a try. Though there was the other option of office cabs but I preferred my Bike over the cabs based on comfort level of travel vs time taken.
There are no direct Volvo buses from Chikalsandra to Varthur, leave aside Volvo, there are no direct ordinary buses on this route. My home and office are located in such a way that I have to change three buses to reach office, this was one of the major reasons that I didn't try out the bus earlier. But finally one day a major traffic jam tipped me over to try out the bus. The Volvo bus which plied on my route was 500K, this bus came to Devegowda petrol pump and went to a bus stop called Kundanahalli gate which is about 4 km from my office. Thus for the major part of the journey i.e close to 22 km I was traveling by Volvo. Also for the rest of the 6 km, if luck had its way then I traveled by Volvo, but most of the times I get into any bus that comes along. For the remaining 6 kms, the frequency of the buses on both the routes are so high that I usually wouldn't have to wait for more than 2 minutes at the bus stop.
The number of 500K are close to around 24, I travel in a 500K that comes to Devegowda petrol pump at around 7:10 in the morning, Surprisingly the bus usually maintains it's time. But based on the driver, the time I take to reach the destination varies. On some day's I will be in Kundanahalli gate by 8:10, on others it can touch upto 8:30. In the evenings I don't have a fixed timing, thus my waiting time can vary based on the time I start. If I start after 7, then waiting time can be as high as 20 minutes before a bus comes along, otherwise from 5 to 7, a bus will be there for every 10 minutes. Some buses labeled 500C also come to DG petrol pump, their last stop being the Kamakhya depot. The cost of the ticket is 30 Rs, but I prefer to take the Gold day pass which costs 75 Rs, by buying a pass I overcome the common hassle of providing change to the conductor in each and every bus.
The Volvo bus is a pretty comfortable vehicle, The smooth ride and the AC are major pluses. But there are also some negatives, the legroom can be slightly cramped up for taller people. If you are standing in the bus then it can get pretty irritating when the driver starts experimenting with his disk breaks.
Finally I would say that BMTC has done a great job by bringing out this service which caters to the middle class public. For me it has been especially useful as I can catch up on my studies in the bus.

Volvo bus numbers:
Chikalsandra to D G petrol pump : 210 IA (This goes to Majestic, very less in frequency)
DG Petrol pump to Kundanahalli gate: 500K (Starts from Vijayanagar and ends at ITPL)
Kundanahalli gate to Varthur kodi: 333p, 328M. (Frequency is decent enough).

P.S: New bus from chikalsandra to ITPL 500P has been added.

It's not about the bike - Lance Armstrong

2009-06-05T22:39:00.000-07:00

Well, what if one day you get up in the morning and you don't feel that good so you visit your neighborhood doctor, only to be told that you have a deadly disease called cancer and the chances of your survival is very bleak. The whole world becomes topsy-turvy, Almost all of life's priorities undergoes a drastic change.

This book is an Auto biography by the famous cyclist Lance Armstrong that talks about his initial days as a cyclist, his fight against the deadly cancer and then finally his journey back to life and what a comeback he has had by winning 7 tour-de-france races. The writing style is a bit brash hence in the beginning I failed to connect with the writer, but again the story is something that will make you think about how fickle life or fate can be. The book also gives some insight into the world of cycling. All in all a very good read.

The Silent Horizon

2009-05-24T07:08:00.000-07:00

The sun is rising, after a bitter cold night,
Its golden rays touching and caressing everything in sight,
I wake up to the chirping of the birds and
walk down to the stream for a gentle scrub.

The craggy path winds down the mountain,
treacherous enough to keep others out of my way,
I douche myself in the silvery stream,
Loosing my thoughts to a silent dream.

I move back to my cave near the meadows,
Walking through the woods under the silent shadows,
I sit down under the shade in silent contemplation,
Mulling over my thoughts in deep rumination.

It has been days since I moved to my mountain abode,
Away from the noisy din that humans usually associate,
Nature has healed my scars inflicted by civilization,
Filling my heart with the pure nectar of the soul divination.

Man lives in a caged world, with his laws and pursuits,
Unable to break free and always in fearful apprehension,
The world of silence and peace is always on the horizon,
But nobody moves towards it lest it should turn turbulent.

I have taken this path towards the silent realm,
Finding peace and quiet in the starry beams,
Learning to loose myself in the path,
And gaining the whole world in the process.

Kodaikanal

2009-04-25T01:03:00.001-07:00

It had been some time since my family had gone out for a vacation, except of course discounting the trips for attending marriages and family functions. So on a spur of a moment we decided to go to kodaikanal on the April 10,11,12 weekend. Kodaikanal is around 500Km from Bangalore and 90% of the journey is on the NH7 which leads out to Hosur from Bangalore. The roads are really good, though in between work is underway on bridges and bypasses, but still it is an enjoyable drive. We left Bangalore at around 5:30 in the morning and we reached Kodaikanal at around 4 in the evening. The route we took was Bangalore-> Hosur-> Dharmapuri-> Salem-> Karur -> Dindugal-> Vathlagundu-> Kodai Road and then Kodaikanal. Diversions from NH7 needs to be taken at Kodai Road which is around 90Kms from Kodaikanal.

We had our lunch in Bathlakundu and it was a decent fare. We had some difficulty in finding rooms as it was a long weekend and people had come to the hills in droves.

Finally after searching for some time we managed to get a double room at a lodge called Rahaat for 1200 bucks but since the room was spacious we were able to easily squeeze in extra beds the lodge owner provided.

After checking in, we went to the famous Kodai lake which is at the center of Kodaikanal. The weather was very chilly with light showers of rain falling now and then, Coming from the summer heat of Bangalore this was a very pleasant experience. The lake was quite beautiful , It is a man made lake modelled in a star shape. We decided to take a walk around it, but finally it turned out to be a very big lake too as the total perimeter came up to around 6Kms. After dinner we retired for the day. There are plenty of restaurants in Kodaikanal and more or less all of them serve decent fare.

Next morning we went for sight seeing, Most of the sight seeing places in Kodaikanal are on one single route, forming a circular loop which again ends in kodaikanal. The route starts from the lake, and is the one that goes on a bridge towards the observatory. The first stop was a pine tree forest, where some film shooting had taken place.

The next sight seeing point was the pillar rocks, a panoramic view point. Three huge boulders rise up straight from the bottom. There are some caves nearby, which it seems runs deep in to the hills, but the entrance to them have been barricaded to prevent any adventures from the tourists.

Green valley view or the suicide point comes next, this again gives a very beautiful view of the valley and the plains below.

On the way down we get to see the Kodaikanal lake from an elevation.

Finally we reached a spot called Coaker's walk which is a half a kilometer walk during which we get beautiful views of the town as well as the valley.

After lunch we visited a park called Byrant's park which is just opposite the Coaker's walk starting point. The park has a beautiful collection of orchid's and other exotic flowers.

The famous Kurunji-Andavar temple is around 2km drive from the lake and after the visit to the park we payed a visit to it.
In the evening we went for the boat ride, which was fun and relaxing.
That night the temperature seemed to have fallen further compared to the previous night. The chill and the cold reminded me of the Sarpass trek that I had done last year.

Next day we started out from Kodaikanal at around 10, and came back on the same route. We had our lunch at Karur at a hotel called Valluvar just opposite to the bus stand, The food here was good.
At around 8 in the night we were back in Bangalore. Kodaikanal was a welcome change in this summer heat, though maybe a touch far from Bangalore.

