Shangai.....

Before i landed in shangai... on official purpose i had a very different image of shangai,china.... I still considered china to be a developing country and expected it to be very much similar to india.... I don't say china is developed because just looking at one city doesn't give you the idea of what it is.... however the pace at which it is taking up work and the pride they take in to complete the same is amazing......

I was spell bound by the number of high rises over here.... its huge towers everywhere....i am not able to see the sky.....sooo many high rises.... i had never seen a city with so many high rises.... and the infrastructure is simply amazing to the population shangai holds...... roads/flyovers are worth seeing once...... i was thinking the same to construct a small flyover in bangalore they take hell out of time and play all the dirty politics to gain as much as possible..... there are certainly few things which india should learn from their neighbours....at least we should forget the false pride we have for our country without doing anything..... we are way behind any developed countries till date.... i agree we have got great culture..... but on the other hand we are a highly corrupted country no denial for the same..... if at all we need to rise to the standards of others....there has to be something which should be pride in doing.... rather than doing for the sake of doing....

Our politicians should be lot more educated and should have the willingness to challenge the rest of the word..... they should have a pride to move the country towards a different levels rather than filling up their own pockets.....

I do agree china is still poor.... but attest they are way ahead than india and what i see is they are definitely making tremendous progress in improving their standards compared to us.....

If they learn english.... they are going to outnumber and challenge us in every field..... we guys have to think and act on it before its toooo late......

Red Hot......

Got Red Hot Swift..... Things are already running wild in my mind about my passion for traveling..... Only thing is i need to improve a bit on my driving skills..... and then i think i can manage...


I would love to drive alone...on empty roads.... with a bit of music...would love to stop at a lonely place and sit all alone......

I got the vehicle and as usual i had a big argument with my mom regarding the pooja... my mom insisted me to take the vehicle to a temple for pooja i didnot have an issue with that but the argument started when mom told they might charge around 300bugs for the same.... i was totally against.... i would rather give money for a cause..... anyway the priest did not ask anything and i had to settle down my temper....

Whats next.....

Today morning i got up....and all of a sudden i felt like i need some budget allocation to be done immediately....... 2 things were running wild in my mind......

A budget of at least 2 lakh rupees needs to be allocated for the same..... one is a Bullet.. a passion to be a Bullet owner..... and the other is a Digital SLR....

Bullet --> It will be either ThunderBird or Electra 5S (http://www.royalenfield.com/app/IN/)
Digital SLR --> Here i am a bit confused still need to study a lot however it will between Nikon and Canon. I am still studying various SLRs and various lens ...will update once i know certain things.....(http://www.photozone.de/active/feature/dslrs.jsp)

Probably i will be a proud Bullet owner somewhere between Dec 2007 - Feb 2008 and for SLR its still at least 6 months away.....but for these i have set the highest criteria in my wish list....

October 2.... Gandhi....

Its October 2... gandhi jayanti.... a holiday in remembrance of Mohandas KaramChand Gandhi.... few days back i read about gandhi... its not like i don't know about him.... it was more like why and how he thought.... i studied because right from my childhood i had seen lots of people who didn't like gandhi... hardly i have seen people who liked his ideas, so was thinking how he was such a big personality in the independence struggle....and still no one likes him to this day....

His ideas were hard to be digested or understood by young with hot blood.... Initially i used to think what a stupid concept he had..... why do we need to talk about peace with people who hurt you..... but later felt like implementing gandhi's ideology is not that simple its the most difficult thing on earth.... and something which has to come from heart....its more of a mind game.... killing you mentally..... many do argue with me saying gandhi's ideas were that of a coward..... i just laugh at them......

Well in the current world his ideas will not work always...... but yes this is a very strong way of representing yourself.... its very hard to control your anger..... you know your enemy is going to attack you....but still you need to take the attack without defending.....this whole idea itself totally against the nature...... and mentally u need to be very strong..... his main idea was i was brought to earth by god and i have the right to leave myself without being controlled by others....

Well one more thing is gandhi was more of a saint whoz intention was not freedom rather it was beyond people to think.... his idea was "vasudeva kutumbakam"....all are kids of god....lets remove the concept of country and boundaries..... yes a very difficult ideology to think and implement in the greedy world but what a beautiful concept..... which could wipe off the bloodshed.....but it was unfortunate his ideas were used by politicians in a different way.....

It requires a good understanding of gandhi's ideology to feel gandhi...

