White List II

Life is getting a little monotonous! And sometimes I need directions and deadlines to keep me going. So its time I created my next white list. Like the previous one, this too should push me into doing something...



So here is is; the list of my targets for the next 50 days:

1. Run for a marathon! I have always wanted to do this, but never did!The 'Running and Living Pune' group is organizing a marathon on the 3rd of July, Sunday. I have decided to run for the quarter marathon which would cover 10.5 kms. I know I can keep walking for a long time, but I am not sure how far I can run. Lets see how it goes.

2. Workshop! Learning never stops! I had been quite busy with the theatre acting classes and then with practices for the play 'Tale Danda' during the last couple of months. Now its time to learn something new, different and interesting during the weekends. Let me see what I can find on the net or in the papers!

3. Leh-Ladakh! A plan that was made a year back and got washed away in the cloudburst! We are planning to go for in a month.
Fingers crossed.



4. I haven't trekked for a long long time now! Many people often ask me about my treks as I used to frequently go on treks the last year. I just realized that my last trek was over 6 months back during last Christmas, when I had gone on a 4 day trek to the Alang-Madan forts. I did go to Mt. Takao during my Tokyo trip, but I would  not call it a trek. It was more of a hike. I therefore have to end this dormant period. Fourth in the list: a trek!

5. Donate blood! Another item that has always been on my will-do-tomorrow-list. High time I put it on the White List.

So those are the 5 things I need do! Today is the 2nd of July. So the deadline to finish off the tasks would be August 21st (50 days later; like White List I).

I will keep you updated as I finish each item on the list.


PS:

July 3rd: Woke up at 4:15am after a 3.5 hour nap and reached Pune University at 6am. The marathon started on time. There were around 25 people running. The pleasant climate, more than 20 people running along and half a bottle of gatorade helped me complete the marathon in around 70 minutes.

Certificate of 'completion'(Click to enlarge).

It was my first time, but I can tell you there are many more to follow!

#1 on the list, completed!

July 9th: Today, I went for a workshop on... making cookies and cakes! :-)
I had found Rajul's Cookery Classes on the net; and I thought this would be an interesting workshop. So I registered immediately. The workshop was conducted by Rajul Sanghvi at her residence, near Shivaji Nagar. She conducts a cookery workshop every Saturday from 1 to 4PM. Today she taught us to make chocolate muffins, shrewsbury biscuits, coconut cookies, banana cookies, pinwheel cookies, chocolate chip cookies, egg-less sponge cake with pineapple icing and chocolate sponge cake with cherry icing. Yeah, lot of good stuff; not all of it is in my head right now; but its there in the handout given to us there along with some 'tips from the expert'.
At the end of the workshop, we had the cakes and cookies that were made. The sponge cake was nice, soft and quite juicy, and I loved the shrewsbury cookies and the banana cookies! They were awesome! I hope when I try my hand, they turn out to be atleast half as good!


#2 completed! Three to go...

July 17th: At Sadhu Vaswani Mission in Pune, a blood donation camp was organized on the 17th of July. Being a Sunday, it was convenient for me to go there. After a quick blood test, I found myself on a cot with a needle sucking blood out of my vein. I was given a stress ball, squeezing which helps hasten the process.

July last week: Bharath, Vipin, Murali, Arjun and I set out to Leh for a trip of a lifetime! One of the most beautiful places I have seen. A must visit for all travel enthusiasts!

Aug 6:  During the trip to Leh, we had gone rafting on river Zanskar. If that doesn't count as a trek, I had gone on a trek to the Panvel waterfall along with a trekking club here, Offbeat Sahyadri, followed by rappelling down the waterfall.

And this completes my second White List! Many more to follow!

Waterfall Rappelling at Vihigaon

I got a tweet last week which led me to this page about waterfall rappelling at Vihigaon last weekend (17th and 18th July). The pics looked good. The rapel was only of 120ft -around  previous 350ft rapel, but the waterfall would definitely not make the descend easy. But the only issue came up when I called up Zeenat on the number specified on the page and she told me that I had to reach Shivaji Nagar at 4 in the morning! That meant I had to leave my house at 3AM and would have to wake up at around 2! That like the waterfall rappelling was something I have never done before! But after booking seats along with 3 of my colleagues, I didn't have much choice.

So on sunday morning, after my alarm was successful in waking me up at 2.30, 4 of us, Prateek, Mansi, Vinod and I went to Shivaji Nagar in a  call taxi. Trekmates, the group conducting the event was waiting there for us. We hopped into the bus and in 10 minutes we started off to Vihigaon. It was a long journey, most of it was along the Pune-Nasik route. We made only 2 stops along our 7 hour journey - the first one when we saw a hyena on the way and the second one for breakfast.

