Kodaikanal to Kuthirayur Dam

So this time let me talk about the kodaikanal trek experience, something that has stretched my limits as far as trekking goes.The effort was considerable so its worth to be captured and documented. as far as the capturing part goes. my Sony cyber shot has done its part and the photos have already made their way to picasa , now after much delay here I'm to put across my 2 day experience at kodaikanal in a few words( dont believe the last line).

Task: Trek from Kodaikanal to Kuthirayur Dam

Planning and Scheduling:

As far as the planning goes things were on right from the month of august and entries had been invited from Madhukar , myself having luckily made it to the first lucky 22. So this time i was in for sure, i didn't really have to keep my fingers crossed unlike the Dudh sagar trip where i made it to the list in the end. The guide Kodai Mani had qouted quite an exorbitant amount for the trek , Prasanna and others having negotiated it and brought it to a decent sum. so finally the trek was fixed on 19th and 20th and we had to leave Bangalore on 18th. small hiccups regarding the bus with the 22 seater was cleared and things were well on their way, everyone waiting for the grand day the 18th evening. after few last minute additions and deletion of people which becomes almost inevitable in every trip the number 22 was still retained.

Curiosity had already driven me to do a lot of googling on the trek and eventually i came across a thread that confirmed it was indeed a difficult terrain, had even come across a picasa album showing a group of people with their legs full of blood oozing out, fingers badly hurt, etc kept me wondering how it could have ever happened. well that's something we all had to bear with. I had showed it to madhukar.






Time for Action!!!

In no time 18th was here, myself having bunked the office then as i was no mood to work so that left me packing and preparing the whole day. I don't wanna be too pedantic here describing every event and moment of the trip , but this is my last chance to keep many a things told so I'm gonna tell myself that let me talk in more detail. so the same evening i headed towards my boarding point near Uma theater along with sachidananda. the bus arrived well on time and people of course were on time too and we had started moving. it rained on the way so others had some difficulty getting in. nonetheless everyone had made it on time and we were off. On the way stopped by for dinner at mallu hotel which was not too bad on the tongue, normally they aren't.


we left in no time and were headed towards Hosur through Sarjapur. activities like the usual antyakshari which somehow is the default activity all the time had started, however this one sounded a little strange with people having their own music compositions The bus stopped by at several places for a tea break and i did cash in on all of these breaks i simply love the hot sweet tea in TN for 3 bucks. I love the way they do it so briskly and yet he does maintain so much accuracy.

Day 1

Soon it was dawn and bus had already started driving the ghat road to kodaikanal through palani ,the plains that used to be so common until now were slowly being replaced by mountain ranges that had a bluish offset behind them. the view was always refreshing. we did spot the Kuthirayur Dam on the ascent , however we didn't knew that it was the same dam that we needed to arrive at the end of trek. from the height it appeared more like a pond of water with a small wall holding it. We were soon at kodaikanal town, This followed by quick breakfast at the vishalakshi bhavan with 2 rounds of breakfast menu. the typical south Indian breakfast does more or less revolves around idli, vada,and dosas. so we did have these delicacies and were soon off to a lodge nearby for a dress change. The guide Mani had arrived with a mini bus that would take us to the trek starting point. so with this the whole trekking expedition had officially started. As we left the kodai town the ever beautiful and green terrain of kodai started opening up in all its splendor, the narrow roads, the perfectly landscaped mountains. the pleasant mist that had greatly reduced the visibility was a treat to watch. suddenly there was a feeling of having left the time to run at its own pace and we having branched off from the outside world onto an entirely different world for this 2 days only to be accompanied by nature, wading our way through the mountains, crossing the forests ultimately to reach the dam and rejoin the material world that we were leaving now.

We got down from the bus at the starting point of the trek, the guide having spared us time as he had gone vanished for sometime searching for a guy who had to carry some amount of his carry things. This place appeared so serene and quiet. It had a lake at the base. my team mates spared no opportunity in getting some really nice shots of the lake and the surroundings.Of course the pictures speaks for themselves and i don't really think i have go vocal here. the lake was a complimentary part of the trek yet was a great starter to the trek.


































finally it was time to start the trek on foot, all of us totally charged and loaded. with arms, ammunition,supplies packed inside the bags,the tents and the wrapped sheets more or less looked like rocket launchers. our weapons were the cameras. me having a small cybershot that's more like a revolver and many others with SLR's that were like the machine guns. ready to war, to shed blood( the blood thing would make sense later, read on!), ready to take on the enemy.

we were welcomed by a sudden short spell of rain that acted like dampener to the fun of those without an umbrellas or the rain gears. We walked through the plains for about 500 meters before entering the forests, this was more of an enemy territory. we were 22+ but they were countless. all set to take on us. taking every opportunity to pounce on us and start sucking blood, yes indeed these were the tiny leaches in the forests. no one was spared , i myself having roughly taken out an approximate 60-70 from my hands and legs. sadly we didn't have any defense against them and had to bear with these blood suckers. walking inside the forests bearing with these leaches was an experience by itself .After roughly 1 odd hour of endless miseries with these tiny creatures we were out of the forests and suddenly on a peak that was filled with mist and having a dead vertical drop in less than a meter away from the trek trail. There was this strange feeling of accomplishment among us like the soldiers who came alive from a battlefield. the last few remaining leaches were whisked away from our skin using the Deodorant spray on them .poor creatures didn't really survive the "AXE EFFECT". The clouds did play a spoilsport denying us this spectacular view of the mountain ranges that lay front of us.


























