Challenge for some. Passion for (so)me

Tiger capture at NWHS contest!

2011-03-19T10:41:00.001+05:30

One of my Tiger capture at NWHS contest @ 3rd place!

Tiger Trail Trek - Bhandavgarh fort

2011-02-12T22:16:00.004+05:30

The oldest fort in India, considered to be more than 2500 years. One-hour trek upto the fort is worth the effort. The charm of this trek lies in discovering these monuments in the jungle, unspoiled and unexplored. Some of the statues lie off the main path and so it is best to take a guide.

One of the Main gate of Bandavgarh Fort

We accomodated this trek on the last day of the stay and that too in the noon, we need to book the entry to the fort with forest dept a day prior along with the guide, it too costs same as the safari! and no trip to Bandhavgarh is complete without making an effort to climb up the fort.

Gang at the entrance of the fort

Shiv Lingam and sleeping Vishnu statues

Shiv Lingam

Apart from the avatars, well worth seeing are three small temples of around the 12th century. These temples are deserted but the fort is still used as a place of worship. Kabir Das, the celebrated 16th century saint, once lived and preached here.

The natural ramparts of the fort give breathtaking view of the surrounding countryside. Vultures wheel around the precipice which also attracts blue rock thrushes and crag martins.
Our guide cum driver Ajay of the skay's camp carried our lunch while we are busy negotiating the trek upto the fort. Supplement charged.

Main temple Structure on top of the fort

Yes Bandhavgarh is a strange land, a new park with a very old history --- Bandhavgarh has been a center of human activity and settlement for over 2000 years, and there are references to it in the ancient books, the Narad-Panch Ratra and the Shiva Purana. Legend has it that Lord Rama, hero of the Hindu epic, the Ramayana, stopped at Bandhavgarh on his way back to his homeland after defeating the demon King Ravana of Lanka.

Main Entrance of Fort

Two monkey architects, who had engineered a bridge between the isle of Lanka and the mainland, are said to have built Bandhavgarh's fort. Later Rama handed it over to his brother Lakshmana who became known as Bandhavdhish -The Lord of the Fort. Lakshmana is the particular God of the fort and is regularly worshipped in a temple there.

The Grand Winter Tiger trail - Bandavgarh

2011-01-15T11:26:00.012+05:30

Thanks to Natgeo documentary on Bhandavgarh, the 'The Tiger Princess'. It created strong curiosity in me to make a trip to this tiger land, although it was not in the list of places for this year. However our Khan saab (aka sher khan :) and myself had some plans for year end, which finally inclined towards bhandavgarh. As usual Khan started logistics planning for great winter tiger trip, started booking of gypsy, blocking guide, train and flight tickets etc etc and all in 3 months advance. Well, as we called it, fortunately it was really a great tiger trip for myself, Khan, Ravi rao and Naveen!

Let me first give some details on the park - Bandhavgarh National Park is spread over the vindhya hills in Madhya Pradesh. It consists of a core area of 105 sq km and a buffer area of approximately 400 sq km of topography varies between steep ridges, undulating, forest and open meadows. The density of the Tiger population at Bandhavgarh is the highest known in India, It has around 64 tigers (according to the data, but to me it seemed to be diminishing ) Most of the land is hilly, rocky terrain which keeps the tigers relatively in a high concentration and increases a chance of meeting with this stripped cat!

The central Chakradara meadows of Bhandavgarh

Getting there: Nearest Aiport is Nagpur and nearest Railway station is Katni near to Jabalpur or umariya station.
The route we took was - Train from Bangalore to Secundrabad, then to Jabalpur/Katni, and a taxi from Katni to Tala (bandavgarh).
Katni is a small village and train stops only for brief time so make sure to be alert from Jabalpur station itself. The tala village which is also the forest entry point with forest dept office is 105 km from the katni.

Stay: We were priviledged to stay at skay's camp, it was a feel of home away from home, what more can you ask when you travel and that too when stay is longer than a week. Yes thats exactly you feel under wings off Kay and Tiwariji. Kay and Tiwariji have great knowledge of the park's flora and fauna, and can provide you with loads of informations about the tiger population and habitat in general.

Kay always possessing an interest in wildlife & conservation. Kay is a self-taught wildlife artist. Her watercolour paintings and mixed media pictures are in many private collections. And Tiwariji an wildlife photographer and naturalist, his unique photographs depict some of the magnificent wildlife of India. He's author and coauthor of many books about wilderness and bandavgarh!
The camp itself is a birds haven, the garden has been planted with all manner of wonderful plants to have an healthy habitat to attract wildlife and provide freshly grown fruit and veg. Meals were lovely and very flexible to fit in with trips into the park. The rooms at the camp are cool, clean and comfortable but with the depleting temperature of bandavgarh, I only wish they had electric warmers :(

Evenings at camp was cozyin around camp fire with hot tea, soup along with dinner. Kay Ma’m use to join us during breakfast, lunch and dinner timings. The discussion and the information about the park, tigers were just awesome and remarkable...

For the next 6-7 days we spend most of our time in the forests, with our driver cum naturalist cum guide Ajay. The core area of forests has been divided based on zones or routes one has to take and thats decided by forest dept in order to divide the jeeps entering the park. Zone A was closed since jurjura tigress (who expired in an accident) liters were safe guarded in that area. So the reamining zones were B,C & D.

Baby Langur

Indian Roller Phosing for us, its typically are far from humans

On the very first day we had sighted male tiger kalua in bushes so couldn't photograph though, thanks to Ajay and guide who tracked back from the spray on the road. But after that next 2 days of safaris were so bare, we dint have any sightings rather than samba deer, spotted, jackal and some birds.

It was just another morning to forest, which we never realised will be most memorable and exciting untill we found B2 the grand male tiger of bandavgarh appeared in front of us from nowhere, the gracious foot steps in glaring morning golden sunlight and straight towards us face to face. Added to it we were the only jeep to track him, I could hear cameras going clik cliks, it was special moment like a private photo session with super model phosing for us :)

B2 the Grand Tiger of Bhandavgarh near GodaDam

As he walked towads us, the guide advised the driver to reverse the jeep to avoid him change the trail, its ethical for the nature lovers in the park to obey the rules of forest and keep as natural, not to disturb any habitat, being it a big cat or birds!

B2 - A grand portrait!

We went back and stood around 20 mtrs back and watched him walking towards us, he glanced us once in a while and walked his path, towards Godadam, we did captured all this trail with stills and Video (our official videographer Naveen :) . Added to this sighting, there was bonus of capturng him marking hi territory by spraying on a tree. The cliks din't stop untill he climbed the dam and hill and vanished in to the bushes...

Following day, to our surprise and luck, Mr Anil ambani was in the park with family on an yr end wilder trip I beleive. As anywhere in india it goes, forest dept excited about this not so new found VIP guest arranged Tiger show, which was officially stopped some yrs ago. Let me brief abt what is tiger show all about - The mahahut's on their elephat back go in search of tiger early in the morning by around 4am and tracks the whereabouts of the tiger and locks elephants to that trail, and the info is given to the camp which will guide the interested visitors in the jeeps to the spot, and then on to elephat back to the spot exactly where tiger is!
Well it sounds like a circus event but it might be worth to watch it for once but doesnt have the excitement when we track the tiger naturally.

B2 backlit

The elephant drama continued for next two days untill Mr Ambaniji made his way back to finance capital of india which is also his home, in a noising helicoptor scaring all the wildlife of bhandavgarh park.

Samba Deer quenching thirst

--Manjunath

Rumor has it..Nikon D400?

2011-01-12T23:59:00.002+05:30

The most anticipated Nikon camera or camera itself? There's been quite a lull in the Nikon D400 rumors of late, definitely due to the release of the Nikon D300s. I'm not worried though, and expect the Nikon D400 to come out in late 2010 or early 2011. As for features, this is the list that came with the roadmap:

Nikon D400
• Replaces D300S.
• Announcement in 1st half of 2011.
• 16MP or higher* CMOS sensor (same new sensor as upcoming Sony A700 replacement)
• AF motor still there.
• 8 FPS (without the grip).
• Live View & special* high quality 1080 video (possibly RAW video???!!!).
• Articulated* 920K LCD.
• OVF & AF module same as D300S.

To me, this seems a little "unofficial" looking even for a roadmap, so I don't put a whole lot of credibility to it, but its the first thing I've heard in a while so I decided to post it anyways.

Do you wait for D400 or just upgrade to 300s? leave your comment here -

My time on planet earth seems more and more important...

2011-01-07T22:25:00.001+05:30

Here we are already few days in to new year 2011, hard to beleive isn't it?

Year end wrapups gives makes me wonder as to was the year just passed by fells like just five minutes or the last 365 days passed on, my time on planet earth seems more and more important and I want to take advantage of it as much as I can!

It was a wonderful year filled with changes, good times and achievement of several personal and professional goals and wishes.

Early in the the year started with me getting healthy with plenty of marathons, I took a few moments aside and sketched what I felt I needed to do on many levels, but with many engagements with work and personal life the running took the back seat, so this year I shouln't let it happen.

Being passionate has its own advantages and disadvantages. However, from what I have seen, if you are passionate, you are one of the lucky few in this world and allows you to be cheerfull with whatever emotional personal feelings or how challenging the professional life goes. Travel had always facinated me, so with it accompanied a new passion of photography early in the year, with few trips to ranganthittu was all required to get it started.

Being with nature and admiring the true beauty of it is in itself a gift, well added to it was my third eye, the camera. Started liking the capture of wilderness and nature with my camera, soon or later I was with addiction to it.

Surely will cherish the first moments of my first sighting tiger in the wild yes the ranathambore forests, it was exciting, it was definative moment one will remember for life. The big cat walking in front of you and hes not tied to boundaries, hes free, in the wild, it was true dream come true, natgeo live in front of eyes or eyes had become an high definition screen all of sudden :)

Now I am wondering what was exciting, the beingness in the wild or capturing them as photos, where should I go from here? Well it might be the combination of both, the zeal to capture them makes me go travel to places of wilderness. I dint like to go more in to technicalities of photography, as just capturing them for myself made me happy, but as you explore and share the platform with like minded photographers, it made me dig more on the technicalities, so is where I am trying to discover more on my new found passion...

It was worthwhile trips to ranthambore, bandipur and bhandavgarh forests, it has increased the zeal of capturng wilderness with more precision, detailed and shart, hope to see improved versions of it this year :) But these trips have made me refreshed, knowing better of me and what I really what to do...

How was your year that just gone by?

Looking forward for an exciting new year 2011

Kaveri Trail Maraton 2010

2010-09-20T17:09:00.002+05:30

It was my second year running Kaveri trail marathon 10km, marking my anniversary of running the rough trail marathons, I was skeptical this year with not much of the practise but thought will give it a shot. The weather was expected to be couldy, misty and drizzling but unfortunately or fortunately it was soaring hot mysore climate. The run started at 8am and I finished at 9:25am with 1 hr 25 min to complete 10 kms, not so great personal timings but yet another run completed to keep the endurance levels high.

Its exciting to see the fellow runners high spirits which keeps one motivated and forget the soaring heat and tough trail. Some motivational one lines noticed -
"Born to run"
"Rest when you are dead"
"Beer tastes better after the run..keep running"

GPS data
Sports tracker GPS map and statictics of my run

Cheers
Manjunath

Wilderness Of Bandipur!

