A long overdue post drafted on 10th oct 2008, but unfunished on account of various reasons like lack of interest. I signed into my blog account after eons to find this piece. I thought a magnificient trip like this one definitely deserved a mention in my pages. So here goes..

This blog is an effort to capture the result of an experiment of undertaking a trekking journey with very little planning, very little time to plan and strictly an late-evening-friday-ish plan with arbit people( some of whom still think sleeping mat is a sofa sponge). This is definitely not a substitue for the beautifully written blogs about meticulous preparation and execution. And I would advise people not to try things mentioned here.
"Bear grylls is to be watched - not to be likened to..posthumously, usually" -- J

It began on a Tuesday when Ananda called from office telling he was bored and would like to head out for a trek during the weekend. Jayanth(jayyu), Ganesh(jinx), Rajendra(raji), Sandesh(sandy) were also ready. But nobody had decided the venue till friday evening, and we decided that Kumara paravata it is after not much discussion. I had been there once during college.

Whenever I want to go out on a trek, I look up the place on the internet to just read what people have to say about the place. I just realised that I read on, I keep looking mostly for vital details. More often, it happens that I do spend substantial amount of time reading various posts , finding out things and then arriving at an itenary. But for late planners, and esp those who get urge to trek on friday evenings, this is a luxury. So, we head out with only essential details, no frills attached . We planned to catch the rest on the way or by experience.We caught the last rajahamsa heading towards subrahmanya. It was a 10.30 bus. We reached subramanya very early at around 4.30 when no hotels/lodges were open. We needed to freshen up. We tried a few lodges, but they were full owing to some auspicious day. So we came back to the bus-station where toilets were locked. We woke up somebody in-charge to open it, he cursingly did it. By the time, we were ready, it was daybreak and the bustling little town was in motion. We had a generous helping of idly, vada and dosa in one of the local hotels there. We started walking along a small road that leads to the foot of the hill. Then I caught sight of green sponges sticking out of jinx and rajendra's bags. I had not given much thought when I had asked them to purchase sleeping mats on the way and they had purchased sponges that one puts inside sofa upholstery. I realised it was my mistake, but we decided to improvise with it. And another problem was, we did not get tents and weather seemed to be breezy and with imminent rain. But we decided to go ahead. A small dog accompanied us to the woods. The cook's house was the first destination. As we started, we saw a local carrying a can of milk to the bhatr mane. We spoke to him. It was his everyday chore -fetching milk from the town and delivering it to the bhatru. I noticed he was barefoot. Asked about the time to reach the bhatr mane, he sized us up, and said three hours - we were definitely not in top physical form. He would do it in an hour, he said. Our journey continued, all along I was thinking about why one(Bhatru) should settle in a small hut in the woods, why he should serve weary travellers, why... Was he a Phantom-the ghost who walks? why? - Was I just about to find out?


We reached there almost at the same time as predicted by the milk delivery boy. It was humid, but the shade of the hut with its portico littered with betel nut husk was a nice place to have our breakfast. The bhatr made us upma - lots of it. Normally, I would never touch upma unless I would die of hunger. But then, I did not want to spoil the mood of the trip. After generous helpings and refilling water bottles, we fed our dog with goodlife milk - one full packet. We bid farewell to the Bhatr, letting him know that we might return in case we decided to head back the same way we came. A two minute walk from there brings us the forest department office - a guard who I remember from last time. He took the mandatory trekking charges from us (last time around, in aug 2005, there was no charge, but he had extorted money from us). This time again, he billed for one camera(we had three), and pocketed the fee for the other two. He had some things negative to say about the Bhatr, which I find irrelevant to this blog. We trudged along, our dog alerting when we were near a snake. We sighted two but weren't fast enough to pull out the camera and shoot it. The terrain was punishing and the difficulty level constantly increased. All through the ascent to the 'Mantapa', the forest outpost will always be in sight. Mantapa is a four pillared stone structure near one of the two water sources of the entire trek.