Trekking route from now on was very pleasant, the weather slightly chilling yet was enjoyable. We then arrived on a small temple on the top of the peak. Mani did the puja's here. We had lunch here . menu as usual was the MTR ready to eat which seems to have now become the official meal for all our treks. we did spot a small deer here that seem to vanish in a wink. resumed the trekking quickly. the routes that we took here were easy. we had to just keep crossing the peaks one after the other. the scenery that we saw here were perhaps the best throughout the trek. we arrived at a small piece of flat land at the end of the day this is where we pitched our tents.Tent pitching is always fun given to the fact it takes some team effort and besides its always fun to see your effort rise in front of your eyes. soon the tents were up and getting inside them was very relaxing as it very getting very cold in the night and my jacket having got wet rain result i had to bear the brunt. The tent was much warmer inside. we did have to fight with leaches even here. we then had light dinner . Sachidanada, Hari, Girish had a can of Sprite(it had only sprite..clear hai?). later in the night i woke up at around 2 and had some nice warm air through the fire that was put up outside. before i could take enough of it Mani was resilient to wait any longer. he was of the opinion bisons would be coming for water in the night and we don't wanna be out. so we had to get into the tents.one could see cow dung all over this place.


DAY 2:
The day started as early as 6.30. the tents were brought down quickly, the wastes including the plastic covers, bottles, blood soaked Socks, etc were quickly burnt in the camp fire. after an elaborate group photo sessions and some poses with the local star ( the Bison skull). we were off on foot once again by 7.30 AM fully packed hoping to see the Dam before the dusk.The Dam was clearly visible from our camp but we had no idea about the trail and it was sure to be a distant dream reaching there easily. On the way we filled water bottle at the water body nearby. The trail was a lot more slippery and muddy. the weather was no more cool and chilling but instead was hot and very daunting this was because we had already started descending the mountains. The way down was never easy. we needed to slide sometimes, and tightly hold on the grip of our shoes some other times slowly coming down through the mountains, given to the fact that we carried so much weight on our shoulders the task was never so easy. and after some point of time wearing shoes was totally impossible and i had to switch over to sandals. the normal sport shoes would never take this much strain and people had to bear with soles coming off . We had to break for rest very often,finally after a harrowing afternoon we finally made it to the base where we came across a small stream. here we halted for an hour or so to have lunch that was very refreshing, we badly needed to refill some energy into us. on the way to this base myself and others having lost the trail and were lucky to make it back to join the group.

The trek post the stream was more a moderate and flat land cutting across the forests. the trail was clearly visible and it was evident that it was used by people often unlike the trail before which bore not much signs of human influence. On the way we got a glimpse of the Kuthriyaur falls which was very majestic, although we didn't pass right in front of it, yet it looked very noisy and huge from a distance. the trail moved parallel along the river which ended up at the kuthirayur Dam. quite often we spotted elephant dung on the way, of course we were quite lucky not to spot any elephants on the way . most of us quite exhausted and we were just hoping to reach the dam asap. The small river we came across along the way was cleared quite easily.

Soon it was dark and this is when the miseries(or shall i fondly call it the NIGHT TREK) had a beginning. The whole group was by itself split into 2 as the first few set of people marched in quickly and the rest of them including me who had misjudged the distance we needed to cover proceeded at a slower pace. at least we were lucky to have Mani with us. The darkness brought along with it multiple problems. we were firstly running short of torches and so 2-3 people had to manage with one torch, there was no water too. although the path looked pretty easy the darkness made things difficult. some of the steps that could have been kept vaguely in the day were to be judged twice and thrice to precision due to dark cover that surrounded us. the girls had some difficulty here but soon they learnt to manage with it and after a slow and tiring walk with some breaks in between, more importantly bearing all the fake claims Mani had been giving about the distance we finally got the first glimpse of the huge Dam wall that lay front us. Yes it was indeed Kuthorayur Dam. Everyone breathed a sigh of relief as we had made it safe at the end of it all. Bishu had been heading the welcome group that awaited our arrival. Soon we marched to a shop nearby and had some cool drinks from where we got on to our buses and started the journey back to Bangalore.

So the 2 adventurous day amidst the lap of nature far from even traces of civilization had come to a grand end. at the end of it we all safely made it back home. of course we have taken some presents along with us ... Be it the bite marks of the leaches or the swollen legs badly injured or the dirty pants unlike me.... but more so we have even taken a more priceless booty of endless fond memories of the 2 days. be it the beautiful lake,the tough time with the leaches, the endless picturesque mountains, the sprite party inside the tent( of course the conversation following it), the never ending complaints of Madhu Gopal( sorry gopala , but you are a great company), wading through the forests, crossing the river and the night trek of course. I shall remember them all for a long time to come.

I'm more than thankful to the group ...... we did work as a team supporting each other every time, .The guide did a fine job and of course people like Madhukar, prasanna, Bishu, Sathya, Jaggu, Madhu, who had put in extra effort , thanks a lot guys. hope to be a part of more such treks in the coming days. and for the first timers like lakshmi, Sindhu,etc you should be doubly happy cause you couldn't have got a better beginning than this trek. you did start off with a bang.
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dudh sagar

this might sound like yet another post on travel experience but it certainly takes a special place in my heart, something that i'll cherish about for years to come.Now that it has made such an impact on me, i thought i shall capture few of its fond memories carefully and place it in secure servers of this site for me to recall them over and over again.

so here i was in the mystically thick, green terrains of western ghats, a small chunk of which occurs between the borders of karnataka and goa. the place is called dudh sagar precisely because here is a very splendid waterfall that plunges from a height of around 310m and so it appears like milk when it wades its way through the rocks pouncing on them every second. the place stands at an altitude of 512m to the sea level. from here the water flows further down and i'm supposed to been told that it joins the sea in Goa.the place is partially cut off from the land as there are no roads leading to the falls. the nearest motorable road is kulem from where one has to either trek a distance of 10kms to dudh sagar or take a jeep trail which at monsoon times becomes unavailable due to rains, however rail routes comes as an easiest option to people traveling to dudh sagar. the tracks are well laid out and the train pushes its way through the heart of the falls giving a full glimpse of the raging falls. the bridge that cut across the falls is an engineering marvel , it adds to the beauty of the falls in a big way and is said to be over a century old, it has clearly stood testimony to the quality of construction carried out at those days. the railway line is said to have existed from a long time under the name of portugese railways as goa untill the 1960's was a Portuguese territory. anyways lets not branch off from here let me get back straight to our trekking expedition.

