BackLogs

I have been wanting to write for quite some time, but for no reason i know off i am unable to update my blogs. Keep watching for these travel logs which will be updated pretty soon

1) Bird watching in Bannergatta
2) Drive to Nandi Hills
3) Drive to Kukke and Bisle Ghat
4) Silver Falls
5) Trip to Trivendrum
6) BhadraRiver Camp Trip
7) Canon Beach
8) Mount Hood Drive

I may not update the same in an order but will try to write up at least a few words at the earliest on each of my outing.

Silver Falls

It was a beautiful accidental trip. I got up around 6 and then was checking my mails all of a sudden I saw Chandru online, bugger he wanted to stay in invisible mode and wanted to travel alone with Sahana leaving me but then I tracked him down and forced him to tell the plans for the weekend. Poor guy was left with no choice but to disclose his weekend plan of visiting silver falls.

I called up Boby my colleague to get ready in 15min and then we started to Chandru's place in Beaverton. After a quick break fast we started driving towards Silver Falls.













As expected most of the places in and around Washington and Oregon are really beautiful and scenic. One surprising thing was I thought all roads in US were like 6 lanes but then once you enter the smaller regions roads are very much smaller with lots of cross roads as well. As soon as we reached Silver falls we thought of starting our 14mile trail hike but then thought lets first finish our lunch rather than carrying it. I would say that was the wisest of the decision for that day :-). Sahana had prepared amazing pongal and curd rice. But well myself and chandra had some contributions for curd rice as well probably that's what made it the best.
Silver Falls really spectacular, the best part of the trip though was a bright sunny day which is very much unusual in Portland area. Also what i liked the most was the trail which goes under the rocks and behind the water falls, which gives one the feeling of standing behind the water falls and feel the beauty.
It was really a good feel, to walk in bright sunlight watching 9 out of 10 good waterfalls on a single day. Still unlike India what I missed the most was getting into water and play under the falls. Neither its warm enough to get into water nor its allowed. Probably we might be fined here if you get into water :-). As a result I ended up feeling like walking in a man made forest with man made water falls. But no question on the beauty of the place its just spectacular its just that i couldn't feel it wild the way you get to feel it in India :-). At times you can say like too much organized makes life so boring, there has to be thrill to explore that's when you get the rush in adrenalin.
We laughed a lot the entire day there were quite a few funny moments, few of them were a joint venture say a business proposal b/w me and chandra to create Minchi falls beside Frenchi falls with Sahana being the toll collector. And then embrassing moments for Boby to find a restroom and being caught by fellow hikers when Boby tried to tresspass for a nature call :-)
After we returned from covering 9 out of 10 falls we were like dead tired from walking almost 10kms on a single day and were really hungry. What came to our rescue was again Pongal and curd rice. We dropped back chandru and sahana at their home, had a nice dinner and headed back to our rooms. End of a wonderful weekend in Vancouver,WA.
I didn't write much about the place becuase there is already lots of information about the place in the offical website so me writing in bits and pieces doesn't really make any sense. Find more details about the state park under the link http://www.oregonstateparks.org/park_211.php

Some of the Best Movies I Enjoyed

I keep loosing track of some of the best movies i have ever loved watching. This is a small attempt to put up a list so that many more can enjoy as well. There are a lot of good Hindi and Kannada movies I just love to watch but here I am only trying to give a list of some good English movies. Every time i watch a good movie i will try to update this list. If I start adding Hindi and Kannada the list is going to explode that's the only reason I have kept it aside.

English:

1. Into the Wild
2. Touching the Void
3. Munich
4. The Hurt Locker
5. Titanic
6. PS I love you
7. Blood Diamond
8. Catch a Fire
9. Reign over me
10. The constant Gardner
11. The Kite Runner
12. The Bucket List
13. Bella
14. Kung Fu Panda
15. Gladiator
16. Patriot
17. Top Gun
18. The Last King of Scotland
19. Brave Heart
20. Sixth Sense
21. The Last Samurai
22. Cast Away
23. The Terminal
24. Matrix Series
25. The Phone Booth
26. Taking of Pelham 123
27. Wild Hogs
28. Inception
29. Social Network
30. Sanctum

There are many more good movies, especially some of the action movies but this list is special as I can just watch these movies any number of times.

