One day trip to Matheran

8th August 2009
I and Maruthu went to Pune to meet our friends and my first manager, under whom I started my career. We all planned for one day trip to Matheran.

On Saturday morning, we packed our food, thanks to Neela for all the preparations, we left kondhwa around 7:45AM in Nanda's WagonR, thanks to Nanda, filled in the petrol, travelled towards chichwad, Prabhu was our navigator. Met my first manager, Rana Chanda, and his family at Wakad junction. As we got delayed, Made him to wait for long time :(. Went on the Pune-Mumbai highway, missed the exit as we were busy taking pictures and videos on the drive, came reverse on the service track, got out of exit. It was tough to maintain the speed with Rana in the highway.It was green all over the place as we crossed the mountains, and dark inside the tunnels. Pavan was happy as we crossed the mountains and tunnels. It was green almost all the road, and it was more lush green as we were close to the matheran. We stopped at the small falls just before the hair pin bends. The view was awesome. We took few snaps, had garam chai.

We headed to the matheran, although the number of hair bin bends are less when compared to ooty, couple of them are very steep and really dangerous cliffs. As we reached the peak, it started raining heavily, but it stopped in few minutes. We parked our cars, bargained for the horse rides. Got a 3 point deal of 600 rs for one cart for Rana's wife, as she had back pain, and 2800 for 7 horses for rest of us. The roads were muddy because of rain. I felt good to sit on the horse after a long time. Few horses were good, and rest of the horses are okay kind. I got a white horse, which responded well for the commands, but could not trot, as I had pavan with me. He was calm and enjoyed the ride. Maruthu was scared a bit about the horse. We stoped at the view point, got down from the horses, walked down a bit, the view point was awesome, tall mountains with a deep valley in between, lush greens all over the place, mist here and there. Check out the video.

We came back from the view point, got on the horses, reached the bazaar point, we all ate the food that we got, too many monkeys were around. It was hard to keep the monkeys away, Maruthu was the guard to keep away the monkeys. Menu was Tamarind rice, curd rice, with pickel. Rana got some lays chips to eat along with the rice.
After lunch, I got another horse to trot for a while. we went to another view point, green everywhere. Spent sometime in the bazaar. We got on the horses, rode them down the hill. On the way back, Prabhu drove the car for few kms, we stopped near a lake.
Reached pune, went to Rana's house in chinchwad. Drank tea, ate Hot Samosaa, and tasty gulaab Jamoons, yeah I ate two :) Spent sometime in Rana's house and reached Kondhwa around 8:30PM. It was a nice day alltogether :)

Where is Matheran: 120Kms from Pune

Agumbe and Joggi Gundi Falls

Aug 2nd 2009
On Sunday, we vacated the base camp at hebri around 7:30AM. We ate our breakfast(Buns, Idli,Vada, Neer Dosa, etc) on the way. Reached agumbe sunset point. Lots of monkeys were around. The view was awesome. We spent 30 minutes over there, ate Ice cream, and pineapple with salt and chilli powder.

We crossed agumbe, reached the route to JoggiGundi falls. It was raining, we all prepared ourself to face the leech, few applied tobacco powder with coconut oil, few applied salt on legs and arms, and few were generous and decided to feed the leech. As I and Elango had been to joggi gundi falls once, we didn't take any guide. We entered into the forest, there were lot of trails. After a kilometer, we took a trial and ended up in the main road. We came back on the same trail, saw a crab on the way, tried another trail, and ended up to another spot along the sita river. It was a fantastic spot. Spent almost an hour over there.


Came back from that spot, finally found the right trail, walked across all the big logs on the way, and reached the joggi gundi falls. It was small falls, but lot of force in the water. Denoy explored the way to reach the small end of the falls. We all went to that spot, felt the awesome water force, It was like natural jacuzzi :) One had to really take the support of the rocks in both the hands and legs, otherwise the water will take you along the sita river.