Tandiandamol - a revisit

2009-03-01T03:26:00.000-08:00

We had initially planned for a trek to Brahamagiri peak which is situated near to the town of Srimangala. Upon calling up the forest office for permissions,we were informed that two days trekking in the forest will not be allowed in this season because of forest fire problem, but single day's trek was still possible so after getting this assurance, 10 of us landed up in srimangala at 5 in the morning. A local police beat showed us the way to the forest office. This place was locked and we were informed it will open only at around 9:30. Since we had the mobile number of the forest officer whom I had called earlier, I again called him up to en quire about the situation. This time he informed us that trekking to Brahamagiri peak has been completely stopped for the time being but he gave us an option to trek to a place called Aa bayalu, A quick google search on a friends mobile phone didn't throw up any results for that place, hence deciding not to take any chance we all decided to go to Tadiandamol peak. I had trekked this peak around 2 and 1/2 years back, and had enjoyed the place very much.

Srimangala being a small town didn't have any decent hotels, so we caught a local bus to Virajpet and had our breakfast there. Then we caught a bus to Kakkabe, and after a journey of 1 hour the bus dropped us off at the starting point of the trek.

The initial 3-4 Kms from the bus-stop is a tarred road but has a continuous upward incline, those of you who want a strenuous climb can start from the bus-stop, otherwise it is better to start the trek from the palace from where it is a 4-5 Km climb to the peak. Since we started the trek around 11:15, the conditions were pretty hot and humid. The initial 5-6 Kms from the bus-stop was through forests and estates and doesn't provide any views, Only after the jeep tracks starts converting to a trail path do we get to see the beauty of the place. The grassy areas were gutted out due to forest fires, but still the brownish peaks were also quite majestic and beautiful.

A water point and a camping site can be found after a few meters into the trial. From here onwards the path takes a more steeper inclination. A final stretch of the forest before reaching the peak is the most arduous part of the trek as along with climb, the humidity saps all the energy out.

Finally we reached the peak around 3, and took in the magnificent view before resting and having the snacks that we had brought with us. the peak unfortunately was littered with plastics, one of the drawback of this place becoming a popular trekking spot. There were more than 6-7 teams that were climbing the peak on that day, with almost half of them camping. To my surprise I also saw three groups of foreigners.

Finally after spending an hour at the peak we started to make our decent. The occurrence of a blister in my feet started causing a lot of discomfort. Finally we reached the bus-stop around 7 in the night and caught a bus which dropped us off at Napoklu. A private bus (Poornima travels) to Bangalore was standing at the bus stand, so we decided to return back to Bangalore that night itself. Thus finishing of the travel in one day. The bus was pretty comfortable and the driver stopped the bus in Madikeri for dinner, We all went to a restaurant named choice, which in fact served a very good vegetarian fare.

Supremacy of Human Life

2009-02-18T07:26:00.000-08:00

The street in which my house is located is also home to four dogs, and since last month their count has increased to 10 with the addition of 6 newborn puppies. Due to the presence of a big hearted old lady, who feeds the dogs diligently twice a day, a meal comprising of lovingly cooked meat, eggs and rice, neatly wrapped in plastic bags, so that each of the them can feed peacefully without fighting each other, these canines have no worry whatsoever in their lives. So to pass time they carry these plastic bags and place it in every corner of the street, and if they get too bored with this activity they decide to try their hands in playing with the children of the street, sending the poor kids scurrying back to the safe confines of their compounds from where they start their counter attack by throwing whatever stones they can lay their hands on.

The friendly neighborhood dog catcher arrives regularly twice a month and surprisingly whenever he arrives, the dogs are nowhere to be found. Either he has a peculiar odor which the dogs can smell from quite a distance or they always manage to get the inside information, the result of which is that none of the four dogs have undergone any birth control operation since they were born. The magnitude of the problem has resulted in worried discussions in all the homes of the street, off course except that of the gentle hearted old lady.
Ruminating over the problem, I suddenly started to think in an altogether different direction, We as humans take our place as the supreme life form completely granted. But what if there is a species somewhere in the universe which has more intelligence than that of man and the ratio of its intelligence to that of man's is exactly the same as that of Humans to dogs, what if this intelligent species attacks earth and colonize it. Also let us assume that this superior species is also as heartless as we humans are, then what may be the situation?
Almost all of what man has built may give way to completely different structures which cannot be comprehended by us, We maybe reduced to the posh streets of superior beings, some of them might keep a few of us as pets for their entertainment( Here we may have to fight for the spot with the dogs), most of them might find our flesh very palatable and some may hit upon the idea of human farms, wherein, the way we do with poultry, humans will be bred for large scale consumption. Some of us humans, who value their freedom very much may go back to jungle life, But the superior species may occasionally hunt them down for sport, etc etc, this list can be an endless one, because the sufferings that we are piling on nature is unfathomable.
So does it mean that as supreme beings of earth we have a right to do whatever we like? Certainly in the above discussed situation, life can be very bleak and that is exactly what we have inflicted on the lesser animals. Being supreme doesn't mean a right to exploit, but it stands for a sense of responsibility towards the lesser creatures, We have the capacity of wisdom, let us use it to leave everyone in peace.

On happiness

2009-01-27T06:49:00.000-08:00

What is the one thing that everyone either consciously or unconsciously wants? I think it is happiness. The primary instinct in any animal including man is survival, once survival is not a major issue then the second most important instinct, the need for being happy takes over. Though most of the animals are pretty much satisfied if their primal instinct is met, man is most likely the only exception. The desire of being contented and happy is infact the major driving force for majority of mankind. But what exactly is this happiness that we are running after?.

I decided to introspect to find out when was it that I felt really happy? The day when I got my first job, The day I got a good salary hike, The day I came first in the class, The day I got my Engineering seat, and few more such things. But the novelty of all of them faded within a few days, that is I got used to them and the situation came back to normal. Also the momentary happiness that you experience at an achievement or attainment is directly proportional to the amount of sorrow or hardship that you have endured to get it, say if a person struggles for a long time to find a job, then the joy he experiences at finally getting it will be manifolds greater than the person who gets a job without much struggle. But is this the right kind of happiness that we are seeking? Personally whenever I struggled to achieve something, I always felt that I will be happy after achieving it, but as most of us know through our experience that it is not true. Life is a constant struggle, our achievements will only determine how well prepared we can be for the next battle that is around the corner.

I have also felt another kind of happiness, When I have tried making others happy, when I have helped someone etc, acts done without any expectations. Though in terms of intensity it may not be able to match the momentary delights but still a positive vibe gets generated in the mind after such acts and a sense of fulfillment is ever present. Acts of compassion and love whether be it towards other people, animals or even to nature, from time immemorial has been linked as one of the pathways of attaining god and in fact the advaita philosophy says that subconsciously we are ever trying to seek god the true and complete happiness, but deluded to take the right paths. Also children are said to be closer to god as they enjoy each moment of their lives without any burden of the past or the future.

So what should we do? should we dump all our ambitions down the drain and become social workers or a sanyasi. It will certainly not be an option for many of us because unless there is a strong inclination to become a sanyasi, we may just be deluding and piling on a new problem on ourselves. The best option would be to continue what we are doing but with a realigned outlook, Let us constantly try to purify our senses and cleanse our mind of all the impurities, while still performing activities which we are inclined to pursue. Taking some time out for meditation, for exercise to keep body fit is also very essential. Reorienting life towards discipline and god consciousness will make life much more enjoyable and help us in enjoying life's fleeting moments more rather than being engulfed in a state of fear, greed or avarice.

Armed with above road map, I have started treading the road, Hope will reach the destination soon.

The Motorcycle Diaries - Che Guevara

2008-12-23T04:12:00.000-08:00

Traveling to different places, seeing the famous sites of the region and soaking in the varied culture is a desire present in all humans albeit in varying degrees. This compelling diary is a first person account of the journey undertaken by Che Guevara and his friend Alberto on the motorcycle named La Poderosa II. The journey lasts for more than 8 months and covers the length of South America.

