When life gives you lemon

Dec 1 2013, Jodhpur express 3AC compartment. We were searching our wallets and backpacks for some left out money and managed to get a ten rupee note and 20 bucks worth of coins. Next Station arrived, and two of us got down with the 30 bucks and headed towards a snack counter and ordered few vadas. #Tip1 do not hesitate to use coins even if you have to use only coins ;-) We were staring at the vadas the shopkeeper picked. We both wanted him to pick the bigger ones though they were oily #Tip2 when a vada is all that you can have for a day, be wise to pick the big and oily one:-P Finally we got our vadas and moved towards the train. At that time we were not aware that we were being noticed. We got back and had the vadas and filled the hungry tummies. Last proper meal we had was around 18 hours ago in Dandeli. We were so much into having fun that we did not have enough time to have food. #Tip3 Eating is part of travelling J do not skip that.

So why were we sitting there with no money, forced to eat just a vada? Because we were a bunch of idiots. #tip4 you may be a stupid, but make sure at least one of your friends is not! ;-) So after spending 4 good days of rambling and gambling in and around Goa and Dandeli, 5^th day we decided to go for some water sports in Dandeli and then head towards Hubli to catch our train @ 2pm on Dec 1 2013. So after having some good amount of off-road adventures in Dandeli, we started our journey in a Jeep without knowing we were going to have some on-road adventures as well. Yeah we were already late for the train and the driver had to do lots of stunts and finally we reached the station at 1 50 pm. We got into the train and were shocked to see our seats already taken. #Tip5 be prepared for surprises  so we started arguing with the people in our seats showing the ticket in our mobile. Just then I realized that our tickets were booked for Jan 1 and not Dec 1 and the train started to move already. We hurried ourselves out of the train and then sat in the platform thinking what to do next.

So we decided to talk to the TTEs of other trains to get seats. After few failed attempts in few trains, we managed to get 4 seats in Jodhpur express. #Tip6 you will meet wonderful people in your journey, and some of them could be greedy TTEs. He gave us the seats on a deal that he would not give receipts for the tickets but instead would give a missed call to alert us in case if there was a squad in train. With no option left out, we signed up for the deal. Just then we realized we were running out of money to pay the TTE and asked a friend of mine to get money from the ATM as there was enough time for train’s departure. He got the money and we paid 2500 bucks to TTE. Train departed and the catering people were selling food items. We were all very hungry. We asked the guy who came from the ATM to buy food packets and he gave us this puzzled look .That idiot had withdrawn money only for the tickets. #Tip7 you may realize all your friends are stupid as well. And so we were sitting there with still hungry tummies, trying different ways to sleep.

The train was about to reach the next station. A man appeared in front of us. We all were able to recognize him. We had just met him while talking to the TTE. We even exchanged couple of words with him before getting into the train. But now we were puzzled why he was there. He told that he had been noticing us from the time we got into the train and was asking us affectionately why we were not asking for help. And then he took one of our friends with him and they both returned with 4 food packets and gave us 500 bucks and insisted to take it saying we could return it once we reach Bangalore. #Tip8 Look for a Mangalam sir, when you need help:-P

So he introduced himself as Devraj, working as an electrical engineer in the Indian Army. He had been travelling in train for almost two days already. We introduced ourselves. He was happy to know that we were all maintaining our friendship from school days. He felt bad that he was not able to be in touch with such friends. He also mentioned that he was going to meet his pregnant wife. It was so inspiring and fascinating to listen to those small stories from back home and why he chose that career and all #Tip9 be all ears to people you meet in your travel. Listen to their stories.

Soon we reached Bangalore. He introduced us to his big gang of Army people and they advised us to take General compartment in Lal Bagh express as that would be the fastest way to reach Chennai. They also suggested we would all get into the train through the emergency exit even before the train comes to the platform. So Devraj found the train and we all jumped into the train through the emergency exit and were sitting inside the train expecting it to start and move towards the platform. #Tip10 Shit happens!! ;-) Suddenly there was an announcement that lal bagh express was arriving towards so and so platform and we see another train going towards that platform. Apparently we were sitting in the wrong train after doing so many stunts. #Tip11 Sometimes even the people you meet on travel can be stupid ;-)

So now we all were hopping from train to train and finally entered the right lal bagh express. But all seats were occupied by the time we got there. #Tip12 Be calm and believe in Mangalam Sir. Train departed, Devraj started talking to the passengers sitting in the train and he made sure to get us some space to sit before he got down at the next station. He even called us all individually and checked if we had reached home safely.

