Honeyvalley trek photos

I am back after a looooong time,here are some of the pics from the recent trek.

"View from Thadiyandamol peak"




"Honeyvalley"

Day II :: 25th Sept 05 :: Rishikesh

5:00AM - We are still in the train. Ii might take another 1 hr to reach Haridwar. From there Rishikesh is another 20km. Well it is still raining, does not look like there would be any letup anytime soon.

9:30AM - After reaching Haridwar we booked a cab at a pre-paid taxi counter which is just outside the railway station. It cost us Rs 400/-. The driver charged us another Rs 60/- to take us up the hill to the hotel. Shikhar had booked us the rooms at "The Great Ganga" hotel. Name sounds bit shady the it turned out to be a very good hotel. Since it is at an elevated piece of land once could see the river Ganga and the Swargashram from here. Our check in time is at 12 in the noon so the rooms are not yet available but we were given one for getting fresh. By the time we finish our breakfast the rooms should be available.

11:00AM - At last some really good food:-) We did get our rooms after breakfast. But for some reason Anil insisted that the beds be separated!!! Does he not have enough control over himself or what? So we had to change our room. Rooms are very spacious, they have got balconies overlooking the Ganges. Just saw a news report about the Ganges flowing above the danger level. One could literally see that.

12:00PM - Had a gala time in the bathroom, read it as taking hot water bath you twisted minds. This did get my juice flowing again. When I was sitting in the balcony happen to see a naked sadhu below. Hmmm...how would it look if I wear my hat, sunglasses, trekking shoes minus the clothes? and having the Ganges as the backdrop under pouring rain. That would make a nice 3-in-1 TV commercial "Where ever you go, you need them". It is raining cats and dogs, dropping raincoat has fired back.


Ram Jhula or Shivanand Jhula

7:00PM - We are back at the hotel after totally getting drenched in the rain. I had to buy 10 rupee raincoats to cover myself. We crossed the river using Ram Jhula (Shivanand Jhula - new name) to reach the Swargashram. Lunch at chotiwala was pretty good. Soon after that Anil did a disappearing act not to be seen till late evening. Since the time I landed here had a feeling that somehow I am closely connected to this place. This was confirmed when we saw 'Mohan Laundry Club' on the way to Lakshman Jhula. Laundry is fine but a club! There are other places worth a visit in Rishikesh. 'Baba Massage Center' (Since 1961) is one such place they have been massaging people for quite some time now, so they know what they are doing! Another one is 'Tantra Mantra Meditation Center' which is crowded with hippies. Your trip to Rishikesh is incomplete without visiting these places. We pretty much covered whole of Swargashram and Tapovan area (not to be confused with Himalayan Tapovan) by foot. Tomorrow our plan is to leave as early as possible to Uttarkashi. Looks like the weather is clearing up right in time for our trek. Finally saw some blue patch in the sky:-)

Prev day :: Day I - 24th Sept - Day in Delhi

Day I :: 24th Sept 05 :: Day in Delhi

I lost my diary in 'Tapovan fiasco', but I am trying to dig out as much as possible from my already battered (why? you'll know later) memory.

8:00AM - Finally the day we have been waiting for so long has come. Out of excitement I woke up even before the alarm went off. I was the first one to arrive at the airport as early as 7:30. Our flight, Kingfisher airlines, to Delhi is scheduled at 10 in the morning. Now that it looks real "colorful" thinking of getting my return tickets booked at Kingfisher:-) Having nothing else to do, I checked in my luggage. Anil and the group arrived full one hour after I did. Somehow I kept myself "busy" all the while. We started off the day by having a bad breakfast at the airport this trend pretty much continued the whole day.

11:00AM - Kingfisher cabin crew are not bad at all. Vijay Mallya is having real taste. Apart from the cabin crew you can watch channels on your personal television. They even serve lunch and don't charge for it! Everything about the journey was good. During landing at Delhi though we got into bad weather, pilot had to circle around the airport for nearly half hour. At one point we thought the plane would make a U turn and go back to B'lore that was the last thing we wanted. Luckily the plane landed safely after a while.

2:00PM - As planned a Qualis was ready to pick us up from the airport. We learned from our driver for the day "Rajkumar" that it's been raining for a day now. Hope it clears up by the time we reach Gangotri else that would really spoil our trek. Shikhar organization is located in Connaught place in Delhi not far away from the airport. We got all the details about the trek from Mr. Mukul, with whom we have been in touch from the beginning. Due to bad weather the UK expedition team is stuck in Nandanvan for a while now and preparing to come back. News on the Japanese team is that they are also stuck but in Gangotri. They are waiting for the weather to clear up before heading to Tapovan. It was time for lunch. We chose a crappy place called Nirulas. What a mess that place was. It was so congested you can hardly move in and out of your table. Food was another horror story. Only thing that was good about the place, not for us though, was the awesome 4 digit bill!