The journey starts of just like that, with the one of them expressing his desire to go to North america on their bike. They seal the deal then and there without much thought on what it would take go on such an excursion . With an amount hardly sufficient to last them through a month and a bike which was as reliable as a sick horse they set out.
The travels take them through the five countries of Argentina, Peru, Chile, Columbia and Venezuela. The account of their incidents range from complete hilarious situations to deep contemplations. For most part of the journey they are dependent on the generosity of the people they meet, some help them out of compassion, some out of awe and some do it grudgingly. The two of them also tried to work their way out in most places, working as Doctors, Butlers, Fire fighters, Chefs and even going to the extent of cleaning the lavatory to secure a passage through a steamer.
The book also dwells into the life and culture of the people of the country through which they travel and also covers the history and geography of some of the famous sites like Machu picchu, Cuzco etc.
Undertaking such a journey without any bother of money or where you are going to put up requires a lot of courage and acceptance of things, something which currently I'm lacking in, but still I could sense the freedom and the accelerating sense of adventure both of them might have felt during this journey.
A paper had aptly commented on the book saying that " Che's trip might have been the trip of a lifetime - had his lifetime not turned into a much greater adventure". Will strongly recommend this book to all the trekkers and hikers out there.

Dabbe falls trek

2008-12-10T07:03:00.000-08:00

Chethan as usual called up, a day before the commencement of this trek, to cancel his tickets. We knew that the vacillating mood of Chethan was always going to come to rest, on this time and tested decision so we were not surprised (Except for maybe Pramod who booked the tickets :)).

Shimoga express was scheduled to leave Bangalore city junction at 11:40 pm, I arrived at the station quite ahead of time, and found Praveen sentinelling the gates. The others took their time in coming and finally when they reached the station they barged in towards the platforms without waiting or calling us up. After a lot of thought I attributed this discourtesy to maybe the traumatic incidents of Mumbai, everyone was scared to spend time waiting in the station and become sitting ducks. Our bogey was fixed next to the engine so I had my fill of the trains whistles and chuggings, enough to drive out any lingering nostalgia about them.

The next day mornings event set the pace for the trek, The train had long stopped at Shimoga station, almost all the passengers had got down but many in our group were still pleasantly slumbering, including myself. Only after Pradeepa frantically confirmed that this was indeed Shimoga town and not some outer station, that we got into action. But by the time we had packed our things, the train had started moving, A mental picture of a hike from some railway godown was in everyone's mind, but luckily the train parked itself on the next track and we had to jump across one track to reach the platform.

Shimoga station resembled Sholay's Rampur station to the tee, there was total sanaata(silence) around. The railway station is located at around 4-5 Km from the City bus stand, but instead of Basanthi we had to make do with auto rickshaw guys. We boarded a rickety government bus to Sagar from the bus stand and reached Sagar in good time. After a sumptuous breakfast of Idly vada and Palav, we decided to give a thought for our destination. After some enquiry we boarded a bus going towards Jog and got down at a place called Kargal which is about 20 Km from Sagar. Here started the round conference discussion's with the Taxi guys, Our representatives being Pramod and Pavan. After a successful round of negotiations, the vehicle was produced before us only for us to find that we were to be herded like animals as there were no back seats in it. Instead we decided to wait for the Bus which was due in 15 minutes. The Bus going towards Batkal finally dropped us at Hosagade and the time was 12:15 in the afternoon.
The trek route started off with a jeep track but soon after we were at the mercy of the villagers for directions. The path has many forks, deviations and runs through many peoples farms and even across small streams. Once near any house, Satish(Being a native of this region) sported his hoi-hoi call to get the people out of their homes to show us directions. People were very friendly and helpful and some even came down with us for some distance to make sure we take the right paths. A check dam built on a small rivulet was a wonderful spot.

Finally after two hours of trek or rather walk through semi forested terrain we reached Manjiah Gowda's house, also popularly known as Dabbe manne. Here we unloaded our baggages and went for the falls, The path towards the falls is a very steep climb down, In most of the places the incline is close to 70-80 degrees. Only with the support of the overhanging branches and protruding tree roots it was possible for us to reach the bottom. It took us more than 1 hour to make it to the base.

The Water fall was a fantastic sight to behold, It was majestically falling off the mountain side all alone in the wild but having a lot of pride in it. I made a dash at the inviting water and was under the whipping water of the falls in no time.

The moment was one of exhilarating action, Sitting under a water falls is altogether a different adventure in itself. After the play and frolic we climbed back, the climb back was much faster, it took us around 40 minutes. Again by the time we had finished a fulfilling lunch of Bullet Rice and Sambar at Dabbe Manne , It was already 5:40, Our plans of trekking to Kanoor kote's doctors house which was some 8 Km from dabbe manne looked not feasible, that too without a guide. We then decided to trek to a house, 4 Km from this place, who had an Omni for hire to take us back to Sagar.

The next day we hired a Qualis and spent our time in visiting a couple of waterfalls, more about this in a later post.

Under the Moonlit Sky

2008-12-03T20:29:00.000-08:00

Under the starry dreamy sky, in the dark of the night,
came out the moon in the whispers of a knight,
The myriad darkness was swept asunder,
gleaming the earth with tones of soft silky silver.

A cool breeze blew from the horizon,
rustling along the leaves in playful oblivion,
The moonlit light twirled along with the breeze,
chilling the night with an embracing squeeze.

The silent silvery stream flowed on,
caressing the stones with its lovely silent song,
The late night air was rent with creaks,
with the lovelorn calls of creatures in the reefs.

There, near the flowing stream stood she,
as a serene silent goddess of the night,
Waiting under the moonlit sky,
shimmering with a radiance of alluring beauty,

I chose to hide behind the hedge,
enjoying the yearning in her lovely eyes,
The night was still very young,
with the sweet smell of her jasmine,wafting.

Her face was a twinge of pleasure and anger,
when at last I alighted unable to hold any longer,
Bliss was how it felt, clasping her in my arms,
the night now turned into a celebration of rapturous joy.

Psycho-Kannada movie review

2008-11-01T06:48:00.000-07:00

The songs for the movie Psycho were a super hit long before the films release, Even though I had heard the songs and had liked them, I didn't have much of an expectation from the movie thinking it to be another gangster movie. It was only after a friend told me that the movie revolves around a boy stalking a girl and the hero may not be seen at all in the movie that it caught my interest.

The movie starts with outrageous camera angles and it takes some time to get used to this as this seems to be the signature of the director and continues for the whole movie. Pavana is a TV anchor and hosts a show on love, the Hero (His name is not at all mentioned) is madly in love with her, follows her wherever she goes without her knowledge and keeps calling her through different mobile numbers. He beats anybody in to pulp who misbehaves with her, and even looks after her family even to the extent of helping her to remember her mother's birthday. At first the heroine is discomfited with the calls, but seeing all the good he keeps doing to her starts falling in love with him. The movie takes a sudden turn after the heroine comes to know about a secret of her stalker. The secret due to which the movie is named Psycho.
The movie which was marketed to be a suspense thriller turns out to be a decent thriller alright. Music is superb and also picturisation of the songs is good. The lead pairs could have done a better job, though they are watchable. The major letdowns for the movie is the director and the dialogues. All in all a very differently made movie, but still does not match up to the hype created by it's superb music. Also the hero is very much visible in the movie, so the hype that the hero is never shown was false.
The best scene of the movie for me was when the hero looking through his mother's letters in a box, spotting a cockroach on the lid smashes it with his head and says "Ammand kagada thinthiya" (You eat my mother's letter) .

