Kerala

This was a 5-day trip back in May. Kerala had always been on my list since I moved to Bangalore and during the intern couple of years back, I could only go as far as Calicut and Wayanad. This was time to go real south and it’s great we went as close as 80 kms from the Kanyakumari. Left Bangalore on a Wednesday night on a bus to Kottayam, around 600 kms. I saw my first Malayalam movie in the bus which had a couple of hilarious but vulgar scenes. Kumarakom, around 15 kms from Kottayam, is the place to go for backwaters. There’s a very big lake called Vembanadu lake where there are houseboats to stay and people come from both Kumarakom side and Allepy side. The timing was good for us as this was not really the peak tourist season. We got a nice luxurious 3-bedroom boat at the price of a 1-bedroom one because the guy didn’t have the smaller one available. We got on the houseboat around afternoon and the plan was to have a ride till it was evening (almost 3 hours) after which the houseboat was stationary till the morning. The houseboat had a kitchen and the meals we got were pretty good. I distinctly remember having idiyappam for the breakfast the next day, which tasted great. It is steamed noodles made of rice. There was also a bird sanctuary on the way to the lake from the point of boarding. Though we couldn’t get in the sanctuary, it was a pleasant site from outside and there were many varieties of colorful birds flying around. There were three guys on the houseboat including the chef. I found out in the evening that they had a simple fishing tackle and gave it a shot. Although I couldn’t catch a fish, I got a couple almost in the hook. They were keenly watching an IPL match between Kochi Tuskers and Bangalore Royal Challengers after dinner. Next morning, we got out of the houseboat in Kumarakom and went back to Kottayam. There was a big church, out of the lot of churches one can find anywhere in Kerala, on the way where we stopped for a while.

The next place was Periyar National park, almost a 4 hour journey from Kottayam and towards Tamil Nadu border. The reason I was attracted to Periyar was that unlike other national parks, it had a big lake right in the middle and one can actually have a safari on a bamboo raft as opposed to jeep safari, which is very common. I usually try and keep inter-city traveling to night during a trip for the simple reason that it saves time and not every route is that scenic. But this one was actually a good route, through the Western Ghats and overlooking kilometers of tea plantations. We had reservations in the government guest house, which was inside the boundaries of national park. Reached around 4 PM, purchased some jelly, chocolates etc from the nearby town and looked around for safari options. While the day-long bamboo raft was not a surprise, night trek through the jungle was a new thing that popped up and we couldn’t resist but go for it. The trek is conducted by the forest officials wherein there is a guide and an armed security guy leading a group of maximum 6 people. Nobody else registered for 10 PM to 1 AM trek which we picked. We roamed around for an hour or so before getting back to the guest house and the dusk time view of the lake was amazing. Having seen the lake from a distance, we decided to go closer and to our surprise, just on the other side, there was a group of elephants hanging out. The place was very quiet and beautiful, the forest very dense and the lake was a great value addition.

I remember a big stag crossed our way when we were about to reach the guest house where we had an awesome dinner buffet and set out for the night trek at 10. For the first time, I saw special socks for protection against leeches. With 4 torches and a fully loaded gun, we roamed around in partial moonlight for almost two and a half hours. It was great fun: we flashed our torches on tons of deer, woke up a porcupine that looked like a stone when sleeping, saw a rabbit and couple of bison. And, of course, there were all sorts of scary sounds from everywhere. The bamboo raft ride next day was equally good. It was actually a combination of rafting and trekking through the jungle. We didn’t get to see whole new types of animals during that except some fancy frogs and birds. I was impressed by the way our guide guessed the presence of an elephant group after he saw elephant shit and in the next 10 minutes, actually he led us to two jumbos. We left for our next destination, beaches near Trivandrum, around 6 in the evening. One of the great things about the trip was that it only rained once when we were travelling from Periyar to Trivandrum in the taxi.

