Saturday, April 10, 2010

Night trek at Antaragange


This was my first trip with Bangalore Mountaineering Club (BMC). In fact, I cancelled my Chennai trip, as I thought night trek should be amazing. I always wanted to trek at night. The trek was at Antaragange, about 60km from Bangalore, near Kolar. Anyways, only 3 ppl from the Bekal trip could make it this time. The pick up point was Symphony theater (Now Shankarnag) in MG Road. I was expecting around 20 - 25 people, but as it turned out there were more than 60 ppl. Though at that time I was pretty excited seeing the crowd (Girls out numbered guys!!!!), but in hindsight BMC should have limited the number of participants to around 25. In any case, they kept us waiting for a while, before it dawned on them that the bus was in the next street and it would be better if we walked to it. Anyways, finally at about 10.30pm we left Bangalore. It was almost 1.00am when we reached Antaragange.

We began our ascent at about 1.15 am. Just then I realized I had left the memory chip at home and so my camera was pretty useless for the trip. Dodo, as usual, was clicking photos after photos. It was such a wonderful experience scaling the peak under the moon light. Finally, we , reached the top at about 2.30am and rested for a while. In fact we waited for quite a bit, for almost an hour before word came that the normal entrance to the cave was closed and that they were finding an alternate entrance. Finally, they found an alternate entrance, but it was too steep and risky. Only few people managed to explore the cave while we were waiting outside, awaiting our chance. Finally, it became too late for others to go inside the cave and we had to return, completely disappointed. Anyways, we thought at least the Sun god will not disappoint us and we waited at the top even as the cold breeze was embracing us. We were already soaking in the breathtaking view of the city beneath, when finally dawn broke. But there were too many clouds, yet again! And we just satisfied ourselves by clicking few more photos of ourselves. And we made our back in the bus, which had come to the top to pick us.




It was a nice trip but it would have been really great had we explored the cave. The sad part was BMC was not even ready to take the blame even partially, which makes me think if I will go along with them again. Anyways, I need to make few more trips with BMC to really recommend them to anyone, which am also little reluctant to do. Only BMC has to prove me wrong.

Tuesday, March 9, 2010

Bekal Fort



A team of 6 Ambiants (actually 5 plus one non ambiant), ventured on a pleasure trip over the weekend. The team comprised of Shu, La, Ra(vi), Shyam, Sankar and Dodo (not necessarily in the height order!!!!)...... As fate had it, I happened to run in to Ravi, Shu and Dodo in pantry. They were discussing on a destination for a weekend trip. When they told me, I immediately jumped on the idea. After much deliberation, we zeroed in on Bekal Fort !! Dodo took care of calling the hotels and the boat house guys. Ravi took care of the logistics. So we booked a Qualis from B'lore (@Rs 7/- per km) and driver 'beta' at Rs 175 per day. After a sumptuous meal at Ravi's place, we left B'lore at around 11.15 pm.

Dodo was our official trip planner and also the guide. He was all set with map in his hands and we were deciding on the route to take. The driver said that the roads were bad in the routes that we suggested. But if were to take his route, we will be covering extra 50km. Finally, we decided to travel in the route that we suggested. B'lore, Mysore, Madikere (Coorg), Hunsur, Sullia, Puthur, Kasargod.... Each one had their defining 'Eureka' moments on this trip.

Let me start with myself, simply because I had the first moment (rather a victim)! The driver somehow got the idea that I was spying on him whether he was sleeping on the wheel or not. Just to scare me, he acted as if he was sleeping and driving little crazily. At one point, he almost ran into a bus and on an another instance, he swerved so much, that even Dodo got scared...Then the driver merely said he was trying to avoid a pit. Then we stopped for tea, which is when I realized he was simply trying to piss me off. Whatever, after that I started enjoying the scenes outside (the trees looked stunning under the moon light)...

At around 5 in the morning, driver wanted a break. So what place does he choose? A spot, right outside a house...Perfect spot in any horror movie in any language. In fact I got paranoid and was struggliing to stay awake. Anyway, after about 30 min, we continued our tortuous, winding journey in the Ghat section. It was 9am when we reached Kasargod. We were all gung ho about a lodge called Ktees Residency. We just could not believe what we saw. We had no idea that it would look like that (in the internet they have amazing pics). So people please be warned, if you are going to Bekal, do not ever think about staying at Ktees...(I think the word Residency was a 'bit' misleading)!!!! Anyway, we found another place called Fort Point. At Rs 400 (after 10% discount) per day it was pretty ok. We were bone tired after 9 hrs of journey and literally had to pull ourselves out of the bed.

