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Yesterday I received a untidy, box shaped courier.

On removing the paper covering I found a thermocol box and a small bottle of fish pickle kept inside it. I wanted to taste the fish pickle from the first day I heared about it – a friend told me. And this is my chance to taste it. At times we see our lives taking unexpected turns and crumbling us & then it surprises us by fulfilling even the smallest of our wishes. Here, I just came across such an incident.
My dear friend instead of thanking you, I can believe in The Alchemist quote “When you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.” and keep silent.

One glass to friendship’s glory lend,
That makes all sorrows lighter—
O happy he who owns a friend!
Heaven has no blessing brighter.
Our joys to swell, our griefs to share
While by life’s storms we’re driven,
Our conscience to direct us here,
Our friendly staff for heaven.

source:

http://napoleonic-literature.com/AgeOfNapoleon/E-Texts/Poetry1.html

The Future:
[[http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/poems/1088.html ]]

Hey Smilebringer, Thanks for taking me to the wonderful world of Minstrels !

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Tadiyendamol is the highest peak in Kodagu district of Karnataka – 1746 meters above sea level. The trekking starts at kakkabe village which is 45 kilometers from Madikkeri (Mercara). The road ends about 5.5 kilometers from the peak. There is about 1.5 kilometers of pathway which only a 4 wheel drive vehicle can cover. We started walking from the place where the tarred road ends – at 10 am.

We got details about the route to Kakkabe from Rony – the Jeep driver whom we met at Madikkeri. The route as per him was like this :

From Madikkeri take the Talakaveri route (left) and we reached Bettageri and travelled for another 7 kms or so and reached nopkyl (spelling is incorrect). We took the same road as per his instruction and reached Kakkabe. Thanks Rony !

Sorry Sir. But this is not the peak !
When we saw the mountain shown below, we thought this is the peak we are going to climb but this one turned out to be very small.

Pond
At the bottom of the peak you reach a point where the narrow path diverts in two directions. If we take the left route and roam around a lil bit we reach here.

oh! this is not that easy.

This is the most difficult area in the entire trekking …

I Conquered.
We reached the peak at 2:40 PM. It took us 4 hours and 40 minutes to reach the summit. In between we halted for about 1 hour to take rest and have food.
(Even at 1746 meters above the sea level we found that Airtel, BSNL and Hutch had coverage ! I made few calls from the peak and received a call too – where ever you go atleast one network follows you.)

How to Go back ?
There is a stone at the summit and it look like a cube.

Lets have some glucose

Time to Go back
We spend around half an hour at the peak and started descending. It took as nearly 3 hours to reach the point were our vehicle was waiting.

The photo given below shows most of the path we have covered during the trekking.

( Our driver Shanker was waiting all this time for us. Around 8 hours. Thanks for the wonderful driving shankar ! )

More snaps are here :

http://flickr.com/photos/freemind/sets/72057594123997286/
Wikipedia has More information:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kodagu

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Tony the little kid just cleared his LKG interview.

Congrats Dear.

(I wonder whether he knows what an interview is. I wonder how he managed to clear the interview. I wonder how those humans who conducted his interview are able to conduct it.)

Update: This is copy pasted from flickr. I had posted this photo on the day he was having interview. The result was announced recently. The description of the images was:

Tony is a 3 year old boy who lives in the (ex) Garden City of India. His parents provides me and many others with the best food available in the software Jungle. And today Tony and His parents are having interview for his nursery school admission. Well Best Wishes Tony! (Sigh …) 


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Makedatu (Mekedatu) is located 98 kilometers south of Bangalore and 35 kms from Kanakpura. Its suited for one day bike trips. The place has a “sangama” (confluence) of Cauvery and Arakavathi and about 4kms from Sangama, Cauvery and Arakavathi squeeze through a narrow gorge. Its said that even a goat can easily jump accross the Arakavathi there and hence the name “Makedatu” – meaning Goat’s leap in Kannada.

Sangam:

From Sangama you have to cross the river and walk or travel in a ‘special’ bus to reach the gorge. We walked to the gorge (4 Kms) and returned to the sangam in the “bus”.

The bus:

We met her/him on the way:

The steps which leads to the gorge …

Makedatu

More snaps

At sangam

More shots are here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/freemind/tags/makedatu/

Caution: On the way there is a small ghat and the roads in the ghat are narrow and the hairpin bends are not marked properly. So if at all anyone is planning to visit makedatu, please be careful while driving.

(The trip was great. It left permenant marks on mind and body 😉 Thanks for arranging it guys – especially Kaushal)

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Makedatu (Mekedatu) is located 98 kilometers south of Bangalore and 35 kms from Kanakpura. Its suited for one day bike trips. The place has a “sangama” (confluence) of Cauvery and Arakavathi and about 4kms from Sangama, Cauvery and Arakavathi squeeze through a narrow gorge. Its said that even a goat can easily jump accross the Arakavathi there and hence the name “Makedatu” – meaning Goat’s leap in Kannada.

Sangam:

From Sangama you have to cross the river and walk or travel in a ‘special’ bus to reach the gorge. We walked to the gorge (4 Kms) and returned to the sangam in the “bus”.

The bus:

We met her/him on the way:

The steps which leads to the gorge …

Makedatu

More snaps

At sangam

More shots are here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/freemind/tags/makedatu/

Caution: On the way there is a small ghat and the roads in the ghat are narrow and the hairpin bends are not marked properly. So if at all anyone is planning to visit makedatu, please be careful while driving.

(The trip was great. It left permenant marks on mind and body 😉 Thanks for arranging it guys – especially Kaushal)

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Shot taken at “Mamalapuram” beach near Chennai (Madras). We halted there for a short while – we were heading towards Pondicheri. Didn’t explore much since we couldn’t get a ticket to visit the Ancient temple.