2010-09-06T23:09:00.047+05:30

It was yet another wilderness photography attempt with friends from the Youth photographic Society, it was rare chance to learn some technicalities from the passionate and experienced photographers who have acheived in the field of photography and most importantly to see the love and concern for the wilderness and nature in their heart.

It was great to meet the like minded people and to stay in the core forest for 3 days, we were putup in the forest department guest house dormitory, it was nostalgic feeling for me as it reminded of the college hostel as we entered.

The next few days was out in to wilderness, dormitory, safaris, birds, cameras...and yes laptop to watch and load the day's work at the end of day.

It was my first long visit to Bandipur forests, earlier I had done couple of safaris enroute to ooty or waynad, but not a full fledged wilderness trip in bandipur. Monsoon is considered to be not to be favourable for the wildlife sighting or is it beleived so or a myth :) but as usual wilderness has always surprise for us! We had very good sighting of the Tusker and to our surprise it was a modelling session with a tusker, it did pose to us, broke bamboo shoot in front of us and ate it. Was around our vehicle for more than 20 min and it was very cooperative, probably we were lucky.

Then what next, more surprise were waiting us in the forest, it was end of second day safari and somone had just spotted the green bee eather on a tree, so vehicle was stopped and folks busy shooting bee eater..then came the voice behind...Tiger tiger...tiger, and no one could for a while beleive what's in front of them and we have just spotted a Tiger in wild. It was a pregnent tigress walking past us with grace of what it supposed to be..the head of the pyramid of wilderness. The cameras were on their job...click..click click!

Seconday noon we planned and visited Gopalaswamy Betta(Betta is hill in Kannada). Its one of the taller hills located just outside the national park boundary. You really get to see and appreciate the vast expanse of the forest in the national park from here. It is surrounded with many more hills around and the green hills(in the monsoon) and their wavy formations make a beautiful sight.
Photography attempt - Landscape and Wilderness (Bandipur and around)

Some of the landscape captured around Bandipur
Landscape of Wild habitat - album

Wildlife/Birds in and around Bandupir/Rangatittu
Wilderness - Photography

Factfile: Bandipur National Park is around 250km from Bangalore and around 100km from Mysore. To reach Bandipur from Bangalore, drive to Mysore; from Mysore take the Ooty road and drive via Nanjangud and Gundlupet. The national park is on the Ooty road around 30 minutes drive from Gundlupet. If you have time and interest, you can stop by the well known Nanjundeshwara temple in Nanjangud. If you are taking the bus, ksrtc buses are available from Bangalore; buses going to Ooty stop at Bandipur on request. Taking an early morning bus(5am) to Mysore and changing to an Ooty bus would be the best option for people who intend to trek. It takes around 5 hours by car and 6 hours by bus from Bangalore. If you are staying the forest department accommodation in Bandipur, it is better to take a bus since you would not find much use of your car once you reach the place.

Fortunately on unfortunately, many resorts have come up on the premise of Bandipur National Park. It is difficult to find accommodation on weekends without a booking. Some of the places to stay include MC Resorts, Jungle Lodges, Tusker Trails and Bush Betta. Forest department has some guest houses and dormitories in Bandipur village. If you are not very keen to stay close to Bandipur, cross the border to Tamilnadu and you can find plenty of resorts in and around Masinagudi.

Bandipur is close to its adjoining wildlife sanctuaries – Mudumalai in Tamilnadu and Muthanga in Kerala. Other near by places which can be visited include Ooty – the famous hill station.

Cheers
Manjunath

Quick visit to Bhardra Nature Camp

2010-08-01T21:48:00.000+05:30

Bhadra situated in the midst of Western Ghat in Chikmagalur and Shimoga districts of Karnataka is surrounded by lofty hill ranges of Mullaianagiri, Hebbegiri, Gangegiri & Babaudangiri. and also the picturesque Bhadra river and its tributaries like Somavahini, Thadabehalla and Odirayanahalla.

If you need a refreshing swim in the river, watch a Hornbill sip the rain, follow the majestic Malabar squirrel along the forest canopy, reel in the great Mahaseer; Bhadra River Camp is truly a place like no other and we mean it in every sense of the word.

Tucked deep inside Western Ghats, the camp lies at the very epicenter of one of world's richest bio-diversity hot-spot. Home to countless, magnificent species of birds, fishes and animals, the place is a true paradise for nature lovers. Six kilometers of the safe Bhadra river flows through this thousand acre camp which has been maintained and preserved so well, you would find it hard to believe its very existence. You will find no plastic here and everything we use at the camp is organic.

The place isn't a jungle lodge or a resort. As part of the village forest committee, what this initiative is , is an agreement between the locals and the government bodies. Much of the money drawn from the camp goes towards local human and forest development. Towards better roads, better schools, better protection of the wild life from poachers, fires, re-plantation of burnt forest strips, balancing of the river eco-system and the like. But what this gives you as a guest is a chance rarely possible till now.

How to Reach -
Bangalore to Chikmagalur (250 kms apx)

Chikmagalur to Aldur ( 19 kms )

Aldur to Kadabgere ( 20 kms . Landmarks in between the two points: Church on your right, Poorna Pragnya High School on your left. )
Upon entering kadabgere, look for a blue board on your right which reads “Bhadra Nature and Fishing Camp”. Take this right. You’ll see a Govt primary school on your right.

Take the right at Mahaseer protection committee’s office. ( You’ll see a well and a board depicting two seemingly angry fishes taking on each other )

Follow the road until you find a black gate on your right which reads “Bhadra River Camp”.
Total distance : Around 280-300 kms ( depending on which part of the city you start from.

The Tigers of Ranthambore

2010-05-02T20:29:00.232+05:30

It was just two days, we were back from from photography experience with nature photographers @ ranganthittu organised by YPS. Imti asked me 'how about some wildlife shooting and foresting at the Ramthambore', temptation was too hard to resist, well, I said 'thats exactly in my mind, but am curious of going to Bandwagarh'. After much draggings and discussions we decided to venture to ranthambore as we dint have much leaves availiable and bandwagarh required lot of travelling as it doesn't have direct connectivity. Flight, train, stay and forest entry (safari's) everything was booked well in advance atleast open gypsy safari's has to be booked prior, infact a two months prior and fortunately rajasthan has every bit and piece availiable online for bookings. thanks to Imti for taking the pain of booking.

For those with wildlife and adventure on their minds, what better place to start off with than Ranthambore, deep in the heart of Rajasthan?

Ranthambore the very name conjures up images of Mowgli and Sher Khan as we pore over literature available on the area, en route the 160 kms journey by road from Jaipur, the state capital. The National Highway that leads to the sleepy district of Sawai Madhopur is good in parts, quite bumpy in others. We had reached Jaipur through hbad stopover flight from bangalore on the midnight of 23rd april 2010 then took train from Jaipur to sawai madopur village, not in real terms as the railway station was major hop stop for the railways enroute.

We reached the resort, Tiger safari resort in the heart of buffer area of the ranthambore forest by all possible means of transport availiable (flight to jaipur, car from airport to railway station, train from jaipur to sawai madopur, then auto to reach the resort from railway stations :). The resort was a small set to buildings of cottages and rooms. We asked for a pool side room and checked in to it, well in the later days the pool side room well paid off us, yes exactly :). With mountains in the backdrop looming large behind us and gusts of wind making whoosh ! whoosh ! sounds aplenty, so that getting up early morning was no hassle since one had hardly slept through the night! It was no comfort to know that the area was rich in hyena and hold your breath, panthers, who liked a snack of the local stray dog meat! .

For next 3 days it was routine to get up early morning 5am and get ready with dress code (light colored cotton shorts and t-shirt, hats and most importantly cameras) to venture in to forest early morning 6am. Imti used to leave early to get the formalties done with forest dept office for the entry to the forest, the signed copies by all for undertaking by all that entry to forest if our own risk :(, the hotel or resorts folks too does this job but with a premium of 200 bugs per entry.

We were finally within the precincts of the Ranthambore National Park the day 1. As far as the eye could see, one could spot the walls of the giant 1000-year-old fortress of Ranthambore that was held by the Chauhan rulers of the 10th century before it became the former hunting grounds of the Rajas of Jaipur.
We were alloted zone 2 on the day one. Ranthambore core forest are was divided in to 5 zones by the forest department and allocated zones was computerised and was obsolutely randam.

Day 1 first half (Zone two)
Ten minutes into the first safari, No sight of the tiger or I was too quick to expect?, Ranthambore is known for tigers. But cannot expect tiger to be traced in every venture in to the forest. We could easily spot other animals like deers, samba deers, langoor, peacock, wild boars etc. also shot some good deer snaps and also birds like king fisher, fly catcher. Three hours past in the forests our 4x4 gypsy climbing on stepp hills and rocks but no luck with the tiger spotting, but we admired the beauty of the impregnable open bush land the impressive dry decidious forest. Without much luck we came back to the resort at 11am, had breakfast and relaxed on the pool side awaiting for next entry to forest at 2pm.

Langoor monkeys predominently found in ranthambore forest...

Second half (Zone one)

Information from the forest guide was the zone one was more structurally rocky and road not so flat and expected the ride to be bumpy, well who is bothered when you are venturing in to forest. Two hrs past no spot of any wildlife, it was just open bush land everywhere and high ranthambore mountains to the right, brown dry trees looked like fossilled for decades, but they just come back alive during the monsoon thats the typical formulation of the decidious forests. Well 5 past 30 minutes we were about to exit from the core area, we noticed few gypsies on way, we just with half mind thought will wait with them, but yes it was right decision. There was tiger movement in the bushes, I was so excited to aleast have the glipse of this mejestic animal, even though it was not clearly visible, I attempted to take few shots at it. Soon it walks upwards and then not sure what prompted, it just walked past us for next 10 minutes giving us enough shots but yes it was 6 past and light was dull :( but I was satisfied with his brilliant spotting and fine phoses.

Day 2 First half (Zone two)
Again zone two and I was not that confident enough to spot the tiger on this route as it was the previous day, and yes it was dissapointing as usual, nothing much on this zone. We just managed to shoot some good birds enroute.

Day 2 second half (Zone Five)

This was quite memorable zone for me atleast, we had very informative forest guide and a racer driver with us. The driver did awesome job and again the jeep was pretty new, the drive was fantastic and zone five is supposedly were beautify route and we could feel it.And also this route proved very lucky for us too, we had spotting of the male tiger relaxing in the pool of water, I did click some very good pictures as the tiger was pretty much there for 20 min.

Tiger cub (2 yrs old) @ Zone 5 near the water spot...he was there for 20 min with domineering looks and eye contact!!

Day 3 First half (Zone One)

One of the lucky route for us and thanks to tiger tracking techniques of Imti, it was quite evident of this previous experiences. He was able to track the male tiger back in this route which we had seen on the day one. It was awesome sighting, The best part was there was no other jeep around but soon they arrived. He kept walking straight towards us and we kept reversing the jeep. He scent marked her territory, yawned and continued to walk. It went so for more than 100 meters. It was an incredible feeling to photograph a huge tiger walking straight at you with eye-contact.

Sub-adult male @ Zone one...Yawning in front of us..its a rare shot we got..we were pretty close at the moment.

sub-adult male..Domineering eye-contact walking down the road..was bit angry on us..as we moved very close!

After about 15 to 20 minutes, another jeep arrived and she deviated her path. There were a bunch of deer grazing in the meadows, and she started stalking them. Are we gonna see her make a kill??