Hercules Ryders ACT 109

I had been postponing this for quite some time now. But i don't know i can't spend time in gym its so boring and time wasting, but i have put on 6kgs and have moved from 67 to 73kgs. What better way to reduce my weight? From now on i will try to go to office atleast 2-3 days a week in my new bike.
I have been hearing about changing the color of auto/bus a go green initiative i don't know was this a joke or is there any valid reason, but from now on i can work on the initiative i have started at least. I spend around 200Rs a week on petrol for my scooter but more than money i wonder how much pollution i might be reducing? I am not sure if there is a means to measure how much carbon emission i would be contributing for a week?
What surprised me the most was, i remembered my childhood days where in hardly we had 2-3 types of cycles available out of which BSA SLR, Hero Ranger were pretty popular i had a Hero Hamsa, but today we have hundreds and hundreds of cycles. I had paid 800Rs for my cycle then and now i paid 10,500Rs.
Today I went to office by my cycle felt good, enjoying the music but I also used to get scared when a bus or a lorry went very close to me. However from now on I will try to use my cycle for all the work in and around my house. Hopefully anything within 5kms I will try to use my cycle.

North Kanara - Sirsi and Yellapura

I would rate this trip of mine as one of the best trips of 2009. Nothing like it was a difficult or challenging trip, but I would rate this trip high just because of the shear surprise it had in it. Again i was pretty much unaware of the finer details of whats this trip all about, but then it was Gilli who had organized the entire trip right from bus tickets to all the other bookings. We started on thursday night at 7pm from KSTRC bus stand on a direct bus to Yellapur.
We reached Yellapur bus stand at around 7am. We called up Nagendra Bhat and he was ready to pick us for a 2 day trip in his Maruthi Omni. After a quick breakfast at hotel Sambram we started heading towards our first destination Sathodi Falls.
We had to pass through the back waters of Kali river along the path. Since we had reached very early of the day probably we had avoided the usual crowd. Every time i reach such a place what i miss the most is swimming in such place, i plan to carry a life jacket from next time. Sripad was the only person who swam a bit there. It was pretty peacfull but i could see some plastics and beer bottles. All of us tried to carry back a bit of the garbage, on our way back we could see a huge crowd moving towards the falls. I could only wish that they wouldn't spoil the beauty of the place just to be seen on an other day.
From here we went back to yellapur and had our lunch at Geetha Bhavan, simple homely food for cheap rate i just love such eateries rather than the existing hotels which have a standard taste across the entire state. From here we started heading along the Yellapur Karwar highway for around 15kms and then take a left to head towards our 2nd falls Shirley falls.
This is more of a private falls behind a house. Its not big falls and its very easy to go down to the falls for a bath. It might be very good during rainy season. From here continue back on the Karwar highway for another 15kms and then take a right towards Magod Falls. This is a huge falls, but i couldn't find a way how to get down the falls. Hopefully there should be some rough way to go down will find it out next time. Very close to Magod Falls we have Jenakallu Gudda for sunset view. From here we can look at the beautiful valley while the sun goes down.
Nagendra Bhat dropped us at Nisarga Mane near yellapura for the night. It was not at all worth, even though we had to shell out a lot of money here it was a horrible place to stay and not worth the money at all. In our team we never mind sleeping down a tree under an open sky rather than a hotel which is not worth the money. Any way we got up very early in the morning and went for bird watching. This is the latest hobby my self and sripad have picked up identifying birds, i enjoy taking photos of these aswell.
Bhat picked us up took us to his house for breakfast. Here we had a feast enjoying the lovely country side food. I always wonder how the food served in a village is so tasty? Bhat's house is in the middle of the forest a few meters from the highway. Hopefully one can stay at Bhat's house if they permit rather than the hotel we stayed.
From here we headed towards the best part of this trip Shivgange falls. I am sorry i really couldn't make out much of the road but one thing i can say is we need to head towards Nellali Matta and Soragina Mane. From top we could only see a huge falls, but then we decided to go down and checkout. This was the best thing we did. One the way down we also found a "Asian Paradise Fly Catcher" (Complete White body and black head), even though it was a small 30min trek it was very steep and pretty difficult, but the view from the bottom is something i just cann't explain in simple words spectacular, pretty much untouched. We wanted to go towards the bottom of the falls but it looked more of impossible to go till the end of the falls. Climbing back to the top was very hard.
From here we went to Sirsi and had home food at a restaurant which didn't have a name though but unbelivable food for 22Rs. After lunch we had to drive around 35kms from Sirsi towards Unchalli Falls. This was the last falls of our trip. This was a beautifull falls but we missed the oppurtunity to go down and hence forth i would say its more of half explored. Best part of the trip was i never expected there were so many huge and wonderful falls in karnataka. Many have only known of jog falls and shivanasamudra falls. Its good that these falls are not much written off so its safe from human destruction.
Its not that i don't encourage people enjoying the beauty of these places, but i am against people not realizing the beauty of these places and spoiling it. Finally we didn't have time to head back to Yellapur and hence we had to call KSRTC in Yellapur and told them we would be catching the bus from Sirsi. Finally end of a fantastic trip, never knew there were so many wonderful falls in my own state. Best part is, there are 5 more falls in the same district plan to go again some time soon.
Team : Gilli, Sripad, Harsha and Poorna
Route : Bangalore - Shimoga - Sirsi - Yellapura