we left Bangalore by 9.40PM on friday , on august the 14th. the Chennai-Vasco express chugged along effortlessly and in time as we got on to our compartments
and trying to introduce ourselves as many of us were new to each other . we were 19 people in all me in particular was a total stranger to the rest of the gang. the sleeping bags and mats were sorted out and our berths identified and soon it was bed time for many of us. hey wait how can i miss out on mentioning madhukar here. he and his friends have been the brainchild behind all the planning , scheduling , executing the trip, again it was he who had let me join the trip as one of his friends had dropped out ,i was in with a sort of a wild card entry , anyways i am more than glad i made it. the food(which was more like the MTR menu card on the table), the tents , sleeping bags, and even the Indian flag which we hoisted the following day was so perfectly planned)

Day 2(august 15th) started as early as 6 with train reaching the hubli station and from there on plains started opening up. the green country side which were mostly untouched started showing up. the characteristic curved tracks gave a beautiful view of the train engine .the bogies that were arranged in a semi circular fashion were worth a click.soon we were in londa and further in castle rock in no time. from here on the train started descending the western ghats to reach goa that lies at the sea level. sitting on the train doors shall give one ample view of the beautiful mountains that lay side by side covered in green. the train covers many tunnels here many of them as long as 500m. water seeps through these tunnels forming droplets which are really beautiful to see. soon dudh sagar arrived and after some quick shots of the waterfall for the first time we got on to the doors waiting for kulem to arrive with all our bags all set to trek all the way back to dudh sagar on foot along the railway track.

after getting down at kulem the food packets were sorted out . then followed the program of flag hoisting as it was the independence day and some photo sessions followed by the national anthem. the anthem was played and we all stood in silence until it finished. i felt it that we needed to sing it really loud and proud like the good old schooling days. anyways after the national anthem chocolates were distributed and we were walking towards dudh sagar in no time. i was totally stunned seeing huge trekking bags on everybody's back fully robust and huge that carried quite a lot of stuff while in my case my poor Nike college bag that had never seen a weight of more than 2 books all throughout the 4 years of engineering was overly stuffed. it was evident that i was carrying the lightest luggage.

the trek uphill along the tracks covers a total of 10 kms until dudh sagar. the weather was highly volatile in terms of rain pouring every now and then. while most of the gang had a poncho to protect them my 3 fold umbrella was all that i had. it had really saved the day for me by protecting my bag from getting wet in rain. the trek was fun with numerous ponds and tunnels along the way. half the number of people were left behind walking slowly exploring too many things on the way while the rest half managed to march ahead of them. we waited for them at exactly half way through. so once they were there the trek resumed. on the way we stopped by for a brief lunch break with some chapathi, Rottis with MTR subjis . this followed some monkey business sathya especially shares a special bond for animals so monkeys got a chance to be nicely fed with breads. Marching ahead it was 3 odd and we had reached around 8 kms . this is when dudh sagar started appearing to us in full fledged at a distance from the view point. after taking some snaps we settled down at a nearby small waterfall that had exactly everything it took have a fun filled bath which was refreshingly fresh.

later moving on we covered the remaining distance and finally landed up at dudh sagar. There lie in front us the mighty waterfall. we were standing exactly at the center of the bridge the waterfall all around us. small droplets rising all above in the air covering the area like a mist. everyone had enough of photo sessions some like me wanted to be shot with shades on/off while some wanted photos jumping in the air while some sitting on the wall of the bridge, some wanted to splash water on each other while others were happy just standing and posing. again madhukar was kind enough to adhere to the demands of all of us and took enough snaps. time flew unnoticed admiring the gigantic presence of the falls and soon it was dark. the gang had already pitched in tents and we had dinner with the MTR menu that had arrived to doodh sagar in our bags. it was calm, cool, no rains to our luck. probably candle lights were the only one missing in the dinner and they had been replaced with torches. after dinner was a lot of fun filled activity with each other posing questions to everyone of us. no one was spared

lemme recall some of the light moments here , i hope people would'nt mind if i did

1. the ragging incident of madhu kutti
2. prasanna's part time tcs job and full time adventure activity.
3. 11 proposals that came in madhugopal's way and sadly all got rejected the only one that was on hold also having been eventually rejected.
4. madhu kutti spotting jaggu in ladies section of eva mall( this was funn)
5. tracking genius madhugopal's own car having got stolen.
6. the crush tales revolving around sathya, harish and the PMO( divya i suppose).
7. ragavendran having moved to bangalore for reason that bangalore is near to western ghats.( i never knew this fact)
8.Peter's hobbies which included drinking
for the rest of the people including me i'm not quite able to recollect, would be glad if people were to pitch in.

soon it was bed time, some of them stayed awake for longer while the rest got into their tents. myself being new to tents found it a little hard to get sleep as it was too hot inside. anyways given the amount of activity we had done all day, falling sleep was just a matter of minutes. i used to get awakened in the nights whenever a train passed by ,often it used to be a goods train that used to pass by with more than 3 engines pushing it from the back the amount of sound these engines used to create was too loud and given the magnitude of the load that they push from one side and pull from the other side. often it is iron ore that these goods trains carry which finally reaches Marma goa port through vasco and ultimately lands in large ships to be exported. it is not surprising if indian railways makes thousands of crores of profit given the amount of revenue that is generated through the freight carriers.