A Tale of Two Cities - Charles Dickens

2008-10-30T07:53:00.000-07:00

I have now decided to review all the books that I read. The latest being the not so latest novel "A tale of two cities" by Charles Dickens. This novel was first published about 150 years ago, but still it manages to capture the attention and imagination of the reader.

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair,...."

The above often repeated quote is the starting sentences of this novel. The story is set around the time of french revolution in the late 1700's and begins with the homecoming of a Doctor named Manette. He was imprisoned in the Bastille by the French aristocracy for 18 years without a trial nor reason, literally driving him to insanity. At last he is released and is brought back to England by his daughter Lucie, who restores him back to health.
Meanwhile a young Frenchman named Charles Darney is accused of spying and is standing trial in London to which the Doctor and his daughter are summoned as witnesses. The Frenchman gets acquitted based on the defense argument that the accused might have been mistaken for someone else and this they try to prove based on the striking resemblance of Darnay to another person sitting in the court called Sydney Carton.
Darney falls in love with Lucie and gets married to her. Few years roll on in their blissful happiness to be broken by a letter from France. The letter is addressed to Darney who was an aristocrat by birth and had a vast property which he had denounced while leaving France. The french revolution had now taken place in France and all persons connected to royalty or aristocracy were put to death. The servant who was temporarily looking after Darney's property was standing on a death row from which only Darney could save him. Out of compassion Darney decides to go back to France little knowing what troubles await him there.
The moment Darney arrives in Paris he is taken a prisoner and put on a deathrow. The Docter and Lucie also come after him to do their best to save him. The Docter soon builds a reputation based on his past sufferings in the hands of the Aristocracy and his 18 years in prison. But a letter written by the Doctor when in prison denouncing the person who put him in prison and his whole family proves to be Darney's undoing. It turns out that the Darney's father was the cause of Docter's sufferings. The rowdy French crowd bayes for Darney's blood for the sins commited by his father and the jury orders for his execution within 24 hours.
The Climax consists of how Darney manages to escape from prison back to England.
All in all a wonderful read, This tells you the hopelessness of those times. The struggles of those times to build a free world, and the abyss to which France had fallen and risen.

Kodachadri trek

2008-09-26T23:28:00.000-07:00

After the Sarpass trek in May there was a lull in our trekking activities. It is not that we were short of any plans, but at the last moments, we found the number of drop-outs reducing the team size next to nothing. So finally when the trek to Kodachadri was planned, we decided to book the tickets 4-5 days in advance without giving the option of canceling the tickets. This ploy worked and four of us (Krishna, Radhesh, Pradeepa and Myself) boarded the 8:30 Rajahamsa bus to Kollur on 19-09-2008. Unfortunately we found ourselves gracing the back seats of the bus and the night turned out to be a roller coaster ride.

Finally in the morning the bus reached Nittur(Some 22 Km before Kollur) at 6:30 and broke down. We knew this place to be one of the starting points to the Kodachadri peak. Our original plan was to go to Kollur, rent a room and to have darshana of the Goddess there and then to come back and trek, even though the trek starting point is some 18-20 Km from Kollur and falls on the way to that place. But with the latest turn of events we decided to start the trek directly. We got down from the bus and bought Lemons, Offerings for the Leeches. After making some enquiries we came to know that the path from Nittur is difficult to trek without a Guide, for at least this time of the year. The alternative was to start the trek from Karakatte. This place was around 5 Km from Nittur, and as we were thinking of how to get to that place, Our bus started on. So we climbed in to it and got down at Karakatte, The conductor knew the place. This place is approximately around 16-17 Km from Kollur.
Before embarking we applied the lemon juice on to our feet, this proved to be a very effective solution resulting in zero leech bites for me. The trek route is through a Jeep track for the next 3-4 Kilometers. But this is not the jeep track to the Kodachadri peak, This leads to some other place. But we knew the deviation is not until we reach the Santhosh Hotel. The trek begins in a dense forest and then slowly we start getting lush green, lawn like open spaces. The terrian becomes very friendly by the time we reach the hotel. Throughout this whole trek there was complete greenery every where, cooling the eyes and bringing a sense of peace to the mind.
It took us about an hour to reach the hotel. At the Hotel we ordered Dosa and Tea, By this time the clouds had gathered overhead and there was heavy rainfall, but luckily it lasted for only 15 minutes. We moved on after the rain stopped and after just a few meters from the hotel we came to a fork, One leading up into the forest and the other being the Jeep track continuing on. We were unable to decide on the route and so went back to the hotel to ask for directions. Finally we came back and took the right path moving up the hill.
Now again the path was through a thick forest and the number of leeches here were more. After a walk for more than half an hour through the stifling humid conditions we broke open into an open space, which was a relief. For the most part from there on, the trek was through grasslands and we started getting some fantastic views. We reached the Guest house by around 12 noon. There were a couple of homes beside the guest house, which provides food and also space for sleeping. We decided to order our lunch at one of the place and unloaded our bags in the house and went for the peak.
The path from the guest house to the peak is really beautiful, providing for some fantastic views. But the flip side is, there will be lots of people, as a jeep track is present till the Guest house, people who come to Kollur usually make it a point to come to Kodachadri also. Unfortunately this is not a situation a trekker would like to encounter after spending so much of effort to be lost in nature and it's beauty. We visited the Ganesh gufa on the way to the top, and also encountered a group of college students sitting and drinking out in the open. I was filled with indignation as to how people can waste their life and health in this fashion.
The peak has a small temple dedicated to Adi-Shankaracharya as it is said that he had meditated here. We relaxed at the top for some time, taking in the view and fresh air. Finally, made our way back to the bhattare mane. All these trekking years has taught us one thing, that is a good long trek will tell you how beautiful a meal can taste. After the heart fulfilling meal we decided to take a jeep back to Kollur rather than trek back through the forest. We also decided against staying for the night here as it would not serve any point due to the cloudy weather. This in turn would not give us a glimpse of the sunrise or sunset. The decision to take a jeep in fact turned out to be a bad one ,considering the condition of the jeep track which was really hopeless, It was by the sheer skill of the driver that we found ourselves alive in Kollur.
The Hotel we put ourselves in Kollur was Mayur lodge. The rooms here were pretty spacious and clean. The next day we went to the temple and sauntered of the time in Kollur before catching the 7:00 pm bus back to Bangalore that night.

Info for the trek

1) Karakatte is the starting point for the trek, though it seems there are other routes. Karakatte is on the way from Bangalore to Kollur and the trek can be begun without going to kollur.
2) Jeeps are available from Nittur for those who are not interested in trekking.
3) In this time of year, September, water is not a problem at all. There are many small streams you will encounter.
4) The best solution for leech bite prevention as we came to know during this trek was lemon juice.

The path of destiny

2008-08-28T07:30:00.000-07:00

In the dark of a fearful night,
On the path of terrible frights,
Is seen a rider dressed in black,
Moving on with a mighty steel on his back.

Ominous as the signs were,
Hate and deceit was the smell of the air,
Swift as wind did the horse flew,
To whence, no one knew.

At last a light shone,
In the dreamy horizon of a dusky tone,
Near the light stood a well,
Containing the elixir of eternal life.

The mans eye's beamed,
This was what he had always dreamed,
Many years had been spent on this quest,
But time was never able to reduce his thirst.

Years fly by, death remains defeated,
The man lives on, but is never satiated,
Death was a consequence which was avoided,
But life was a solution which never provided.

He now realized his quest was misplaced,
On paths which never were meant to be traced,
His life was well lived till now,
But the past was a burden which had a hold on him now.

He now realized what death meant,
It was the sleep needed to start afresh,
Finally death came since he so wished,
As friends they went, further on the path of destiny.