A friend we met on the way

When we reached at 11, the group from Mumbai had already begun rappelling. The guys waiting for their turn to rappel were having a nice time watching the waterfall and people rappelling or enjoying in the water. . Within a couple of hours, they stopped for lunch. Prateek had brought tasty puris from home and Mansi had cooked some good pulao for the four of us.

People enjoying the place and their time

After lunch, we didn't have to wait much for our turn. I was the last one to go among the four of us. One of the guys who finished his rappel passed his gloves, helmet and harness to me. I put them on with the help of one of the volunteers and then was ready to go!

My first few steps

When the rope was free, I was called. Few instructions were given, the knot was tied and in a couple of minutes, I was walking backwards along the waterfall. 

In size, the descend was only a third of the Naneghat rappel I had done earlier. But the force of the waterfall and the slippery rocks made it equally if not more difficult and challenging. My footwear only added to the problems. I was wearing my shoes earlier, but for the rappelling I decided to change to my sandals thinking I it would give me the same grip and I that I could prevent my shoe from getting soaked! I didn't sleep properly the previous night, I had a fever and still went ahead with the trip but changing the footwear was the stupidest of them! I slipped once after covering almost the quarter of the height. After that I kept feeding the rope faster so that I stood perpendicular to the rocks and managed to complete it fine. It was a really thrilling and enjoyable experience. 

I believe the pics speak for themselves

 By the time I finished, it had started to drizzle. I was feeling really cold so I changed to a dry shirt and wore my wind cheater. But before others finished and we reached the bus the only dry shirt I had was wet too. We had tea in the evening and then left for Pune around 630; we should have started 2 hours earlier to reach on time. Now we knew we were going to reach back home pretty late in the night, but what we didn't know was about the accident on the highway ahead which caused a huge traffic block and delayed us further by more than an hour. The fever and cold was getting worse. We now had to stop at a restaurant for dinner which again consumed some time. But with the help of the good roads (we came back via the mumbai pune national highway) and the driver's heavy right foot, we managed to reach Pune around 3.40AM. I then took a rick from shivaji nagar to my home and reached there at 4am! I have slept past 4 in the morning a lot of times before, but never after waking up at 230am the previous day!

As Jack Bauer says, "...this is the longest day of my life".


Similar posts:
-Naneghat rappelling
-Duke's nose Valley Crossing

The world is flat...VERTICALLY!

"pls let it be full......lord..."
That is exactly what Pancily's chat said, when I told him that I was going forward with the trek even if he was stuck in Mumbai with his work. It was Pancily who told me about the 350ft rappelling at Naneghat on Feb 21st. But later, he had got the deadline for his project as 22nd feb which pulled him back. Girivihang trekkers, a club from mumbai was organizing it, and they would have it again only after diwali. So this was my best chance. Just as Pancily hoped, their bus was fully booked! But as they were coming from Mumbai and I was in Pune they told me that they'd let me do the rappelling if I arranged for my travel.

I then called up Viggy and Kini. We decided to go there on bikes. Kini was hungry for a long ride on his new R15! But on saturday, we learnt that naneghat is around 4 hours away from pune on bike, and your back is not going to like the last few kilometres. So Ashwath and Vignesh dropped out! The organizers had told me about Samyak who, along with his friends, was joining them from Pune. When I called him up, Samyak told me they were going in a Tavera, and they had space for another person!! You know what happened after that. :)

The pic that compelled me to go for the trek ;)

We - Samyak, Rishikesh, Anirudh, Prasad, our driver, Sachin and I- reached Naneghat at 12 noon. The Mumbai guys were there and around 30 guys had already finished rappelling. We sat down and waited for our turn to come.Some of the guys who were in line to go next were looking tensed. But the guys who had just finished seemed thrilled and we were eagerly waiting to get going.

 Click on the pic and spot the two guys who are rappelling.

Once everyone from Mumbai had finished, we got to start. They had a two sets of ropes coming down from the top. So a couple of participants could rappel at the same time. After waiting for few minutes, it was my turn. I got into my harness, got the carabiner attached to it and went to the top.

  I was then told how to rappel. The instructions were quite simple; atleast seemed simple when I heard them. Keep your feet at a distance of around 2 feet and do not bend your knees. Lean backwards and using your left hand behind you pull and feed the rope to your right hand, which would be a few inches above your forehead. The sole function of the right hand is to maintain balance. So you must not try to hold the rope tight if you are going down too fast. The speed can be controlled with the left. And if you do not come down in a steady manner you could spin around like a top, as Sachin did. :) This mostly happens if you do not use your feet properly or when the rappel is overhanging (it means the rocks are curved inward).

