Tuesday, December 27, 2005

Back from Heaven!

Just back from Heaven. And this is not about the 11 hours sleep I just woke up from but about the visit to God’s own country with six of my friends!!! It seems very interesting how just a year ago I was almost wiped off the face of earth. And one year hence, here I am back from exploring mom Nature… I still have to come to terms with her splendor and majesty!!! What sights, what grandeur! Every such trip of mine turns into a humbling experience and now I have most definitely decided I need to take time off once in a year to travel with friends around! It is amazing fun definitely!

I was wondering how to start this blog, but with photographs inserted, I decided chronological order would make more sense. Seven of us from office headed towards Wayanad district in Kerala on the morning 22nd December. The journey from Karnataka into Kerala passing the Bandipur forests was eventful, what with the driver having a dangerous auto-rickshaw-driver instinct! A resourceful friend among us had obtained a worthy contact at the place we were headed to and also got a cottage booked for us in the interiors of Kalpetta, a suburb of Wayanad.








Once we got to Kalpetta around noon, we got the complete list of places that we could visit from our ubiquitous and ever-useful contact and we decided we would cover the lake, the waterfall and ‘view-point’ on the first day. The Pookode Lake was a scenic place surrounded by hills and we took two boats to have some great fun for half an hour. Two friends who I would rate good enough to stage a stand-up comedy show made the whole trip a big blast! The view-point was an excellent vantage point from where one could view the splendor of the valley spread out.


The website has to say this about this point – “Entrance to Wayanad from Calicut with Lofty peaks, gurgling streams and luxuriant forests add magic to the journey up the winding roads to this hill station.” Against odds, we made it to the Soochipara falls in time and what a worthy visit it was! An amazing cascade hidden between hillocks with a 2 km trail leading to it made this a perfect start to a memorable trip. All except one of us got ourselves drenched in the waterfall and it had us all wondering how much of a physical exertion the next day’s trek was going to be. We had no clue to what was waiting!


We knew we were about to trek up a 2100mts mountain – Chembara peak and we had to take permission from the local forest dept guys to do so. We also had to take a guide along - Satish, a teacher by profession. He led us through the tortuous path giving insights about the historical and geographical significance of the place. Along the diagonal of the hill we had to take what would be called ‘otthai adi paadai’ in tamizh, covered on all sides by thick mountain flora. The trek was really tiring to say the least. But the effort was definitely worth. And more so because of the ‘dil shape vaali’ lake in the middle of the mountains! What a sight to behold! Everything felt very unreal! We were literally transported into another world… and I almost felt like being inside the CUG of LOTR or something! It was truly an out-of –world experience.

And the surprises refused to cease. We reached the topmost point to meet a French woman cooling her heels off there! She came alone, and for the second time! It takes 1 hour to reach the lake and it is a trek of 2 more hours to the top of the peak, and she started late the day before and had to stop at the lake. And this day she made it to the top and was reading a book relishing it every second. And she replied in the affirmative when asked about scaling the Alps and this was her first trek in India. And when asked how she managed it alone, she had this to offer – ‘Yes, I know. Indians don’t like being alone’. I sheepishly defended this by saying – ‘It is not that we don’t like to be alone, but we are not much used to it!’ And after that the trek downhill did not take as much of our energy as it did of our time.

The next day held lots of promise with us yet to see ‘Edakkal’ caves and the promised river rafting in the river surrounding the mystic Kuruva Islands. We were lucky to have started that early in the day because the caves attract an average of 1000 people per day! When we started our second and then easy trek with our guide, the friend who somehow fought her way up the Chemabara peak refused to take one step further than the caves. The set up was like this. The caves were at around 900ft from ground and there was another trail leading up to this peak, some 1000ft more. So all other ‘experts’ after the previous day experience set out to conquer yet another peak. Another of the various surprises was in store for all of our ‘trekking’ minds. There was no flora or vegetation on the mountain except for a few stray strands of wild grass. All we had was slightly steep rock surfaces and another rocky and tortuous path with foot marks as the only trail to follow!

The ‘Edakkal’ caves history was very fascinating. Literally Edakkal means – ‘eda’ is in between and ‘kal’ is stone. The caves are supposed have been formed 30000 yrs ago due to a huge earthquake and the setting of the caves got it its name. And people of that time had inhabited this place, leaving exotic cave images for our cameras! It felt great to be a part of another time! The comic duo continued there antics to the top of another peak and we were all having a whale of a time. There was time for a bit of shopping where people got their hands on to coffee, tea powder and some artifacts.

With no time to lose, we decided to skip lunch and head straight for the inviting Waters of the river that leads to the Kabini in Kerala. But to our initial disappointment we were told we would have to wait for 2 days to go river rafting. And when we crossed 30mts across the river by a boat, we got irked when someone told us there was a land trail further down which we could try when going back!!! Grrrrrr…! And there were ticket cabins placed everywhere on these ‘islands’ and we had to pay every time we crossed a tiny piece of land or water! But nothing could distract us from the view being presented before our eyes. Yet again the ‘Predator’ feel was induced in us in these untamed forests that we had to walk across and we were specifically told that there was a high risk of getting lost, which made it more exciting.

And the best was yet to come… We all reached an innocuous end of one of the islands and decided it was time to head back home, not to risk getting late. That was when an elderly inhabitant of one of the islands suggested a different trail that would lead us to the first island that we crossed on boat. The best part here was we had to cross the river, which shallow enough with rocks under the surface for us to cross by foot. Though the rocks had a fair bit of moss on them, we all collectively set out on a journey, we dint know would take us more than an hour! Albeit the experience being great, we lost our way and were hopping from one island to other without knowing which direction we were heading! And in the middle of nowhere, when we were trying to get to one of the islands there came along another senior citizen. He had all of us baffled when he just got into the water and went past us to the other coast in 2 minutes flat! And he also waved back! It was then that we realized how ridiculously easy the locals found it to cross the very path we were bring so timid about crossing. But we eventually found the path back to the boat that would take us back to the mainland.
All of us concurred that each adventure surpassed the earlier one in surprise and thrill and overall the trip was once in a lifetime experience!!!


Visit http://wayanad.nic.in/ to get a glimpse at what I am raving about!
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Saturday, December 10, 2005

Sachin is GOD, again...!

Passion triggered like nothing else. The master made it to the 35th! And I know it’s a pit stop! WOW! 'Sachin's batting is amazing' is a seriously wanting understatement!!!

And I just went on musing…looking at the Aus-Kiwi match explode, about how the tournaments get named! What with such a gallery of greats in the Indian team now[;)], what will tournaments of the future be named? Like the ones now called Border-Gavaskar trophy… am taking my guesses!

Tendulkar – Waugh trophy

Dravid – Lara trophy

Murali – Warne trophy

Inzamam – Vettori trophy

Flintoff – Kallis trophy

Saurav – Gilchrist trophy

[I suddenly want Saurav to bounce back like hell and score a couple of centuries!!!]

Quirky guesses I know… but just having fun guessing!
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