Berlin

2008-07-12T22:10:00.000-07:00

This trip to Berlin had happened during the trip to Hannover, The details of most of the Hannover trip are given in the previous post. I had booked the tickets online to Berlin from Hannover. Got up at 5:00 in the morning, Outside the sun was shining brightly as if it was 9:00. Quickly had an MTR packet for breakfast and set out for the nearest Metro stop at 6:15. At the metro stop, the ticket vending machine was malfunctioning. Somehow it was not accepting my coins. Luckily a German lady was also waiting for a train at the station. Hearing my plea for help, she came along and after checking the machine, she said in broken English that the machine indeed was not working. So I asked her whether I could board the train and get down at the next stop to buy the tickets? Hearing this she was shocked! She told me that even though nobody checked, it was not good to get on a train without a ticket. Instead she suggested me to catch a bus in an opposite street. I was reluctant to catch a bus, because I was not aware of the routes and by now I was comfortable with the train. But unfortunately it didn't look good to board the train without a ticket with this lady watching me. So went to bus stop, just then a train zoomed past. The bus was not long in coming, and after ascertaining the destination I bought tickets from the Driver.

After reaching the railway station, I went to the platform specified on the online ticket. There was still sufficient time for the train. After a 15 minutes wait, the train came. In my ticket the bogie mentioned was wagon 23, But this, I couldn't locate as there was no mention of any numbers on the train. So taking a deep breadth, I dived into the nearest bogie. Inside the compartment there was an electronic display mentioning that this was wagon 24. And in just about that time the train started moving. Finally after locating my seat in wagon 23, I made myself at home. The train started to gain speed and within no time the displays were showing a speed of 230 Kmph. During the journey the train reached a topspeed of 250kmph. The journey from Hannover to Berlin, which are 260 Km apart was completed in 1 and 1/2 hours.
I started my Berlin tour with Riechstag, the German parliament. Took the metro from the main station to unter den linden stop. Outside the station, after asking for directions I found myself in front of the huge building. There was already a decent queue at the entrance, and after a strict security check, which was similar to those in Airports, I got inside. The feature of this building is the glass house kind of a structure build on the top of the building. From this place we can get a view of the parliamentry affairs going inside the building and also a very good view of the city. There was also a collection of photos referring to the history of the building, I moved on after a cursory glance.
The next place on my itinerary was Bradenburg torr, This was just a monument in the greek style. But lot of history behind it, from Napolean to Nazi's to the final 89 revolution. This monument was originally built as gate to the Berlin city in 1780's, but later on took the shape of the city's symbol.
After Bradenburg torr, I got to the metro station and went to museum island. Museum island is surrounded on all sides by river spree and consists of only Museums. I went to the Pergamon museum, considered the best among the lot. The place was full of stuff from Greece, Persia, Babylon and would have taken more than a day to run through. I spent a couple of hours at this place and by that time had my fill of history. Came out and saw a park with benches, went there and had a quite lunch.
Next stop was the church Berliner's dom. A beautiful and majestic church, though unfortunately they were charging money even for a place of worship. Inside the church, all my camera baterries were exhausted and from there on had to struggle with my mobile camera.

Coming out of the church, I saw that I was in a beautiful part of the city with huge building, built in the greek style, I went for a walk on that road and again came across the river spree, the river was criss crossing this part of the city so many times that it gave a Venice kind of a feel for a traveller like me. Walking on the streets of an European city is altogether a different experience.
My final stop was at Berlin wall, East side gallery. Though this place was more or less in ruins now. The graffiti on the wall had all but peeled off. With a great struggle, managed to get only one shot out of my camera.
Finally after spending spending some time in Alexanderplatz, a large open square in the center of the city, I made my way back to the Railway station to catch the train back to Hannover.

Hannover

2008-07-03T07:58:00.000-07:00

After boarding the flight to Frankfurt at 2:00 in the night from the new Bangalore airport, it was a long journey. The purpose of this travel was to attend the IEEE conference ICME at Hannover. Inside the plane, TV monitors were showing the height, outside temperature etc from time to time. Seeing the figures of 10,000 meters and -51F, a small prayer made its way through my lips. After a good sleep of 4 hours, I woke up to find Dhana Dhan Goal being shown on the TV monitors. I guess for the Airlines it is cheaper to buy flop movies and show it to a helpless captive audience. After landing at Frankfurt, I made my way to the gate of the Hannover flight.

Finally after a walk of more than a couple of kilometers inside the FA, I came to the gate of the Hannover flight. Here I made my first purchase in a foreign soil, Half a liter of water for 3 Euros. I didn't realise at that time that I was paying close to 200 Rs . The flight took only around 45 minutes and landed safely at around 10:30 in the morning. Having done some previous research on the local transport of Hannover, I had decided to take the local metro to the city center and then travel by bus to the hotel. After collecting the luggage, I followed the signs to the train station. Inside the station there were no manual ticket vendors, Tickets had to be purchased from the vending machines. Then started a half an hour struggle to figure out how to get a ticket out of it. The interface language was german but that can be changed to English also, Unfortunately I came to know about it only the next day. I was soon joined by a fellow Bangalorean called Sharat from Ittiam and a couple of Chinese guys. There were no germans in the station from whom we could have requested some help. Finally after banging on all the machines in the station, one of it showed some sympathy and gave us the tickets.

In Germany for the local transport such as the Metro and the Bus service they follow what is known as the honor system, wherein there is no checking for tickets anywhere, They expect the travelers to be honest enough to buy their tickets. Electronic displays showed that there was a train for every 6 minutes or so. Sharat and I discovered that we were staying in the same hotel so we traveled on together. The bus service was also good, again properly displaying the time left for the next bus to arrive. I was slightly dissappointed with the hotel room, for 65 Euros they were providing a cramped up small space, and also there was no free breakfast. A 2 minute phone call to home reduced the weight of my purse by 12 Euros. Once settled in, I broke open a MTR Bisibelebath packet, cooked it in the wash basin and had my lunch. The water they had provided in the room was nothing but soda and they called it sparkling water, I decided to check out the neighborhood shops to buy some still water and fruits, but unfortunately the hotel and the conference center was so strategically located that anybody could easily access a 600 acre forest, a Zoo and a peace loving residential area but not any shops. Further after coming back to the hotel, I got to know that on sundays no shops are open, this is a feature more or less in all Europe. So went back to the room and slept, only to get up in between for a quick MTR Pulao.

