Chikmagalur - Thogrey Hunkal Thota

Well the title of the blog is rustic , but we were off to the place which is more " poshly " known as Hunkal woods. 17 adults and 3 kids. Now , with families , you must be wondering , how a youngster ( although I don't look like one :-) ) had fun. I learnt one thing , people who entertain , always entertain , irrespective of age. I was glad I was amidst people who savoured humour and fun as much as I did.

After a journey which went by all the while changing DVD's in the van we hired , we reached Maurya , a Govt run restaurant on the Mangalore-Bangalore road fo

r breakfast. Everybody was very sleepy since we started early. Nothing very eventful happened in the onward journey , which I somewhat regret , but I guess the law of averages kicked in , in our return journey. We picked up some soft drinks at Chikmagalur , our last touch with civilization and hit our destination.

This view is the most eye catching part and this is the very bunglow where we lived. Apart from this place there were some cottages which w

ere newer and more luxurious.We were welcomed with some tasty coffee and then we had lunch , which was very nice. Homely is probably a better word. 

Heavy lunch , nice kesari baath for desert and it was time to relax a little bit. We went outdoors , sat on the grass and had a nice chat.Some climbs on the trees , chatting , laughing , clicking photographs , sleeping on the hammock and we were ready for a game of cricket. 

They provided us with some good bats , we had carried tennis balls and we lost / broke a couple in the woods. There is also a good picture of me , playing a very flamboyant late cut , but fortunately it was clicked early enough to hide that I was bowled clean :-) There is however , a video which caught me getting out :-( 

Others were either playing badminton , went for a stroll or went cycling ! It was a fun couple of hours when the local care taker said we should be leaving to Mulayangiri , if we wanted to be there for sunset. So , we had some refreshing coffee the second time around and set course to Mulayangiri.

Mulayangiri it was , the highest peak in Karnataka , though it did not seem so high. The route was narrow and Tarun was very scared. He probably was on the verge of calling his insurance guy to increase some stakes :-D. We were on a roll , with Anthakshari , for the entire 30 Kms. Jyothi, Amit and Swathi , as usual , in full form , with the others pitching in here and there. Time flew and we were there. We moved quickly and were just on time for sunset. We saw part of the sun go down quickly and experienced the chill on top for a while. We started back towards Hunkal woods , camp fire and tequila was waiting for us :-) or was it ?

Back at the camp , singing all the way till the camp fire. I smelt alcohol. There he was, Rajulu , with legs folded , sitting like a guru , and serving people "theertha" from the "kamandala" made of glass :D It was a very funny sight.  Shots were gulped in and unlimited chilli bajji's were coming from the kitchen. Yummy !

I was extremely sleep deprived for the last couple of days. When everybody went for dinner , I grabbed the oppurtunity to take a nap. One hour it was and I was back , fresh. For the campfire discussion. It was one of the funniest discussions I have ever been part of , mostly thanks to Haridas Pai , who would probably be a standup comedian if he were not in IT. We discussed a lot of things , a lot of absent heads were hillariously discussed ( especially Praveen ) , including Gandhi and Nehru :-)  , a lot of grass was pulled and thrown into the fire because Kaushik thought , in the state of mind he was , that it would keep the fire alive :-D

Rise and shine , it was coffee time. We were all up by about 6:30 AM , had coffee and set course at about 7:30 for what was s'supposed' to be a small trek. It was a nice walk through the coffee estates , but it was not planned well enough , so we did not carry anything to eat / drink. As we went higher and higher people got frustrated and they wanted to turn back. But , the view was beautiful. We were climbing a hill , which was part of the estate and hence private , beautiful grass all around and beauty all around. We even sighted the Mulayangiri peak we had been to just the previous day. All together a tiring experience. We came back in the Gypsy. had left over breakfast , which was also quite good. Rava Idly and Vada. Freshened up and got ready for lunch. We had nice lunch , with Gulab Jamuns. We then celebrated Kishan and Soumya's anniversary. They cut a cake , we ate it and set course to Bangalore. 

All was quite initially. Most were tired. They slept till Hassan. We stopped for Tea and snacks. When we started again is when the fun started. Dum charades. Awesome game to be playing while travelling. Initially , the game was mellowed down , with difficult movies names. Then Hari calls me. Whispers a name in my ear. I enacted darkness. I asked Tarun to say it in Hindi. He said ' Andheri '. And , immediately , Voila , with an Einstein look on his face said , " Andheri Raath mein , Diya tere Haath mein ". Boy , that was the biggest mistake he did in his life. People started asking , is that the kind of movies he watches :D The answer was right though. There it started , a spree of funny movies and even funnier enactments.

We stopped only when we reached kamath for dinner at CR Patna. Post dinner , the fun continued. Until it all ended in Kanakapura road. Trip was done

Everybody back home and back to work the next day , stretching their bodies. I'll append some more photos later on.

e-Rendezvouz

An attempt at a different form of writing. I would like to term it discontinuous writing, on a nascent development in my day to day life. Boy , it has been long since I enjoyed reading an e-mail thread which started out so casually :-)
I hope you understand what you are reading subsequently, if you don't , All the best ;-)

-- An Orkut friend request
-- an exclamation in my mind followed by a question mark
-- an e-mail , requesting clarification
-- a vague clarification
-- clarifications from background enquiries
-- request for some more data , with a flirtatious attempt at a meeting
-- redundant data provided , with some positive responses for the second half of the request
-- stern request for data

Story to be continued.Keep a watch on this blog for more. There will be a contiguous version if this has an interesting ending ;-)

Adios, amigos.

Bandhana

Now, that's the title of my blog. What am I going to talk about today ? Well, just another dissection of an eventful day.

There were two forms of Bandhana's today - 

1) The binding of Balakrishna, Carnatic music and a Dias , which happened for the first time.

2) Madhu is now clear to get married :-)

Here are the details :

1) The event was conducted in Bharathi Vidya Bhavana , a landmark by itself on Race course road , Bangalore. The programme was delayed a little bit. It started with a 16 year old Anjali Sriram singing her way through the hearts of the audience with her mature and seasoned voice. There were hardly any flaws and the Vaagadeeshwari rendition was my favourite. We soon went on stage, and sang some rare and difficult compositions of Uthukaadu Venkata Kavi, a blind carnatic composer who existed prior to the carnatic trinity. We performed in a group of eight , and there were a lot of synchronization flaws , but it was OK in the end. Srinath , also joined the audience for the last 4 songs ( out of the six we sang ).

2) Both of us, set course towards Deve Gowda petrol bunk in a hurry. We were thinking all the way which route to take , and ended up probably taking the shortest path :-) We reached there and congratulated Manu and Preethi, Madhu's brother and to-be sister-in-law, a wonderful couple, on their engagement and just sniffing our time away waiting for Madhu to accompany us for lunch :-) I wish the couple a wonderful time ahead in their lives. We had an amazing course of lunch, I dropped Srinath off and came home to sleep. I just had to sleep after that lunch. My bellywas bulging after that lunch even though I was wearing a Kurtha - Pyjaama :-)  

At about 6'O'clock in the evening I was woken up by a Mosquito , singing in my ear. I waved my hand and it went away. Assuming mosquitoes don't have any brains, I assume it would take it a while to re-locate my ear. 

It woke me up again at 6:10 , presumably by the same mosquito and here I am writing into Bandhana, my blog.