A Chilly Surprise: Kemmangundi

Friday: 6^th July/2007

Time: 10 pm

Location: KSRTC Bus Stand, Bangalore

Status: Trip yet to start

The journey was to start, the journey with the unknown, and the journey in which I knew only a single face. But the single face was yet to arrive.

Yes, I was standing right next to a bubbly crowd waiting for my friend like a stranger in the party. Finally he arrives with a delay of 20 mins to the destined spot only to ask me if I met the others. By the way, the friend I am talking about is Santhosh.

How the hell am I to know that the small little happily screaming crowd right next to me was the one who I was to travel with?

By the time I was introduced to the entire team of travelers (sorry wanderers), the small little happily screaming crowd had become big.

17 + 1 was the crowd, the 1 being me.

The journey started at 11 pm with a bang! Bang? Hey it’s just the bus door which got closed.

Destination: Tarikere

The bus journey included introduction, keeping the others in the bus disturbed, midnight snacks and lots more fun stuffs.

Have any of you seen ceramic rust? Yes we had our first sight of it on Saturday Dawn. The room that we had taken contained a rusted water closet. The rusted water closet found several comments which could not keep us off laughing. And an ironic thing is that, this lodge was the best in town.

After the morning rituals, we had tea in a nearby canteen.

Saturday: 7^th July/2007

Time: 7:30 am

Destination: Kalhatti Falls

Location: Kalhatti falls is a pilgrim place near Kalhattipura which is 20 km south of Tarikere town in Chikmaglur district.

The journey to Kalhatti falls contained the bus journey and walk. Now coming to the best part of this was the bus journey. The journey was more of a song party, the songs ranging from Kishore Kumar to the latest party songs.

Though the water falls that we could visibly see was very little, the very sight of water flowing was pleasing.

Time: 9:30 am

Destination: Kemmangundi

The bus was supposed to arrive at Kalhatti stop at around 9:45am. Since we had little free time here, we decided to have our breakfast. The late arrival of bus to the stop added to our advantage in helping us to finish our food by then.

The drive to Kemmangundi typically compensated for the amount of noise which prevailed in the previous bus journey. This time none of us had any energy left to show off our singing or any other skills. Basically it was a short nap. Actually I don’t know what the others were doing as I was asleep. J

At 11:00 am we were in Kemmangundi all rejuvenated with energy to start off our best thing of the entire trip.

Tour De Hebbe (Hebbe Falls)

Location: A downhill trek of about 8 km from Raj Bhavan takes one to Hebbe Falls where water streams down from a height of 168 meters in two stages to form Dodda Hebbe (Big Falls) and Chikka Hebbe (Small Falls).

The chill weather prompted all of us to ask for a cup of hot tea/coffee. We actually spent a lot of time doing absolutely nothing. After a long wait, we wouldn’t have actually thought about the entire wait if the tea/coffee was at least lip smacking.

The time lost is lost, but why did it have a mention in my blog?

This was when we had our first encounter with the blood sucking leech at a dangerous spot.

Since none of us knew the route we chose to take a guide with us to be on a safer side.

Special Mention: Siriyal, The Trek Manager

Sexy drizzle, cool breeze, wet mud, tiny puddles and finally not forgetting to mention the silent sizzler, The Leech.

The leech party

In silence I crawl,

No one can feel my prowl.

Life is tasty, life is yumm,

I relish blood serum.

Happiness is what I see, happiness is what I feel,

Blood is wine to me, Human is shrine to me,

Blood Blood is all I preach

After all I am a leech

Eighteen of us and a few more other groups being present would surely make the leech smile. Their hunger is all that they quench and since they are not poisonous lets not make them sound like criminals. Now moving away from the talk about the leeches…

Beautiful forest lands, mind boggling contour & the tall standing trees made the trek a little too amazing. Being an 8 Km trek (If you take the road, its 12Kms) on a rugged terrain required a person quite some effort to enjoy the fruits.

The mountains were cloud clad, so forget the horizon even the person leading the troop was no where in sight. The whole climate added to the pleasure and with such romantic weather, Thank god… my girl was not around.

As we reached the end of the trek, we had to cross numerous flowing water bodies to get to the other end. With the force of the water being quite some amount, it was a tough job to keep anchored to your feet.

There is a saying which goes like, “With every pain you get pleasure at the end”.

But ours was, “With pleasure you get enormous pleasure”.

Declaration: Hebbe Falls is a very beautiful thing to visit in monsoon. As water looses no sheen during this season of the year, the sight of water falling from a great height adds to its sheen. It’s a mind tuner. Visit this place.