She stealthily moved towards deer as we watched her. Carefully placing her paws, not to make any noise, she inched closer. I had seen on documentaries tigers placing their paws softly on dried leaves, not to make any noise, and here I saw live in action. But then some of the deer spotted her and gave out alarm calls. Damn it! She was seen here. She sat down as slowly as she could, not to make any noise even if she was seen. Stayed there for few minutes, and disappeared into the bushes.

Day 3 Second half (Zone Three)

We were initially allocated Zone 1,but we were very keep on goin on zone 3 as we had never been there and it was supposedly very beautiful zone in entire ranthambore forest. So were requested forest officer and got special permission for zone 3, initially he was reluctant but agreed to out request. As said we had wonderful experience enroute, there was two lakes, core inside the forest, we did shot some awesome birds, samba deers and wild boar, but yeah no luck with tiger. Finally when we were on the exit route the T17 female tiger suposedly in zone five has come out of the forest and she was found relaxing in the buffer area, it was quite far, but we managed few shots and headed back to the our resort.

T-17 female tigress (Radio colored) found outside the buffer area...dominent in Zone Three.

We all enjoyed photographing and sighting tigers at Ranthambore, but I’m not sure if they did. We did report spotting of the tigers to the forests officials which might be of some use for conservation and sensus.

More pictures can be found on Picasa -

http://picasaweb.google.com/skmanju/WildlifeRanthamboreForest#

Cheers

Manjunath

Carlton Towers fire Tragedy

2010-03-06T21:14:00.002+05:30

It was just another evening of Feb 23rd 2010 and people having snacks at office cafeteria balcony, but soon it turned out to be witness for the most unfortunate tragic scene of silicon valley, for us working at diamond district which is right opposite to carlton towers. Initially we just saw some some engulfing from top of the tower, our impression was that it might be some problem with the generator on top of building but soon it turned to be false as the major portion of the building has smoke engulfing.

The next few hours of scene in front of the building was disturbing and would make any strong person too loose their sense and eitch in their minds for years to come. We had helplessly witnessed the tragic moments of people jumping out of the 7th and 8th floor of the building to their deaths. It was very unfortunate that we could do very little to help them, some people in our office wrote a banner to advise them to break glasses and not to jump and that was the little bit of humanity that we could show at that moment.

Soon by 5pm the building was gathered with people, onlookers, police and such massive gathering that even disrupted the traffic and also the movement of the ambulence and the fire tenders. Still there were people who left to homes from neiboring offices as though nothing happened, and some were watching in front of the building from start to end as though some drama was unfolding and there were people who were ready to help in ways they could. Witnessing the loss of lives in front of eyes is very disturbing and will be etching in our minds for the life time.

It reminds me of the Dr Manmohan Singh's recent comment 'Our cities infrastructure and basic ammenities doesn't reflect our steady economic progress'

Had been High rise hydralic ladders arrived at the building immediately could have saved those precious life, or atleast the fire tenders could have trapping nets or atleast announcement about the recue operation could have help...yes nothing happened unfortunately. Ill equiped Fire department has to look at it seriously at least now.
I learnt from media that people trapped inside were busy “tweeting” their experiences, rather than get themselves out of the location or help others in need.
Many died by jumping from the 7th floor. A bit presence of mind could have saved their lives. Also people and some policemen were trying to catch the people falling from 7th floor with a bedsheet, can anyone think of this idea?
There were around 200 people busy clicking photos on their mobile and blocking the way for crucial help
TV Reporters arrived the sport much earlier to the Fire tenders and were barging inside the building, even before the fire personnel could clear the way and declare it safe to enter.
Seems people rushed in and looted cash and other equipments from offices located in the building
The restuarant located in the Ground Floor, though not even related to the fire, was ransacked and glasses were broken.
Even after two days , there were 3 OB Vans in front of the towers, might be waiting to get some sensational news from people who will come to work today.
One twitter has tweeted to all his fans allowing them to use his picture hanging out in the tower !!!
Last but not the least, Please do pay attention to the fire drills happening at your offices, it doesnt mean you are safe, but helps you know the basic information like fire exits location etc.

The tragedy put nine people have died and 59 are reported injured in a fire. As Bangalore tires to cope with the tragedy that took place in the Domlur area near the Old Airport Road, evidence points to serious lapses on behalf of the city's firefighters.

Book Review: “Discover the Diamond in You” by Arindam Chaudhuri

2010-02-06T11:53:00.006+05:30

What would be best new year gift? yes first time I felt and realised it to be a book. this book 'Discover the Diamond in you' was gifted by my boss to all the team mates on the first working day of new year 2010!

I was never a fan of these management kind abooks and was very reluctant to start off with this book, what really attracted was it said that it can be completed in flat 59 minutes is all Arindam is asking from you.

The prognotist can be one amounst us, some of us do lots of hard work but can go unrecognised way and some can easily get all the recognition and and tagging, thats sometimes called smart working. It's always not true that smart workers are not the ones working hard, but the combination of both work better and make the killing in corporate life!.

Getting on to contents part of the book, Arindam talks about 9Ps, from Passion to Patriotism. Loads of references of successful people are given. Just to state one, Sachin Tendulkar is the heart throb and inspiration for many many people. But there are as many criticizers as well. They just say that Sachin got lucky. Arindam in this books questions those critisisers as whether they knew Sachin, at the age of 13 used to practice cricket for 5 hours every morning. He asks them as to how many people they know who wake up that early and practice their passion at that young age. Only winners have that in them. Sachin had the dream and he followed the 9Ps. It is an automatic formula to success. Such examples with known personalities adds flavor to this book. Just identify your dreams and merge them with the 9Ps…This will be in your blood stream and you will see Success Knocking your door.

Nice quick read...give it a shot

Cheers
Manjunath

Book Review : Count your chickens before they hatch

2010-02-06T11:27:00.005+05:30

This book is all about counting chickens of your success before they hatch. He strongly beleives that to be successfull one shouldn't keep waiting for the success to come on your way...should make them happen. I remember a recent tv commercial for anandrathi funds..where in the person fishing gets a huge fish and hes happy with it but under the waters someone makes sure the fish comes on to the hook.
Here meet Arindam Chaudhuri the manangement guru cool, who makes the concepts of management not so boredom, but makes it exciting and relevent with more examples and india centric approach.
Some irrelevent quotations at times, but mainly I liked how he has explained the dosage of being passionate about what you think, winning friends, managing people, setting goals, achieving them, motivating and leading extraordinarily.

This book has two major sections. The first section is more of a ‘Self development’ stuff where the author talks about the ASK paradigm (Attitude, Skill and Knowledge) in order to raise any individual. The second sections talks about the theory ‘I’ management. The ‘I’ stand for ‘India Centric’ management.

Idol to Ideal.."His lord krishna's actions and the Bhagwad Gita hold extensive lessions of the modern indian management"

Some quotes from the book -
"If you think you can, you are right: just be passionate about it"

"Friends whom you will meet in hell: The prerequisites for motivating people and winning friends"

"People who has passion for work has courage to whistle while they work."

"When nothing seem to help, I go and look at a stonecutter hammering away at his rock, perhaps the hundred times, without as much crack showing in it. Yet, at the hundred and first blow will split in to two, and I know it was not that blow that did it. but all that had gone before it."

"Show me a country, a company or an organisation thats doing well and I'll show you a good Leader!"

Cheers
Manjunath

Book Review: The Notebook by Nicholas Sparks

2010-02-02T12:15:00.000+05:30

Set amid the austere beauty of the North Carolina coast, The Notebook begins with the story of Noah Calhoun, a rural Southerner recently returned form the Second World War. Noah is restoring a plantation home to its former glory, and he is haunted by images of the beautiful girl he met fourteen years earlier, a girl he loved like no other. Unable to find her, yet unwilling to forget the summer they spent together, Noah is content to live with only memories...until she unexpectedly returns to his town to see him once again. Like a puzzle within a puzzle, the story of Noah and Allie is just the beginning. As it unfolds, their tale miraculously becomes something different, with much higher stakes. The result is a deeply moving portrait of love itself, the tender moments and the fundamental changes that affect us all. It is a story of miracles and emotions that will stay with you forever.

Nicholas Sparks has this wonderful way of writing, where I think I would enjoy reading even if he wrote something where the plot was completely ridiculous. The way he writes is almost poetical, and the way he describes, for example, Noah just sitting on the porch in the evening playing his guitar - nothing all that spectacular - makes it sound like something so amazing. His description and imagery, I find, are just so calming, that while reading I feel like I'm in a dream-like state, with a sense of wonder over the smallest things.

The story, however, fell a little short for me. I characters didn't seem all that believable to me, the things Noah and Allie thought and said, the way they formed their sentences, it just isn't how people talk. They were structured, not automatic as they would be for normal conversation/thinking. And they kept talking about their love for each other, but I didn't really feel it. There was a lack of, well, passion.

Great if you're looking for a quick read that is beautifully written, but not overly heavy on the heart.

Cheers
Manjunath

My first birding and a stupid attempt of photography

2010-01-16T22:29:00.004+05:30

This was supposed to happen and with our passionate wild life photographer friend Imti, its driving crazy photography sessions. It was on my birthday 26th dec and was a quick trip to Rangantittu bird santuary, which was planned previous night 11pm and for Anji it was kinda unplanned as we picked him up from his house that morning :). We just assembled at Venu's place, myself, imti and Venu got up early and all set at 5 am, but as usual Chandru was late and we had to pick him up from his place and on the way Anji too.

Very quickly we picked up all the guys and were zipping through the mysore road highway in Venu's new found santro car. We were determined to be at rangantittu early morning sun shine. By 9:30 am we reached Rangantittu with a very obvious pitstop on the way at Kamat lokruchi for breakfast!

Located at a distance of 125km from Bangalore, Ranganathittu bird sanctuary is one of the most popular bird sanctuaries in India. Large number of migratory birds arrive here during winter from across the world.

Route: Bangalore -> Ramnagaram -> Bidadi -> Maddur -> Mandya -> Srirangapatta -> Ranganathittu

We hired a personal boat at Rangatittu for 300 bugs and set afloat waters with cameras in hand. Imti with his professional camera and Anji with his almost SLR camera but dont know what to do with it and myself with my basic Olympus camera and know how to use it but dont know photography techniques...Imti used to teach us to shoot the pictures in sunshine only otherwise we can dark and distorted images. With some gyan from Imti and some left our creativity which I last used in engineering exams to write big long answers to get some marks :) did click some photos of birds...yes a stupid attempt I call it.

We bugged the boatman to take us nearer to the birds and did click some snaps of birds, it was here I got attracted to photography, I decided that next time i come here it will be with some SLR camera and some basic knowledge of photography :). We could easily spot open billed stork, river teen, stone plover etc.

From there we headed to balamuri falls where we swam in the river kaveri and had fun under the falls and started off to Kokare bellur which was on the way back, with a 5km deviation but the road was in pathetic condition, which we could manage to drive though. It was off season so there were very few birds there, managed some photo shots and started off to bangalore and by 5 pm we came back.
Here is the work: http://picasaweb.google.co.in/skmanju/BirdsAsSeenByMyLens#

Cheers
Manjunath

Year End Wrap-up - Lessons learned and goals achieved

2009-12-16T23:55:00.020+05:30

Writing an year end wrap up for 2009 is like I am describing my personal experience with a raft boat on the waters of the bramaputra river in the himalayas, the chilling cold waters, the ups and downs of high levels of rapids which reflects in accord to the situations, feelings and emotions in the life this year...