day2 (august 16th sunday)
Day2 started by around 7 o clock with everyone headed for a stroll to dudh sagar railway station to enquire the availability of trains towards kulem. after conforming that there was a train at 11 o clock we headed back to our tents to start getting ready. breakfast was bread with jam/pickle/sauce and soon everyone were ready with their shoes on and we finally bid a grand good bye to dudh sagar after taking a few snapshots with the whole of the group. soon we were in kulem headed towards a river that flew nearby . this i feel was water coming from dudh sagar and other small springs from the mountains. after a refreshing bath, swim and few daring stunts by bishu, satya, madhu, madhugopal etc . it was lunch time. after having lunch with MTR menu which now sounded usuall we headed towards kulem station and soon we were on the train traveling back home.

the journey on train back to bangalore was again memorable in more ways than i could even think off . from playing cards to anthyakshari to dumb charades that werent restricted to just hindi or kannada and had movies with universal approach. playing these were whole lot of funn. me particularly being totally new to the trade learnt a whole of tricks playing them. here i need to thank the girls for being active participants. soon time flew and it was 12 in the midnight and was time to hit the beds.following morning the train reached bangalore late by an hour. so i needed to take the auto. even headed to the office after some reaching home and getting refreshed . what happened later is a totally different story about my dozing chapter in the office.

Now that the trip has ended all that remains is sweet memories of the falls and whole of pictures taken there. it couldnt have been what it was without the rest 18 people who were totally supportive. taking names of all you guys would mean a lot of effort so i just wanna thank you all once again for being a part of this 2 memorable days and hoping for more such treks in future


always truly yours

karthik

BMTC

well this time I thought i shall share a little about my personal experience and my views that i've had from the last one month traveling in BMTC buses that rule Bangalore roads or probably i should say ruthlessly rule Bangalore roads. my association with these buses are not something that would just date back to a month or so.I have been traveling on BMTC buses ever since my primary schooling days however there is a lot of discontinuity as i've switched to cycles and then bikes, pooling, etc etc in between. i want to recall here that there was a route 10A which i did travel in my primary schooling days this route was where Rajnikanth used to be a conductor way long back

Now lets throw some light onto the facts and figures that govern BMTC .the organization has close 5300 buses under its fleet including some cozy and modern Volvo B7RLE's with a very low floor, then usual EURO-3 buses called the parisara vahini with the base fares, the new fleet of buses with air suspension, fans and a whole lot of other services like the BIG-10, kendra sarige ,ATAL sarige, etc. it operates over 5000 daily routes the total workforce stretches over 20,000. the total number of depots is over 32 and mini bus shelters all around the city goes upto 2200 and its growing at a huge pace. daily on an average 37 lakh people travel by BMTC. i would say its one of the very few organizations under the government that positions itself as being very dynamic and constantly bringing out new features into its basket. it is also been the most profitable urban transportation organizations in the country making some good figures. the last years profit alone touched over 140 crore . this is easily a huge figure considering the fact that transport organizations all over the world end up making losses.

a lot can be attributed to success of BMTC, be it the absence of a suburban trains or a metro in Bangalore and BMTC being there at the right time to cash in on the opportunity and positioning itself at the right areas with the right fleet of buses and infrastructure, then it could be the heavy influx of people form form other states to Bangalore and some don't have vehicle so BMTC comes as a default mode of transport to all these people who are left without alternative .then there are the labor class of people who are dependent on BMTC again owing to its nuke and corner connectivity. these people are the ones who get highly benefited by the BMTC bus passes including the poplar daily passes as these are aggressively priced and allows one to travel in any bus on any route. this allows a lot of hop and jump from buses so that one can reach the destination faster. BMTC also rents buses to the corporate world for the transportation of their employees this has also ensured that they enjoy a steady income from these IT and non-IT industries. then there are few colleges and schools that make use of BMTC buses these arrangements are beneficial for both the BMTC and these educational institutions ensuring safe travel of the students using them . then there is the IT crowd that often makes use of volvos ensuring these volvos are doing good business and on weekends the volvo fares are reduced and this ensures that they are common man savvy on weekends so in this way they end up making good collections on all days , the volvos running on the airport route are too highly priced but there has been such a good connectivity of these buses from all corners of bangalore to airport that people have been using them over taxis and personal vehicles considering the fact that traveling to airport is a 40+40 km affair to many of us. for someone commuting on a domestic flight and ends up paying a UDF of over 300 rupees for using an airport that never seems to appear of an international standard it is worth to pay 150 rupees for an AC ride to home on these volvo buses which are on service round the clock. these buses are even decked up and ready to accommodate huge baggage if any so that one can enjoy a hassle free ride home, then major bus terminals of BMTC are spruced up and some even have malls and shopping complex(big bazaar's) in them to get money flowing into the organization through rents and lease and finally last but not the least there is this BMTC governing body that thinks that it is here to make profits, something which it feels it is entitled to, therefore any rise in the fuel prices is almost instantly passed on to the passengers pockets so that BMTC remains unaffected.


however there are problems faces by BMTC to looking at the point of view of a commuter the most primary would be " the Bangalore traffic". the word has had great influence in our lifestyles probably been a flagship word often used by many right from taking excuses citing it, to accounting for absence, late to work, etc etc traffic here has grown from bad to worse to even ugly( at few places) this would be the factor that sort of puts a tab on BMTC's growth.a commuter like me would probably have 2 options to get from one point to another. one would be a 2 wheeler and the other would be bus. further if i start zeroing on between the 2 then I'd start looking at the comparison between the fuel costs and the ticket costs that I'll incur. lets take an example: for instance a ride from my home to majestic bus stand which is the main transit point for any destination in Bangalore, it would cost me 10 rupees in a bus while it costs me less than 9 rupees on a 2 wheeler as the distance is around 8 kms and in the cases where I'd have a pillion rider I'd be able to save even more traveling by a 2 wheeler. but then someone like me( rather many like me) who's conscious of environment would still think let me contribute on my part by trying to reduce emissions by traveling through public transport. then there is the time factor which is very decisive in all our lives. a ride from my home to majestic takes 1 hour on an average on a bus and the same ride takes 20 mins on a 2 wheeler . this is something that many of us would'nt be in a position to compromise on. then there are factors like irregular arrival and departure timings of these buses which again lead to waiting and delays ,this is something probably no one has a control of considering that Bangalore traffic plays hues and cries at times making it next to impossible for these bus drivers to maintain regular timings , then there is a problem overcrowding of buses , some trivial factors like unfriendly drivers and conductors in some buses also play a role in making BMTC not so friendly for many of us.