Anyway, first we went straight to the fort. The cameras were already out, dishing out fotos after fotos, even before we actually entered the fort. With imagination running wild, each one was engrossed in taking pics and stiking poses...But from a particular spot (we had to climb a ramp like structure), the view was simply breathtaking. We were dumb struck when we saw the beach from top of the fort. My mind was busy scanning the fort to see from where Manisha Koirala came running to meet Arvind Swamy in the movie Bombay....Anyway, after more pics, more fun, we finally made our way out...The next on the agenda was food. We saw a restaurant named Kia Ora right outside the fort. Even though it was slightly pricey we decided to eat there. But little did we expect that fate would deal such a blow on our face (errr.....stomach )!!! First of all they took ages to serve the food, but when the food came, it was so bad, that I decided staright away I am writing about this place in my blog. Please avoid this place. Little did we know at that time, that it is going to be a gastronomically challenging trip!! Anyway, we had one memorable moment at Kia Ora. It was Shu's "graphic" moment. This is what happens to overly brainy, intelligent people.



Next we went back to the hotel to get freshened up and leave to the boat house. We hired this boat house from 5pm to 9am. We were little late because of the traffic. (This boat house was about 20km from the hotel). Once there, we quickly boarded the boat. It had a nice space to sit (chairs, tables et al). The first thought that crossed my mind was "Wow, nice setting for a perfect drink." Anyway, we were told that sun set will happen at 6.30pm and that they will take us to the beach. But we missed the sun set narrowly. After that, the boat came back and stopped in the middle of the river. The boat house stay was the highlihgt of the whole trip, thanks to Dodo. We were just sitting and chatting generally. Then we started playing UNO. It was such a blast. We only stopped when the dinner arrived, by which time, we had already started our 'Signature' moment!!!! The dinner was alright, infact it was the only good meal we had in the entire trip. Anyway, we continued with more UNO and later Rummy. That was when Dodo had his moment, 'Signature moment'....Shyam and I were laughing our lungs out!!! So finally we hit the sack at 1.00am. I had, by then, completely lost hopes of waking up for the sun rise.

But wake up I did, sharp at 6.30. However, the Sun god decided to play hide and seek with us. He hid himself among the clouds, refusing to come out. So I went back and slept again. But Dodo was at his best, captured some of the finest pics at that time. Anyway, finally we had breakfast as the boat was cruising towards the shore. The journey came to an end and our beloved driver was waiting for us on the shore. We were deceived by the sign board which said Kapil Beach 3.5Km. We wasted almost an hour looking for the place, only to realize that it was private. Anyway, we headed back to Bekal beach. Then started the fun time. We thoroughly enjoyed every bit of the beach part, dripping with salt water, covered with mud and felt content at heart. Finally, we went to hotel, checked out and started the long return journey back.

That is when the couple had their moment, 'WTF' moment....It was funny coz their mobiles were also in that bag only..Anyway, the hotel guys were eagerly anticipating our arrival !!! Anyway finally we left Bekal once for all. Except for that bad stretch of road, the driver was rocking. He drove in 90's consistently and we had amazing fun. This is when the driver himself had his moment when Dodo scared him to death by 'falling' asleep.....Thank u Dodo, for taking revenge on the driver. Oh I almost forgot Shyam's moment. It was so funny when he was trying to find the perfect location, hmmm, for you know what !!!!! He thought it was main road and then he had to hunt for another location.....

We stopped at Sullia for lunch, which proved to be another gut wrenching experience. The food was so pathetic that I was missing my cook's food badly. At this juncture we were debating on whether to stop at Coorg and spend some time there, as we reckoned that we will reach B'lore at odd hours and it will be difficult for all to go to their respective homes. But we decided against stopping and headed home straight, instead. We made one more stop in Kushal Nagar, where I had coffee. I broke my vow and had coffee after 2 years. I thought it was worth the experience. Finally, we left that place, with heart becoming heavy each second, as the trip was nearing its end. Lastly, we stopped in Mandya for dinner. Fate had the last laugh, as we had yet another horrible meals. It was the closing ceremony of the spate of bad food that we had over the two days. Ravi was so indignant that he strongly suggested that I write about that hotel too. I kind of forgot the name, it is something like Guruprasad or something, even though the board said Nandhinee also. Anyway, so guys avoid this restaurant also. We wanted to stop in Mysore, but then the driver took the by pass road, so we did not go into Mysore city. Anyway, finally we reached B'lore at 12.45am, settled the driver's bill and chatted for some time. Finally slept at around 2 am, knowing fully that Monday Morning was already waiting with a huge club in the hand ready to deal a blow on my head. I reached office at 12pm on Monday, still basking in the fun filled moments that I had over the weekend. It was made special by each and every one of you. Thank you guys and hope to venture into more trips.