Now we do not know where he is. We are not in touch with him nor do we have his contact details. But he added more value and memories to the entire trip than all the places we saw and all the fun we had in the previous days. #Tip13 If you don’t want yourself writing blogs about people you meet or friends you make, stay in touch ;-)

This trip, especially the return journey brought in a big change in our perspective towards travelling. Travelling is not just about visiting places, doing adventurous stuffs, having fun with friends etc. But it is also about the people you meet and the stories you hear. Travelling is an experience. It does not matter where you go nor with whom you go, but you need to experience it. There could be few let downs in your plans. But it all adds up as a good experience. You will learn a lot of life lessons in that small vacation you spend on travelling than what you learn throughout the rest of the year. Happy travelling.

Winter is here!!!

View from Kedarkantha

That night, I had a restless sleep. I was tossing and turning inside those compact sleeping bags. Outside the tent, the temperature was probably between -15 to -10. I finally got up and made my way out of the sleeping bag when Ghost, the dog started barking .I lighted the headlamp which was hanging at the top of the tent. I piled up some three rucksacks together and rested myself leaning back on it and trying to get little more sleep.

As I closed my eyes, I was remembering our first moments of this trek in Sankri. Sankri is a small hamlet in northern Uttarakand. We reached Sankri on Dec 27th around 5 PM. Weather was very cold and windy. Temperature was around 8 to 10 degrees. We were welcome by Rohan, our trek leader from Renok Adventures. He took us to our first campsite in that small village. The campsite was located in a beautiful location surrounded by never ending mountain ranges, farmlands, small streams and it also gave us the view of Swarga Rohini, one of the high altitude peaks in Uttarakand. We went around the camp site for a while and then settled for camp fire. Soon we had more people joining us in the camp fire. There were 24 of us by the time we started dinner and we had our introduction session over the dinner. As the darkness grew, it was getting much colder and we were reminding ourselves that it was just the beginning of the winter that was ahead.

Sankri camp site

Next day morning when we got up, people were already doing warm ups. Sankri looked too lively with men and women both starting to work, and the Sankri Kids playing around. They were even trying to talk with us in their own local language and passing comments about us and giggling among themselves. Soon we got ready and then we were introduced to Kamaji who is our other trek leader and also to Raju Bhai and other support staff. We started the Day 1 trek around 9 30 AM. Initial climb was quite steep but on a proper trail. After two hours of climbing, we started to see the first patches of snow. Many of us were already tired and exhausted because of the steep climb and the altitude gain. We were all running for the ORS sachets at one stage. As we climbed further up, we started trekking between snow covered woods. Finally after 6 hours of climbing through the woods with pine and dried apple trees, we were able to see a plain surface fully covered with snow and amidst the snow was our next camp site. We walked fast towards the campsite, dropped our bags and rushed for tea. We were having tea and biscuits and looking at the snow covered woods around us. And then we notice a golden furry dog running down to the campsite through the woods in a completely different trail. Being a person who is dead scared of dogs, I initially was taking back steps whenever that dog came close. But slowly I realized how adorable the dog was. Later that day we named it “Ghost”.

After lunch, we spent the whole evening playing games which included some kindergarten games too. Some of us were making some confessions which made us all laugh. All of these we were able to do in that weather just because of the campfire that our group made. And that made the difference between the other trekking organizations and Renok. As the whole area was covered with snow, it was really difficult to find wood. We had to either climb up or down to get some wood to get the fire running all day and night. So our leader suggested us to form a human chain passing the wood all the way up to the campsite. And that way we got the camp fire running till the next morning.Finally we all retired to sleep around 11 PM. The temperature was around -5 to -7 degrees that time. Thanks to the campfire and the quality sleeping bags and at last the tents.