A solution to these problems lies in taking of private vehicles off road to the maximum extent, this however is not possible by force nor is it not possible to ask all people to travel by BMTC which brings along with it so many disadvantages. the right solution is definitely in bringing up the metro in full fledged across Bangalore. this would by itself provoke a lot of people of Bangalore to give up their private vehicles and switching to metro. I'm sure even the IT managers who don't seem to think beyond their cars shall also consider traveling by metro, simple reasons being its clean energy , cheap , word class, fast and efficient. BMTC's on the other hand could act as feeders to these metro stations ensuring that they don't go out of business. both the BMTC and metro could be integrated and common passes issued that could be used in both the modes of transport. this shall definitely improve traffic situations and bring down the vehicle density in Bangalore that are currently on havoc mode. this shall also ensure that emission levels in Bangalore shall gradually come down and make way for restoring some of the lost glory's of Bangalore like trees and peaceful roads that are either diminishing and are practically non existent respectively. once this happens we could slowly concentrate on making good pavements on roads for walkers and also try to introduce cycling lanes for the people preferring it.


on a lighter note we have all experienced many things on a ride in BMTC buses be it silently hearing 2 or more people conversing loudly in the local language sitting in the bus, or the irritating guy loudly talking on his mobile phone and lying to the listener at the other end that he is malleshwaram while the bus is actually is in jayanagar, or the charming girl from the college in the front seat about whom we friends kept talking about , or the ride on the foot board feeling the wind and trying to alienate from the crowded bus inside or the sweet old school and college days where the conductor just used to keep yelling at us to remove the huge bag from the back and hold it on out hands and we simply wouldn't listen. probably many of us including me would have traveled to so many places in Bangalore in BMTC on a school bus pass that had an entirely different route and we were so confident that the conductor wouldn't check. these were some of the fond memories i shall carry over with me.

Kutta- paradise untouched

If any one were to ask me have you ever been to a place with no idea about it and no expectations and yet it turn to be something so memorable then I’d say its definitely gotta be kutta , a small town bordering Karnataka and kerala in madkeri district


Ok so now before I talk about kutta in detail lets go a little into how I ended up being there, for which I’ll have to talk about friends that I have recently met online .we’re this group of enthusiasts pretty much bored doing the obvious things all the time so one among us had came up with something out of the box and gradually after some nurture and fine tuning it was all set to take off. So we were all ready to go to this place called kutta for a 2 day trip. Now this aint any ordinary trip it came with its own peculiarity and at the same time was innovative.

The task was pretty much simple and straightly laid out, we were supposed to go to the place(kutta) , find a job there and earn enough money that could bring us back home.
How we went about doing the job is something we shall talk about later

So we set on the journey on Friday night the 10th of may, we were 10 of us, the number was achieved after a lot of additions and deletions. me myself had dropped out earlier and had made a last minute decision to join the team. Many of us were new to each other yet fully charged up to take on the task of the trip. We got to know each other on the way and then we did talk a lot about everything. Be it gossip, the system of education, or the government everyone had a say in everything we talked and talked. So in no time we were all got along with each other so easily

It was nearly 6 in the morning by the time we reached the entrance of nagarhole national park. We got out of our van and had a quick glimpse of the forests before our driver could fill some formalities at the entrance of the gate. Thus our van drove into the park , the road leading through the forest was in good condition and is dotted with numerous curves, which I feel is delight to drive through . The forest appeared calm and beautiful in the early morning. We could spot some deers, peacocks and an elephant to our luck. The more fiercer ones were never to be found. I just hope they re in good numbers deep in the park. It was very discouraging to see so much of human settlement inside the park which was something to worry, anyways we exited the park in no time and reached kutta. This place was actually at the edge of the forest. probably that was what made it so beautiful and calm

We reached the main bus stand, which appeared like a scene from a movie from a bygone era. the whole atmosphere looked stand still with the time . there were very few people and some stores that we could spot these stores had very little to offer .people in here spoke Malayalam and only handful of them knew kannada which was again disappointing given to the fact that kutta still belongs to Karnataka. Anyways on the whole the place looked peaceful. we made futile attempts to find a room to freshen up however the 2 lodges that kutta had were filled.
So our only hope was “tranquill lake” which offered home stay at a little distance from kutta in a place called chircad . how we gotta know about this pace was through a visiting card given to us by the forest guard at the exit gate of the forest we somehow managed to get the card even though he was reluctant to hand it over to us after listening to our plans . he knew this place was damn costly and was sceptic about whether we could really afford it .

