A trip to Kudremukha - The Plan

The year 2010 has been a very dry year for me... Except for the Kolkata-Sikkim trip in the month of April, I haven't been to any other trip and esp. treks. Even though there were many a plans before a couple of friends' marriage, the plans never got implemented... The same thing happened even this time... Though no particular place was decided for the trip, the dates were all finalized... and we boys were all ready to wear the trekking gear and to start the trek, if need arises, from Bangalore it-self... But as expected one girl from the gang backed out at the last minute & the chain reaction started... many others also backed out..

I was so desperate to go to a trip/trek... I was ready even to go alone if nobody accompanied me... Luckily I found not 1 not 2 but 4 others who were ready for the trek.... During the planning stage the number had reduced to 3 but now it is finalized that 5 of us will be leaving at-last on Friday night for the trip. Guess one can understand my desperateness when I stress on the word "at-last"... my mind deserves a long break from all the thinking I am doing these days.... I just want to stop thinking about anything.. be in the midst of nature... enjoy the trek thoroughly... have some authentic coastal but vegetarian food... and last but not least... be away from the common Bangalore din!!!

Ok... So where are we going?

We aren't the type of people who keep thousands of options and then struggle to choose one place to go to... We had 2 options - kudremukha or kemmaNNUgunDi. We decided to go with the former one since one of my friends had already visited the latter one.

What other places are we visiting?

Below is a list of places that we have planned to visit on 30th and 31st of October, 2010.

1. kudremukha - our main destination

2. gangamoola - the birthplace of three rivers - tunga, bhadra and nethravathi

3. jamalabad fort - fort built during Tipu Sultan's time, around 65 KM from mangalooRu
4. horanaDu - devi annapoorneshwari's temple
5. sringeri - devi sharade temple
6. hanuma gunDi jalapatha - 32 KM from kalasa
7. bhadravathi Nature Camp

How are we going?

Initially, when the number was reduced to 3, we'd decided to board the KSRTC bus to kalasa and from there take another private bus to kudremukha. The reason to take the public transport was simple - cost. According to my estimation if we take KSRTC bus to-and-fro, we'd be spending anywhere between Rs. 1000.00/- to Rs. 1750.00/- Instead if we hire a cab we'd be spending anywhere between Rs. 2000.00/- to Rs. 2700.00/- That was a huge difference... and for a small group of 3 members, this cost was exhorbitant... so the decision to make use of KSRTC buses was taken...

Yesterday my other friend and his wife also decided to join us for the trip... and the group size has now grown to 5. Because of the increase in the number of people (3 to 5), we have decided to hire a Toyota Qualis. And now the cost estimation is anywhere between Rs. 1700.00/- to Rs. 2500.00/- and it was ok with us.

One might argue that going by KSRTC was still a better option. Though going by a private vehicle works out to be costlier than public transport, it is a lot more flexible when compared to going by a public transport. All of us stay in different locations of the city bengalooRu and finding local BMTC buses during the night is a problem. Since it is also a long weekend (November 1st being a holiday on the occassion of kannaDa rajyothsava) even getting tickets in KSRTC buses was a little difficult. Moreover, there are no direct buses to kudremukha. We have to get down at kalasa and from there hire a local private bus to reach kudremukha.

What exactly is the plan?

The plan is to leave bengalooRu on Friday, 29th October, 2010 night in Toyota Qualis and reach either horanaDu or sringeri by early morning on Saturday, 30th October, 2010. After taking bath, finish visiting the temple, and depending on the time, we can visit any/all the intermediate places listed above. Probably we may keep horanaDu for the next day! Reach an intermediate place, have dinner and sleep off! The next day, i.e. Sunday, 31st October, 2010, climb the kudremukha hill along with the guide. Once the trek is finished, climb down, get into the car and leave for horanaDu or bengalooRu. We'd want to reach bengalooRu by Monday, 1st November, 2010 morning so that we can take rest the entire day before going to the office on 2nd.

What websites did I refer to for planning the trip?

It wasn't easy finding the right information for the places we wanted to visit. Each one of them had taken either a different route or had visited only a subset of the places. So I had to take a help of all of the below mentioned websites to know the pros and cons and then decide on my own about our trip.