Next day morning when I got up, I was able to hear people already involved in early morning conversations. Two of my friends from my tent were already out. And I knew the temperature must be really cold already. So added up one more layer and decided to move out and that’s when I realized that there was already a group waiting near the tent. As soon as I got out, 8 of them were there and some of them were throwing snow at me and few really tried to put the snow inside my jacket. And they were shouting “Happy birthday”. Yes, I had just turned 26 that day and It was good to be there with eight of my friends from different phases of my life. Some of them were from school, some from my first work place and one from my college days.

Later that morning we had tea, breakfast and some medical checkup followed by warm up sessions. Soon we started the trek. The first one hour climb was extremely slippery and steep. For major part of that stretch, I was not at all confident on just the two legs that we were all manufactured with. It was extremely slippery at most places because of the icy path. It was like, if one of us had fallen, it would have resulted in a cascading effect. Our trek leaders and the support staff did an amazing job in helping us all do it. After almost an hour's climb, we reached Juda-ka-talab a small lake on the way to the next camp site. The lake was completely frozen and covered by snow filled woods. We sat there resting for a while and admiring it for some time and then we continued our climb which was even more tedious. The whole path was very narrow that we all had to move in a line, one after the other. Sometimes we had these mules with huge load crossing us and hiking up in full speed to overtake us and we had to push and crush ourselves towards the hill side holding on to something.

On the way to talab

Juda-ka-talab

Finally after 3 hours of struggle, we saw a huge campsite with India hikes, YHAI and everybody else. Renok had their tents in the best spot on a corner of that hill top from where you can see many hill ranges of the Himalayas and also the majestic Kedarkantha peak which looked very close from its base camp. This campsite was situated at 11000+ feet and the temperature was hitting 0 in the late afternoon only. This campsite was the real test for our tolerance to the Himalayan winters. After grabbing some rest, we went around the campsite taking pictures and collecting wood for the next two days and we met some friends who had come through India hikes.

Kedarkantha basecamp

We spent most part of the evening and night around the campfire and the kitchen:-P Team Renok was providing us yummy pakodas, soups and finally the dinner. This night they asked us to sleep early as we had to start trekking early in the morning around 4 AM. So we retired to sleep around 10 PM but then there I was sitting back against those rucksacks trying different ways to sleep. As nothing could help and as the Ghost kept barking, I decided to walk out of the tent. The time was around 3 AM and I came out to witness the most spectacular view of this whole trek and even my whole life till then. Sky was fully lit with Stars and the Moon. It was a perfect twilight. And the headlamp seemed useless. The snow was glowing because of the twilight and the Kedarkantha peak was still visible even at that time of the night. There was very less noise and it was just the sound of the night and those of the mountains and of course the sound of Ghost too:-D

Finally everybody was up and ready by 4 AM. We all had some parathas and oats. And we started to hike again and in dark this time. For the summit climb, we all got our crampons as it was expected to be extremely slippery. We were walking in a line. I was at the end of the line walking slowly accompanied by Aman and Ganesh who actually helped me summit the peak despite the back pain that I had acquired over the past few days. Sometimes they even made me forget the manufacturing defect and fact that we all have only two legs ;-)

Summit climb 

The summit trek was really tiring and it was damn cold as well. Many of us had our first snow fall as well on the way to the peak. The wind was strong and cold and it was pushing us. Whenever there was heavy wind, we had to hold on to our trekking poles firmly. After hours of climbing, the peak started to appear closer. The closer we moved, it looked as though the peak kept moving away. At one point, I was not sure whether I would be able to make it up and even the guide asked me that directly. But there were a lot of positive vibe from the people around. People were encouraging each other. There were guys who could have done it with ease and much faster but waiting for others to help them do it. A guy who was walking all alone, taking rest once in a while and then start hiking again like a mad man. There was this adorable couple helping each other and also others throughout the journey. A guy stuck with mountain sickness still wanting to do it. There was a whole group hiking without the crampons on the shoes. And there was a guy from the previous day who was actually a porter carrying around 45 Kg on his back and still running up and down the hill helping people to climb. This whole trek had many flavors. May be all these motivated every one of us made our way to the peak to witness the spectacular views of the never ending Himalayan ranges of the Himachal and Uttarakand.