So here we were inside tranquill lake which was a huge estate spanning 30 odd acres . Once inside we wasted no time in meeting its owner Mr Cariappa .he sounded very polite and enthusiastic towards us .after we told him our plans he was almost spontaneous in agreeing to offer us a job . he even agreed to give us the dormitory which was a part of his home stay for free in return to our work that we wanted to do. each bed on the dormitory was supposed to cost 350 per night ,so that came fully free

He immediately took us to the coffee plantations where he assigned a group of 5 which included me the task of ground preparation around the coffee plant for manuring . the other group of 5 was assigned the task of manure mixing along with wood smoothening and one among us was offered to look after the pepper weight and the number of bags that he was selling the same day to the agents

So we got onto to work in no time even though we still didnt have bath or breakfast.
this was the sort of work that required no brain it was just raw labour and we enjoyed doing it. After clearing 10 plants or so was when body showed some reluctance in the form of sweat. However it didn’t matter much we kept going interrupted by small resting sessions often that marked some photo clicks and some chit chatting with the labourers there. The more we got to know about them it was both encouraging and discouraging. They led a simple life and had very less to worry about, they didn’t care for the government that had completely neglected them neither were they unhappy about being paid very less for a days labour. They sounded to be content. they did have their own share of entertainment in form of movies that they watch every week in theatres. What I felt nice about these people were that they had very little to complain in life unlike we people who have so many complaints given to the fact that they were paid as little as 75 rs for a days labour and still they seemed happy enough. We were able to make ground clear for 150 plants (the number have got a little exaggerated) and then we set off to see what the rest of team were upto


the rest of the team had already finished mixing one set of fertilizer bags that comprised of various chemical fertilizers to be mixed in various proportion. We helped them a little in loading the bags and then we were all off to bath and after a heavy breakfast of uppitu and lots of pickles we got on to heels to repeat the same task of fertilizer mixing and managed to finish one more set. the count was now 40 bags and this made it 2 sets
by the time this task was finished it was nearly afternoon 2.30 . we wasted no time and headed to the lake where the restaurant was situated. The lunch was plain yet tasty probably because we worked so hard and all of us were so hungry . the workers in the estate who doubled up as servers in the hotel , helpers in fertilizer mixing were very kind to us and treated us well.


some of the things that I observed about kutta was This place had only 2 kinds of ppl. One set were the rich and the hugely wealthy with acres of coffe plantations like Cariappa and others were the labourers who worked under these people . the middle class people were not to be spotted mostly

now it was 4 in the evening and everyone were ready to leave for irupu falls which is pretty close by to kutta we had a great blast under the falls which had water flowing in at freezing temperatures. Some preferred to stay away from the falls and helped click our photos and by the time we returned back to the estate it was evening and we stopped by on the way to buy a small gift to Cariappa . the idea was unanimous among everybody probably everyone in the group felt very impressed by his hospitality.

The night didn’t have much of activities because we were already tired working all day so we all had dinner on the lake side hotel , some preferred to have wine while others like me very happy with the chapathis that we ordered and we all got back to the rooms and thus the day had to end


Day 2 started as early as 7 o clock when we all started with the fertilizer mixing for another set of 20 bags this time we had what’s called the pace as we worked in close tandem like a team by dividing work amongst each other so thus we were able to finish the task much more earlier we then retuned to our rooms and quickly had bath and vacated the rooms most of them were sceptical about facing cariappa and telling him that we had given up and wanted to leave. We then went into his house and he was kind enough to let us leave. We presented him with a gift that we had got yesterday, his joy seemed no bound he was very happy to take it . we cleared some of the bills that needed to be cleared before leaving and thus we left tranquill lake .

It was nice staying at this place for close to 24 hours Cariappa was a broad hearted rich person. Many of us were taken by shock when he told that he was a bachelor and stayed with his mom alone. He was very dynamic and respected nature a lot which was evident from the way he talked about forests and coffee plantations. he had a good business mind for which his estate stood testimony. Apart form income that he derived from coffee, spices like pepper, etc , orange, jackfruit, honey collection and many more crops that his estate owned . he had beautifully crafted some part of his estates into home stay with the right ambience that people would look for. Here was a man who could have just chose to ignore us but instead took concern to help us realize the aim of our trip which I feel was successfully achieved. I shall remember him for a long time to come and am hoping to spend sometime in his home stay cottages sometime in future


we then drove to a hotel nearby and had breakfast further we had planned to go kurva island that was in kerala . after some dilemma of the driver about the permits we somehow managed to convince him and thereby we left . These islands were nothing that special to sort of talk of. I told to myself probably nisarga dhama in madkeri is a much better place
on the way back to Bangalore we again had to cross nagarhole where we stopped to have glimpse of elephants at the camp inside the forests . It was nice to stand very close to these tamed elephants and touch them .each of these tuskers have their own record in terms of the number of mahouts they ve killed all their life. With count going upto as high as 5. I felt the life of these mahouts were very pitiful

after leaving nagarhole it was again time for chit chat and everyone started narrating some funniest instance in their lives, some talked about the memorable moments so we were all fully engrossed in this activity it was night 8 and we stopped by to have dinner at a dhaba on mysore road. This one luckily had a good taste , sadly many of the dhabas on mysore road aren’t that good .in no time our van reached Bangalore as one by one people started to leave it was hard to digest that the trip had come to an end

.like they say all good things have to come an end. This one had met its end. However memories of the trip shall remain in us for a long time to come


my friends sachi, vishwas, vishwa angadi, sandesh, ashwini, sharath, vinay, prabhath, deepa and certainly the diver sardar . i shall thank all of you for being a part of this trip which was something new, something to remember, something to cherish

the sad tale of lalbagh and nanda road

my heart feels very heavy when i think about the recent developments that have been revolving around the metro rail which has had gained so much hype and expectations in Bangalore.


suddenly i no longer regard metro rail which i thought meant a lot of pride for Bangalore as something not worth all of it. the recent spat of issues and controversies that it is bringing up makes me feel "is metro doing good or is it wielding an axe right into the heart of Bangalore ".
however i still strongly stand for having metro rail services inside bangalore but not at the cost of bangalore it self, metro doesnt have to alter the face of bangalore all together for what good it brings ,we are not ready to part with the identity of bangalore itself just to make it better.