We stopped there for a while and resumed to pushpagiri which is an intermediate peak before the final destination. Atop, we had lunch - bread, milk, oranges. From my experience in 2005, I had rated this the most tiring and dangerous part of the entire ascent. We had to descend slightly into the forest(very dense) and then climb an almost vertical rock face littered with small waterfalls and slippery moss. The weather brewed a nice drizzle with fog and visibility reduced to around 20 feet. We managed it and made it to the last of the slopes. This place is infested with cobras. We were lucky to see the molted skin of a cobra. Lots of elephant dung was strewn around. We reached the top around at 5'0 clock, by which time the rain was quite annoying. We had no idea of how to see through the night. Various plans were hatched, but finally we made a makeshift tent out of the burlap bag which housed the sponge sleeping mat. We called it the 35 rupees tent ( The guys had paid 35 for the burlap bag). It was genuine engineering - the sack was able to shelter our bags, and our bodies, from head to torso. From waist down, we were at the mercy of the elements. We kept the sponges on the uneven rocks as the flooring material - bad idea. We got a fire going, but nobody was in mood to cook. We had avalakki mixture, biscuits and chikkis. We squeezed inside the small place and rajendra immediately slept off. We were just joking around. The sponges we slowly getting wet. The rain started increasing. Within fifteen minutes, we were all sleeping on wet sponges, and were being lashed about by the rain water. But we slept in the rain and I woke up next to the dog. The dawn was chilly and misty, rain had died down. This phase gave us the best photos of the entire trip. The sun came up dazzling and all signs of rain were removed quickly. We had breakfast of noodles and started the descent towards Mallalli,coorg.
I realised I was wrong when we started descending. It was steep and rugged. In many places, we had to slide down on rocks and we got many bruises. In my opinion, it would be really difficult to descend along this route during the peak of the rainy season. The best part was the dog was guiding us whenever we lost way. Sometimes, he would wander off chasing birds and sounds. But would return everytime. We encountered many people ascending from this side of the peak. Leeches were everywhere - after a while we stopped caring about them. The forest department had installed dustbins at quite a few places. Our sponge sleeping mats finally found resting place in one of them. The forest started thinning. We could see a creek with a bridge. We were almost at the end of our journey. We rested along the pebbly banks, washed our legs and had silent moments. We noticed that our dog had lot of leech bites. Trudging along we came to the road. At that point, we were relieved to find out that we had not missed the bus. We dropped our plans to visit Malalli falls nearby since we did not find any means of transport and were very tired. We waited for an hour for the bus. We had to leave the dog back. It followed our bus for some distance before accepting reality. But we were reassured that it would find a way back to Subramanya with groups who climb the peak starting from Mallalli.
Civilization started. A beautiful trip came to an end.

March of the seeker

Master of my sorrow
Keeper of my joy
Make me see tomorrow
I'm your little boy.

Merciful you have been
All along this way
Why aren't thou to be seen
In this lovely May?

I seek for thee everywhere
In the rain and in the sun,
As I search, in my heart I bear
The forlorn thought-'has my end begun?'

I do not know whether I have erred
I do not know whether loving is wrong
But everytime I saw my face mirrored
There was you telling me love is strong.

You gave me the wrinkles and the years
You took everything that I cared
Now its only me and my tears
And memories of time with my loved one I shared.

(Date : June 2006)

(Photograpy : Jagannath S. Location :Dal Lake, Srinagar)

Why Blog?

Writing over the internet may be very good trend to follow while heading into the future. The world is getting better connected and journalism over he internet is catching up. I was just wondering why more people have started reading blogs .
I have grown seeing grown-ups discussing things they read over the newspaper or see in the news. These are moments that help them transform the bland, formal newspaper print into something colorful, something imaginative. They tell things about the news that they just read. It could be a very gloriously extrapolated version of truth, sometimes otherwise too, sometimes both. But the point is people enjoy the interpretations given by others and themselves. For those who enjoy them alone, there are always so called evening tabloids which are abound with spicy stories. It is human nature to gossip is my best guess. Call yourself a gentleman or call yourself a politically correct guy or call yourself a diplomatic guy or call yourself whatever you will, but I am sure, you just cannot deny that sometimes you do enjoy the on-the-face comments on movies by Rajeev Masand(CNN-IBN) more than the reporting of the ever politically correct diplomat Pranay Roy. And here is where I feel blogs are reaching out.
Blog writers call a spade, a spade. They think freely and write freely. With the Net and blogs making its presence felt not only with the tech savy section but also with the regular users, the potential of cyberworld will make a mark in influencing public decisions in near future. Good internet writers will be in demand.
But I read somewhere, that if you want to be a good writer, you should.. . write.

