Friday, May 18, 2007

A journey! The way back.


Din knew how long we slept, but that was nice sleep we had. wake up only to realise we were hungry. reluctant to go by the same path we had come thinking it would take too long and we might die out of hunger, decided to use a 'shortcut'. the path looked pretty easy and directly we could have been to the place where our car is parked. but, raghu never agreed to take that path. he tried hard to convince me n raghu mama to take the clean path though it will take lil more time. but we were adament. in fact din even allow him to make choice by climbing down a distance and calling him there saying "see the place looks so near from here". cursing us raghu finally started following. now we were making our own way. raghu was little tense, especially after he got call from home. no no it was not his girl friend. finally we reached a place from where we had to decide which way we should move forward. raghumama, the captain, took the responsiblity immediately. he asked us to stay back and went in search of the easiest path from there onwards. few minutes later we found raghumama gone from our sight. is he lost or something. after few agonising minutes, finally we heard voice from raghu mama. but still he was not seen. all that happened was we heard his voice from somewhere. he was asking us to come down. but where is he ?. as we walked down, we saw plain land getting disappeared and dry bushes in place of plain land. we had to make our way through bushes now. bushcrafting??? . we saw a small temple there and found raghu mama resting there. had to eat 'jam' to get energy to traveling furthur. now there was no path at all from there. we had to walk through the bushes now. reached a point from we cannot move further at all. some how we managed to cross that and found a huge boulder. from a distance it seemed that the boulder was the end. once we climb down, we will reach plain land from where we can easily walk to the place where we had parked the car. a shock was awaiting when we reached the end of the boulder. after the boulder, there is steep fall. it is impossible to climb that down with out some broken bones. we had to search for some other way. again through bushes. and finally we saw some people there. with the help of them , we crawled through bushes for finaly few meters and successfully landed on plane land. we were no less happy than columbus when he found new land. no one said anything. we simply started running. as fast as we could. forgot how tired we were. ran through the field as though we are running for the first time. i did not remember when was the last time i ran like that. ran till we got tired and finally a water tank. we drank water as much we could. and headed straight for the car. raghumama swore he will never come to that place again. even had doubts if the snaps we saw was from this place. but now were heading back to bangalore insearch of some good place to eat. raghu called his home and told he will be back soon.
Now let me tell something about the place. actually it is really a nice place. very good for trekking. very calm and windy on the top. there is easy path as well to reach the top. and right time to visit is just after rain has stopped, sometime in november when it is lil cooler. me planing to visit the place again sometime in future. also trying hard to convince raghumama to visit the place again

Thursday, May 17, 2007

A journey, the Beginning.



Few spectacular snaps of the place and nothing else to do during weekend forced us to visit the place right away. The place's name was 'skandagiri' around 60 kms from Bangalore. with almost no research about the place , we found ourselves( me , raghu and raghumama. WOW! doesn't it seem like 'Ed,Edd and Eddy') heading towards the place early morning. well finally found the place after lil confusion. Parked the car at the bottom of the hill, we started climbing the hill (in the picture). we refrained from using the path which easily would have taken us to the top of the hill to get xtra thrill while climbing. Little did we knew then what was in store for us. One local boy showed us another way from which we can reach the top. being followed by a cow herd (in search of grass on the hill) with fear one of the cows might hit us with it's horn we started climbing fast. after few minutes, cows found us resting on a boulder. after posing for few snaps, cows marched forward while we were still resting. it was great that we planned to carry a 2 litre water bottle. convincing each other that the peak is very near (oh! what a mistake) we again started climbing. after few minutes we were desperately searching for a big boulder where we can rest. when saw a big boulder under tree shade, it was no less than a treasure for us. the cows are no where to be seen now. earlier, we had light breakfast and carried some snacks (what a great idea it was), thinking we would come back within couple of hours and have lunch. ate some chips and water while we rested(man did we got addicted to rest?) there. no way was seen further. did we reached the top? not yet. had to walk over the boulder to find further path. path? there was no path. we had to make one. By this time we had forgot we carried 5.1 MP camera with us. so no snaps there. little further, we saw few people there .they showed us the way to reach the top that happened to be easy???!! to reach the top. by the way the scenic view from there and fresh wind encouraged us to move further. after climbing couple of boulders and a lil walk through bunch of bushes, we saw what looked like main entrance of some fort. now we realised we had to take some snaps.with out any major incidents, we finally reached the top where we found a temple(snap). forgot to mention one interesting thing. one of the 'cowboys' there had his eyes on water which raghumama was carrying. he convinced raghumama that there is water reservoir(pushkarane) on the top. after repeated search, we did not find that pushkarane. ate the snacks , drank rest of the water we had and slept for a while under the shade available there.


coming up next...... raghu refuses to climb down . raghumama is lost!!. bushcrafting!!!!. we become explorers. the final run.and more........................

Good signs

Has the golden time for Indian football come? chek out blog 1 and 2 i had written about Indian Football. India Hold Iraq 1-1 in Olympic qualifier. Yeah India did not qualify for next round. But the game they played defnitely seems impressive. As a die hard football fan i would love to watch the match if some tv channel shows the match highlights. More over Team India has done well in hockey too. past few years saw almost entire country busy watching Team India in cricket with great hopes. recent failure in cricket world cup resulted in huge disappoinment. Now Even saw couple of wins in cricket as well ( may be against Bangadesh, but it's a win and let's hope it will continue for rest of the season ahead.). With recent good form in Indian hockey,football and cricket, let's hope we will get chance to cheer Team India in all the games. Hopefully we will see Team India standing in a good position in International arena in all sports .