Are we there Yet?
When we are travelling on a journey, we always look forward for the destination, the excitement and expectation of reaching the destination. This year it was the journey that seemed to be the 'never-end' and till today it could still be in formation, but have acheived lot of mile stones and exciting goals planned and some unplanned. The retrospective of the journey is that the path taken is less travelled but yet had defined clear picture of the way the future looks like.

Challenges and New technology - There were many challenges in the technology world as the budgets were squeezed or chopped at times. But fortunately or conscious effort of bugget planning or spree of cost reducing virtualization strategies or new product release pressure, that I got on to work on array of new technologies this year. Starting with Netapp storage with advanced features, AIX micro partitioning, spree of platform virtualisation of solaris like LDOM's, very early adptoption of LTO4 technology in the world for backup and recovery, latest blade server implementations in a confined data center spaces, OpenSource technologies. The Information technology team surged ahead of competetion by taking the advantages of technologies and innovative ideas to improve existing resources to support highly intensive product development environment and agile development practice which was new to the organisation.

One thing that Did not change - One thing that did not change was the focus on the work, the hyper hectic work infact, the can-do attitude of the team, which certainly helped overcome odds and stuff filled with technologies and innovation. Yet this year resulted in more effective and accurate results in my work, probably that was due to my early resolutions for this year. Organised work and planning ahead, well, that seemed to be working as i could see my dairy being occupied almost.

The Silver Lining or Was it a Shining Star - born passions reloaded
I always beleived the hrs in a day was not sufficient for the errants of life and work, but I was kind of wrong when I realised 'I have time for what I want to do' yes it's the passion.
I had to reload some of my born passions which was diluted and less proactive all these years, or lost in the busy 24 hr schedule. Being passionate has its own advantages and disadvantages. However, from what I have seen, if you are passionate, you are one of the lucky few in this world and allows you to be cheerfull with whatever emotional personal feelings or how challenging the professional life goes. I believe that those who have found a passion to live for have found the meaning of life and gained spiritual nirvana or 'spirit' in you all :) . That goes so against the philosophy of Buddhist nirvana right?? But when the blood is hot and spirit young, I think a cause or a passion and a single steel minded dedication towards it does the trick. It provides a purpose and gathers your thoughts.Those quarterly one marathons, early to bed early to rise strategy, avanture activities, tennis classes...all in all classy passions. For me, one whose life is passionate has got a life which is worth living for.

Conclusion
All in all 2009 was a year of challenges and may not be out of the woods yet (definetely tiger woods has :) since 2010 looks to be waiting with much more challenges, but ready to face it cherishing the accomplishments completed and with a right perspective.

2009 - Mission Accomplished now looking forward for 2010

Merry christmas & a very Happy new year, and year end holidays...enjoy madi!!!

Cheers
Manjunath

Kudremukh Peak Trek

2009-12-14T16:24:00.010+05:30

Kudremukh was suposedly first trek I was to do ever since my first trek way back in 2005, but various due to reasons I could't make it -

First time when I planned along with my college friends, some one demotivated saying its not safe and not so exciting place.
Next I planned myself by checking information on the blogs, got the contact information of the forest officials, send them DD for the dormitory accomodation and permissions for the trekking, but that trip got cancelled due to various reasons..
Once some of my colleages had planned, but unfortunately I couldn't make it.

After this time around Facebook was there for me to help on planning kudremuka trek. Just casually browsing facebook I found a message from exotic expeditions that they have plans for kudremuk on Dec 12-23th of Dec 2009, so I shared the message on my facebook profile to check if any of my friends can join me for this trek. December is typically considered a very good time for trekking in karnataka for various rasons, firstly the climate is very favourable and another is greenary landscape is more since the misty whether during that time around. After a week Vishal from infa showed interest and after bit of draggin Krishna too said that he would be interested for the trip, so we just confirmed and get started on to this trek.

On friday Dec 11th night 10:30 pm, Santhosh picked me up in the qualis he had arranged for the travel. Vishal and Krishna has already joined from MG road, also there were two more people in the qualis that's Praveen and his friend Anna. We reached the place called Balgal (this is 10km before kudremuk town and near to hike start point) at 7am in the morning with some pitstops on the way for tea and driver too wanted to sleep for a while :)

From Balgal we got on to a jeep (4x4) where there is a huge board saying 'trek to Kudremukh starts here', along with two more guys who joined us at Balgal, it was a bumpy and off roading exactly as the raod was heading towards the core of the KM forest, it was muddle and hilly with 45' inclination sometimes, it was a scary ride too. But the driver was well versed with the road so took us to the mullodi house which is 6km from the balgal and is the starting point for the kudremukh Peak. We started relaxing and freshen up quickly as we had to start the trek before 9am to avoid getting late in the evening as the camping inside the forest area or the peak was banned by forest dept, might be due to naxal problems.

We were all set and ready to go by 9 30am and we started to climbing from the mullodi, it was rough road initially with stones and gradually tuned to forest grassy land. Initial part of the trek was cool ... li'l uphill and then a li'l downhill ... a walk along the ridges with a view of valley on one side ... and then a few streams along which we cross with not much hurdles. In little more than an hour, we entered an open field and Ramesh showed us the 2nd Lobo Mane ... soon to be followed by the 3rd. The real trek starts from this point ... where the path becomes a lot narrower and uphill. Immediately after the 3rd Lobo Mane was a steep climb up one of the hills which took us to some height and provided a panormanic view of the surrounding. On one side was a cascade of hills covered with lush green grass, interspersed with shola forests(Its a patch of forest between the mountains or forest in the valley between two hills). To our front was more lofty hills, the tip of which having a sharp drop on one side and resembling a horse's face!
A little more than an hour from Lobo Mane was a small rock with water trickling down from the top. At this point, the peak was looking pretty close, but we were kind of vertically below the flat face of the peak and climbing up from there was just not possible. The path meandered to the right side almost going away from the peak taking us to another beautiful view of the valley. We had to cross over to the other side of the hill. It took us almost half an hour before we started moving up again, sharply to reach the foothills, at this point I was ahead of the guys and couldn't locate anyone back from view of few hundred meters, so I decided to take a break but soon I could see someone speaking it was Vishal and Krishna who joined me and then they just went ahead, from there the climb was really tough as it went vertical But, the excitement of being 'almost there' kept pulling us up. Though a sign post en route reading "KMP 1.5" pointing upwards almost killed most of us, our guide was quick to assure that "its just another 15 mins ... and then its flat terrain!". Indeed in another 15 mins, we reached the foothills of Kudremukh peak and from there it looked like a medium climb. It still needed about 20 mins to reach the peak from this point and I could see Vishal, krisha and other gang almost reaching there, so I just quickly trekked over and joined them, yes we had reached the KM peak in exactly 3 hrs 30 min thats an exciting timing. We just crashed at the peak and rested there while rest of the guys reached there after 20-30 min and everyone had photo sessions and ate the chowchowbath that we had packed from mullodi house.,but yeah it was not tasty as they had missed salt in it..but without choice we at it!!

As decided, we started our descend almost 2 pm. In spite of the slippery path we did descend down quickly reaching the rocky stream by (almost vertically below the peak) abt 3.30 abt almost uptill Lobo Mane. By then, the time was about 4.40 and it was safe enough with no signs of rain and enough time to reach back before dark. Vishal and Krisha was alomost running down hill...probably more excited to have food at mullodi or were panicking about getting stuck in the dark in forest :) We were back in Mullodi by 6 as planned and crashed at the first spot we could find.

Myself, Vishal, Krishna and our guide Santhosh decided to go to Somavathi falls nearby which was a 10-15 min of trek, the other guys were tired they dint join us. But yeah they missed the freezing cold water shower at the somavathi falls, it was exciting. We came back from shower and pitched in the tent and relaxed chitchatting while the dinner was getting ready at the Mullodi house. At 9pm we had our nice good dinners (akki roti, curry, sambar rice etc) ..yummy and then went to our tents and sleeping bags for a cosy sleep, couldnt imagine how quickly i went to sleep that night thanks to tiredness of the trek!!!

Morning we got up and had the showers and quickly started to horanadu which was 18km from there, we had darshan of Annapoorneshwari godess...what a sign of releif after having darshan for the devotess. We then had a delicius lunch the prasadham at the temple and started off to bangalore.
Kudremukh was one of my most awaited treks for me and worth all the the wait..

Whats the next adventure? never know :)

----------------------

Fact file: Area 563 Sq. Kms.

Rainfall 3000 mm - 6350 mm
Temperature 10'C - 35'C
Altitude 600 - 1892 M
Peak Kudremukh
Plan: To trek on very difficult route in Karnataka's one of the most magnificent forest.
Trekking routes: There are coupled of them, the one we took was Mullodi to Kudremuk Peak (9.62Km climb and 9.62km decend)
GPS data: http://sportstracker.nokia.com/nts/workoutdetail/index.do?id=1886143
Album photos: http://picasaweb.google.co.in/skmanju/Kudremuka_trek

Cheers
Manjunath

Books review - Chetan Bhagat's

2009-12-08T21:58:00.003+05:30

Chetan Bhagat's books are tend to be simple, with linear narratives and variety in the story telling, I personally like his kind of writing due to mainly the simplicity and creates the curiousity in reading and makes one stick to the book untill fininishes reading. They are not serious literature kind of novell but an entertainer like an bollywood masala movies, what else you need from a novell? There will be so many instances which will relate to life and feels 'oh this is so much true'. Well, here are some of reviews for his books which I have read.

Five Point Someone - What not to do at IIT
I read this book after all his other books, but this was the first book by the author. Well I was very curious to read as many people had reviewed it as a good one. It's a story of three IIT Delhi students- Hari, Ryan and Alok who come from three different backgrounds. The book is about their years in IIT Delhi and how they cope with the pressures of studies, family and relationships. The story describes the ups and downs of their college life. Their low scores, the way they are perceived by students and professors on the account of their scores, their drinking habit, their strategy to beat the system and finally being caught stealing from their HODs cabin. All the wrong things of a protagonist, but it is never kind of justified in the book that one of the positiveness of the book. None of the charecters are perfect, yet intelligent, very obvious they have cracked the IIT entrance and grabbed a seat. but you come to like them that is the greatness of the Chetan Bhagat.
I would advise this book as a good read, even though if your not in to too much of book reading, this is going to be a good start.

One Night @ the Call Center
I just read this book since one of my friend gave it to me saying, just to try it out. Personally I felt not a great story or good ready, but I might be minority when I say this - a colleage of mine things it is a brilliant book, might be due to witty one liners. Typically Bhagat's charecters are 'looser type' but one can find hero in them.
It's all about the six apoeple who work for a call center in the suburbs of national capital of india. Story was narrated to Chetan by a co-passenger in a train, after later gets the commitment from the autor to make it to a novell. Cast that includes someone stuck in a bad marriage (with a cheating husband to boot), a wannabe model who sleeps her way to the assignment she never gets, a Casanova who secretly pines for the model, a jargon-spewing boss who's as slimy as he's sleazy, and a 'Military Uncle' who, by now, should be expected, in this retinue of caricatures, to have his dirty secret-- having to earn a living because he's thrown out by his son and daughter-in-law.
By way of a plot, the summerise to do a 'day in the life of', but this is where the story falls apart. The love story gone awry, the secret trysts in flashbacks, the underhand attempts to sell out the company, and its 'heroic' saving by these protagonists. The perception of a call center folks looking at a software guy (the Microsoft guy) seems witty and sometimes aweful for techies, but goes well with the story line. One feels about so much happening in one night but sheer mechanics of ending of backgroud has ended the story well.