As we were tired, we preferred to travel by jeep instead of trekking up. Now since we had to catch a train from Birur, we came down in the same jeep till this place.

After dinner and loads of fun games in the station, we caught Shimoga – Bangalore Express at 12 midnight. The train journey in the general compartment was a fun of its own kind.

Time: 4:50 am

Location: Bangalore

Status: Successful trip

Unchalli Falls, Yana, Gokarna

Date: 29th Dec, 2006
Time: 8:15 pm
Location: Bangalore Bus Stand @ Majestic
Vehicles : 1 Bus+ 2 Tempo Travelers
No Of Ppl: 70


Our group: Just 5 of us.....
Picture: Welcome.. Welcome...

We are a group of 8 (5 Guys+ 3 Gals) people. Due to various inescapable reasons 3 of them had to drop out. Serious reasons you see... so this was the first major upset to our trip. But we had to move on.

Great men said "Life is a journey, keep moving". But ours was "A single journey is life too." Our great new year plans was shaken...
Picture: 2 Gangsters at work

9pm we started of from Bangalore. The bus journey was not very comfortable but we were not here to have a fun trip. It was a trek-trip. We were headed to Unchalli Falls..
Picture: Ohh dear dear...!!

Sleepless bus ride was after all not very bad. 5 am we were at Sangam to pic up our breakfast/Lunch/Dinner for the day. We had to finish off our morning duties in public toilets. How can i explain the pleasant smell in those spick & span toilets. "Adbuthaaa"
Picture: Sleepy Heads

Though it was such cold morning with mist around us, off we left for Unchalli Falls, no time to romance in that weather.
Picture: Our shadows went missing.

Had to break for breakfast and the place were we broke was just awesomely refreshing... We had our share to eat along the beautiful stream. The best part being the sound around us. After all it was not the vehicles. It was the birds and the trees.
Picture: Deformation

First pitstop: Unchalli Falls, just before noon.

Such beautiful falls, the sound of the water falling was such a mind purifier. That doesn't mean out corrupt minds got all purified in a single shot, but was worth an attempt. :)
Picture: Y the hell do people get soo damn tired?

We took bath in the water flowing down the hillock. So what does this imply? We had to trek down the hill... Yes this was our first encounter with trekking in this particular outing.
Picture: Dingri's Classic Laugh

The cold water, sweet breeze & dirty friends (ok i take this back.) In what other better way can a trip start is all what we thought, we didn't know the way the the whole thing could turn. Haha Hahaha...no no.. the previous sentence means nothing, I just felt like adding it cause it sounds terrific.

2nd Pit Stop: Yana

WE were supposed to reach Yana early the same evening. Tired of trekking at Unchalli Falls all of us were asleep in the bus. Suddenly all the cell phones started ringing as though it was a call to heaven by the Death-God. The only thing each one of us realized was that people from other vehicle had called us to tell... "STOP THE BUS"..... The next thing that we realized was we had taken the wrong route. We were on the "Goa Road" rather than the "Mangalore Road".

Hail our Bus driver!! Hail Driver!! Hail, his thinking!! Hail Storm. As though everyone in the bus were guided by the same force, screamed in chorus.... "LETS GO TO GOA".

But our statement had no much power to actually convince the driver to continue on the same road, the road to heaven (Goa).

The next few hours was the real pain to each one of us. SATAN had smiled at us. The bus went out of gas so any possible reclamation of the lost time was void. We saw a lady run over by a loaded truck. The bus went on a real narrow one-way road in the wrong way. While the bus was taking a turn, an auto-rickshaw's front wheel got stuck to the bus and it started rising. Seeing this the auto-rickshaw drivers gathered to create a haunting scene.
Picture: Parameshwari Parambhu PriyaShubhaBhyam Dharshanam Icchami

What more can u ask for? The SATAN had the last laugh that day.

The night 2nd best thing:

Picture: 3 to Tango

We had to put up the tents ourselves. I do agree that putting up a tent is not some kinda rocket science but its not that easy as a jigsaw puzzle.
After Knowledge Transfer from other groups on how to put up the tent, we kicked off the implementation of the same.



After putting up the basic structure containing of only the poles, I was personally excited to know that i will be sleeping in a tent laid by us... Cool right?
After much effort in putting up a tent, our tent had a major flaw, it was too high. Our efforts to re-engineer went for a toss when all of us unanimously veto-ed on putting up the tent from scratch. The solution which came out is confidential and i will not be able to reveal anything.