I wore my gloves. The knots were tied and I was at the edge of the cliff! The first couple of steps weren't very easy. An instructor told me a twice not to bend my knees while going down, because I could bang then onto the rocks if I did. After taking around 4 steps, I started to get the hang of it. The speed started to increase and I started to  literally run backwards [and downwards ;)] for a few seconds. I suddenly realized that the team at the top was no longer to be seen, neither was the control team at the bottom. I was alone for the next 50-75 meters, before I could even see the guys waiting for me down there. But now it didn't matter much. The fun factor had overcome the fear! I was really enjoying it! And before I knew it I was on ground; ground that didn't make a lot of angle with the sea.;)

 Coming back to the base after the rappel.

  
At 430 pm, everyone had finished rappelling. Once the organizers checked the count of people present, we set out for Pune. On the way, in Junnar, we stopped by at Anirudh's gradparents' home. After having some tasty poha and tea there, his granddad took us to a packaging factory they own. The person managing the place showed us around, and it was really impressive!

 After that, it was a non-stop drive to Pune, ending another memorable day and a great experience!

NB: The pics were taken from Kunal Shinde's picassa album of the same trek with rappelling conducted by the same club, Girivihang trekkers in 2009. The first pic was from another blog.

PS: This completes 3 on 'My White List'. :)

My White List

I watched "The Bucket List" again a couple of months back. The movie is about two terminal patients, played by Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman, who make a list of 10 things they want to do before they 'kick the bucket'.

I tried making a bucket list, but wasn't able to write more than 4-5 items that i really wanted to do. So keeping my fingers crossed and hoping that there's time left before i cash in my chips, i decided to make a shorter short-term-list. This would consist of 5 things to do in the next 50 days. I call it the white list. You can use your wild imagination and creative mind to figure out why. ;) So heres the first white list.

1. Watch an IPL match. The third edition of the Indian Premier League will begin on March 12th in Mumbai. I am yet to witness a live match in a stadium. So being in Pune, this could be a great chance.

2. Rappelling on a waterfall! I have been wanting to do this for a long long time! Another test for my fear of heights! There is scope for rappelling and lot of other activities in places in and around Pune. That is another reason I prefer staying in Pune over cities like B'lore, Chennai or Kolkata.



3. Join some vocational classes for weekends ;). I haven't yet decided what classes to join. Will need to decide soon. :)

4. Considering the present situation, i feel watching 'My Name is Khan' in Maharashtra amidst all the hullabaloo, could have a place in the white list. :P

5. We have been procrastinating the visit to the paintball arena in Kalyani Nagar for quite some time now. Moreover, spending a lot of time playing counter-strike back in the college, I'm craving to shoot someone down. :P

That completes the list. Today is 13th Feb. So a time frame of 50 days would make the deadline for the above white list, 6 weekends later, the 4th of Apr. Will update the space as I finish each item in the list.

Post Scripts:

15/02 I had gone home last weekend. 'My Name is Khan' was released there; but again with a lot of opposition. It wasn't Shiv Sena there but their cousins Bajrang Dal causing problems. The theatres didnt screen the movie on friday, but they did start from the second day. The theatre didn't display any poster of the movie and you could also see a lot of policemen on duty outside. The screens were obviously running houseful; two of them were screening only this movie. Thought not in Maharashtra, I feel thats good enough to strike #4 off. :P

20/02 There were many guys from college in pune today. Yadu, Hari, Sharath, Padmanisha, Tisa, and Aruna were in Pune for the weekend. The number was good, so this was the best chance to play paintball. It is fun only when you have a lot of guys. So along with them and TP, nishana and chitra, I reached the paintball arena at 5pm. As Padmanisha wasn't feeling very good, the remaining 9 of us went on to play. Chitra, TP, Aruna and I were on one side; the rest on the other. We were given some safety instructions in the beginning after which, we had 5 rounds of absolute fun. If you haven't done this, get around 10 of your friends and rush to the nearest paintball zone! That completes #5.

21/02 I was quite tired after yesterday's paintball. But could I have missed today's rappelling because of that?! ;) #2 done. Check the post here .

13/03 The 3rd edition of IPL began yesterday in the DY Patil stadium, with a grand opening ceremony. With Pancily, I witnessed it and a great match between KKR and DC, that followed. Its a totally different feeling when you watch a game live in the stadium. You need to watch a match in a stadium atleast once; and you would probably enjoy it more if its a IPL. #1 is also done now. 1 more to go!

03/04 This one took couple of weeks. I had a hard time deciding which classes to go for. Finally I made up my mind. Its kickboxing every Saturday and Sunday morning! That completes #3 and my first White List is finished successfully; in time.