The 3 Mistakes of My Life is Chetan's third book, about cricket, religious politics and rebellious love. Fortunately of unfortunately this has nothing to do with Mr. Bhagat's life in itself. It's about three friedns get cought in a leagle tangle to earn some money and ofcourse only some fame, how they get out of it or sacrifices they have to do to come out of it. I personally feel Bhagat has touched lot of problems modern india or latest india is facing, he might not explain the problems directly but the protagonists themselves reveales as story begans to unviel. Few of them are expensive higher education system, lack of facilities in small towns of india, caste, religion, hypocrisy amoug politicos, public and others alike, drift in the religion that can affect the youth talent, politics in the cricket, lack of passion amoung indian and just want to make quick buck The charecters as just you and me and he makes one of the point very clear we indian live with all these and life ticks happily.
One thing about this book or about he Bhagat's writing is the humour along with the witty onliners and comparisions yet they will be an inclination towards a problem and speaking out to the public and having the opinion read out to the larger audiences.

2 States - The Story Of My Marriage, Chetan Bhagat's most recent book4. 2 States -
The Story Of My Marriage, is about how love marriages work in India and is again typical of him in the first person. It is like his first book Five Point Someone supposed to be inspired by his own life.
I liked his initial quote - 'Around world, boy loves girl and girl loves boy and they get married, but india its much beyond that'
The initial fifty pages of the book are super quick, girl meets boy, moves in with him, love each other, have sex etc, they get their degrees & jobs etc. He describes so much about Ananya that I googled Bhagat couples to find out how they look like :) . The way the South Indian Vs. North Indian angle is presented is something which is very predictable. But then as a reader there would be many points where you be like “oh this is so true” and I think that’s where lies the strength of Bhagat.
I would recommend this book as good read, I personally felt it has lot of charecterness, feelings and so much of positiveness in the story.

The fear, anger and determination - India pays homage to 26/11 victims, martyrs

2009-11-26T22:14:00.005+05:30

The fear - I have no entertainment agenda, but has to express the fear, anger.Its an year, its first anniversary not sure to call it an anniversary, India is paying homage to the victoms of 26/11 mumbai carnage. It was Nov 26 2008 when the extreme fear rolled in india when 10 Pakistani terrorists held Mumbai hostage for nearly 60 hours killing over 170 people and wounded more than 300, many where women and children.

The gunmen were well-prepared, apparently scouting some targets ahead of time and carrying large bags of almonds to keep up their energy. The terrorists were very determined and remorseless as said by one of the commander of the indian commando unit. The fact that the Taj was ful of terrified civilians made it difficult for our commandos to fire on the militants, avoiding civilian casualties. But yes they made it, they sacrified their life, they fought, they set aside they own personal life to save people and raise country's pride.
But the fear amoung the citizens continues...

The anger - after math the incident whole county looked awakened sending strong signal that they wont be deterred by terror. Within three days mumbaikers went to school, college and office as any other day. But there was anger...citizens marched in all cities holding candles, channels boradcasting peoples message to our stubborn politicos that they wont take it anymore. India has been shaken repeatedly by terror attacks blamed on Muslim militants in recent years, but most were bombings striking crowded places: markets, street corners, parks. Mumbai - one of the most populated cities in the world with some 18 million people - was hit by a series of bombings in July 2006 that killed 187 people. But this time people looked they were not going to spare leaders if they did not act on the situation. There were movies like 'the wednesday' which enlightened amm admi view...we can't take it any more we need peace, dont divide and rule with us.My name is not important. The color of my skin, my life style or what religion I follow are not as important as my nationality is. I....am an Indian and I am your brother. Yes the anger exists...

The determination? With the awakened citizens at the rate which it never happened in the post indian independence state, the politics of india shakened and was forced to take more intense and immediate steps, the step down of the CM of maharastra, the step down of the home ministers, well all the drama that citizens mutedly had to watch. The security hightened everywhere, hotels saw baggage scanners, railway stations with security personnels, double scans at the airports.,but all laster for few weeks. the event started diminishing from people's mind, the channels which were determined to focus on this and awaken the leaders started slowly shifting their agenda to more gossips of bollywood and other stupid scandels which looks more entertaining. Yes the determination to bring in the change had lost somewhere with in few weeks or days to be specific.By and large there was no such terror bombings took place in india after 26/11, but does that mean we have adequate security measures, or is it more to do with pakistan's internal mess or the diplomatic pressure by india and world?
Where is the determination?

--Manjunath

Bangalore ultra marathon 2009 - Life's calling where are you?

2009-11-21T21:48:00.026+05:30

Life's calling where are you? are you scratching your head trying to think whats the smirnoff Vodka caption doing here or if you just had two pegs of vodka? nah thats the caption it just flashed to me as I learnt about ultra marathon :)

A sunday morning 5am of 14th Nov 2009, previous few days had witnessed continous drizzle of and still did that morning too. It was tough getting up early on a chilly morning, but not much choice.. I got up to join my colleage to travel to haserghatta (a village in the suburb of bangalore) for bangalore ultra marathon, it's a true endurance event where in running distance is extreme somewhere around 25, 28, 75 100 or 150+ kms. If I truely recall it had been 10 days I din't even ran for a km and thanks to the cool drizzy climate in bangalore which made every nut to get more cozier in to bed.

I was running for 25Km event and even in practise sessions I could hardly managed 20km max, so this was actual stamina test and I was wondering how an 70+ kg globe was intending to cover the distance of 25km :)

It was a picturisc location to run, a view of the large grassland continued as much as your eyes to look for, it was beautiful and with the weather so favourable, was quite cool and little drizzle..utmost luxury one could expect during a run.

Event for 25km started exacly at 6 30am and we were on track, I started slow initially for 2-3 kms as usual with 10kmph and then pick up the pace to 7-8kmph, I call that a turbo switch On :) soon I realised it was getting tough as it was rough trail with inclinations and rocky surface. But a well organised event helped cover more and more distances, the aid stations at every 2 kms was strategically located to get goin with some water, fruits, snacks and glucose to reload!!

It was 2 laps to cover for the 25km event, while I was dying to keep pace on the second lap to cover an up hill run, someone tapped my back, I curiously turned back to see who it was, a gentleman said 'the longer we run, smaller our problems become' , he could clearly read on my back T-shirt the infa caption for running club, well that was some cheer!!!

Totally 7 folks from my office participated and averaging to 3h40m of completion time. It was an exhalirating emotion after completing the run.,yes my gps trackers was ticking 27.25Km total!!

We heard loudspeakers announcing each of our name and announcing the results as we finally arrived at the finish line after 2 laps corvering exactly 27kms, we were cheered, presented with the finisher medal and posing for photos at the podium.

Well that also completed my quaterly BO of 2009 :) yes my one marathon per quarter target!!!

Cheers

Manjunath

Nike Human Race 2009 - Hours, Minutes and Seconds… Not the Server Uptime for a Change!!

2009-10-27T22:54:00.016+05:30

Nike human race 2009 was a yet another marathon mania, but still it reminded their promise and fullfilled agenda of 'Clebrating the Run'. Initially I was skeptical to register for this marathon or not, since it was in the evening and as everyone involved with running said that body needs to be tuned well if its odd timing run like the one Nike has organised, it was evening 4:30pm. But yes as usual got prompted to join...

The Nike+ Human Race 2009 24.10.2009, a 10k worldwide running event was back for its second year. This is a multi-city event. Nike said its all about celebrating the sport of running by giving runners everywhere the opportunity to run together. It was helf in 24 cities such as New York City, Los Angeles, Buenos Aires, Rome, Singapore, Paris, Seoul, Bangalore among others. In Bangalore the Race was organised amazingly giving the runners with a great running experience, it was @ clarks exotica county near Bangalore internationel airport.

As we entered the amphitere was sparkling with the gigantic stage and runners all over. It was all set to provide runners with a great running experience and to celebrate the the evening with fun, music and exciting festivities. It was truly a global event with facilities at international event parameters. Myself and two friends (Suresh & Pattu) participated in the race, we were all dressed up with the exciting Nike human race Red tees which was compulsary to wear and had a BIB on it. We all completed the race in 1h20m around, it was though running in hot sun of 4pm, but soon we forgot all the pain when the finish line approached and our dear friend was holding banner which read 'Feel the passion...this never ends...Manju, suresh & Pattu'. We all celebrated at the rock show, had fun, photo shots, food, beverages and relaxed for a while and headed to October beer fest @ palace grounds!!!!

Fact File:

Organised by: Nike

http://inside.nikeplus.in/

Nike-hosted Human Race events will be held in more than 24 cities such as New York City, Los Angeles, Buenos Aires, Rome, Singapore, Paris, Seoul, Bangalore among others.

Kaveri Trail Marathon - A tough trail running

2009-09-12T13:55:00.037+05:30

It's running...why does it needs to be so complicated??? I remember thinking that way before I was into running mania :-). Well with all the Jack daniel's running fundas its getting complicated a bit, how about making it some more complex? doing it in a rough trial? yes, that is the Kaveri Trail Marathon (KTM), a picturesque but tough trail marathon conducted in Srirangapatnam.When I first saw the news letter from runners for life regarding KTM, it read with the caption "it's tough, are you", that created interest to learn more about it. yeah it was running at kaveri trails...wow that was exciting and I registered for it. Soon the guys from infa runners group also started registering..yeah finally we were three..myself, puru and pattu confirmed for the run, but puru had to dropout last minute. Hope to see more infaites joining KTM next year...

On saturday evening 10pm Myself, pattabhi alias pattu and his cousin (Dinesh who works for mindtree) left for srirangapatna in pattu's car, well the plan was to stay at pattu's uncle's place in mandya and then leave for srirangapatna the next day early morning since we had registered for 10k and it was supposed to start by 9am, and all went on as per the plan. Sunday morning by 7am we left mandya and reached fortview resort @ srirangapatna where the runners were supposed to assemble and bussed to start point at ranganatittu. We saw the busses were getting full so we enquired if we can drive ourselves to the start point and they said yes we could do that. but by then we're not told that 10k startpoint was 15km apart from ranganatittu, we reached the start point of 20k and waited there for 20 min doing some warmup activities.,there was about 10 min to the race start we're told by a volunteer that we were at wrong startpoint and need to travel 15km to race start, there were other 10-15 folks with us who were also for 10k...what the heck it's not our fault? but not having much choice we all got on to our car's and started a rally :-) yes thats correct rally to run (a value added adventure, do we go in search of adventures or it just happens? :)..I could see a tata safari zipping thru the rough roads..,following it was pattu's santro and then other folks behind us...yes we did it in 8 minutes and reached the race start before 2 min exact :-)...soon the race started before we could relax...yes that's how it has to be right?

As we started the run, the scenic beauty of kaveri canal started taking on us, I was admiring the nature god's beauty...it was amazing. But not too far as the terrain along the route was getting difficult and with the temperature rising it was really getting tough, we kept the normal pace and decided we will go slow but not do pitstops. After around 2-3 km the density of the runners came down and we could see only handfull of runners along the route, there were no crowd around to cheer the runners but the farmers along the route were smiling at us, I could imagine what they though in mind - " are these guys crazy to come all the way to run here? " :-). There were people running for challenge, running for excitement and as usual some of them doing ramp show :-). It was definately not an easy run, the trail with lots of roots, ups and downs, creek jumping (not rock climbing though) and most importantly the temperature. We had little difficulty finding the distance mark and water bottles were not availiable so frequently , I don't want to get into details on that now.,hopefully will have better in ultra marathon.