Monday, September 7, 2009

Moratorium begins........

Well, technically speaking few weeks left for the moratorium period to start...However, with classes getting over, and still a good fortnight away for final exams, am already having an eerie feeling. We have been 'awarded' this 2 weeks holiday so that we can hunt for jobs while at the same time revising for the exams. It has been 15 months since the course started, but these 15 days are going to be crucial. The sudden feeling of liberation has actually sent my mind on a free fall. Now, I want to do a million things, things which I could not or did not do in the last 15 months. For instance, I spent most of the time today playing sudoku, 'polished' my resume for one final time, cutting important articles in news paper, infact reading the news paper properly, calling people and so on........However one thing has not changed! Sleeping late.....This is one habit that has stuck with me for the past 5-6 years. I do not doubt for one moment that I will sleep before 3 am.....

Friday, July 31, 2009

Filling up space!

It is 2.30 am and am wondering what to do! Mid terms got over today and been lazing around for the entire day. Assignments and presentations are haunting, but I prefer to take it easy, atleast for the weekend. Only 2 months away from graduation. I do not see the end of the tunnel, yet, let alone some light!!!! Now that internet is functioning again in hostel, I took a 'leisure stroll' across the web to see if something excites me. Found nothing interesting, so getting back to real world. It is still 2.35 only and I do not have the answer as to what I want to do.

Things that I considered doing today but subordinated everything to sleep.

1) Finish SAPM Assignments
2) Start reading Valuation by Damodaran
3) Start Tax Assignment
4) Read Derivatives
5) Gather material for IFM assignment
6) Read Cost Management book
7) Watch any movie
8) and the list goes on.....

It will be dawn in another 3 hours. Got SAPM class in another 7 hrs......What am I doing here now, I should have been in Chennai at this time, if only the darned classes were cancelled......
Anyway, at least I managed to fill some space in my long forgotten blog. Signing off....The best thing at this poing might be to catch some sleeep before the Sun makes a touchdown...

Wednesday, April 8, 2009

WordChallenge!

A thing that has got me hooked on is this facebook app called WordChallenge. I love words and more so playing around with them. Infact it has got me so addicted that I virtually play it all the time......... The other day, when I was sitting bored in internship, i was playing this and I thoroughly enjoyed it. All you have to do is make lot of three, four, five or six letter words from the tiles of letters given. You get points for each word formed and extra time for words lengthier than 4 letters. When I was young it used to be numbers. Now its words. There was another facebook, Pathwords, I guess. I used to be addicted to that. But this one is more fun than that, especially because, pathwords allows really stupid words, which am not even sure, that they exist. Try it here.

Thursday, April 2, 2009

A year gone by........

Damn! It has been exactly a year since I wrote my last post..........It has been one hell of a roller coaster ride, since then. I pretty much watched all the IPL games, barring a few, before I packed my bags to b'lore to pursue my MBA (technically speaking, PGDBM)......Its 9 months since the program started but it just feels like y'day!!!!! Its internship time and am with BEL, Chennai. Well its really really great to be in Chennai with family, friends and food........Even the Chennai veyil is not a put off this year..............

Still not sure whether am fortunate or unfortunate to be doing MBA at this time........Anyways, lets see what is in store when placement begins in Q2. There are lots to write about the things that have happened in the last one year....But some other time for that!!!! 

Wednesday, April 2, 2008

Goof ups!

These days, I have become a pro at spotting errors. Thanks to the 'Caught Snapping' section in the Weekend Plus of The Hindu paper, where people can post bloopers or anything out of the ordinary that they have snapped, for a gift voucher from UniverCell. Anyway, I noticed one while watching NDTV few days ago during the Chennai Test match. There was a news reel at the bottom about the match and it read 'Chenoi'. It disappeared in a flash, before I could move. Not that it would have made a good material for 'Cuaght Snapping' section but a goof up is a goof up and someone (me me me) spotted it.

Some of the articles in msn are fun to read, for you can come up with tonnes of errors. Damn! I should have bookmarked them, coz' am not able to locate them now. And another habitat for errors is The Economic Times. Seriously, you do not have to go looking for errors, they will pop up right on your face and welcome you. It is not just typo that am talking about, but serious grammatical and idiomatic errors, which are simply unpardonable. Still, I read ET for the content. Oh there you go. I found out one article in msn, thanks to the fantastic team, who never disappoints me. Read the last paragraph and you know what am talking about. Interestingly, there is an advert for copy editor job. The work is so shoddy, that I do not mind doing the job for free.