Beach Trek...

A beach trek was due for a long time.... just like yedakumeri railway track trek and this time we decided to go ahead with the beach trek we knew if at all we are going for a beach trek this is the ideal time not much of heat and not much of rain..... yes the weather for beach trek was just perfect with a bit of rain to add some spice for the fun.....

As i had gone to udupi to attend my cousine's marriage i didnot think it was worth going back to bangalore again and come back, so decided to travel from mangalore to gokarna by government bus.....ooo god a stretch of 200kms gave me very bad memories horrible roads...in fact many places there is no road..... it took almost 8+ hours to travel this distance with lots of body pain....

I reached gokarna by around 7pm found a lodge opposite the bus stop and just checked in i didnot have any energy left for the day ....just called up friends to ask have they left bangalore.... bad luck...they had some issue with bus and they couldnot start before 11 and this added to all the fun.... they couldnot reach before 11.30 in the following morning.....

We had to start our trek at 7 in the morning and we started at 1 it spoiled our plans badly however we decided to enjoy the path rather than cover the distance.... We refreshed at chitra's friends place had food and got our dinner packed and started to move towards the kudle beach.... in fact the first beach was the gokarna beach very near to the temple..... since our only reference was a blog by bharat...we didnot have much idea about the route....

I initially thought there shouldn't be much problem for us as we had tents and we dont have to worry much about the stay and stuffs.....but it was not that easy either adding to it was the delay in our start.... after around 1 hour we reached OM beach it was just 1km walk, this was my 3rd visit to OM beach in this year..... dont know but this time i didnot even have a proper look at the OM probably because i wanted to see what is ahead...

The route ahead is not very easy as it is made of huge sharp rocks.... and which might hurt u badly if u slip.... and one side of which is the ferocious sea.... after Om beach we reached halfmoon beach... friends couldn't resist water any more and few got down to water.... well it was here that i had given gilli my specs to hold and went to wash my face but with in minutes i had lost my specs....lucky enough i found it beneath sand almost sunk inside...... Halfmoon beach is surronded with rocks and it is not advisable to get into water.....over here

From halfmoon beach we moved towards paradise...and it started raining making the route very slippery....lakshmi struggled a lot.... this was a spectacular beach i loved it the most probably i will go here again i wanna camp beside this sea in the night and enjoy the morning it was an amazing beach.....but again didnot feel like it was an ideal place to get down into water as lots of rocks around and a bit of risk is involved..... found few foreigners as well along with lots of syringes had heard lots of drug trade happens over here.... syringes were justification for the same probably.....It was here that visy had twisted his ankle and had to take a small break...

Know one knew the route ahead of this and also camping for us was an issue as it had rained a bit... also we knew that ahead Aghanashini river joins the sea.... the route ahead was a bit tricky as we dont have to walk along the sea and climb a small mountain and cross a small forest to reach a place called Meppadi... from here we got a straight mud road to reach the port where we can hire a boat to cross the river... It was here shilpi lost her mobile 2nd in a row.....

It was already dark and around 50people in a small motor boat which was almost at the same level as water was very scary..... well to be frank not scary but rather i was thinking like these are the boats which we get to see in the newspapers telling that toppled can say it was a bit of risk as 90% of us didnot know swimming.... and also it was dark....once you crossed the river it was very dark with no power and we passed along few huts of the fisher men..... and got the help of a person who took almost everyone in a small cab to a temple near by at kagal where we could camp.... After refreshing in the temple once we opened our food we found that the food was not in great form but no other go :-( ....hopefully this was the only regret in our trip....as we had tents and had planned to camp near the beach but ended up in a temple well.... it was only because we were late and it had become dark and we didnot know the route ahead.....

We got up early in the morning and were ready to move towards the sea again....beerukudi beach.... from here its almost like a 6-9kms long stretch of beach it was amazing.....The feel of breeze around the beach in the early morning pleased one and everyone..... we could feel the breeze.. kiss your face and then leave you behind...... we stopped at around 8.30 to have breakfast.... We had prepared avalakki.... it was fun to see lakshmi take his share and hide in a small place behind a boat hehehehe.....

From here we moved towards Kadle beach our last stop...it was around 12, i had resisted hard enough not to get into water for 2 days..... once we knew we are done with trek i ran to water and went far ahead to enjoy the high waves....could feel the power of waves the more i went to challenge it was thrown back telling you are no match for me..... dived with waves..... played with all the friends.... it was fun... the best thing i liked the most was we went so ahead that after we came back there was no sand in our body......