1. http://wiki.worldflicks.org/kudremukh.html#coords=(13.208528951673102,75.24742126464844)&z=13
2. http://usandeep.com/trekking/kudremukh.html
3. http://aravindgj.blogspot.com/2006/11/kudremukh.html
4. http://ponderingmusings.blogspot.com/
5. http://paachuprapancha.blogspot.com/
6. http://anushankarn.blogspot.com/2008/07/ramnagar-fort-and-palace.html
7. http://unknowntracks.blogspot.com/
8. http://sharavathi.blogspot.com/
9. http://letsgoforavacation.blogspot.com/
10. http://payaniga.com/
11. http://www.naanushande.com/2006/11/kudremukh-home-stay-trek-n-trip.html
12. http://theicywindblows.blogspot.com/2004/07/kudremukh-experience.html
13. http://shashankbjain.blogspot.com/2007/09/trek-to-kudremukh-peak-may-19-20-2007_6027.html
14. http://shashankbjain.blogspot.com/2007/09/kudremukh-ranges-if-you-ask-my-opinion.html
15. http://payaniga.com/2007/09/trek-to-kuduremukha.html
16. http://www.karnatakaspider.com/resources/3424-Kudremukh-Where-stay.aspx

All these websites are abundant with information about kudremukha, directions to reach, distances, accommodation availability, etc. etc.

I owe a big thank you for each one of these bloggers without whom I wouldn't have had planned for this trek.

Also do note that most of these blog posts were published long back and the information provided might not be accurate. So readers' descretion is required.

Further details about my trip, exact cost, route we took will all be updated in a continuing post, but after the trip.

Mid semester marks are out...

"At last the mid-semester marks are out... Check out by logging into Virtual University" My friend called me up on 19th October and told me this about my BITS Pilani mid-semester exams... and I was in front of the computer at that time... guess I was watching a movie or was doing something of lesser importance :D when she had called me..I immediately logged in and found my results...

I wasn't surprised or even felt bad about the results... coz, I'd expected worse... :D But what surprised me was my marks... The marks in each subject is actually part of the respective subject's code!!!

For e.g.
Comp code for Internetworking Technologies is 1624: and marks is 16
Comp code for Software Engineering & Management is 2115: and marks is 15
Comp code for Network Programming is 1627: and marks is 7
Comp code for OOAD is 1524: and marks is 25 (reverse of 52)

I felt the evaluators had given me marks based on the course code of the respective papers... though it wasn't true... Anyway... one fear I had in the last week is no more... but now I am waiting for the D-Day... my 1st semester final exams results...

Hope I pass at-least with a 'B' grade in the exams if not with a 'A' and I also hope I wont get a 'C' or a 'D' even though there is every possibility that my performance might fetch what I fear!!!

My first finals...

My first finals was exactly the way I'd expected it to be - difficult, surprising, challenging, tiring yet satisfactory - but my action towards it was not the way I'd wanted... It is sad that I miserably failed in not performing as per my own expectations...

If you are thinking what I am talking about... it is about my BITS Pilani MS first semester final examinations... The questions were as tough as I'd expected it to be... but I wasn't prepared well enough to answer all the questions properly. I did realize that a week's time for the finals is no way enough... even though the exam format is "open book" wherein you are allowed to take your books/notes/research materials/print outs etc. etc. you may still not find answers to quite a few questions... The case was exactly the same with me.... The first paper was of Network Programming... I did fairly well in this paper... but the immediate second paper was Software Engineering and Management.... man, was that a question paper? I  struggled finding answers to the questions in all the books I had for almost 1 hour... yet I couldn't answer all the questions... and those which I have answered aren't good enough to fetch me the marks I need to pass, the way I wanted to. :( The next two papers - OOAD and Internetworking Technologies - weren't good either...

The next semester I have much difficult papers... Multimedia Computing, Network Security, Data Mining and Advanced Operating Systems... all of them are difficult... exhaustive... and I want to prepare for the exams right from the start.

If there is a suggestion you want to make about the way I need to study for these MS exams... do inform me... I am not sure.. if smart work will work here.... the age old technique - hard work, I guess is the only solution.... Prove me wrong if you don't think so.... :p

One thing leads to another

Today I was testing the all new http://www.google.co.in search engine... which returns the results when you are still typing your search words.... Wow it is great... faster than ever... and I love google even more than the past... :)

When I was contemplating about the new change in my favourite website.... I, by chance, hit these words in the search area "who hates" trying to find out "who hates self" or actually try to find out "why one hates self"... the search engine.... predicted my search query and showed me the following hints in the same order...