Falls Covered : Sathodi Falls, Shirley Falls, Maagod Falls, Shivgange Falls,Unchalli Falls and Jenakallu Gudda
Contact Person - Nagendra Bhat (Ph: 91-9980427640) - He will drive you around for 2 days showing all these places.

Wild Life Photography

I had been to Kabini and K.Gudi, best part of which was some of the best shots of wild life shooting i have done till date. Even though i have treked a lot i never had the experience of shooting wildlife in the wild. For the first time i realised how difficult it is to shoot birds and animals in the wild. I am just adding some photos rather than writing anything much. But the best part of the trip to kabini was my first sighting of a Leapord.








Route to Kabini : BANGALORE (220 Kms) – Ramnagaram – Maddur – Mandya – Srirangapatna – Mysore – Hand Post Circle (On Mysore - Maananthavaadi Road) – Karapura
Route to KGudi : Mysore-Nanjangud-Chamaraja Nagar-K.Gudi-B.R.Hills-Yelandur-T.Narasipur. Distance. 205 km

Chunchi Falls

As I mentioned even though I travelled a bit over last six months I never updated my trip details. This was during august so please don't go by the amount of water in the snaps. My initial plan was to visit shivanasamdura during its peak season and since it had rained heavily i had no doubt about the amount of water in the shivanasamdura so called up loki and pratiba to join for the trip. We started at around 4.30 am in the morning. I picked up loki and pratiba and along with jyoti started driving towards kanakpura. We stoped at kanakpura at around 6.30 for breakfast and as usual idli was our best bet for early breakfast.

Last time I had driven to shivanasamdura via kaveri fishing camp, it was very beautiful but this time i couldn't really make out if i was driving in the same route or not but then i only knew i was driving towards sangama. But around 20kms from Kanakpura i saw a board reading Chunchi falls. I had never seen or heard about this falls before and immediately i took a left in that direction.
After driving through a small village and rough roads we reached a spot which was more of a dead end for my car, we came out of the car and could see the river flowing between a mountain but yet no trace of the falls. We had to walk down a bit to find a falls which was in its best , none of us had imagined that we would end up in such a beautiful place.
Best part of the trip i would say was the time we reached the spot we had reached chunchi falls by around 7 and we didn't find anyone other than we four. It was ferocious and scary as well yet we sneaked a bit close towards the falls and got completely drenched by the water. I did some photography and then by around 10 we could see few more teams coming down and then we felt it was time to leave. It was those moments of enjoying the beauty of the water falls in the early hours without much crowd that was so special about this trip.
We were completely satisfied for the day yet we started driving towards sangama, but as expected i felt this place was horribly over crowded and badly spoilt with plastics all around. I always feel that either good places should not have good connectivity so that value to reach these places is remembered or it should be maintained perfectly by totally banning plastics and fining heavily for violators. This fine amount could be used by the local villagers for the development work around these places.
We didn't enjoy anything at sangam and we started heading back towards bangalore. We reached back bangalore at around 3.30 or 4 and went to Prathiba's house. She prepared some pakoras for us and we had some fun with hot pakoras and tea. We enjoyed the trip to the core because nothing was planned and everything happened as a pleasant surprise. We wanted to go to shivanasamudra and ended up going to a place which i had never heard off.

Place : Chunchi Falls
Route : Bangalore, Kanakapura, Aldur, Deviation before Sangama, 6km to Chunchi Falls
Distance : Around 90km from Bangalore

Lost Touch

I have not updated my blog since almost 6months, don't have a valid reason though but from now on I would be reading and writing very often. I had few trips in these 6 months and i would be updating the same at the earliest.

My Bucket List

Even though i had an idea of creating a list of to do before i die from long back, few movies off late have inspired me to put it in a place so that i can keep checking the status and keep adding new ones on regular basis.