Its not an everyday game to be sleeping on the beach side tent. Yes... BEACH SIDE TENT.

GoodMorning..... Get Up you idiots.... Its already 6 am!!


Where the hell am i? & What do they mean by already 6 am?
Ohh, We got to be going to yana. Guys finish off your morning duties...
Picture: Hmm Hmm

Now comes the 3rd Best thing:

3 of us, only guys, we wanted to take bath. So we separated from our group, hunting for a place to take bath. No one knew where we were, neither did we know. We got the requisite permissions to take bath in a holy pond...

Happy & Gay (Kindly note: Its not Gay & Happy) we came back to our bus parking to realize, we have been left out. OOOWWW MAI GWAD!!

All our cell phones had been kept safely in the bag and bag was in the bus. The only thing we could next was hunt for a public telephone booth. To our relief, our friends who were in the bus were reachable and the most important of all, we knew their numbers by heart.

Some things which were obvious followed this. We got shouted by our friends and the trek lead. But when we told them we had taken bath, we could smell them burning in jealousy. Hahaha...

2nd Pit Stop(Again): Yana
Yana in Kannada means pilgrimage. Trekking up our way was great as always. Fun with friends routinely followed. Let me not say anything... I will share pictures instead.





3rd Pit Stop: Om Beach at Gokarna
It was already 6 in the evening and we had missed the beauty of sunset.
Picture: TT at his best...
The group got split into 2. One went on for a beach Trek and the other for just a pleasant boat ride. I was happy to be on the boat, relaxing.

December 31st late evening: Supposedly fun evening.
This was when the problems started. Guys who had gone for the boat ride came back to the meeting point early but the detached group who were pro Beach Trek were not reachable and none of us knew the next course of action.

Frustrated of waiting for those guys, we had a round of photo session. And to tell each one of you reading this, this one was the only best thing that evening.

10pm all of us gathered and it was unanimously decided that we will not be going to kamat for dinner. 2 days and 3 times a day at kamat had bugged us to the core. We headed to a different restaurant agreeing on the formula that we will have to dutch. To our fate the restaurant guy said, he will not be able to serve all of us at that time of the night.


Here comes the 4th & the Last Best thing:

Dinner at Kamat.
To please us all, the Kamat guy had taken an additional step to see that, that particular dinner was a lot better than the other food sessions. After all this was a new year night.

The celebration should have been at its peak but we were having our last dinner for the year 2006 at the road side kamat.
Picture: The best I could get out of this fellow..

New year Celebration in front of Kamat.

11:45 pm: We were done with our dinner.
11:50 pm: Someone called out "10 mins to go"
11:50 - 11:58: Kept laughing on the way we were celebrating our new year.

15 seconds remaining : "Lets start the countdown Guys...Lets start from 10"

10
9
8
7
6
5
4
3
2
ONE......

ALL OF US SHOUTED OUT IN CHORUS HAPPY NEW YEAR....

We exchanged hand-shakes and hugs.

To cheer us up, one person went ahead to lite a Diwali Cracker. After much effort was wasted on trying to get it crack, it became a tiny bon fire.

Picture: Transition from a Fire Cracker --> Bon Fire

Off we got into the bus and left for Bangalore.

Was the Adventure Amorous?
Yes the Adventure was really amorous................ Amorous in its own way

Jain Farms near Bangalore

1/Oct/2006: Ayudha Pooja

Time: Till 10:15 am
All the vehicles were washed and the pooja done to it. Flowers were hanging out of all the vehicles to mean another safe year for all the people travelling in them.

All of us had to meet up at my place and leave from there by 10:15 am. As usual only Dolly and TT turned up at the decided time. They were shocked on reaching my place as I was still doing pooja to the vehicles, which is supposed to be long over. OK, fine they had to settle to what was happening, they had to believe as to how slow things were going that day.

Headed to : Jain Farms, Bagalur (JF)
Picture: Million Dollar Smile

Cost: Rs. 200 per head on Sundays. This includes Lunch and snacks in the evening.

Time: 10:40 am
Varun and the group dropped down. Finally these guys had come. One person had to be picked up from Bommanhalli at 11 am. So after some quick Hi's and hugs, we started.


Time: 11:00 am
Location: Bommanhalli(On the hosur road)
Vehicles: 1 Santro + 1 Alto
No of ppl: 7


Reason for being at this place: Waiting for Deepthi.
Ohh heavens!!! Its 11:20 am and no clue as to where exactly Deepthi is! 2 cars and 7 ppl waiting for a single girl? By now we all knew that she was exactly like her Boy Friend on her time commitments.