1. who hates indians
2. who hates justin bieber
3. who hates harry potter
4. who hates selena gomez
5. who hates obama

At first I tried to avoid the first hint and completely avoided the rest... and typed "me"... lucky me... I couldn't find any websites... which had photos of me... or couldn't find a single resource on the net which had mentioned my name and had blogged about hating me... (even though there is quite a chance to find people around me who hate me... :-) )

The search results for "who hates me" wasn't satisfactory... so I decided to select the "who hates indians" and search for results...

The results were quite intriguing... and made me go though a couple of them for almost 2 hours... (that is quite a lot of time for me to spend-on esp. when I have my exams in another one week and I am not yet prepared for it)

I am not posting any results out here in my blog... if you want to read them... just google it out, yourself...

Anyway... initially my interest was to know what type of people (to be read as people from which continent, country) hated India more.... but as I kept reading blogs... and comments after comments....I did realize a lot of things about ourselves...

We Indians (I mean most of us)... always try to show a happy-go-lucky face... "Even though we see a dead donkey on our plate.... we are the type of people who look at the dead housefly on a neighbor's plate and comment about it...." This comment may make a few of you laugh and infuriate others... but on the other hand... I hate doing that myself... and hate it even more when I see others do it to somebody else. For e.g. My cousin's family is in a mess... still the woman of the family shows her smiling face to the outside world including to her own parents and in-laws who could help her in setting her family on track.... instead she talks about the neighbor's problems!!

The CWG (common wealth games) was a mess... everybody knows it... but then we dont talk about it... we don't ask the govt. to punish the people who were responsible for that... instead we avoid the topic as much as possible... and when somebody else (to be read as a foreigner) comments about it... we get angry and we feel insulted.... why so?

Of-course there are a lot of developmental activities going on in India, in Karnataka, in Bangalore... We are happy about all those... but that doesn't mean... we should avoid the bad that is happening to the country and let it continue forever... When I say bad... I don't mean the bad that has happened to the Indians in Australia and other countries (racial discrimination and physical attacks) or the terror attacks in Mumbai and rest of India but am talking about the internal problems... problems related to corruption, poverty, food, infrastructure, education, etc. etc. Like the elders say.. the biggest enemy of all is we ourself. We don't change... but we want others to change for us....

Many of us try to avoid problems thinking that it will go away one day... I myself had suggested the same to somebody on her blog when she had suggested that she is thinking of committing suicide!!! I'd said... "Try to solve your problems, ask others' help... if nothing works out... then close your eyes for a while... and let the problem go by the way it had come into your life..." Now I realize how wrong I was.... how could you let go of problems without solving it!!! How could you be even happy when you know you have problems in hand and just pretending that the problems don't exist!!! Some of them might be very lucky... the solution to the problem they are facing... may come from another person... but not all are lucky enough all the time... many a times we have to dig into the problems and go through bigger hell... at-last to come out of all the problems.... that is the irony of life....

I hate politics and politicians and hence I avoid talking about them, reading about them, discussing about them or even thinking about them.... this way I am not achieving anything... I know it... like Amir Khan said in one of his interviews.... When an interviewer asked Amir Khan about why he is commenting on politicians when he can't get into politics and correct the system... Amir replied "I am not made for politics and I can't do every kind of job on earth... but when I see that something is going wrong... I can raise my voice and/or inform somebody that they are wrong..." Well.. these aren't the exact words which were out of Amir's mouth... but this is exactly what he meant. :) This interview was actually published in The TOI.

And now coming back to the title of this article... one might have wondered... why on earth did I chose to call my article "One thing leads to another"... The reason is pretty simple... I didn't end up in the thing I started with... I started with appreciating google... but ended up thinking about the problems faced by the people generally in India and particularly in Bangalore... I guess the title also explains in a way how my mind works... and how fast it changes its track...

Perception: Women Vs Men !!

Another funny email from a friend... about friends. :)

Women Friends chatting in office....

Woman 1: I had a fine evening, how was yours?
Woman 2: it was a disaster. My husband came home, ate his dinner in three minutes and fell asleep in two minutes. How was yours?
Woman 1: Oh it was amazing! My husband came home and took me out to a romantic dinner. After dinner we walked for an hour. When we came home he lit the candles around the house and afterwards talked for an hour. It was like a fairytale!