At the end of 10km I realised there is no finish line and not one volunteer sited around, and my GPS tracker ticking 10km+, finally after running further .5km we could see finish line with big gang of vounteer and visitors crowd there to welcome and cheer us. Yes it is 10.5Km in total, we completed the run with not so exciting timing of 70-80 min, but considering the climate and trail its fine:-).

Soon after the run we just plunged in to the kaveri canal and played with waters for few mintutes before we had lunch and drove back to bangalore at a 2 hr relaxed pitstop at mysore road cafe coffee day. With pattu driving, dinesh dozed off and myself busy with notepad on my cell phone writing this blog :)

Overall, I was happy with our performance and the learned lessons to improve upon next time!!.

Cheers
Manjunath

Factfile:

In the historic town of Srirangapatnam, on the banks of the river Kaveri, an ever-growing group of runners meets every year to run their hearts out. The Kaveri Trail Marathon (KTM) is a picturesque but tough trail marathon conducted in Srirangapatnam. It’s an event that is slowly and steadily gaining popularity among long distance runners in South India. With a canal from the river Kaveri flowing right next to the trail throughout the route, it is one of the most amazing trail routes to run in Karnataka. But the humidity and the heat of the area also make it a very tough route to run.
Venue: Srirangapatnam, near Mysore
Distances: 10k/ 21k/ 42k

Organised by: http://www.kaveritrailmarathon.com/

Nearest places to visit: Raganatittu bird santury, balamuri falls & mysore KRS dam.

Save GKVK - The last remaining green cover in North Bengaluru

2009-09-01T10:18:00.002+05:30

Save GKVK March
The last remaining green cover in North Bengaluru
Organized by Rotary Yelahanka
Issue: Proposed construction of a major 80 feet link road through Gandhi Krishi Vignyan Kendra (GKVK) campus of the University of Agricultural Sciences, Bengaluru.
Why is it of concern?
GKVK with a well-defined campus boundary, demarcated by a compound wall all along its periphery, is a unique habitat with rich bio-diversity providing the much needed green space and shelter to several species of birds, insects, animals, and many rare plants.
Deforestation as a result of uprooting more than 3000 trees would be extremely detrimental to the green cover, potentially affecting ambient temperature, rainfall, and the surrounding water table.
Pollution resulting from the fuel emissions of subsequent traffic on the proposed link road would negatively impact the bio-diversity of the campus as also the health of the neighbourhood children and residents.
The research character of the campus would be adversely affected with the advent of vendors, commuters, establishment of commercial enterprises, and generation of waste material alongside such a major link road through the campus.
Community Demand:
We must SAVE this lung space - the GKVK campus - one of the last remaining green cover in North Bengaluru!
Source: http://www.hasiruusiru.org/ - Hasiru Usiru is a free, open-to-all forum.Hasiru Usiru is a network of concerned citizens of Bangalore who want Banglaore to live up to its "Garden City" epithet and are concerned about the conservation of public commons, open spaces and greenery.
Signup:http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HasiruUsiru

Dine with the Himalayas - Amarnath Trek

2009-08-05T21:57:00.097+05:30

It was just another day at office, myself, pattu, sunil, ravi, vishwa were chatting at our usual adda post lunch at cafeteria. Well, the topic of dicussion was to decide and plan for rafting...where, when? abruptly we decided to go to dhandeli for kali river rafting and action item for me was to check the feasibility. After googling and discussions with friends I got the contacts of the jungle resorts in dhandeli, but upon contacting them we realised that waters in kali is capable of rafting only after september since the waters in the dam has to come up. So now that the dhandeli plan was put on hold until few months hehe....there was some other mission idea revolving around pattu's mind (...kashmir?) which only required a small ignition , was finally done by Suresh (sales suresh.,have to specify to diffrenciate between IT suresh..hehe). Pattu asked me to drop by his desk next day, then I did, he was all with his smiles there...he told me that we have diverted the trip from dhandeli to Himalayas and probably srinagar/amarnath? Are you crazy or what, I replied. But that's no surpise in the team as we have done this couple of times..remember the kodaicanal trip? After this idea was floated we all decided to go to srinagar-amarnath since pattu had already visited once so he can be our tour guide cum host :-) few of guys (Pattu, sunil, suresh, ravi ) were already ready for the ad-venture., I think some of them had dual idea in mind - "swamy karya hagu swakarya" by visiting amarnath. But yeah I was bit skeptical initially whether to go or not...what was that blocking me? well, I dont have an answer but what drove me to join was the passion towards adventures.

Pattu and Sunil took the initiative to search for the best possible cheap flight tickets for us to travel to sringar. Finally pattu could find some on the yatra.com and tickets were booked for 31st July 09 8:30am departure and 4th Aug 2:30 pm return. After 2-3 days Shyam also wanted to join, so pattu booked tickets for him but he dropped out after 12 hrs of booking :-), again some work for pattu to get the tickets cancelled, yes this time around he had tough time getting refunds from yatra.com, finally he had to escalate it to CEO of yatra.com. sounds weird? but its not unusual for IT infra folks like us isn't it? Well before 29 july we regrouped to discussed the plan or the modalities for the trip and decided the things to carry and do. We (myself, pattu, Sunil, Ravi and Suresh) were all set to go, but last moment Ravi dropped out from the trip due to his eye infection :-(, it was four of us left for trip.

On 31st july 2009 we started for the trip, flight was around 8:30am from bangalore - delhi (stopover) and then to srinagar. So we are pooled the cab and reached the airport having idly wada on the way :-). We reached Srinagar in the afternoon that day by around 1:30 pm, I was told that its a military airport so expecting it to be a baremetal one, but to my surprise it was a full fledged airport architectured for the way it should be to handle the heavy winter snowing. We found a travel counter at the airport so we decided to enquire there about the cab to baltaal base camp, the person there was very courteous and he told us the pricing and route etc. Our suresh with very excitement asked - 'shiv lingu kitna height hai abhi' the answer came back ' Woh ling hai lingu nahi...,apko hindi kisne sikaya' by then we were all bursting in laughs...

We hired tavera cab from sringar airport for 2100/- to baltal base camp which is 130km from srinagar. The drive was through sonmarg & kangan along the valley of rezan, throuhgout the drive, we enjoyed the pictureque scenery, apple plantations with stoppings at the some of the beautiful spots. The driver was not willing to stop frequently since after 3 pm the military convoy passes thru and if we get stuck has to wait for an hr or so, but, we insisted and made some pitstops for photo sessions & lunch (parota, lassi with chana...hmmm mouthwatering is it?) . It was the National Highway (NH1D) and zeal of Kashmir started taking on us. Here on we started admiring beauty of Kashmir and why all call it as heaven on the earth. The road which leads to kargil and then to Ley-Ladakh twin cities as so we could see sign boards mentioned ley 370Km. After 3 hrs of drive we came at a deviation for baltal base camp where in the road for another 2-3 km was completely muddy and pose challenges for even 4x4 SUV's. We reached the base camp at around 5pm and we had to pass thru couple of security checks and there was even a computerised baggage scan. It was valley between high mountains and we were clicking photos, while a army jawan standing there called us in kannada, not sure how he realised we're from karnataka, we left that place after a quick chat with him - 'nimma uuru, estu varsha aithu kashmir ge bandu etc'. Then we hired a tent after negotiation for 50 bugs per day/head and logged our bags in to it and left in search of food, pattu knew langars (these are hindu cummunity kitchens serves free food to all the yatris), to our surprises menus there goes from roti, chawal, daal...to masala dosas's & sweets etc :-). We had good daal rice and a roti and came back to our tent, had good sleep that night since we knew the next morning gonna be tough for us...at 11pm in the night we heard the announcement from the authorities that nobody should venture into the trek next morning till 5am, unless they declare the weather conditions favorable one.

Fact file: The trek to the Amarnath caves during the months of June - August every year is one of the most holy pilgrimages for Hindus. It is located at a height of 13000 ft above sea level. Best time to visit: July to August.

Climate: Average Max temp 16°C, Min Temperature -4°C.

How to reach: Trek or hire a pony from Baltal base camp is 17km and from pahalgam base camp its around 48km. Helicopter services are also availiable at the base camp.

Day 2: We got up at 4:45am in the morning after snoozing my nokia phone alarm for about 4-5 times :-), everyone wanted to have bath since we're going to have darshan, so we quickly bought hot water for 20 bugs per bucket and had shower in the freezing cold atmosphere. At 5:30am we're all ready to trek and we started climbing, on the way there were pony wallas asking us if we need them, but we rejected saying we are very confident of climbing on our own. As height was increasing sunil and suresh were stopping frequently for relaxing. I saw few Sadhu's and old women were walking continuously chanting "Bam bhole". I was amazed by their will power...we continued our journey. Scenic beauty nearby was wonderful Devdar trees, waterfalls, snow color rivers and mountains, flowers of different kinds, environment of Amarnath climb. No matter how fit you are, this one is demanding hike. The religious faith and zeal are what I feel will keep most of the people going. It was around 2.25km we had a pitstop and relaxed, but sunil and suresh were not ready to get up, they needed some more rest, there we decided we will hire a pony to load their luggage and they can only walk along. Meanwhile I told them that I will keep walking and will meet them at next pitstop, that time I dint realise that there will be multiple routes and we may disconnect from each other, but I went ahead for another 3 km admiring nature god and beautiful mountains. I decided to take a break and ate an apple from my backpack and relaxed for 20 min, from there the route was getting really tough and it was getting difficult to carry myself, but was determined to keep pace to complete the journey, nothing could have prohibited us to take amarnath dharshan except Army :-). Now that I was alone and don't have a clue of my group reached a place where there was two routes in front of me.,I enquired few people which one to take but dint get clear reply, then I approached an Army jawan and asked - 'sir koun sa route teek rahega' he replied 'yeh wala route naya hai our dho kilimeter bachega aapko.,magar bahut difficult hai, rasta teek nahi hai, our doosa assan hai' that put me on thoughts for a while but took the difficult one thinking it will reduce the time and lenght, by now it was 9:30am - 4 hrs past and covered 5km...still 12km more to go. I stretched further and started walking along with the military team who were also trekking along..,spoke to few of them but yeah very obviously I couldn't match their pace :(

Now I realised if I walk further I will over extent myself without food so took quick break and ate an apple and some buscuits, by then it was 11:00 am, I had covered around 12km. Another 5 km seemed to be impossible for me but, did I had any choice? I can't even take pony since I was on a trek route only. It was time to do a final swing, so started the trek again will a full determination to reach the cave by 12pm, sometimes even I ran like a marathon :-) yes I did it, by 1 Pm reached and Pattu, sunil and suresh were waiting for me, we hugged with praise for eachother and left for dharshan. The cave is huge, almost few hundred meters wide and tall, we entered it finally with facing all hurdles. Luckily there was no rush, shiva lingam was around 3 ft height and parvatimayya's lingam was beautiful and 6-8 feet high. With holy mind I prayed lord shiv. Also saw two pigeons in the cave. People say they are invincible., as they drank water falling from shivji's jata. I drank the melted water from the lingam and left the cave.