3:30PM - It's been drizzling since the time we landed here. Looks like it is not going to change. Now we don't have any option but to roam around Delhi. Since we have a 10PM train to Haridwar we thought it was not necessary to book a hotel room instead booked a cab and that's going to be our home in Delhi. We just realized it is not just sight seeing we also need to do some real acting to get through our day. The idea is our driver would take us to some very expensive govt owned shops,needless to they have some tie up with Shikhar or to the organization he works for, all we have to do is to pretend as though we are genuine buyers. This would fetch our driver Rs 400/- and some gift!!!. Right now I am sitting in front of one such shop where as Anil & Co are "performing" inside.



8:00PM - In between such acting sessions we found time to see the Presidential house, Parliament house, India gate and Qutub minar. Here the roads are so wide,at least at the centre of the city but the old Delhi is a different story altogether, and without any potholes if you are from B'lore you would definitely feel out of place. In the evening we went Ansal plaza, it is just like any other malls. Unfortunately it was the same story here also, bad food. Whole day is turning out to be bad food day.

10:00PM - Since morning I was wondering where the hell is that 'Tom Thumb' Delhi. Finally I felt at home. We just came through old Delhi, narrow roads with potholes adding to that there were cows in the middle. This was more like what we are used to in B'lore. Only important thing that we probably missed out was Tihar Jail. Old Delhi station is needless to say a real mess. We had to see a woman jump out of the train and a man taking a leak on the platform before boarding the train. We had managed to get seats in the same coach but it was scattered all over. Somehow managed to get into same compartment.

Once I got into the train my juice really started flowing. I promptly managed to capture that in my diary but as I said earlier I lost the diary. It is really sad that such a valuable material is gone forever. May be one day it'll show up in History's Lost & Found!

Next day :: Day II - 25th Sept - Rishikesh

I am back!!!

Landed in B'lore yesterday night at 11PM. And I am already back at office...so sad. Trek was quite adventurous, though nothing went according to the plan. Lots of incidents, lots of events to blog about. Unfortunately I lost my diary in 'Tapovan fiasco' (tell you more about that later) so I lost the first 7-8 days of writings:-( Anyways I'll re-write and try to recover as much as possible from my fragile memory bank. For the remaining ten days though I kept another diary and it is intact:-) All of us are back safely but one of us came very close to saying final goodbye!!!

After a long wait...

It's been more than 2 months since we started planning for this trek. Finally the day has arrived. I am so excited:-) Tomorrow at 10AM we are catching a flight to Delhi. After that it'll be a long 17 days of fun! I pity all these guys sitting back at office and breaking their head on designing. Yep some work has come our way after a long time but I am gonna miss it. I am not complaining though:-) To all my fans...I know you'll miss me but it's time to let my creative juice flow in the Himalayas. If there is any emergency you can contact me at mohan@nowhere.com. See you soon...

Trek claims first victim!

With only few days left, our Himalayan trek has already claimed it's first victim - Company's leave policy. My moderate 17 days leave has finally caught the attention of our senior management and policy makers. New amended policy says one should take permission from senior manager/director in advance for longer leaves (more than 5 working days). God bless all of us. I guess the time has come to move on. I will have to start searching for an "established" startup company with less or preferably no work. Any pointers???

PS: This also forced me to edit my earlier post. I have masked out one more character of my company's name!

Germalam trek

Date: Sept 10th and 11th 2005
Team: Regular trekking team + Sowmya (Manjula's friend)

It's been a while since we had done a really hard trek. This one really qualified as one of them at least for some of us. This place is about 190km from Bangalore. It is on the way to Coimbatore, if you are going via Malavalli-Kollegal route. This was a core Veerappan area and also a ration point for him. When he was alive probably not many people ventured into this forest. After he was killed in an encounter(??!!??) it became accessible to common people to see what is left of it. You can read more about the place here. We started very early in the morning. As usual I was the first victim to be picked up at 4:30AM. On the way we had an early breakfast at Lokaruchi. From Maddur we took a deviation towards Malavalli. Since Shivanasamudram was on the way we decided to visit the place. After spending few minutes and taking some snaps we were on our way to Germalam. The drive from Kollegal onwards is really scenic and surprisingly not hazy.


Gaganachukki falls

Lush green mountain ranges and the cultivated farm lands below resembles any European country side. This explains why the Tibetans chose this place to set up their monastery. When you reach the check posts just say "we are going to Daniel's farm house". This works like a secret magic words, police man opens the gate without another word. By 11:30 we reached the farm house. This place in itself is a beauty surrounded by peaks all around. First thing that we noticed here was the birds. I am not any bird expert but I can tell you that this place has got wide varieties of them. By the time we got settled down our lunch was ready. We had a hearty meal after that it was time for our first trek.