Time: 11:30am finally she is here. God bless her. We could have waited no more under this terribly-hot sun.
The only change now being

No of ppl: 8
Guys: Karthik(me), Santhosh, Amit, Varun, Harsha

Gals: Shubha, Priya, Deepthi

Santro: Myself, Dolly & tt.
Alto : Dingri, Tims and 3 gals. (Oooooo !!! cooollllll )

I will not be able to speak about what was going on in the alto. But coming to our car, ohhh!! we had music at high decibel, all of us were singing along and as usual we were cracking some horrible PJ's. Suddenly the other car wanted us to stop, but y? OK, Priya just wanted to travel with us. Cool!!
Picture:The feeling of rowdy-ness

You need to travel on hosur road until u see a huge flyover with Hosur Bus Stand right next to it. Guys please don't ask anyone route to this place especially near some market cause the guys in the other car had horrible experience making this mistake. When u see the Bus Stand on your right, you got to take the immediate left and JF is around 8 Kms from this left turn. The travel wasn't tiring as the roads were great. Finally we reached JF. It comes to the left.
Picture: Welcome, Welcome to Jain Farms.....

There are basically 4 couples:



You have to pay first, then use all what they have. OK, I let me list out the "time-passes" here.

1st Time pass: Astrology

This guy has a parrot, which is given orders to pic up a card. Basically every card has some god's snap attached to it. Seeing the god that the parrot has selected, this astrologer says some nonsense. He will for sure tell you, " Right now you are going through a difficult phase, just wait for 6 months and you will be able to find the changes which will come across you." Pure nonsense man!!!

2nd Time pass: Pot-Making

Here there were 2 old guys, who knew their job well. He made sure he told us how to go about it before we started off. The first and the foremost thing was making the wheel rotate real fast. This was the most difficult part of the whole pot-making.
Picture:All of us trying our luck with the wheel

One demo and we started off.... Only when we tried, did we realize that the demo was of no use. We needed demo again. Many attempts and still we could never get the final product like him. The Pot-maker's pot was a masterpiece and ours was only piece with no master.
Picture: The final product-Pots

Dingri's pot turned out to be wide-open on both ends :)

3rd Time pass: Cycling

We had to pay extra for this. Just 10 bucks and hour. The problem here is not with the amount we pay, its more to do with the fact that the whole amount must be taken at entry itself. Come-on, we don't want to be told to take out our wallets again and again.
Picture: Having a pleasure ride

Dolly & myself took off in 2 cycles to find out how big the place is. We found a swimming pool on the way but decided not to pay extra to use it.
Picture: Sometimes things go wrong(Punch line given by Tims)

Lunch: Not all that good, but we had to survive the day.

4th Time pass: Horse Riding

All of us made sure we sat on the horse. Its no big fun for people who can ride the horse as these guys don't let the horse go fast and there is only a very little place for the horse to move.
Picture: Horse-Power

I had my worst experience with a horse here. A sincere advice, "Don't sing or dance standing behind the horse." I was in my own world singing loudly, and suddenly the horse lifted its hind legs to kick me. To my luck, i wasn't right behind the horse.

5th Time pass: Golf

Rookies can have fun here. There is a small area for golf to be played. Though it looks real small compared to the ones what anyone would have seen, its still fun playing as a rookie.
Picture: The trainer,Dolly is busy sharing his expertise

Picture:Practice is all what makes a man(woman also) Perfect

Picture:When we were tired Golfing, We were busy jumping!!

Picture:Searching for Excitement All around

As always Dolly, Tims, Dingri, tt and I started the game. After around 20 mins all of us, except Dolly, were bugged and we went out of that place. Dolly continued the game with Samaj-Rd(Deepthi). Our brilliant Dolly doesn't mind playing any damn game on this earth.

Picture: We found a "duck-billed platypus" with a mole

Picture: Self Kombu-ing / Feeling Horn-ey


6th Time pass: Table Tennis, Snooker, Chasing the Ducks

Very few of us tried our hands at this. We started playing snooker at around 5:45 pm after which snacks were provided(Very oily stuff).
Picture: See the way we eat guys.

Picture: A flower on the Devil's ear. The devil's bitches all around the devil.



After intense workout, "Farm-Goddess Varuneshwari" gave us a Divine guest appearance. Her/His (Its) immaculate beauty was mindboggling.



And when we questioned the Farm-Goddess's feminism, he/she(it) cut our heads and placed it on the wall.

LONG LIVE THE HEADS


Time: 6:40 pm
Time to leave.