After that we slept in a tent for an hour or so and at 3 pm we hired a pony for 500 bugs per person to come back to baltal camp. In this travelling we all invented that even horse riding is more tougher than walking. As it takes toll of your back and thighs. You also need good balance over it as few women fallen off the ponies in front of us. Finally we reached baltal at 7 pm, we were feeling relaxed as we completed Shivji's darshan successfully. A great accomplishment for a follower. So that in mind I was very much satisfied.

Day 3 (Sonmarg-Srinagar-dal lake): We got up at 6 pm and packed our backpacks with collecting the clothes that was scattered all inside the tent. Paid the reamaning amt and said bye to Aktar (our tent care taker) We hired a cab (tata sumo) at the base camp for 3200/- to take us back to srinagar and also to have siteseeing of whole srinagar till that day evening 5pm and was supposed to drop us at dal lake. The driver was quite knowledgeable about the places around, we asked him to get us to rafting place @ sonmarg Sindh river, he did that. Myself and pattu had strong mind to do rafting in ice waters, but others were not that inclined. Reached rafting place at around 8 am, they told us 4 people are compulsary for rafting and it costs 300 bugs per head, so sunil and suresh were targets for us to convince which we did after some ragging :-). All set for rafting with life jackets, helmets etc, we realised the water was too freezing and any mistake of ours on the route will render us in to ice freeze waters. As the boat started off from the banks, we all shouted 'bam bam bole'. Our boat immediately took momentum as the waters was gushing in high speed, there was amazing rapids and freezing water spilling over us...gave us an amazing experience of life time, within 30 minutes we had covered our 4km along rafting and reached the destination where our cab was waiting for us. We said gud bye to raft choach and left from there towards sringar. That day went fast with visit to world famous moghul gardens, Shankarachaya peeta on the hill top, ksheer bhavani temple and a mosque. By evening 5 pm we reached Dal lake, sunil and suresh found a beautiful house boat for 2400 bugs for 2 days for all four guys, thanks to negotiation skills of suresh :-)

Welcome to floating sojourn...kasmir, Apples and apple-cheeked children, beautiful pahari women and the pink lotus flowers, paisleys and carpets, jewellery and wood carvings, the shikaras and houseboards.,its complete holidy atmoshere in srinagar. It still is...if it were not for the Army personnel littered all over. As one drives into sringar, it seems that the area has been taken over by the Army. At every ten steps an armed man will stop you to ensure that you are just a tourist. Hence, it is advisable to carry valid identify proof. In fact, soon enough you will start enjoying their company, since they not only make you feel safe, but also are always eager to chat and share a cup of tea, with a sermon or two flowing in if you accidentally touch upon the subject of national security.

It was time to log into the houseboat, the only way to reach houseboat is to take the shikaras. These shikaras are smaller boats that are decorated with flowers and brightly colored shiny fabrics and are specifically meant to tkae people to and fro between the houseboards and shore.

Unlike the houseboats of backwaters in kerala, these houseboats are fixed. Each houseboat is complete in itself with a few large rooms, a living room and a kitched. The remiscense of Mughal regal sensbilities can be seen in the fine furniture, delicate rugs and fabrics. After relaxing for 2-3 hrs in houseboat we thought of going out on shikara around Dal lake, we stuck a deal for 500 bugs for hrs of ride. The water is so clear that one can clearly see the underwater weeds and small fishes swimming. We sat in the shikara and watch life go by on the water, entertained sellers of all sorts of delightful things who arrived in shikaras to show their wares. Also our shikara passed by meena bazaar where we did some shopping (handicrafts, shawls etc) and finally came back to houseboat tired and everyone quickly slipped in to deep sleep.

Fact file: The valley of Gulmarg: a large meadow about 3-sq-kms in area, stands at 2,730 metres, 56-km south west of Srinagar . The name means ‘Meadow Of Flowers’ and in the spring it’s just that, a rolling meadow dotted with countless colourful Bluebells, Daisies, Forget Me Not’s and Buttercups. The valley itself is about 3-km long and up to a km wide.

Main attractions: Snow capped mountains, Gondola (rope way) , its world's highest rope way or cable car which extends to the mountains upto 13,000ft.

Day 4 (Gulmarg): Gulmarg .. that’s what the plan for the day. As usual we had to get up early by 7am, this time was to save money on travel and to go by govt bus instead of our sumo's or tavera's. We reached TRC by 7am exact and upon checking with the bus station we realised that the bus to gulmarg was cancelled due to very less passenger turnout (good or bad?) well, we re back on track and hired a qualis for 1300 bugs. Our main attraction in gulmarg was Gondola (rope way), never realising that there was another adventure awaited there. Immediately after reaching there we're approached by ponywalas and they promised a spectacular rite to the hill top where the snow mountains with another 7-8 siteseeing locations, well, with halfmindedness everyone climbed the ponies and it started climbing the hilly regions, very scenic mountains with pine trees. Then in the further journey to Gulmarg road was surrounded by flowers and chinar trees. It was yet another tiring ride on the pony of about 6km to reach the hill top, but, yeah all the tiredness vanished when we reached the place, it was so beautiful and only in the movies and probably calenders we had seen that amazingly beautifull place, we're mesmerised. After playing with snow for 2-3 hrs, it was time for us to get down, we decided to get on to our foots, it was a very exciting trek back, photo sessions happened by default. Ad-venture din't end after comming down, as everyone felt we should go for the gondola ride as we have come all the way to gulmarg, so we spent another 300 bugs per head and got on to gondola ride, it was amazing, breathtaking scenaries, withinn minutes the cable car reached the height of 13000 ft, where we could see the snow capped mountains. Oxygen and termperature decreased as it gradually went up, but on top it was ferfect fun. We spent some time there and came back, had lunch at a hotel near gondola base tower and walked back to the parking lot at gulmarg where the qualis was waiting for us. It was around 5:30, while the driver was not that humble this time, he was murmering that we're late by 30 min, suresh used to call the driver as 'frustrated soul' :-) that was fun too. After reaching srinagar we decide that night we will enjoy the houseboat and will not go out for dinner, so we packed some food from Nathus (famous veg restaurant and sweet stall in srinagar) and went to houseboat. That evening we sat on the brige of the houseboat with out feet in the neat waters of dal lake, chitchatting till late night with some drinks (soft ofcourse..hehe).

Day 5: (Srinagar airport): Finally it was a day when we all got up late in the morning, yes it was 9:30am :-) quickly packed our bagpacks with all the scattered clothes in the rooms of the houseboat. Had lunch at krishna dhaba (as discovered...our fav dhaba in srinagar) and left for airport in ......an auto...yes thats correct..cost saving.,but it costed us 2Km of trek with lugguage as the autos were not allowed beyong the security checkpost before airport :-(...ufff that was word everyone uttered. Got on to the aircraft by 2:20pm and reached bangalore by 9pm. It was home sweet home for me, but with sweet memories!!!! that's how we completed our journey with ad_ventures....

Marathon mania - Bangalore 10k 2009

2009-05-31T18:15:00.005+05:30

It's just running...why does it needs to be so complicated??? I remember thinking that whenever Suresh used to tell me that he was a fanatic runner and does it every morning and then the weekends too with a group called 'Runners for life'. He and Puru (@infa) had participated in many marathons and to us they were the kinda Experienced guys!!!

Bangalore sunfeast 10k was making noise in the news papers, it was big time advertised event round the time of june-july. Well this time I had decided to participate in the event with some motivation from peers at office. Now where to start, how to start? hmmm...started running daily morning and then with weekends some of our colleages (Puru, chandu) at GKVK, which is a good running location in bangalore, I too joined them, I really enjoyed the atmosphere there, it was a peaceful place...and the most important the bamboo forest trials. From further reading on running and marathons..,my thinking of 'just running...why so complicated' seemed to be diminishing as I learnt there was lot of techniques and processes involved :-)

Ten steps easy...ten steps hard....twenty steps easy...twently steps hard...one hundred steps easy...one hundred steps hard...some one mentioned this is an effective training mantras and was thought by Jack Daniels. Jack Daniels? I questioned thinking it might be just a punch line to make strong effect as the whisky :-). Well I learned it differently, he's world best running coach, scholar, exercise physilogist, athlete researcher and coach who does it right way - with scientific data.

After all the monthfull of running...it was finally the day of the run which was scheduled to commence at 6:45am, on 31st may 2009 and the event was divided in to multiple categories - 6 races - World 10k, nation's callenge 10k, Open 10k, majja run 5k, sr citizens run and a wheel chair event. A large number of participants took part this year - the kanteerava stadium was crowded, the hype created had worked or the buzz word Run-madi-run made the trick :-) whatever.

We were around 15 folks from Infa registered for Open 10k and wearing a Infa sponsored rebook T-shirt. I completed the run in 1hr:15m time, well not that great personal bentchmark too but a great feeling of accomplishment without a pitstop...

There were people running for charities...running for their fun, some people walking as though they were doing a ramp show :-) and some with costumes in majja run, well, probably I was in for curiosity as I was running for first time and testing my stamina :-)

It was a well organised event, they had taken care of every minute things to make the event so sucessfull. All in all a nice feeling, I will be back after a next marathon...probably bangalore ultra 26k event in nov 2009...bye for now!!!!

************

Fact file: According to Scott-Barrios (the author of runners world) it boils down to a few basic rules.
* Do the minimal training needed for optimal results. According to Scott-Barrios, each runner has their own, personal "individual training threshold". Run at it and you will optimize your training. Run below or over it and you risk either under-training or getting injured. Each person has to find their own optimal training level.
* Be consistent. Becoming good requires running with some degree of regularly. It's not how hard your training as much as how consistently you train.
* Balance hard efforts with rest. As a rule of thumb, don't run back to back hard days. "Sandwich" (my term) hard days with easy days, allowing yourself time to rest and be restored.
* Expect peaks and plateaus. Runners naturally realize plateaus in training and racing. Learn to enjoy the peaks and understand how to work yourself off of the plateaus.
* Practice patience. This ranges from embracing the "10% rule" (never increasing your weekly running by more than 10% in terms of mileage or time week over week), building a base (especially if you're relatively new to running) and establish a consistent routine to your running.

Coorg trip - Rafting @ Barpole, an adrenaline quotient certified

2008-08-06T13:45:00.022+05:30

It was party time., well, Vinay's bachelor party...we were exploring options as to where to celebrate this time, an idea of coorg just came from some one, yes thats it.,within no time we had plan going for it. I knew anish (Bethel estage in coorg) thru some blogging, so I contacted him and got information regarding homestay & rafting etc. The very next day myself, pattabhi and Avadoot had conf call with Anish and very next weekend we were all set to go...