Reached Varkala beach in around 5 hours and stayed in a small hotel for the night. Got up around 4:30 in the morning to go to the beach and spent couple of hours there. Varkala beach, with a cliff running parallel to the beach, is different from other Kerala beaches. It’s very shallow, particularly in contrast to the Kovalam beach, where we went next. Took a local train from Varkala to reach Trivandrum, 12 kms from Kovalam beach. Since we were at the Kovalam beach around noon, it was very hot. I got a good tan there which was notable for a couple of weeks after the trip too. This brought us to the end and the way back consisted of a 3 hour train journey to Kottayam and 12 hour bus journey from there to Bangalore.

Few more books

Got a chance to read some books because of the surgery:

The Great Indian novel: Modern Indian history weds Ancient Indian history aka Mahabharat. I didn’t know a lot about Mahabharat before I started reading the book (never even seen the TV show). But Shashi Tharoor takes good care of the readers like me by spending the first quarter of the book by not bringing in limelight the analogies of his characters to the modern Indian history, which is most of the 20th century. One does need to be fairly familiar with the other set of characters like Gandhi and senior Congress leaders throughout the century, Subhash Chandra Bose and others of the likes of V.V.Giri who may not have been a lot talked about but were pivotal in post-independence India. So, there are three sets: characters in the novel, characters from Mahabharat and political characters from 20th century India. Except a few outliers, all the characters of the novel have a counterpart character in Mahabharat and one in 20th century. When I say characters, I use the term a little broadly for the last set. The author went one step ahead and has even compared his characters to national elements like democracy (Draupadi), media (Arjun), army (Bheem) etc. One might claim that the book doesn’t cover history of the nation continuously and completely. For example, one of the obvious freedom fighter I found missing was Bhagat Singh. But, one has to realize that the book is not exactly a narration of Indian history using Mahabharat’s characters, although at one point even I was convinced it is. The book is simply a story of its own embedded in the two dimensions of an epic and a nation’s history for the readers to appreciate it at multiple levels.

K2: Life and Death on the World's Most Dangerous Mountain: This is a compilation of 7 expeditions to the world’s second highest mountain from 1930s to 2008. I have read the book “Into thin air” about the 1996 Mt. Everest tragedy but this book was more interesting. Although there are multiple K2 tragedies described in the book, it is more interesting because the author presents things from a mountaineer’s viewpoint which was missing with Jon Krauker (author of “Into thin air”) to some extent. While the expeditions described are only ones to K2, the author talks also about the history of mountaineering in general. Having climbed all the 14 8000-ers, he often relates to his experiences to the other great mountains. There are mountaineers portrayed as heroes in the book and also some as villains. I was actually a little shocked to hear about the dark side of the 1954’s first successful expedition. One more thing I liked about the book was arguments about the dilemma that a mountaineer faces sometimes. For example, what should a mountaineer do when he is faced with a situation with a dying person on his way to the top? Should he go pursue his dream of conquering the peak or try saving the dying person by carrying him down? The author also talks about coordination and how the lack of it can screw up the whole quest. I found some feats like that of a guy saving 6 others using an ice axe during the 1953 expedition and the solo non-stop climb of a guy to the top of K2 in around 20 hours too awesome. I was so full of energy after reading the book that I searched for movies about mountaineering and saw three of them. The best among the lot was a movie called “K2”, released somewhere around 1992.

The logic of life and Freakonomics: Putting these two together because of two reasons. First, there’s not much to write about them, both are nice reads and deal with plenty real-life examples. Second, they have a related theme: rationality. While “the logic of life” claims that that all human behavior, individual or social, is a result of rational thinking, “Freakonomics” tries to unravel some interesting cause-effect relationships even at macro level like crime rate in US etc.

On the road: Not purely a piece of fiction, it describes the journey of a young man through the entire country, along with many of his friends, particularly Dean Moriarty, who is a person with infinite energy and a will to experience things raw. The book is not about a single journey but many road adventures that the narrator and his friends had during a period of 5-6 years. There are elements like their zest for exploring new worlds, struggle with money that reminded me of the journey of Che Guevera in “The Motorcycle Diaries”. I was almost about to leave the book after having read the first 50 pages or so, but quite happy that I didn’t.