H1N1 in India

Went to Pune over the weekend. While going to Pune, it was not that panic, only few people wore the mask in pune airport. but within two days, it changed drastically. Number of death cases are increasing. In Pune city, many people wear masks, although few ignore it. While coming back to bangalore, In Pune airport I think 60% of people wore the mask. I didn't see any foriegner wearing a mask. They are not caring at all, either they don't know where to buy or don't care about spreading it. To avoid that, Airport authorities might have made the arrangements to provide/sell the masks at the security checks. In the security checks, the security checking inspector are wearing the masks, but no emphasis on the passenger about the usage of masks. I wore my mask that we got from a medical shop in pune. Reached bangalore airport, I was partially happy and partially scared after seeing that only < 5% of the people were wearing the masks.

Somewhere I read that this virus might hit 30% (approx) of world population. Too scary...
Children and old aged groups are easy targets for this virus. Wash your hands frequently and properly, keep distance from people who have symptoms. Check out what WHO says about it - WHO's FAQ
Beware of this virus, take precautions to avoid the reception of this virus and also to avoid spreading of this virus.

White Water Rafting (WWR)

Aug 1st 2009
We all gathered at the bangalore city railway station on friday night.
Most of us finished dinner already, Few of us went for another round, ate some sandwiches in Comesum restaurant.Got into the train Shimoga Express (6227), chit chatted a while, went to the berth after the ticket verification. Elango woke up as per the train schedule and asked everyone to get ready as the train was supposed to reach Shimoga in 10 more minutes. I woke up, went to toilet, refreshed, then found out that the train was late by 1 hour. Few continued the sleep, few enjoyed the early morning breeze as the train crossed Bhatravati and other places. Soumya hit nostalgia, remembered about her school days. We reached shimoga, elango lost the TRAX driver number, called Adreno Dilip, got driver number again, found the TRAX, loaded our lugguage into it. One new friend, nagesh, joined us in the TRAX. His friends already reached agumbe one day ahead and waiting for him. We introduced ourself to nagesh and started playing coffee potting. As it was 7:30AM, We had idli vada, coffee in a restaurant in shimoga. Got back to TRAX, continued coffee potting and came up with cool limericks. We stopped by MandaGadde Bird santuary, passed by Agumbe, finally reached Hebri, the water rafting base camp at 11:30AM. We occupied the dormitory, refreshed us, few slept for an hour, lunch was ready by 1:15AM. Dilip ask us to eat enough food as the water rafting requires lot of energy. We all ate well :) and rafts came back after the morning ride.They pumped the air into the rafts, we picked our life jackets and helmets. Guide explained the basic commands to us. We boarded the rafts and got into water. for few minutes we practiced the commands and started our journey. I took my handy cannon camera, packed inside the dry bag provided by the guide. As we proceeded we used to the commands and got the synchronization among the rafters. Guide informed us about the places where we can get into water to swim across the river. We got into water for few minutes. I don't know the swimming, but It was too tempting. I jumped into water at three places keeping all my faith on the life jacket. It was an awesome experience.
The guide didn't allow me to take pictures at all for the first half of the journey. We took a small break, few more people joined us for the rest of the journey. For the second half, I changed the raft, the guide in the new raft was cool, he didn't say anything about the camera usage, I took my camera wherever it was possible, clicked some snaps, shooted some videos. Few fell off while crossing couple of rapids, everyone jumped into water as soon as the guide gave the signal for the swimming. Elango got hurt on a rock in a rapid while swimming :(, I and Poorvi was about to drifted away by the water into a wrong path when we were out in the water. We both didn't know swimming. Somehome managed to stay against the water flow, and got into the raft with the help of the pedal. It rained as we crossed dense forest areas. After 3 hours of enjoyment, the 26 kms of water rafting was over.




We came out, lifted the rafts on our head for half kilometer, kept it on the vehicle. I and hecate competed for the max push-ups on the ground. You know who would have lasted long, yes, ofcourse it was me :), although hecate gave a tough competition. Maruthu captured that in the camera. We walked back a km on the roads, another vehicle came for pickup. we reached the base camp, ate hot hot Aloo Bajji, few Capsicum Bajji, lots of Onion Bajji. refreshed ourself, had dinner, few went to sleep. We played cards, Luck was with me again, I won 3 or the 4 games we played. went to sleep on saturday. Sunday's activities worth a separate blog entry, will post it later.