View from kedarkantha

After summiting Kedarkantha

We spent some quality time in the peak and then started descending to the base camp. The downhill was quite easy and fun. We had good fun sliding in the snow. Wherever we found an opportunity, we tried sliding down and finally after we lost all our energy we reached back to our tents and rushed for food .We spent this evening inside the tents only. It was the coldest day of the trip. Even holding the plate for dinner was extremely difficult. But we all somehow managed to get a decent sleep because of the tiring trek we had that day.

Next day, we had to go downhill all the way up to Sankri in a single stretch. But in a different route through Hargaon. Half of the downhill trek was tricky due to the icy trails. But we all reached back safely and it was a happy ending that all of us from our group completed the trek. Soon people started leaving after sharing good byes and sharing the hope that we may meet each other in some trek some day.

"Pillayar Suzhi" at the tiger's den "Gavi , Periyar Tiger Reserve"

"Pillayar Suzhi" - some letter/some symbol which tamil hindus write on top of the paper before writing anything. KG kids to retired old people (not atheists ofcourse :-P) almost everybody uses it believing in it to give a good beginning. Although this is superstitious, I am using it for my title as it is fancy ;-) And ofcourse the trip to Gavi was a good beginning.

August 2012, Myself and three of my best friends from school days decided to visit this place "Gavi". So the team consisted of 4 members myself, Dinesh Vasudevan( will be referred as Dinesh in all my travelogues from now), Nagendra Babu(will be referred to as Nagu in all my travelogues), Saravana Rajendran(will be referred to as Sara in all my travelogues from now). So we always wished for a trip of this kind from our 11th std and finally it came true after we all got our so called white collar jobs ;) :P 

So we called the forest department and booked for a day visit to Gavi before starting from Chennai. As we did not have our travel tickets booked,we went to CMBT on that rainy day and boarded one of the worst buses of SETC at 8 PM. The bus started and we were all chit chatting for sometime and slept thinking that we would be in Kambam (Foothills of Kumily) by the time we wake up.

We all got up in the morning around 7 30 a.m  after a long sleep and the bus was riding through a highway and my eyes were searching for a signboard  to know where we were. And it was shocking and disappointing  to know that we had not even crossed trichy :-D And we reached Kambam only at 12.30 PM noon. We switched to another bus and finally reached kumily around 2 PM.

As soon as we got down, rain started to pour. We ran searching for a hotel and we finally checked in to the Ray's Inn. There was this guy Ray thomas who welcomed us and gave us a really good room for an affordable price. We refreshed and went out for lunch and the expectation of my friends to see some good looking mallu girls was a real disappointment in that town :( Note :- I am very very good boy, first bench from UKG  :P  So i did not have such expectations ;-) ) And As soon as we came out of the restaurant, we met this auto driver"Vinod". We booked his auto for rest of the day for 400 bucks and asked him to show us some really good places. And this was one of the best,memorable and adventurous rides we ever had. Especially in a hill station it is really adventurous to travel in an auto.We were expecting to see some really good location.But Vinod stopped the auto in front of an old house and we were heavily disappointed. he asked  us to pay some 10 rupees per head to the people who lived there in the house and took us to the backyard of thee house and we started walking deep into the backyard. In a 10 minutes walk we saw a stunning scenery before our eyes. It was like a view point with grasslands spreading everywhere and we could see both Tamilnadu and kerala and also the huge chellarkoyil waterfalls to our right. We were sitting there for a long time looking at all those places playing with each other.

Next we decided to go for an elephant ride. My friends nagu and Sara were quite afraid But still went ahead and took an elephant ride. Although we speak of wildlife conservation and all those, it is really worth a ride for at least once in lifetime. And the elephants were treated really well compared to many other places which offer elephant rides( like Mudhumali,Wayanad etc).

Finally it was the EOD, so we had our dinner and went to sleep early that night as we had to wake up early the next morning. We had arranged a jeep to travel to Gavi. We woke up quite late around 5 PM and got ready as soon as possible and started from there. We opened the jeep top and all the four of us were standing throughout the ride.Soon we crossed the pamba river by jeep and entered the Periyar Tiger reserve at around 6 30 PM.

