ENagar

Train journey was good.! Few of us were missing the late night sync up calls though! We reached the place around 7′o clock in the morning.A jeep was hired from the station to Subramanya…That was a thrilling roller coaster ride..The driver seemed to have undergone Coaching for F1 racing! Then, we rushed into a nearby hotel and had breakfast. Filled up our bags with everything possible..little did we realize that they would become the biggest burden for the rest of the day..!
The mountain looked so inviting when we saw it from the bottom…Everybody started the journey with a smile on their face…But none knew they would curse it so much in the coming few hours..!
The journey was exciting in the beginning.. Green forest around and a thin damp path…Wow..!!
After 1/2 hr, Shibu the guy with the heaviest bag(14.5 kg) was down first..! So few of us unloaded the bag and threw away few extra stuff! BTW..FYI..He had Smirnoff, Teacher’s, Antiquity, 3 60ml bottles of VODKA and Red Bull, SOYA drink and many more( these are few names I got to hear) from him…!
Stopping now and then, having Glucon-D, lemon water, Arun’s cucumber, Cashews, Grapes,Oranges etc was simply too good..!
The scenic beauty was no longer appreciated after some time and a glimpse of the Bhat’s house was the most awaited one..!The fastest people could reach the Bhat’s house at around 12.30pm and the rest followed them. Hogged food there..rested for a while! We discussed a lot, gave up the idea of cooking on the top and left behind all the vegetables, rice, etc that we had got with us and resumed the journey again..!
The second half of the journey was terrible I shud say with the destination being right in front of us and we struggling to reach it..!
Nisar and Sathya, the most energetic guys in the group had almost reached the top and slept for an hour waiting for the rest of us..! Half of the group managed to reach the Pushpagiri top( one next to Kumara Parvat) by 6′o clock!
Then starts the camping preparation!…Few of us stayed back to accompany the ones behind and the rest went ahead looking for a right place for the camp. A small water body is what we wanted and we had to even crawl on a huge boulder for that. Manoj and Sathya had found a good place for camping and settling for the night. Then, Manoj and Nisar take up the duty of helping people crawl up the boulder and Ankur and Sathya pitching the tents in the meanwhile.Finally we reached the camp at 8′o clock in the night.
Now starts the hunt for firewood..! few of us were successful in getting firewood and boiled our Ready-to-eat’s and hogged food like we’ve never seen before..! A special mention , Shibu, the man of class had non-veg biryani for the night..!!
We had 5 tents pitched, played PING-PONG for a while and then the terrible, chill, windy night! everybody tried to sleep in their tents but hardly anyone could sleep..!!
We got up as soon as possible in the morning being extremely happy that the night is over.! Gathered firewood and lit fire to keep ourselves warm! Tried to make breakfast too but were unsuccessful!! We then went to our final destination, the top of Kumara Parvat(you could see the flag in the photograph). You can observe the triumph in everyone’s face..:D!
Then, packed up all our things, cleaned the place and started the journey back! Climbing down was much less tiring than climbing up but toes were badly aching!! few of us reached the Bhat’s place at around 12.00 and the rest followed after an hour. Had food there, collected the items left in the Bhat’s place and started the journey down with the heavy bags again! Time just flew by and we really dint knew how we could make it to the bottom again..! So the journey was both fantastic and deadly!!

The greatest achievement according to me is that all 13 of us (mostly first timers) reached the top and camped on the Peak.

Some famous one liners:
Every gram of weight matters !
one more VODKA please..!
- Aswani

Some snaps (taken by an unprofessional amateur) can be found here

Kumara Parvat is the second highest peak in Karnataka (The highest is Mullayangiri near Chikmaglur) located near the Madikeri-Mangalore district border. There are two routes to the hill top, one from Somvarpet(Near Madikeri) and the other from Kukke Subrahmanya(Mangalore district).
We are planning to go by the Subrahmanya route. Does anybody has any prior experience of this route, or has any information to share.
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BTW Economist has a nice audio series. Doing Business in XXX (foreign city). If you have time, just listen out what they have to say about the few important cities of the worlds (unfortunately India is still not covered)

I was going through the mint’s list of 100 things to do in India and 3 things caught my fancy.

1) Paragliding

2) spa

3) bicycle trail to Chennai

This post contains a lot of pictures.. so for those of you who have bandwidth constraint… plz do not go forward.
(more…)

Today I watched the remake of the movie Don. Shahrukh Khan who claimed that he did not even knew how to ride a bicycle learned how to ride a car….. all in the middle of a police chase…. his motivation… the gorgeous Priyanka Chopra who was sitting next to him all along.

Sounds filmy… so did I thought, but then I looked at myself…. this weekend I not only learned how to ride a bike… that too after a brief 15 minutes flat tutorial from a reluctant friend….. And I learned it wonderfully enough to drive it over the hill slopes, highways of goa and even to places where there were no roads carrying a pillion who had no insurance…

my motivation?
Well I had 2…. first the wonderful bike ‘Natasha’…. and second my beautiful friend.

Who says real life cannot be filmy

I tried to make a list of options avaliable
1) indiflight A nice tool which allows you to find cheepest flight to multiple destinations, on multipe days and using break journeys.
2) makemytrip Huge publicity, but it charges extra for credit card bookings.
3) rediff good plotting tools, fast site.
4) flightraja fast flight, with a persoanl touch. The agents actually call you to confirm the bookings

Then to book international travel tickets:
Stic travels is specially useful. They get the best discounts, yet ensure hassle free luxurious travel.

Bus tickets use redbus. It has a very fast query engine. However its services are limited to Chennai / Bangalore originating routes and does not support KSRTC/government operators.

For train travel, I guess one has not much choice but to go for irctc. Even though it is the only govt body in my list, the service is good. Tickets get delivered in time. However the user interface needs lots of upgradation.