Next day I decided to check out the famous gardens of Harrenhausen. At 9:00 I went to the nearest metro stop, the ticket vending machine here was different and on top of it, It took only coins which I didn't have. I glanced around and found an Australian guy who was going to the city center for a shampoo!. He had proper change for 5 Euros, and with the change bought a day ticket costing 3.9 Euros . Using this ticket I was free to travel in all the public transport system inside the city. Changing two lines I reached the Gardens, I was expecting a KRS kind of a crowd, but here there was no one. The lady at the counter could not speak English so she called a guy on the wireless . The English speaking guy came and explained to me that there were three things to see here, one was the Aquarium, and the other two were gardens called as Grobergarten and Bergegarten. The whole package was for 14.5 Euros and the individual package was 12,3,3 respectively. I took the combined package and went for the Aquarium first. The Aquarium was really fantastic as they had a varied collection of sea life, including a tunnel through a sharks filled water. All the guides inside knew only german, except for the one who was near the piranhas. I got to know a lot about them as he gave me a lecture on them for close to half an hour. After the aquarium I went to the Grobber garten, which was more like our KRS with neatly cut gardens, fountains and flowers. There was a photo shoot going on in one of the lawns, with an eye catching, sparingly dressed brunette being the protagonist. I couldn't muster enough courage to steal a shot of the scene and quickly moved on. Then I went in for a lunch at the cafe near the ticket counter, here again the ladies at the counter didn't know English and after a few minutes of confusion, I was served potato salad with cream. After filling up my stomach, went to the bergegarten. This turned out to be really good as this garden had a varied range of beautiful flowers. I spent close to two hours here taking super macro shots. They also had several glass houses simulating different vegetations, such as desert, tropical etc. The glass houses even included birds from that region.
Finally at around 4 in the evening came out and caught a Tram back to the city center. Once there, went on a street roaming spree. In the process came across some landmarks of the city. Finally at 6, Came back to the main station and bought some water bottles and fruits before returning back to the room.
The next day after the conference, I went with sharat and Ajit (From TI) to a lake in the city called Maschee lake. The lake was big and it is said that it had been dug up manually to keep people employed. After a boat ride in the lake we came back to the city center and had a vegetarian burger before going back to the hotel.
The following day was mainly spent in the conference as my presentation was in the afternoon. The presentation went off pretty well. In the evening the organizers had arranged for a banquet at a restaurant near the city hall. We vegetarians had very less to choose from. A kind of comedy show was arranged and it was fun. Finally at 10 in the night we came back. The streets were completely empty that day due to the Germany-Turkey semifinals. After the match there were wild celebrations all around.
For the next day, I had planned for a trip to Berlin. I had booked tickets in one of the super fast trains. Will post the details of the Solo Berlin visit in a separate post.
Finally on 27, I took a taxi early in the morning which cost me 37 Euros! Then taking the Frankfurt route, flew back. Again during the return I had to endure the super hit Welcome movie. Though one surprising thing was, A German sitting next to me saw the whole movie and enjoyed it too! I landed here at 12:15 in the night and stood in a queue for 45 minutes for immigration and another 45 minutes for baggage collection, before finally taking a taxi, this turned out to be reasonable as the cost was only around 700 Rs!. One more surprising thing at the BIAL was that customs guys didn't even screen or check the Hand baggage.
Thus ended the trip to Germany.

Sar pass Trek

2008-05-30T22:54:00.000-07:00

I had been checking the YHA website since last december to see when they are going to put up their 2008 Himalayan trekking schedule, Last year we had missed going for the trek just due to sheer laziness, This year I had made up my mind to go, come what may. When the schedule appeared in January, I didn't loose anytime in applying for the requisite leave at office and booking the trek. At final count we were a group of 6 (Me, Satish, Radhesh, Krishna, Chethan, Pramod), All set for the expedition.

The trek was for 11 days and our reporting date was May-2 at YHA base camp in Kasol. We had booked flight tickets in Jet airways from Bangalore till Delhi, This being my first visit to the capital I was really excited, but all the excitement evaporated when we came out of the plane, The heat was sapping. The situation was similar to that of walking in a frying pan. Till we got into the AC Taxi there was no relief. I then realized that I was literally living in a natures AC in Bangalore. We then went to Radhesh's cousins place and after spending some time in front of the cooler and after sufficient acclimatisation, decided to check out the Metro and I have to say that all of us were really impressed by it. After coming back we had a wonderful meal of paneer parathas and Veg pulao again at Radhesh's cousins place.
After the meal we were on our way to Cannought place in Delhi from where we had to catch our 5 pm Volvo bus to manali. The bus was filled with honeymooners, though most of them looked very young(just out of college kind), somehow I kind of felt sorry for them though don't know why. We also met a group from Maharashtra going to Kasol for the same trek. They in fact turned out to be our tent mates at the base camp. In the bus we had to endure a major torcher of watching the hindi movie Naqab. The twists and turns in the story was stomach churning and all of us were mentally exhausted after the experience.
Finally at day break we had a wonderful glimpse of the Beas river flowing down in the valley. The Maharashtra group got down at Bhuntar, which is the nearest place to Kasol with all the buses from Kullu or Manali going through this place. We unfortunately were unaware of this fact hence got down at Kullu and booked a hotel room to freshen up. After a not so quick brunch we packed ourselves and got into a bus going to Manikaran. The journey took us more than 3 hours and finally we were dropped at the camp which is situated about a 100 meters before Kasol village. After the joining formalities were done up with we were assigned our tents, To our surprise we found that the tent was already filled up, so thinking some mistake has happened we went back to the lady in the reception. But she said that no mistake was made and 16 of us had to stay in one tent, this was a shock to us, but somehow accepted our fate and stormed into the tent and conquered some part of it for ourselves. We were in for another shock, as we found out that our group consisted of 68 people. Though we came to terms with it after some time, and the possibility of going with the first group where there were only 46 was also open to us. Then from that time onwards the blow of the whistle never stopped to haunt us, for tea, food, blankets, soup, assembling all of them pee-pee was the sound and that sound never used to allow any of us to relax even for a moment. The dinner that was served was pretty good, except for the fact that at the end of the trek you and Aloo(Potato) won't be good loving friends. The whistle blew again after the dinner and everyone was dragged out of their tents for the camp fire. The dancing lights in the middle of the camp was supposed to be the camp fire as burning of wood is banned due to some archaic rules of YHA, Though in the kitchens they burned tons of them. After some Darde Disco and other item songs we retired to our tents. Just before the lights were to go out, there was an atomic explosion in our tent which threw all of us out in a matter of seconds, this goes to show that aloo mix can be as powerful as dynamite. To our surprise we found that the tent behind us was empty and here we were 16 struggling in one tent. After some talk with the organising lady some of us were unofficially allowed to sleep in it. So 8 of us in the original tent had a good nights sleep.

Day 2(3/05/2008)
All of us were up before 5 in the morning itself and completed our daily ablutions quickly. And then with the pee-pee sound we assembled for our morning exercisers in a nearby field. While coming back I decided to buy a few water bottles for the acclimatization trek later in the day, but unfortunately for me while climbing down the stairs of the shop, I sprained my ankle after loosing my footing. After reaching the base camp the pain had increased and I was not finding it easy to even walk. So went to the camp docter, who gave me some pain killers and tied the crape bandaid. She told me to take 2 days complete rest and to go for the trek directly. We had orientation after that which included some pretty good advise on what to do and not to do in the mountains. I then gave a miss the acclimatization trek and went and sat down near the river parvati. That was really a quite moment and enjoyed two hours of it, till the others came back from the trek.
With my leg twisted, the idea of going with first batch was dropped as I was not willing to take any chances. So it was the batch of 68 we were destined to be with. This group had some interesting people from different fields including teachers, Goverment officers, ex-Armymen, docters, Naturists, School and college students and our group made up for the software engineers. In the afternoon we were free and sat in our tents and talked. Satish a yoga expert spent some considerable amount of time on my leg. In the YHA base camp in two days we learned how life in a refugee camp can be, Though we enjoyed this experience thoroughly.
After dinner With the usual camp fire and bournvita we were back in the tent, though thankfully no explosion occurred tonight.
Day 3 (04/05/2008)

On this day after the morning breakfast we were taken out for rappelling, Once there it became clear that it will take at least 3 hours for the whole exercise to be completed, so we decided to give it a skip and roam around. In any case I couldn't have done it because of my leg. In the afternoon we had rock climbing, which was again a repeat story so we gave this one also a skip and went around roaming. So on this day we did pretty much nothing.