Then "Real ride" started. If your are ever going to visit Gavi in july-august then this jeep ride is going to stay in your heart forever. You will never forget this ride. You put your eyes on any place you will either see lush green trees and grass or you will see water running through the woods. We saw many mesmerizing viewpoints on the way. We got a good driver who even stopped and showed us animals too. We could not see many as we were late. If you want to witness herds of elephants sliding through the hills and grasslands, do enter the forest before 6 am. There are also chances to witness the "Man Eater" ;)

And we experienced all these except for the "Man Eater" :( But still a jeep ride in the forest region climbing up the hill with Ilayaraja songs at the background will undoubtedly be an unforgettable page in everybody's diary :)

We finally reached the forest guest house around 8.30 AM. We had a great buffet breakfast.As soon we were done we were introduced to our forest guide "Prem Kumar". He is from one of the 12 tribal families who live in that forest and he had many stories and information to share with us during our trek. Every group started with their own guide.Surprisingly 90 % of the people who had come there were from alien countries. The place was not popular then among the local people,although now that place is very popular because of the Malayalam movie "Ordinary".

As every group started walking, Prem asked us whether we wanted a normal 2 hours walk or an adventurous one and we chose the latter. And the very first thing which we had to do was really adventurous and frankly i did not want to do that and i was terribly afraid we had to walk around a hill top over the slope to get to the other side of the hill. With help from Sara, I managed to do that we finally had to descend from the other side of the hill. With few climbs and descends over the hills we entered into deep forest. We also witnessed the view of Sabari mala Iyyappan temple which was completely covered by mist and also the hills in which the magara jothi is believed to appear. We were following each other and the stories told by Prem were really amazing and also it helped me divert myself from the fear of falling down the hills :P As we kept walking inside the forest we had to descend the hill though the forest.

When all my friends were walking in two legs, I was sliding and catching hold of the roots and branches of the plants and trees and even went back to the stone age walking in four legs :-P And the scary part of this whole trek is the "leeches". We were able to see our shoes completely covered with leeches. My friends even started bleeding. But our guide was amazing. We were feeling hard to walk with our shoes.But this guy just walked with a paragon slipper and he never cared about the leeches sucking his blood and he kept walking. Finally he even made us cross a river and then he asked us to descend down a water fall :D:O. My friends started descending before even i started thinking of it. I took few steps down holding the huge roots of a fallen tree. But then my fear asked me to go back up to the top of the falls. And So i did :D And seeing me afraid everybody came back ;) ( Nice Friends :-P That moment when you start saying thank god with a sigh and then realizing that people are around :P;))Now we had to take a shortest possible route as we had already crossed the time limit which was given for our trek. So we took the most steepest route to climb up the hills to reach the guest house again. It was very hard. Nobody had the energy to climb and we slowly reached back the guest house around 3 PM. We had our lunch ( We ate as if we did not eat for months :P)

Then Prem and his friend took us in a boat to the most beautiful water falls which I have ever seen till today. There was not a single person there. Wherever I kept my legs, I was able to see my legs through the water.The water was crystal clear like the water in a glass mug.My friends got excited and  had a bath in the falls and i was taking pictures of a water snake :D thinking it was dead. As i kept taking the pictures i noticed in the camera screen that the snake changed it's head direction and i thought i was just going to die :-P but then prem's friend told me that the snake was injured :-P  After a while, we reached back to the same guest house. Prem gave us a bag of fig fruits from the forest(Too tasty and you will never get that kind of fig in our cities). Then we had to say bye to prem and his Gavi as we departed.

As soon we reached the hotel, we checked out the hotel and went to the bus stand and got a bus to kambam. We did not have our tickets booked. So we were in a confusion and then we met a person(forgot the name :-D ) in the bus who was very helpful and he called the SETC office and even few private travels and gave us information on the buses, their schedule and seats availability. As he told ,we got a straight bus to Chennai as soon as we got down from that bus. Two of my friends slept early and myself and dinesh were talking for a long time about his first channel and third channel (If you know what i mean:-P)and soon we slept too. 8 am next morning, we got down in Chennai CMBT and we were all going towards our homes thinking about those places and people we met and also were trying hard to digest the fact that we had to go to office after reaching our homes :'( ;-)


Useful Links: http://gaviecotourism.org/php/ViewContent.php?lid=4