We (Manjunath, Pattabhi, Vishwanath, Shailesh, Ravi, Vinay, Sunil and Avdooth ) started off from Bangalore on Friday night, August 2nd weekend, we traveled overnight and were received by Arun at 5.30 AM in the morning. They had asked us to give a call before we start and Anish kept us informed about the route all night so that we dont get lost. Arun (estate care taker) received us at the gonikoppa at 5 AM -- after all it is a 5 hour journey from Bangalore!!. We parked our TT cab at a travellers bunglow and got on to Arun's Jeep, as the road was rough and only SUV's could take on. It was a nice bumby ride thru the extensive coffee estates, cardomom plantations and lush green beauty of coorg. It took around an hr to reach the home stay place which was inside forest. Accomodation in bethel was in swiss and bamboo cottages, the cottages introduce its guests to the adventure of camping wihout sacrificing any of the amenities of modern home...Although there was electricity inside the camps, Rakesh (care taker of Bethel) insisted to commune with nature

The guys then refreshed and helped themselves to a full breakfast and after that we went on the trek with Rakesh. Our trek with the estate was beautiful, but mild. It can be classified at most as a beginners trek, just enough for first timers to be stressed but not so much that they can't complete it as we were the adventerous type ... so our trek was pretty mild . But the wade in the crystal clear waters of spring and streams, trek up to the hill was excelled experience...along with the mix of jack daniels with the stream waters :-)

We came back from the trek at around 2pm and relaxed for a while, then was the time for some more adventures, we went for the 3.30 PM rafting session, had to wait because the 1 PM rafting team turned up late!! Arun has already booked the rafting slots upfront but still we have to wait for an hr or so to get our turn :( Rakesh made sure that the rafting folks knew of our displeasure. Barpole river offers the wildest white water rafting in south india with rapids becoming the levels upto 4 in peak and we were right in the peak season with rainfall at it max in kaveri basin. A sucessfull rafting run.,ie. non eventfull without casualties, is a combination of great guides, proper training and gear and ofcourse luck. Thankfully we had good quality equipment and gear guides who conducts rafting at barpole, the training program includes rafting commands and rescue techniques. Folks will be prepared ahead of the river challenges trown at them and need to have better river reading skills. Getting down the raft and being recued is common and even lot of fun - Well we were all on the raft equipped plunged in to waters.,initially the coach was explaining us with command of rafting 'left flow, right flow etc' then came the time to jump to water to get used to water movement. hmmmm it was the ultimate scary part of it, even though the life jackets are on, it takes iron nerves to do that, well without having much choice everyone jumped in to water when their turn came. Sunil, pattabhi, vishwa & avdoot were in once raft and myself and Ravi in another, well vishwanath jumpped first in to waters without knowing the waters but to the bad luck he was pulled opposite the direction of raft...he was like shouting ' help me help me...i dont know swimming' we could stop bursting with laughts at one side and feelling bad with our helplessness.,well, nothing to horor the coach on the raft pulled him back :-)
The next 1 hr was amazing experience with the rafting.. the gushing waters of kaveri pulled the rafts on the speed quickly. I heard someone yelling 'I know everyone dies one day, but why am I paying for it' :-). humours aside, it was amazing rapids up to level 4 sometimes giving ultimate challenge for the rafters..

At night we settled down to a cozy campfire...and the next day we went back home the long way back to Bangalore, via , Gundulpet..Bandipur forest with a stop over at the famous Iruppu falls Photos that wetook have been uploaded, the link to the album is here

Fact file: (CoorG)
Located in the Western Ghats, right on the border between the southern states of Kerala and Karnataka, Kodagu or Coorg as it is popularly called is a nature lovers paradise.
With pleasant climate lasting through out the year (average temperature 15°, maximum temperature 28° in May), dense tropical greenery, scattered hamlets among rugged mountains, extensive Coffee and Cardamom plantations, Coorg provides for one the most beautiful settings for a vacation anywhere in India.

Scanda Giri Night trek - Aka Kalawarahalli betta

2007-11-18T21:31:00.056+05:30

It was just a casual kickoff trek after a long gap that mani has planned, skandagiri is typically a night trek and very mild of around 4 hrs of trek. We all started at 11pm in the night in two cars to scandagiri, it is 70km from bangalore city at the foot hills of chikkaballapura. We reached the place at around 12:30am, there were couple of guides readily availiable to help and also one of the guys approached us. We booked him for 400bugs and started to trek. It was a day of half moon and haldly any moonlight due to cloudy atmosphere, but we had with us torches and headlights with us which helped usway thru the trees and rought terrain of the mountain. The next 2 hrs was climbing on the rocks, steps, grassland and we reached the summit by 6am in the morning. It was mistly early morning and we could see the mountains covered with mist all over, we have plently of photo sessions and rested for a while. Already there were some folks tented last night and present there when we reached.

At 8am in the morning we said good bye to the summit and started decending down the mountain, it was not that tough to get down as we took the other route which was supposed to be formal route the the kalvaralli betta, yes it was much more easier than climbing and we realised we took the tougher one while climbing but still had couple of pitstop to just chit chat and pull each others legs :) all well that end well. We reached parking place at around 11am in the morning and had couple of tender coconuts and drove back home. It was exact 12hrs of express trek I ever had!!

Fact file:

Skandagiri is a hill, located approximately 70km from Bangalore city in the Indian state of Karnataka. It is off Bellary Road (NH-7 Hyderabad-Bangalore Highway), and is very close to Nandi Hills and Chikkaballapura. The peak is at an altitude of about 1350 meters, it is every adventurer’s paradise with beautiful night trek, altitude camping, stunning sunrise, and serene and swimming clouds that sometimes limits visibility to just a few meters.

Getting there
There are two routes to Skandagiri:
From NH-7, turn towards Nandi Hills. At the base of Nandi Hills turn right and proceed to Kalawara village via Muddenahalli (birth place of Bharath Rathna Sir.M.Visweswaraih).
From Chikkaballapura proceed directly to Kalawara village.
Directions:
Follow the Bangalore International Airport , better known as Bellary Road. After crossing the BIA , you shall be on Chikkaballapura road. Follow the same road until you find a Visweswaraih statue on to your Left.
Take a left at this place and a right turn at the City Municipal Council a little further down. Later this shall directly lead to papagni Mutt, which is the basement of Skandagiri.
At Kalawara village ask for Omkara Jyoti Ashrama / Papagni Mutt(13°25′26.6″N 77°41′28″E). There is a Shiva temple near the base of the hill, where vehicles can be parked.
Nandi to Kalawara to Papagni Mutt is 6 km.
Chikaballapur to papagni Mutt is 3 km.

Kanoor kote Trek (Shivmoga) - An expedition in pouring rain

2007-09-21T09:57:00.003+05:30

In progress....watch this space :-)

Sakleshpur abandoned railway track trek - Donigal to Adkumari

2005-08-13T10:05:00.011+05:30

This post courtesy by Naga ---

Fact File: Sakleshpur is on Banglaore-magalore highway (NH48) 225km from bangalore, 36km from hassan, 128 km from mangalore.
trek route: Sakleshpur starting from donigal station to yedakumari station (20km) can be trekked in a day. (Note: This trek is not advisable to do now as the train is operational!!)
On 13^th of August, Saturday we planned to go for a trekking and decided to go to a place which was about 225Kms from Bangalore, 35kms West of Hassan and about 125Kms East from Mangalore.

We reached this place on Sunday early morning by 3:30 am, since it was too dark and this was the first time all of us were going to this place, we decided to take rest until Manjunath's friends arrived. We were Seven of us, Prashanth, Eshwar, Manjunath, Jagadish, Anjan, Imtiaz and me.

The starting point of the trek, Donigal Railway Station was around a 1km from the bus stop.At 5:30 inthe morning we reached the starting point of the trek. The trek starts from here to Yedakumari which is around 20Kms. Now there is no train service in this route, government is converting the entire stretch to a Broad-Gauge, working was going on, hence many people choose to trek on this stretch, along with a beautiful view of the nature. It was a misty morning, with very low visibility hence we waited for mist to clear and dawn to break.

Here is the Gang

Left -> Right Jaga, Nag, Prashanth, Eshwar, Anjan, Khan, Manju.

We started by 6:45 am and started walking down the railway track. There were several tunnels and bridges that we need to cross, within a km we reached the first tunnel, with some distance from that we reached the first bridge, crossing bridges was very exciting, was a bit dangerous though. We exalted the lush greenery all around us, the view from the height of the bridges and we just loved the freshness of the air which we would never get in Bangalore. Nature could not have been any better.

Bridge from different Angles

One among the several tunnels.

The Water Falls was Awesome

We saw Sumo, Tractor which was customized to be used on the railway tracks for carrying the materials for construction and transportation of people.

The Style Kings
We stopped for breakfast at around 9:00am at a small waterfall where we had some chapattis, relaxed for 20minutes and started again. We passed though the longest tunnel, about 250mts, there was a small opening to the right of the tunnel half way through, there was a loudm noise, curious to know if there was something, to our surprise it was an awesome sight of a water fall downside and it was falling from a great height. There were more surprises to come, there was another waterfall but this was accessible so we decided to take bath in the nature, the force of the water was great and we enjoyed the bath. Fresh after bath around 11.00am we started our journey further down the railway track. There were more bridges to come, some bridges were around 200mtrs, and we held our breath as we crossed these bridges. I had almost slipped of on one of the bridges.
We had lot of photo sessions along the way, all of us wanted to show it to our friends, there were several types of flowers and birds in the rich nature, we hardly knew their names but made sure we captured as many as possible. After covering around 13Kms we saw a huge land slide and we were in doubt about our further journey hence checked with the local people, we were told that there were several such landslides ahead and it was very dangerous to go any further. I had only heard and saw in the television about the land slides but an opportunity to see them. We relaxed there for a while enjoying the Mother Nature for some time along with some light snacks. We started after 2 more groups in the morning, but managed go past them and we were the first to cross these 13kms, after all everyone of us very energitic :-p.

We decided to return back at around 12:30pm. It was raining very heavily, hence it was much more difficult to cross those bridges again which were very wet by now, we managed to cross all these bridges very safely after all, seven of us were very strong :-p. We made our way back in the rain the environment was getting a bit cold by now even though it was noon. we were supposed to return back before dawn, as it would be difficult if it gets darker, so we started walking faster than we did in the morning, we reached the same place where we had breakfast in the morning. It was around 3:00pm by now, we got to know that there is a short cut from this place to Maranahalli where we can get buses to Sakleshpuram or directly to Bangalore, now instead of walking back on the railway track we decided to take this route, it was around 3-4Kms from the place where we had our breakfast. We were almost drained by now, with very little energy left, and the path was not all that easy as on the railway track. We had a plan in mind to reach the highway by 4:00pm hence we could not have our Lunch, it really tested our stamina level and wanted us to prove our strength we started from this place and reached the highway by 4:00pm. All of us were very tiered by now, we had a cup of Tea in the nearby tea shop along with some snacks, we hardly could walk by now. We managed to get a bus to Hassan which was around 37Kms. After reaching Hassan we thought of resting in a lodge and go back to Bangalore the next day, but fortunately for us we got a Bangalore bus that was all empty so we decided to return to Bangalore the same night so that we can relax at home.

It was a very exciting trek. We managed to walk approximately 25Kms in a single day. It was a totally unplanned trip but executed to perfection.

Kumara Parvatha trek - My first expedition

2005-03-25T09:42:00.007+05:30

Many has told us that a trek to Kumaraparvatha (Kumara parvatha, Kumaraparvath, Kumaraparvata) @ 1714m is arguably the most strenuous in Karnataka making this beautiful mountain in the Western ghats so enticing to me. Subramanya is situated at the foothills of western ghats in Dakshin Kannad district, famous for the Kukke Subramanya temple. The popular trail to the top of Kumaraparvatha starts from here

Famous Kukke Sri Subramamya Temple..from where trek starts

Start of the trek!

Enroute the trek

Warning!

. Here is the famous 'Bhattara Mane' (Bhatt's house) where people stop over generally. They told it will take about two hours or so to prepare lunch. It would have been a good idea to send somebody ahead and tell them about the food requirement at the earliest.

Bhattara mane

Guys...gulping food at bhattara mane

Mantapa the camping site!

Full moon captured from the camp site

Moon and the folks

Finally back to habitation