Dreams Die Young

Where art thou, my young dream
I longed for thee to see the dawn.
It became morn, you weren't to be seen
Why is that, you were gone?


Did we not start out together?
Did i not toil hard for you?
Now, you are not even in the nether
You vanished even without a clue.

Do you not remember the days that were past,
Working hard not noticing even blood off my brow?
Will you return back with hope along, fast,
Or will you allow the fear in me evermore grow?

In desperation, I asked the wise one,
He said that some dreams die young.
Is it true or is there truth none,
Tell me my friend, is it the last I've sung?



(Photograpy : Naveen Prakash. location : Krishna river reservoir, AP )

An ode to Hyderabad

My first tryst with Hyderabad was for a mere two months. It was summer of 2006 and I had landed here as a fresh graduate looking forward to a future. Yes. Those were good old days.Back then there was a different CM. Now there is a different CM.One thing I usually dont comment is about politics the reason being simple. I dont know much about politics. For me , the politics means only specific strategical decisions which affects taxes, my payroll, and changes by TRAI which will ensure inexpensive calling rates - so that i may call home often.

A lot can be said about the changes that have happened in this beautiful city- the new airport, new foot over bridges, new lanes and many more infrastructural additions to cater to the everygrowing IT doings. But I am not writing to enlighten about the additions made, but specially about one thing which has not changed.
It is the way Hyderabadi road users(motorists and pedestrians) put vehicles/roads/lives to test everyday. Call it efficient driving or call it utilizing full potential of vehicle or more precisely call it our ability to not care for anything unless it affects us directly. Call it what you will, but what never ceases to amaze me and many other who are not natives of Hyderabad is the complete exodus of traffic sense.Frankly, I considered myself extremely lucky having survived many attempts on my life by 'share' autos back in 2006. Now I am back here. Everyday, I see accidents with ominous regularity only to have it being overwritten in my memory even before it is forgotten. As I walk on the streets of this amazing city, I almost get run down on a daily basis. My cries of 'Watchout!' are being lost in the ominous traffic. But the driver who intended to mow me down turns back and gives me a look. I think it is a smile. A look that almost says 'why so serious?' And while he turns back, the vehicle still chugs along diligently in traffic. That is a feat by any standards.
I hope everyday that I finish the work I am supposed to do in Hyderabad as soon as possible and return to my hometown alive. Meanwhile, I kindly ask you to recommend me for the bravery awards... i think they are awarded posthumously too. Your efforts will not be in vain.

inertia

Newton must be thanked. i think he coined the term inertia.
I am too lazy to verify the fact now. Whoever discovered it,
probably saw it work with material objects which are tangible.
They must have seen the motionless objects refusing to move or
moving objects refusing to stop. .
The same analogy works for the mind, i guess. I have tried to blog
about the things I experience as frequently as possible..and yes, I
have the time too. But whenever i open this page, something happens.
I feel like i have to move huge boulders in my cerebrum, revisit my
memory areas, think deeply and ....(i leave it here, i cant think). During
these troubling moments, i just quit. And feel bad about it later.
The retrieval process of events from memory require mental effort, esp.
if they are not very pleasant..to pen them for public is something for which
the world will throw their hats off. The world will stand for you on one
leg if you can do it regularly. And if that happens, people dont stop, they
start blogging regularly although some other important thing may take
backseat in their daily schedule. Maybe it gives them satisfaction...or people's
adulation. Some people claim that blogging gives them the outlet for their
creative energy(Yeah, we've seen them.) . Blogging or no blogging, life goes
on. The benefits and harms of them .... i think that is best left for another
blog, some other day, some other time.

To start blogging, you need to overcome the inertia of the mind. You
will have to roll the stone uphill to the top. Once you just reach there, all
you need to do is nudge it down and have a roll and give it inertia of
thought.

But rolling stones gather no moss.

I still dont know why i penned the proverb above. But if you are willing
and wish to think deeply, just think of an arbit scientific concept and
relate it with the saying... you too can proceed to roll the stone uphill.