now let me talk a little about Bangalore south , a place where I've lived all my life, a true place to be! dotted with beautiful wide roads ,parks ,shopping complexes,malls, the prestigious jayanagar extension that holds the pride to being the biggest locality in Asia , not to forget lalbagh that upholds the very definition of Bangalore being called a garden city .an another road that i want to specifically mention is the road between south end circle which stands as a gateway to jayanagar locality and ending at sangam circle which marks the end of this huge locality. the road might approximately be about 2-3kms long and it has parks and service roads running on either side of it , the road is dotted with trees on either side and there are indeed so much of trees that all through the stretch of the road one cant see any sun and can flawlessly travel in the cool shade of these trees which are over 50 yrs old. i would easily be tempted to call it one of the most beautiful roads Bangalore has. the place is so calm and shady that few years back the organizers chose this road for the bicycle race for the 4th national games which Bangalore hosted. this road is popularly called nanda road as the nanda theater which once existed stood on this road , however it was pulled down recently to make way for a better building. some of the specialties about these theaters were they always showed Kannada movies which were better some time back and they offered tickets at rock bottom prices . me getting accustomed to these theaters found it really hard to shell out those extra bucks with the advent of multiplexes some time back

now coming back to where we started, the metro rail project. it feels very painful to digest the fact that the metro rail cuts throughout the nanda road(which is a good thing however ) and the cost that that it comes at is a massive 323 trees being felled on nanda road and on lalbagh to make way for the metro. these numbers are not something that we can ignore in the name of development. it might be easy to say the same simple mantra of the bureaucrats that for every tree felled we shall plant twice the number of saplings but that is far from reality to imagine those saplings growing into trees which alone takes several decades and the amount of effort it takes to nurture them is a huge task.

of course any illogical developments comes with an opposition in the form of protests which the residents have taken up, however little heed has been given to their protests and the metro work has been sailing through practically ignoring the suggestions of the people who actually use it in the future. there have been a lot of suggestions that has been coming from people that the metro should go underground when it comes to saving trees which i feel is totally justified . it may be true that for places where metro should go underground the cost escalates by twice or thrice which should not be a problem . protecting the heritage and the greenery of Bangalore should be our principle agenda , and as far as the increase in the cost for the metro can always be recovered by charging a rupee or two higher in ticket prices

citizens of Bangalore have always appreciated quality infrastructure development and have always paid higher money to use them. some of the live examples that i can recollect are NICE road with toll for every 5-10kms, the ride from BIAL to Bangalore on a Volvo buses that costs a whopping 150 rupees but still ends up making fair business. these are very few among the many such examples

the citizen of Bangalore shall welcome metro in full pride and would proudly use these Eco friendly transportation and he shall definitely be more than willing to pay an additional fee for the ticket rather than see a green and calm nanda road go fully barren and huge pillars of metro rail along it just to keep the cost low in building the metro, this is something people would never wish to see .....

now it is for the authorities to re align the plan and re shape the path of the metro cos its never to late to do something good and positive. i just hope they start working as soon as possible to make the metro a real winner.

" metro baralu ondhu varusha saku adare hasiru barulu halavu varushagale beku
adake maragalannu kadeyabedi"

i would also like to quote one famous line here

"kumbarange varusha dhonnege nimisha"......hegagadhirali a maragala padu

Recession

>Economies Have suffered today ,
Recession has been the talk of the day . . .

companies are becoming bankrupt ,
lay off's becoming common without any interrupt . .

Sensex has taken a negative slope ,
nasdaq has gone out of scope . . .

World economy seems damaged
they look totally savage. .

There's little one can do in the present situation ,
except hold on to ur job to see that they don put u on permanent vacation . . .

America appears to be worst hit
I pity them, their supremacy no longer fit

Ppl Have lot of hopes pinned on obama . .
We gotta see what he has in store for us now

In a situation like this all i can say is wait and watch
U never know what in future u got

slum dog millionaire

the results are out and its clear slum dog has cleanly swept the oscars with as high as 8/10.
this might be a great joy for the people of india as Reheman gets a perfect 2 for his music .
but then there is much pain somewhere in the heart for the film having highlighted the negative aspects out great country which was again blown out of proportion trying to gimmick on the maximum possible way to show the poverty that exists in here, when there is a ton full of positive aspects of country which could have been shown in an even better way with vibrant colors to it.

now coming to the movie and how it takes you through a slum kid's life in mumbai, there was nothing that kept me occupied throughout the movie , all along the movie i kept feeling that our ,mumbai slums cant be so bad and in fact there is nothin really happening like what has actually been shown with young kid's eyes been taken away, or underworld being such an easy career to these kids however few other scenes were very moving.

i enjoyed watchin benjamin button and reader more than what i did watchin slumdog. and i have friends who're of the similar opinion ,kate winslet did fully deserve that oscar and with bradpitt i feel he had a tough race winning it although i feel sorry for him missing out the 3rd time. its really surprising that the oscar committe didnt find those 2 movies worth enough ,this kind of puts me in tizzy as to how would the foreign audience actually have liked slum dog showcasing our poverty . has it been such a hit with them that they gave away so many awards.

i ve been an avid film watcher and every year and i ve watched almost evry oscar nominated movies as much as possible and i had my own ideas as to when would a movie win an oscar , but now seein slum dog my equations seems to have tumbled down fully..

lastly i've been reading that after slumdog's impact much of relief seems to have been coming for those slum kids , i hope this movie would bring some positinve change in their lives . atleast in my opinion this is the least slum dog could do , atleast it didnt impress me as a movie.

jai ho rehman and russell and the spirit of our indian people

"mangalore pub incident" just an assault or a wake up call

its been a week or so since the pub incident has occurred and i must say this incident is blown truly out of proportion. the media on one hand has been glorifying the videos of the assault time and again crying foul over the government and its inability to tackle the situation the government on the other hand doing not enough justice to the victims and involved in more of a blame game taking the whole issue somewhere else.