Tibetan Monastery


The Village

Monsoon trek:It was already cloudy when we arrived. Our plan was to leave after the lunch and be back by 6. Since I was the strongest (at least they thought so) I had to carry all the water bottles, cameras and umbrellas! Our guide was Basavanna, a tribal guy who works in the farm. Just few minutes into the trek it started raining. Even the umbrellas and the rain covers didn't help much. This also made the trail quite slippery. Fortunately though it was not a rain forest which means no leeches. Once you are inside the forest most of the time you are surrounded by thick vegetation. You hardly get any scenic views. But the scenic views are not the only thing in an avid trekker's mind. It is the adventure that is involved in it and the suspense of not knowing how many of them would make it back safely. It took us almost 2 hours before we reached an open area overlooking the valley. The view was not one would call breath taking. From here we could see the farm house. Couldn't believe that we covered so much distance. May be it was the rain that pushed us. But we did notice something. All the time we were only worried about reaching the destination instead of enjoying the nature around us. What's the point going all the way and just run through the woods. May be we should try to understand and interact more with the nature.
It was still raining and all were completely drenched. After a small break we were back on the trail. Soon after we reached another open area. Here we learned that few years back Veerappan had killed 7 villagers for failing to deliver the ration. Naturally Veerappan became our topic for discussion. People over here don't have anything bad to say about him. One of them even claimed that he had seen the man himself. Now that he is dead even I can claim that I had lunch with him! Since it was already getting late we headed back to the farm and made it by 6 as planned.


View from the top - Day 1

Night drive:When one goes for a trek inside a forest their main intension would be to spot some wild animals. But the fact is it rarely happens particularly when it is raining. You should be extremely lucky to spot any wild life. Though we were jaded after the trek, we went for a night drive around the farm house in search of wild animals. In the end all we could manage to see was a family of wild boar and some deer. As soon as we came back, we crashed in our tents. My tent was in a corner and the whole of it was for me! I was just praying that a leopard or something else wouldn't show up in the middle of the night.

Trek to Etnur betta:I had a nice night sleep. Chirping birds woke me up in the morning. Others were already up and had gone for a walk. During our breakfast our discussion turned to Kyoto agreement. Countries like Japan, which does not have much of their own land, donates around $360m to India for planting trees there by hoping that would reduce the green house gases. This also gives Japan the right to pollute. In reality though those trees would never be planted but only on papers. Our mahila mandal was not too keep to trek up the Etnur hill. So it was only me and Anil. After yesterdays experience I decided to wear a T-Shirt and a short for the trek. That would make life easier if it rains. We started off at around 9:30am. Initial part of the trek pretty easy. Soon enough we came across a water hole. Just near that was a bunch of rocks. Climbing up was quite steep but doable. Wearing a short made my task much easier.


Waterhole!

Smart guys always make smart moves. This was the last time I thought of myself this way. Things were about to change. From this point onwards there was absolutely no trail. To make matters worse it was full of thorny bushes. Even the ascent was very steep. Within no time my hands and legs were full of scratches. But look at the brighter side things could have been worse had I decided to wear slippers. Which I was seriously contemplating. Half way through we heard a trumpet of an elephant near by. Decided to take a closer look. But the path was so dense we had no chance of seeing the elephant unless we get really close. When you want to take a risk should always have an escape plan. We had one and that was to run!. But the problem was there was no easy way. Needless to say we ditched the plan. We reached the top in another hour. The view from there made all the effort worth. We couldn't quite believe that we made it so far from the farm house.


View from the top - Day 2

After a short break we began climbing down the hill. Again there was no shortcut but through those thorny bushes. On our way back we again missed the elephant by few minutes. Luckily or unluckily we crossed the same path barely few minutes apart. It was apparent from the foot marks and the strewn grass over the bushes. Couple of hours later, at 3pm, we were back at the farm. Another tasty meal it was time for us leave. Hope these two days has given us enough preparation for the ultim@te trek!

Pushing the limits of imagination!

How far one can push the limits of imagination? Wanna know the answer then watch AanKhen(eyes) on DD1 (Thur 10pm). This mega serial is directed by Amrit Sagar, grandson of Ramanand Sagar who happens to be the producer. Serial is about a group of idiots, call them terrorists, trying to destroy India and another group of morons who are from a counter intelligence unit trying to save. Not a bad plot by any means. But the breakneck pace, action sequences and the acting (if you call it that way) really screws up the whole serial. The best part is you can just switch of the logical part of your brain and enjoy the circus. I have been watching it for some time now. By now I am used to all those toy guns, helicopters, missiles and the ships. Very often one gets to see Carlos, Kangaroo and a chick, the villains, sitting inside a helicopter having snacks while a dump looking guy wearing a cheap headset tries to fool the audience into thinking that he is actually flying a helicopter. But yesterday they went one step further. Carlos and Kangaroo sends a fighter plane to spray the chemical weapon over Colonel's, lead officer at Aanken, town. What do we see inside the plane??? Surprise surprise!!! Again a dump looking guy trying to act flying and behind him two guys standing with a cylinder filled with the chemical weapon! Did they forget to change the sets or what?