Day 4(05/05/2008)

This was the day we were waiting for, to gain freedom from the camp. We didn't have any exercise session today and after having breakfast and packed lunch of alloos, we were on our way. The first part of the journey was a bus ride, through the beautiful parvati valley and after an hour or so of bus journey we came to unch dhar, this was the starting point for the trek. Here we bought sticks at 10Rs each. These sticks turned out to be our life savers for the next 8 days. From this point the trek was a steep climb down and after crossing the river over a bridge the route took a steep upward turn. The climate was a touch cloudy and cool and with the view of far off snow capped mountains, some kind of a nostalgia was setting in on me. By the time we had reached shila village we had settled into a good rhythm, but the guide accompanying us decided to give us a long break and sell his goods of maggi, frooti etc. More than 45 minutes was wasted here.
After Shila village which consisted of paddy fields and full of care free children, we continued our trek to Guna paani. The later part of the trek was an upward climb along a small waterfall. The clouds had closed in and soon it started raining, we didn't get the chance to have our lunch. We walked quickly through a forest of pines and reached the camp of guna paani by 2 in the afternoon. Here there were only four tents and two got occupied by girls so our group which was coming in last were left in the lurch, Our camp leader then showed us into the blanket tent where we had our lunch. The tent was a leaky bucket phenomenon and we just hoped it will not rain in the night. At around 3 the skies cleared and the sun was out and provided us with the view of the surrounding area. I and pramod decided to explore the next hill and set off. The surrounding woods were filled with chirping of birds, but it was very difficult to spot them. After jumping over a few fences and following some unknown path we came to a place where the view was really fantastic, after taking some photos we were back in the camp by 5:30, just in time for the tomato soup. The dinner was served out before night fall and then we had the last of our camp fire here with torch lights.Day 5(06/05/2008)

This was a unique day, because this was the first time I was going for Nature's call in the open. I was up by 5:00, and found that other guys had already gone to book their spots. With toilet paper and a mug of water I set out. The day was already breaking out and finding out a sufficiently secluded spot was becoming difficult. Finally after quite a bit of a search found a decent spot near a pine tree. Went back and had bed tea. Today the trek was to the Faul paani camp situated at 9500 ft. The trek started with a gradual climb around the bend of the mountain that we were in and then opened out in to a panoramic view of 270 degrees at the bend. After the bend the path gradually sloped down and along this path we found a good variety of Himalayan flowers. Even at this height people had built their two story stone houses and practiced farming. Then we encountered a small glacier, this was the snow that was coming down from the mountains and was getting converted to a stream down below. This was my first encounter with snow, but it was nothing more than powdered ice. Here several people encountered difficulty in walking on the snow. After some effort, all of the group were safely across. The trek from the glacier crossing was through a pine forest and gradually sloped up. At the glacier crossing we had crossed into the next mountain. Finally near a water falls, lunch break was taken. The Maggi shop was already present at this spot. While washing my lunch box at the water fall I got my shoes wet, this was a major misfortune and I had to trudge in wet shoes that whole day.
After the lunch break the climb took a serious upward turn, climbing steep slopes after lunch and after long rests is always a difficult proposition but we had to push on. As yesterday after lunch the clouds were collecting over head and suddenly rain started. This pushed us into jog mode over the steep slopes. Luckily for me my leg was holding up pretty well up till this point. Finally we reached Faul paani camp, to our surprise this camp was not located on a plain field, but inside the pine forest on the slopes. The advantage of this spot was there was no wind, maybe this was the reason they selected the camping spot. This time some enterprising guys from our group had gone first and got hold of a tent, so the girls this time got the blanket tent. Again I and Pramod set out to explore the area around. We found a woodcutter who was cooking his meal over a fire. We sat around and enjoyed the warmth of a real camp fire before coming back. Having dinner at this camp turned out to be a great adventure in itself, there was no plain patch of ground to stand at all. From this camp onwards we started getting sleeping bags and no camp fires. Bournvita was sent to our tents at night.

Day 6 (07/05/2008)

Answering nature's call turned out to be a severe balancing act here as we had to climb down the slopes and find a spot. Afterwards climbing back was quite an effort as the body doesn't respond to such acts of trekking just after getting up. After a breakfast of chole bature we set out for the next camp. Just when we were a few meters from Faul paani, a herd of goats started overtaking us from all directions. The frightened goats were running helter skelter rolling down stones of all sizes. We stopped and waited to see the last of the goats pass. This took a good part of half an hour. The trek route this day was quite pleasent with slow upward slope and great views. The blue sky, the far off snow, the calm were so endearing, maybe this is the reason why sadhu's choose the himalayas for their penance, The calm and quiet and the beauty of the nature can put you into a trance in no time. Today we encountered patches of snow in shaded parts. The lunch point was near a snow patch and lot of us had fun playing on it. The final climb though as usual turned out to be quite steep. After a steep climb of an hour or so we reached Zirmi thatch camp. The camp is set on the grass lands. We were now at 11000 ft and the trees at this place had started giving way to plain grass and snow. This camp was surrounded by snow capped mountains and we had a superb view.

Day 7(08/05/2008)

The day before sarpass, We were to trek to the highest camp Tila lotni, The trek started with some amazing picture perfect views of the grasslands and the surrounding mountains. The meadows and the flowers were simply amazing. This part of the trek was also pretty easy with a few steep points in between. As we moved on, the frequency of snow crossing started increasing and after some time, we were more or less walking on snow only. I was wearing woodland shoes and they did a pretty decent job of keeping me standing on my legs. The technique of walking on the snow required kicking it hard enough to get a sufficient grip, I was not quite doing it because I feared, reoccurence of the pain in my leg. Walking on snow is quite a different experience altogether and the risk of slipping is always high. The lunch spot was surrounded by ice and the final stretch after lunch was an ice breaking experience. This was when we were taking our baby steps on Ice walking. Finally after slipping quite a number of times we reached tilla lotni, This camp was surrounded by ice and was a beautiful site. Suddenly after the welcome drink the clouds opened up and it started snowing, Though in fact it was not complete snow maybe a mixture of snow and rain. The cold was bone chilling, Getting out of the tent for food was also something everyone wanted to skip. After a small and quick dinner in the snow fall we quickly moved back to our tent. The tent was not exactly air proof and there were many open spots in the sides through which the cold winds were not showing any mercy. That night I had some serious thoughts of why I came to this trek, but before going to sleep I thought of my comfortable bed at home and was lulled into a sound sleep.

Day 8(09/05/2008)

This was the D-day. Today I skipped the routine nature's call program because of lack of tree cover and the cold. Instead of the roti-sabzi we were handed biscuits and frooti. Today we started the trek at 6:00 in the morning rather than the usual time of 9:00. There was snow all around and the initial part of the trek was a steep climb. The climb was for about an hour and at the end of it we had reached Sarpass. This was nothing but a broad ridge between two valleys. We walked along it for about an hour or so. We were now at more or less the tallest point of the surrounding mountains. All directions were decked with snow and their shimmering light can just blind anyone. Luckily we were wearing sun glasses that helped us in preventing the glare but somehow I was not comfortable wearing it as it was recoloring the whole view. After the walk on the ridge the great slides started. The slides were more than 300-400 meters long and there were 4 in total. But after the first slide, we had to again climb up to a ridge which was called as the biskeri ridge. The distance was more than 2 Km's and walking on snow for this length is not so easy. To top it all suddenly the sun went out and it started snowing. We were walking on a mountain slope with a precarious slope on one side, any slide would have taken us down for quite some distance. After a great effort we crossed over the ridge and from there the rest of the slides began. The snowing stopped after the second slide, but the weather was still cloudy and maybe it robbed us of a good view but we were lucky to have encountered a snow fall. The sceneries even with very less visibility was beautiful none the less. From this point onwards for the rest of the trek, we were either climbing or sliding down. The camp of biskeri was beautifully located just below the snow line with flowers growing all around it.

Day 9(10/05/2008)

Even though the town of biskeri was visible from this camp, we had to spend another day at Bandak thatch camp which was located on the grassy meadows. For most of the day we climbed down and at one particular spot did rapelling and after lunch the route took a steep upward turn. The camp was beautiful situated on grassy meadows and plenty of space to run around if you have the energy. By this time my leg had started to complain again, so didn't participate in the games that were played there.