Sl.no. -- Wish List -- Status
1) Buy a Bike of my own Salary (Done - May 2003)
2) Buy a digital Camera (Done - June 2006)
3) Upgrade to an Digital SLR (Done - 20/6/2009 )
4) Visit Kargil and Ladak (Done - September 2007)
5) Stay out of home for 2 years (Done - 2005 to 2007)
6) Buy a cycle (Done - 14/1/2010)
7) Visit Ladak and Kargil by Bike (Pending)
8) Visit Auranachal Pradesh (Pending)
9) Paragliding (Done)
10) Rafting in Ganga just after rains (Done - August 2007)
11) Be the pride owner of a Bullet (Pending)
12) Scuba Diving (Pending)
13) Learn Swimming (Pending)
14) Learn and Play Guitar (Pending)
15) Sky Diving (Pending)
16) Dine and stay in a five star hotel (Done)
17) Get Lost for a week (Done - 25/12/2008)
18) Cliff Jumping (Done - December 2006)
19) Watch King cobra in the wild (Done)
20) Watch Tiger in the wild (Pending)
21) Take bath in a water falls (Done many times now)
22) Buy a farm land and do farming (Pending)
23) Walk an entire night in the dark (Done - 26/12/2008)
24) Feed/Educate a child (Pending)
25) Trek to Everest Base Camp (Pending)
26) Visit Land of Opportunities - AMERICA (Done - June 2009)
27) Photo shoot in Masai Mara, Africa during the Great Migration (Pending)
28) Travel in Europe (Pending)
29) Become a Politician - Join a political party (Pending)

How to Apply for Smart Card

I obtained my license for geared 2 wheel and car (LMV) way back in 1999. But during a pickpocket incident in the busy majestic area i lost my plastic card after that i went to the Rajaji nagar RTO to which i was told i have to get the plastic card from tumkur only. However when i went to tumkur RTO again i was told since they don't have machine right now i would have to go back after 6 months :-) believe me i was told to come back after 6 months. Then i went to Rajaji nagar RTO again for change of address and applying of plastic card again i was told to apply after 3 months because after 3 months they would be issuing the new smart cards. Again when i went after 3 months i was told they are very busy since the system of issuing smart cards is very new and they asked me to wait for a month or so, so that it can ease down a bit. Here i am again after a month to listen to the same music since my license is valid till 2019 its better for me to wait for a month or so, so that it can ease the rush a bit more but this time i was a bit reluctant. Now let me tell you the process of applying for the smart card along with the change of address :-) and also how it works in the RTO :-)

One person sits outside to assist you for your help :-) . I went to him and asked for the process to apply for smart card and he told me to go to counter 21. I went to counter 21 here i was asked to go to cash counter and pay the fee for the same. I went to the cash counter and after standing in the Que for 15min when it was my turn i asked her how much do i need to pay for change of address and smart card. She told me to go to counter 21 and ask them how much i need to pay. I was surprised that a person sitting in cash counter doesn't know how much to accept and she just accepts what people ask her to take :-). I saw that people don't pay for a certain job rather they ask her to take 200rs, 300rs and give a receipt for the same so strange right :-)

Now i went back to counter 21 and asked how much should i pay for change of address and smart card. He told me i had to pay 300rs (200 for smart card and 100 for change of address). Again i went back to the cash counter to stand in the Que, a middle man was standing in front of me with a list of 30 people, i had to wait until the receipt for all the 30 people is finished :-) . At the end of which the cashier told to the person 750Rs. Probably this should be the commission for the cashier for doing his job, because it was not paid at that moment :-). Its my turn now, i told her to give a receipt for 300rs to which she asked my name. I told "Poorna Prajna", she could not hear or probably she didn't know the spelling she asked me to write an application and come back :-). I came out again but i remembered suddenly and went back to the counter and gave my license and asked her to see my name from the license. At last she gave me a receipt for 300rs. With this i went back to counter 21. He told me to write an application and attach an address proof . I wrote an application and attached a xerox copy of my voting id card for address proof and went back to counter 21. He asked me to go to photo counter and get my photo clicked :-). When i went there, i was told that i should get a signature from the person in counter 21, so i went back again. This time he told me that i have to attach a printed application available outside for smart card. I had to go out to get the form only to know that there are no forms available with the RTO and i have to go to the xerox shop near by and pay Re1 for the application. After filling the application again i went back to counter 21 and got the signature and after which i got my photo clicked as well :-). Again go back to counter 21 and hand over all the documents along with your license. I got a piece of paper with a RTO seal as acknowledgement and i have been asked to come back after one month :-). Hope that i will get my smart card after one month...

Its soo simple right, but this is how it works here... Every time i visit a government office i remember few words from Gandhi "Its not that you are helping a customer, rather its because of the customer you are existing". I guess its Gandhi , golden words but so far from truth in the Indian government offices.