From Kadle beach we reached kadle busstop were our bus was waiting...... end of beach trek....but even after a week....everyone are still crying .... especially people who were fair have become like zebra.....with black and white patches.....

It was the end but what i missed was camping in front of the beach....and enjoying the morning in front of the beach.... i want to camp in paradise beach will do that soon.... felt like it was a mixture of calm, beauty and ferocious in it.... i wished i could have sat on rocks in the morning to give some thought for myself........ well felt like that is what you loose when you are with friends..... got one more wild idea should either drive a bike or do cycling along the long sea shore.... will take up some time.....

The return journey was action packed just near jog falls.... we saw a huge king cobra to me this was the best thing..... a huge angry king cobra with its hood raised..... i had never seen this beauty ever before....wow it was just amazing...... we stopped at jog and had lots of pineapple.... after which we had an action packed night everyone dancing hard in the bus.....

Trek log:
Bangalore to Gokarna - Via Tumkur,Arasikere, Shimoga,Sagara,Honnavara,Kumta, Gokarna
Start time : 11:15 PM IST - Gokarna reached @ 12 PM IST
Brunch @ chitra's frend house - Dinner filling in dabba's uppittu Kesaribath
Trek start @ 1:15 PM IST - Gokarna Beach - Kudle Beach - Om Beach - Half Moon beach - paradise beach ( need to climb 3 small hills ) -
Reach Meppadi - then reach Aganashini Via Boat - 7 PM IST - then reach Kagal ( local cab)
Stay @ temple, freshing dinner sleeping
Morning 7:15 start - Kagal to beerukudi - 7:45
8:30 bf - then walk walk walk - 6 kms, reach Kadle beach - 12 PM IST
2 hrs water game
2 PM IST packup to Kadle bus stand then rech kumta
Lunch @ Kamat
3:30 back to bangalore Via Sagara - 6 PM Joga
6:30 back - Dinner @ Shimoga
Monday Morning 4:30 bangalore

Trek Organisers:
Lakshmi,Poorna,Diwi,CSP,Manju,Gilli,Prathiba

83 Year Old Young Man

I had been to my cousine's marriage.... i had a plan to leave to permude(a remote village in the middle of the forest around 20kms from mangalore airport) soon after lunch and meet grandpa.... a place i love a lot..... got lots of memories with this place.......

At around 3 at udupi i went to grossary stores and got some day to day grossary and some fruits.... and started in a bus towards permude.... it was long time since i had been there but still i remembered everything....... i remembered a lot about my grandma who passed away last year.... i was soo unfortunate i had just spoken to her one day before and promised to visit her the next day....but i was late....

The bus took me over the curvy roads along but one funny thing was at one stop some were near a womens college at mulki.... 100s of girls got into the bus and it looked like i was the sole male in the bus was very funny they looked at me very strangely probably because i was a bit drenched with rain and also had big luggage hanging around me.....

I reached permude at around 5.30 called up grandpa to check has he reached home... and he adviced me to take an easier route as the normal route was in bad shape and also due to rains i had to cross a small stream...... but i insisted to go by the normal route and asked him not to worry.... i got a bit lost in the woods but i managed to go back.... i reached my home.... i love this home a lot.... felt like my grand maaa was waiting for me..... i dont know but i miss her a lot..... i almost got tears in my eyes seeing the house...... the tree under which i used to sit with my grandmaaa and listen to her stories...... all came to mind in a flash of second....

I entered the house and was very happy to see grandpa.... now he leaves alone in this remote place they dont have kids.... so he now feels very lonely on this earth without grandma.... everything in the house looked in a bad shape.... i entered the kitchen were in my grandma used to serve me the best food i had ever tasted in life.... and the kitchen looked haunted all the utensils she used rusted out.... the swing on which i slept when ever i went there...on my grandmams legs ...... felt like she still existed in that house......

I could not get sleep in the night somehow every moment i was feeling like someone is calling me.... towards the tree or towards a remote room in the house.... felt like my grandmamma also wanted to meet me.... but no one knew the source of how to meet.... i just wanted to meet her once.... such was my state i don't know y but i was like on my knees please give me one chance to meet her...... but does that work?