firstly an organisation like sri rama sene must have been banned mercilessly which has taken a law into the hand literally assaulted people in way thats even hard to think off, it is nothin but just a gunda sene with a set of violent people with no human values i do not think this sene as of now is anything more than that. we've been seeing a lot of organisations like the kannada rakshana vedike,ABVP, and other pro kannada organisations etc which have shown tolerance in their protests to some extent even though they have sometime resorted to violence at some point of time however the rama sene has taken law totally into their hands in the worst possible way. i feel its our apathy that they use our sacred hindu god Rama to name their organisation. i do not know who built this sene and with what ideologies and goals was this sene formed , but however this incident has totally tarnished its image and it has completely gone into wrong hands. but i still see light for the sri rama sene as now it has strung into popularity , if it is to really make use of this opportunity then it must convert this popularity into positive energy by taking up its issues in a peace full manner . however those people involved in the pub incident have to stringently punished .

now looking at the pub culture and how it is growing at an alarming rate. bangalore may have already earned the tag of being the pub capital of India, other cities like mangalore etc may have started catching up. but is this tag something that we really require or to be proud off ,has anyone bothered to find out how many young boys and girls frequent these pubs or what impact does these pubs have on them. do we really require this pub culture in these huge numbers of them all over our places . isn't this culture purely aping the west , do we need to embrace it in such a way as it is happening now. often we see people say they work hard whole of the week so they frequent pubs in the weekend to unwind and relax but does the same explanation hold good for young boys and girls going to colleges i think definitely no. so its time we sit back and look what is really happening in these pubs and think about regulating the age of people going these pubs.

ultimately one must agree that pubs are definitely not any sort of a boon to our society however it is upto the people who visit them and indulge in drinking or smoking inside these pubs as it is the question of human freedom but at least government should definitely regulate by bringing upon a law for age bar to the entry into these pubs .lastly media especially the TV has not been fair in airing these violence videos time and again on air rather they should take the real issues and fight with the government airing these videos only creates more pain in the victims and anger among the public .

the trip to thiruvananthapuram

this jan 2009 we'd been to kerala . i would'nt exactly call it a trip cos its more of a pilgrimage, less of a trip . our destination being the ananthapadmanaba temple in thiruvanathapuram. so we started our journey beginning 28th jan night from Bangalore on the ever crowded kanyakumari express . since we had our tickets reserved there werein for no hassles the journey was smooth . what really caught upon my attention was the completely electrified rail routes from bangalore and untill kanyakumari . this is something i had never expected and considering the fact that most rail routes within karnataka mostly run on diesel engines i felt have our state been left out in getting the proper rail infrastructure .

the good thing about electric trains were they made less noise, drove much faster, they had uniform torque and most importantly were pollution free. anyways moving on the night was smooth, i had a good sleep(apart from one incident which goes censored) and woke up at about 4 AM in the morning to enjoy some fresh air standing by the door, however i couldn hold on standing for long as it was very chilling. the one thing about this train was even though its destination was kanyakumari in tamil nadu it largely covered most of kerala in its journey ,even crossed andhrapradesh on the way.

soon the sun was up and people started flowing into our reserved compartments with open tickets they were mostly students and office goers this did'nt matter too much because train was mostly empty by then an there was regular rotation of people getting down and flowing in. our destination was reached by 3.45 a perfect half an hour late which was very much upholding our railway tradition.

i had to negotiate my grandparents across the stairs which was a lil difficult for them considering that my grandfather hadnt eaten anythin that whole day travelling, he's a very Orthodox man doesnt eat food without bathing anyways that's his choice on our part we had packed enough to have during the journey and so we were decently full. the next task was too search a room in the city which i was lot worried about anyways we somehow managed to strike a economic deal in a hotel close to the station and the rooms very very clean and looked good.

then it was bath time and we all had bath and got ourselves ready for the ananthapadmanaba temple by 5 o clock evening we had the darshan and managed to get back to the rooms by 8.30 .the thing about the temple was absolutely no entry without dhoti and we weren allowed to take inside any mobile or camera, which i felt was a lil harsh.

talking about the temple is some thin i really would love to , the temple complex is huge i happen to hear that it was the largest temple in kerala , the architecture , the carvings, the gopura were magnificent. the deity in the sanctum sanatorium again was very pleasing to see .lord vishnu in sleeping position in the name of anantha padmanaba. i was very satisfied by the way the preists conducted themsleves considering what we usually see in some temples about they being only after our dakshina rather than performing the pooja with all fearfulness.


the next day we left room by 2.30 am in the morning again for the same temple and our puja's were finished by 6 and so therefore we had the whole day to roam about thiruvananthapuram.
leaving no opportunity un seized we hired a qualis for the city sight seeing for which we spent 1400 all inclusives. some of the places we then saw were atkul devi temple which happens to be called shabarimala of women, then we went to the kovalam beach, here i have to mention about the leela kovalam hotel to its adjacent this was somethin like a masterpiece of pleasure. from what i could see the hotel looked splendid.

carrying on we then went to sangamukham beach which is right opposite to the trivendrum international airport, however the link roads to the airport appeared to be of a very sub standard quality some kind of a galli road if i can say then our next destination was Veli village park which had a nice water body right adjacent to the sea . we tried our hands on boating however we gave up the idea after knowing that the prices were too costly. then further moving we then went to the city museum and park, visited the zoo, i would rate the zoo very average it hardly had any animals and it lacked maintanence however the garden looked attractive

we came out of the garden and the driver drove us back to out lodge and there it was the end of our trip . we packed our luggage and boarded the trivendrum-chennai super fast express we had a nice tight sleep considering all of us were tired.
we got down at salem from where we initially planned to take a bus to bangalore however to our luck we found a passenger train to bangalore which was to leave to bangalore almost ready to depart we quickly climbed on to this train and reached bangalore by 10.30 am. so that was the end of our kerala trip.