Coorg and Nagarhole

This was a 2-day trip back in March, just before holi. Though it was not the perfect time to visit Coorg, we decided that we’ll go for it and keep the bigger trips for later. I always wanted to go stay in a national park and Nagarhole national park was convenient to be included in this trip as it is around 90-100 kms from Coorg. We reached Coorg a little too early, around 4 in the morning, and took a home stay for a few hours before we could start roaming around. We began with couple of places in the city including Abbey falls and went to Nisargdhama after that. Nisargdhama was a good relaxing place and among other things, had a nice tree house. I really want to go spend a day in a big tree house in the middle of some jungle when I get a chance. Dubare elephant camp was next on our list but apparently, the elephants need a nap from 1 to 4 during the day and we had to reach Nagarhole before it got dark. So, no elephant ride for us. From there, we went to Bylekuppe Tibetan Monastery which happened to fall on our way to Nagarhole. The monastery was pretty big and the main temple was flooded with golden decorations. I remember having seen a monk riding a bullet motorcycle in his robe before we entered the monastery. This was close to evening and we went straight to Nagarhole from there.

We stayed in a resort called Jungle Inn, close to the national park. The place was very quiet, not at all over-crowded and had good food. We got to have a bonfire in the night and had to get up early around 5:30 the next morning. Rented a jeep for safari in the park during morning and travelling to near-by coffee plantations during the day. The park was not very dense, at least that time of the year, and we couldn’t spot a tiger, about which we were so looking forward to. We did get to see elephants, mongoose, boars, bison, langoors and deer. Our safari finished around 10 and we got out of the other side of national park to see coffee plantations, which were plenty by the way, and a waterfall called Irupu falls. Our driver was patient enough to answer all the questions Sakshi had about a coffee plant and its lifecycle. Irupu falls tuned out to be better than Abbey: there was more water and one could actually go under the fall. The plan was to leave the same day for Mysore and from there to Bangalore. We reached Mysore just in time to get a glimpse of the Sunday lighting of the palace. Left for Bangalore by bus and reached home around 1 AM. Played holi the next day in our building and it was great fun. Got to capture some lovely pictures.

Madhugiri Fort

It was less than a week that I was back on my bike after the surgery. I wanted to go on a ride, starting in the morning which had not happened till then. So, I started around 6 AM for Madhugiri fort, north-west of Bangalore. It is a big monolithic rock, overlooking the town and has a fort built on the hill. I didn’t take the shortest route as the road is not good there. Went till Chikballapur on the Hyderabad highway and then took the other highway straight to Madhugiri. I was expecting heavy rains during the ride but got lucky. The weather was simply amazing: hardly any sun throughout the eight and a half hours. The ride from Chikballapur to Madhugiri also had some hilly patch, which was my first while driving. The way to the top of the fort was through stairs and I actually climbed almost one third of it. I could have gone further but thought I would be over-straining the leg. 25 kms from the town, there was a blackbuck reserve in a place called Maidanhalli. I distinctly remember the ride to and from the reserve because of many things. There was no road for the last 5 kms before the reserve and I had not been such a bumpy road for some time. Then, when I was very close to the reserve, a beetle entered my helmet and to make things worse, it got stuck somewhere in the visor.

The reserve was not big and planned like a national park. There was no person or vehicle for almost half an hour while I was in the reserve. Then, there were the beautiful butterflies all around and there were a couple whom I kind of followed on the bike. It was lovely to go slow and just ride along with them with for a few seconds. I saw two deer, one blackbuck and the other not a blackbuck, fighting each other. It was not a very intense fight but neither looked like a friendly affair. It felt like two professionals practicing for a boxing match, where they try to knock the other person down but don’t give their full strength. I was really exhausted during the last 50 kms or so from the airport to home. Loved the day and I really needed it. Also, I found this great link about the top 10 monolithic rocks in the world: http://www.touropia.com/largest-monoliths-in-the-world/