Morning as soon as i got up.... i moved towards the room in the 1st floor which invited me in the night...... it looked haunted dark rooms couldn't see anything with the doors closed and when u open the door it sounds like a horror movie due to the sound of the wooden doors.... once i entered the room it was spiders and bats everywhere...... it was a mess....but 2 things which caught me up were a suitcase and other box which contained all the belongings of my grandma.... i touched it to feel her... my heart cried for her....

Then i decided to speak to grandpa..... grandma was my past now i need to look into the person i have in hand..... asked him would he like to join me to bangalore no was the immediate response... i know he cannot leave without his house...... he told the stories about grandma probably about which he might not have told to anyone.... i saw tears in his eyes.... he was such a strong man i had never seen his eyes wet in the toughest of the moments.... it was his simplicity in life which took him far away from worries...... but now he misses his wife with whom he had spent 50years of life together supporting each other in this remote place..... now thats what is love...... he told he feels her in every corner of the house everyday feels like she is still around me.... i hugged him and he cried a lot.... probably he might not have cried so much in his life time.... it was a support he needed.... but what and how much i can do??? i don't know the answer right now.... but i will definitely take up this.... probably i have a duty in my hands......which i will not hesitate to finish.....

Waynaad....A walk in the clouds....

This was my third trek with in a month and already i could hear some words from my parents, but still i wanted to go.... i didn't wanted to miss any place....

This trip was eventually planned by CSP as he gets limited options to take a break from his work. The plan was to visit Edakaal Caves, Meenmatty Falls, Waynad.. Trek to Chambaa peak and if time permits visit Soojipoora falls... At the end we couldnot make it to soojipoora falls....

We started off from bangalore very late as the distance to be covered was not much, and we reached edakaal caves by 6.30 in the morning as expected the weather was very pleasant with light drizzle.... we had to wait till 9 to start climbing the peak...so after refreshing ourself and having breakfast we started off to the peak,

The feel of the thin air was very refreshing....the way to the caves was really good rains had made the rocks a bit slippery otherwise human interference has made it lot easier to go even with your family. Things which attracted me inside the caves was a split between huge rocks...i cannot explain how it looked like but it was great..... we started moving ahead from cave towards the peak of the mountain peak..... certain places in between were really hard to climb and our lakshmi did struggle a lot..... but what i like about him is he never gives up he did come to the top....but when i say he never gives up he missed the most spectacular part of the trip...meenmatty falls hehehe.....

On top of the mountain i managed to sit on top of a big rock and feel the breeze but the silence was being constantly disturbed by our team bootha..... by her own songs how sad..... once we were down we started moving towards our next destination meenmatty falls...in between we stoped at place to have wonderful lunch......

The way to meenmatty falls initially began with a walk along the tea gardens....it was pleasant to have a look at the entire valley.... at the end of the tea garden there was a tricky path to switch in order to move towards the falls.... i think this is were a bunch of guys missed and came back telling us there is no way to the falls ....poor guys don't even know what they missed.... Rather than these guys sripada and lakshmi opted to sit at a place and sleep ...... guys u missed something really great .....

Once we reached the place i tried to click some snaps but it was really difficult because i was completely wet and as soon as i opened my camera it used to get filled with water...... never mind i did take some snaps..... but the place was very slippery and very dangerous....

I had never seen any falls as ferocious as this..... probably because it had rained heavily and the falls was in its fully glory and also we were standing just in front of the falls....it made it even more scary because if u slip you gonna meet the fury of the falls so was the condition.....it was sooo good that we could open the eyes properly..... because of the water splashing on your face..... just one thing what an amazing falls..... good thing is that these places are still hidden and not many people venture into these places.......

On the way back there was a small stream were in we managed to get into water and have some fun...... this is were vicky and viji just stood below myself and diwi and i remember them telling the water is a bit salty hehehehehe......

We stopped our day at a small town...were in we booked 2 rooms and few guys opted to sleep in the bus itself...... we slipped to bed pretty early and had a good sleep..... our next day's destination was chamba peak....

Well here i think we started from hotel very late..... probably because a few of them were new to team.... we need to have proper rules to be on time so that we can give more time with what we had come for rather than in hotel rooms.....

After taking the permission from the forest officer we started moving towards the chemba peak... it was an amazing experience moving through the tea estates... a view to cherish in the light rain...... a feel of walking in the clouds.... a feel of touching the clouds.... amazing view.....amazing place.....