Day10(11/05/2008)

On this day of the trek there as nothing but a steep climb down through the pine forests. All parts of the legs were trying to console each other. And finally by noon reached Barsheni. From there sitting on the top of the bus we had another glimpse of the beauty surrounding us and got down at Manikaran. After a superb bath at the hot springs of the Gurudwara we went into the langar. The food was simply amazing, especially the rice and Kadi. After the fullfilling lunch we boarded a bus back to kasol camp for a warm welcome from the other group members yet to start their trek. Since we had enough of sleeping in the tents we decided to check out off the camp on that day itself. After returning, the trek bags and sleeping bags, we collected the certificates and went to the holiday home in Kasol which had decent rooms.

Finally at the end of it all, the trek was a great fulfilling experience and the mountains are such that they will keep pulling you back.

In Search of Paradise

2008-04-15T08:40:00.000-07:00

Clammed in the sea of humanity
i'm not finding it easy to swim,
Around me are the menacing waves
pulling and pushing with every whim.

I yearn to live free in the place
which people dream and call paradise,
I decide to start my search
before it is late to even reminisce.

I break free and wander around
walking on the sands of forlorn beaches,
With the sun going down accompanied
with the joy, music of waves teaches.

I lie on the grassy meadows
looking into the starry lit sky
With a cool breeze blowing
whispering with trees as it passes by.

I walk down steep slopes
covered with flowers of different hues,
Drinking from the little brooks
and swimming in the bustling foam.

I tread when my mind desires
eat when the opportunity provides
The journey is bit long
but the heart never tires.

With each rising day the journey continues,
and with each passing step joy renews
I don't know still where is my paradise
But if the journey is such, Even paradise can wait.

A Haunted House

2008-04-02T07:50:00.000-07:00

Flowers have withered, Fountains have run dry,
In a state where the whole house was a visual cry,
Nobody ventured near it, nobody tried,
Foolish was the word for one who enterprised.

Every day through my window I see the house,
Filled with the usual lot of eerie ghost grouse,
People say that the ghost there hates every living thing,
Ripping up all of them without remorsing.

Once I decided to check the ghost with curiosity but no desire,
The house looked bleak, as if ready to catch fire,
I entered through the broken back door,
Into a room whithered out by unkempt galore.

Dust, mud and broken glasses were the ghosts company,
I stepped on as if I was part of the whole melachony,
No one knows what dreams were built in this place,
No one knows between it's walls what despair was faced.

Far down the doorway I saw a broken mirror hung on the wall,
I went towards it, feeling for the place which has suffered such a fall,
Light was fast fading outside but still there was no sign of my host,
I peered through the mirror, to realise... it was I, who was the ghost.

Ethics:A question of limits

2008-03-25T07:31:00.000-07:00

Every religion in the world has the word Ethics in its must haves for its followers. Ethics and moral values have been the eternal words which are considered their worth in gold in a person. Nowadays even companies, let alone governments draw up lists on what constitutes ethical and non-ethical behaviour. So is ethics a mere set of rules that I need to follow that has been prescribed for various circumstances?

One thing that needs to be cleared is ethics and law doesn't mean the same, they work in different dimensions altogether. Long back I had attended a presentation in which a speaker had explained the meaning of ethics by giving an example of the irresistible tendency of jumping a traffic light, His contention was that during normal hours every one of us will follow the traffic rules, but what happens at say Midnight shows the extent of ethics one has. I awoke suddenly from my sleepy dreamy state I had snuggled into at once, mainly because for me the traffic lights seize to exist after 11 in the night. And after a long debate with myself I came to the conclusion that, Yes I was indeed breaking a law and was an offender, but was my behaviour unethical? To that the conclusion was no. The traffic lights were created to ensure smooth movement of traffic and the intention being only that, At midnight if the roads are empty and when there is no sign of any vehicle in all the three directions of the road waiting for the Red light to turn to Green seems quite illogical. By following the traffic rules at such times you have blindly bind ed the law with your reasoning of ethics. There is nothing wrong in such a reasoning but there is again always a question of limits here, What if the traffic lights malfunction and unfortunately you are on the red for the whole of the night. You are bound to break the rule after some time, because I don't see even the above mentioned speaker waiting till morning to move ahead.

Now if I start extending this same idea to say corruption, will the water hold. Taking a bribe is banned under law, but a Person may argue that since he is not able to maintain his family even for the bare necessities with his salary or say if the person has a severely ailing dependent whose medical expenses he is not able to meet. Now this person is thrown in between the choice of doing his official duty properly or fulfilling his duty as a Husband or Son. Can we call such a person unethical who takes bribe to get medical treatment to his Wife or Parents which in anyway would have been beyond his means? This question is very difficult to answer. Some may argue here that the person is showing attachment (Moha) towards his family members and so according to karma yoga is following an unethical practice by not doing his duty properly. Even it can be argued that the person should go for the medical treatment as much as his means allow him to. But we know that not everyone here is a Yogi or a Monk, on the flip side there may be severe feelings of guilt of having not done enough towards the loved ones.

Now let us come to the point of giving a bribe, I have known some people who have steadfastly refused to give any kind of bribe. This reminds me of the older Kamal Hassan in the film Indian, He refuses to give a bribe when the doctor demands one to treat his badly burnt daughter and later she dies without any treatment. So did the father come out ethically shining from the incident. I would doubt such a situation happening in real life, because your sense of ethics get overrun by emotions at such situations. Again a case of limits being reached.

Also the idea of what is ethical and what is not keeps varying from person to person and also over time. Many years ago polygamy, taking dowry etc were all considered normal and there was no element of unethicality about it but the passage of time always tweaks the ethical wheel to weed out the unwanted or unwarranted things. Some people may be ahead of their times with their concept of Ethics and these are the people who tweak the ethical wheels of the society. Even these people can only tweak because that is the only way, If you want a drastic change that is never going to happen, It will be like breaking your head against a wall, which was the case in the movie Indian. Trying to correct through the help of fear is never a permanent solution.

So finally how to decide what is ethical or not, for this the only option will be to follow ones conscience. A regret after an action will be an indication of having not met your ethical standards. There is always a limit till which we will stick to our ethics and after this tipping point we break. It is essential that we keep pushing our limits, but it has to be kept in mind that no one can become a saint in one day, you need to work on it.

Love

2008-02-29T06:39:00.000-08:00

Every now and then I think about her,
She is that grace who will live in me forever,
Her charm is so seductive,
I wish I see her, till death doesn't forgive.

The sky and the ocean pale in front of her,
The brightness of her beauty makes the earth move further,
Her wish is a command,
It is her love that I wish to demand.

A pale blue evening, with the stars above,
I knelt down and showed my heart to my love,
A mocking bird screeched behind,
Wishing the earth to meet the sky tonight.

She chose to forsake me however,
The heart that loved, bled for her forever,
Atlast death smiled, to grant me my last wish,
Took me, when her name was the last on my lips.

Passion

2008-02-20T06:36:00.000-08:00

Like a river always on the run,
Passions are always ready to take a new turn,
Limitless are their ebbs and flows,
Countless are their mental blows.

Sweet as nectar they seem on a moonlit night,
Great are their despairs with no end at sight,
Come dance with me is their call,
Without fail, always we take the fall.

They come in various forms,
Anger, Lust, Greed, Pride which follow no norms,
Trust them to make a man empty from within,
Hiding from them is not a good position to be in.

Boundless are the ways in which they strike
Some perish, the rest just survive with a sigh,
Great is the man who tames then all,
Envy is my feeling for a person who can stand so tall.