At the same time, their husbands are talking at work.....

Husband 1: How was your evening?
Husband 2: Great. I came home, dinner was on the table, I ate and fell asleep. It was great! What about you?
Husband 1: It was horrible. I came home, there's no dinner because they cut the electricity because I hadn't paid the bill; so I had to take my wife out to dinner which was so expensive that I didn't have money left for a cab. We had to walk home which took an hour; and when we got home remember there was no electricity so I had to light candles all over the house! After all, I was so aggravated that I couldn't fall asleep and my wife was jabbering away for another hour!

Person hindering YOUR growth is dead!

These days I am getting a lot of cool, informative email forwards... here is one more... Read and enjoy...

This article contains some grammatical mistakes which aren't corrected for originality purpose.

One day all the employees reached the office and they saw a big advice on the door on which it was written:
"Yesterday the person who has been hindering your growth in this company passed away. We invite you to join the funeral".

In the beginning, they all got sad for the death of one of their colleagues, but after a while they started getting curious to know who was that man who hindered the growth of his colleagues and the company itself.

The excitement in the gym was such that security agents were ordered to control the crowd within the room. The more people reached the coffin, the more the excitement heated up.

Everyone thought: "Who is this guy who was hindering my progress? Well, at least he died!"

One by one the thrilled employees got closer to the coffin, and when they looked inside it they suddenly became speechless. They stood nearby the coffin, shocked and in silence, as if someone had touched the deepest part of their soul.

There was a mirror inside the coffin: everyone who looked inside it could see himself. There was also a sign next to the mirror that said: "There is only one person who is capable to set limits to your growth: IT IS YOU".

Your life does not change when your boss changes, when your friends change, when your centre changes. Your life changes when YOU change, YOU become Krishna Conscious, when YOU go beyond your limiting beliefs.

Unity in Diversity...

From my diary:

During our school days we have studied in various books and also have heard that from our parents/elders/teachers that India is a country where people live in unity in spite of diversity. But now I ask a question "Does Unity in Diversity exist at all in India?"

Recently a website called http://www.leavebangalore.com/ has proved that unity in diversity doesn't exist. This website opened up a new platform for lenting out our anger and esp. on Becharein Bangalorians. Those who were from outside Karnataka and esp. outside Bangalore condemned the cosmopolitan nature of the city and some even questioned its existence itself!!! The site coordinator concludes by giving 4 points

1. People will complain about everything

2. "Unity In Diversity" doesn't exist.

3. People will say anything when they think they're anonymous.

4. There are a few sane minds but they are overshadowed by the madness of the majority.

People will say anything when they think they're anonymous. But there are few people like Jaya Bacchan who are exception to this rule. These people just go out to the public and speak their mind. This is a serious offence. I mean in Mumbai you can't say that you will speak only in Hindi and you can't say that you are a North Indian! You are also supposed to know Marati! But when in Bangalore for an outsider learning Kannada is like committing a crime. A guy comes to me and proudly says, "...maamu, my house owner spoke to me in Kannada. I knew what exactly he was asking. He wanted his house rent. But still I acted as if I was dumb. That as****e doesn't know that Hindi is the national language and he was supposed to speak to me in Hindi only..." Well first of all thank you for accepting that you are dumb and secondly making me understand that it was a rule to learn Hindi to communicate with the outsiders. I mean all these days I was under the impression that India is a free and fair country and you can speak in whatever language you wanted to. And moreover, when the state and the central govenments are trying to provide basic education to the people, few extra conditions are also put across which makes teaching Hindi mandatory.

But let me tell you all monkeys, in spite of all these issues related to language, unity in diversity does exist in India and is on an all time high now. I mean how else can you explain so many people joining their hands to a reason... a reason to scold Bangalore which is giving them their bread & butter. Even the people who have commented in the website mentioned above and also in several such type of communities in social networking website Orkut.com, have agreed that except for their job they wouldn't care a dime about Bangalore. Well, if they dont have a job will they or wont they care about anything else?? Note the point your honour!!!

People will complain about everything. Didn't the constitution directly or indirectly allow us to do this??? Isn't that the basics of Democracy??? Hmmm.. I think we all have to sit in "Social Science" classes once again!

Real Fact Kool One

Another one of those classic fowards denoting the state of the country!!