We did take a break at a small place were in there is a small lake in the shape of heart.... i don't know weather it is man mad or natural but its very good to see it from top really looks like a heart..... the trek to chemba peak was not very difficult for our team probably because now almost every one has some good experience under his belt and we reached the peak pretty soon.... it was clouds every were...... and a small drizzle added to the fun..... i felt like i need a viper on my glasses to keep in clean.... a feel of that thin air going through your lungs is something i cannot explain one can only experience it.....

After a small photo session we started descending down it was very slippery and almost every one slipped once or twice.... but eventually nothing happened to anyone...

It was the end of our trek and we started moving back towards bangalore after a wonderful dinner.

One good thing this time was the bus we arranged was lot more better only thing was the TV/battery was not working fine and we couldn't enjoy the Bond movie....

Well the scenic beauty was sooo great that i plan to go here by bike ......probably this december??

Hope our new teammates ,we can say our team guest Ranga and Tulsi got a break from their US life and enjoyed with their indian friends :-)

Team members : CSP,Diwi,Raghu,Sripada,Viji,Jyothi,Girish, Prabhanjan,Chitra,Prathiba,Vivek,Lakshmi,Ranga,Tulsi,Vikram,Nikil,
Harsha,Binish and myself Poorna

Funny Moments :
1. Viji and Viky's salt water experience...under the falls hehehehe...
2. Diwi explaining the 2 foreigners in our bus about him in UK.... even though they were not at all interested....diwi u rather need to concentrate on CSP first to get him out of you way hehehe
3. Both Diwi and CSP carrying the walky talky and are together on peak leaving the rest behind
4. Investigation by police family raghu(201),diwi(301) and sripada(401).... adding a new member lady rambo -- jyoti(101) as lady police.
5. Gaaaana kaage getting the award as Ganaaaa kogile from giri :-(
6. Non Stop entertainment by Diwi...

JOG Falls

I might be traveling a lot, but somehow i am having a feeling that i am missing something very badly....need to find that very fast other wise i will waste lots of my energy..... somehow i feel like i am missing myself or probably my loneliness when i am with my friends..... a thought why i go and what i wanna find in these places... i know for sure that its not just that i wanna enjoy with my friends.....there is something beyond this....

Looking at the media information about heavy rains and the photo of overflowing jog falls, an immediate plan was made by myself and gilli that we will visit jog. But few more of our team mates wanted to join us... As we didn't have a great plan for the trip we decided for a KSRTC bus for our two and fro journey...
It was planned for a one day trip and hence we didn't had to worry about stay. Our team this time included Gilli, shripad, chandra, sahana, priya,shilpi,prathiba,loki,harsha and myself poorna.... We reached sagar early morning and got down only to know that shilpi forgot her mobile in the bus...

We reached jog falls at around 6.45am, we still could feel the cooool breeze covered with mist all around because of the falls and falls was not visible properly ....however the initial look of the falls had brought along with it the disappointment as this was not the falls we expected at this point of the season.... at least not me....however i decided to enjoy the way it is.... i decided to go down along with shilpi and prathiba.... few others did start however due to rains they restrained back..... going down was not bad at all after sooo many treks in our credit we reached down pretty soon..... i was pretty lucky that once i reached down the skies were clear and i could see the majestic jog from bottom.... huge rocks... roaring water falling on the biased rocks and slipping between the rocks....it was simply amazing view....

What i missed here was to take bath below the water falls, as i don't know swimming and i saw a big pool of water to go near the falls i didn't take the risk to go below the falls however the saddest thing was there was a proper way to go near it.... i just saw it when i came back on top again......

The best part of the trip were 2 things one watching jog from below and the other going to the top and standing at a place were the water falls down..... here i should mention that loki and sripada took a great risk to jump the falls and go to the other end it was very risky and the worst news was the same day one person died trying to jump from the same spot.....

Bending down and watching the water touch the ground and also trying to locate the place were we were standing was really great.... we could even see a beautiful rainbow ..... myself and chandru were active clicking the photos.....

After jog falls we moved towards Linganmakki dam and also from there we went to have a look at honnemardu back waters....the river was overflowing due to the recent rains and by the looks itself it was evident that it was very risky to get into water........but still shilpi and priya got down to take a dip in the water......

But at the end somehow felt like jog was a bit overcrowded.....probably due to the publicity given my the media ....lack of infrastructure to handle that crowd.... lack of civic sense for the people who turn up there... and also a mistake i have been telling to the MR team... in order to reach the destination we are forgetting to enjoy the present....felt we could have spent some more time in and around jog....