I love, you hate..

Today, even though was a holiday for Labour day, I had to wake up early as the electrician was supposed to check my ceiling fan. The last few days have been getting hotter and hotter, but were manageable under the comfort of the office air conditioning. But my fan at home broke down at the worst possible time; the last couple of nights would have been hell if not for Ananth's table fan! The electrician said that the problem was with the motor, and that he had to take it for a day for fixing it. I was a little sleepy when he left as I had slept quite late, but I chose not to go back to bed. Later however, after a really heavy lunch, my mattress turned into a powerful magnet and pulled me with all the iron in my body. I've no idea when I slept off. But I woke up around an hour later feeling I was being baked in an oven. I was forced to get up and throw some water on my face and wash the sweat off.

Half an hour later the curtains in the room started flying like superman's cape and within 5 minutes it was raining heavy outside! I went straight to the balcony; I could find people in most of the other balconies too.

The FB page was also pouring with posts about the first rain

From the balcony I was watching the kids play in the rain, people walking happily. When the rain got lighter, I couldn't help but get out and take a stroll myself. I walked to a restaurant nearby, and had a nice hot filter coffee there.

Kids in the society playing in the rain

Just as I was thinking that everyone must be just loving this rain because of the scorching heat that it washed away, I noticed a pizza delivery guy from Dominos. He was carrying a bag, but wasn't rushing for cover. He was walking slowly and dejected. I was pretty sure then that he wasn't able to protect the pizza from the rain, and he also wasn't going to deliver it within their 30 minute delivery deadline. He must have definitely been upset with the rain gods.

Also the roads are most slippery after the first rain; and therefore risky especially for the bikers. I have fallen prey to that myself! First rains come when people are least expecting them. So almost none of the guys on two wheelers would be carrying any raincoats. then Inorder to avoid getting drenched, they now hurry to their respective destinations; which along with the slippery roads, increases the chances of accidents. I hope nobody got injured today.

I wonder if there is something that makes everyone happy! Does anything come to your mind?

Remembering Harsh

A year ago on this day I lost a very dear friend of mine! Harsh Pande, one of the most liveliest persons I have ever come across succumbed to cardiac arrest. All of us were totally shocked to hear the news! He was one guy who just couldn't leave like that; he was destined to achieve a lot more. Perhaps that's why they say, the god acts in mysterious ways!

For those who do not know him, the video below might tell you a little about him (mostly related to academic and professional achievements). But he was a lot more than that. No video/movie could do total justice to describing him! You had to know him!



Few weeks before his untimely demise, he had finished writing his first book, Hiccups, which is now being published by Jaico Books! Reading the book will surely ignite memories and remind of some good times; but will always miss him!

One hell of a guy!



Links:
Harsh's Website
Hiccups on Flipkart
Harsh's Blog
Jaico Books
Infibeam

11th Pune International Film Festival

I always look forward to film festivals. Every January we have the Pune International Film Festival here. I know it's a bit late to post about it; but it has been lying as a draft for a long time, and I thought I should hit the 'Publish' button.

I had gone for the film festival couple of years back, and for some reason wasn't able to make it last year. I like to go for film festivals for many reasons:
 - They introduce you to wide variety of movies
 - As mentioned in a post earlier (random is good), I like watching movies in Foreign languages
 - You get to watch a lot of movies for just Rs.700. ;-) 700 is not a very small amount; but when you watch 12 movies using the pass, it comes to less than 60 per movie, which is very cheap. Many festivals at the NFAI are free of charge too.
 - Most of the movies are critically acclaimed ones

This year I caught the following movies:

11th, Friday
Asmaa
After finishing our work at the office quickly, we went to PVR Cinemas where Asmaa was supposed to be played. The IMDB rating of the movie was pretty good, and would have been an ideal start to the movie spree for the film festival. At PVR Nivedita, Ashok, Vriddhi, Amit, Karthik and I had reached on time, but after getting there we came to know that the movie screening had been cancelled! We didn't have enough time to get to another theater which was screening the PIFF movies.
IMDB Rating: 8.0         My Rating: NA

12th Jan, Saturday
L'avventura (The Adventure) - Italy
I had reserved the weekend for PIFF. Reached RDeccan City Pride early by 9AM to catch the first movie. The movie, directed by Michelangelo Antonioni, started a bit late because they were facing few technical problems. The movie was playing very slow and the subtitles weren't showing too. After sometime they could fix the subtitles, but not the speed at which it was playing. Due to this, they had to stop the screening of the movie halfway as it was eating up the screening time of the following movies. Not a good start at the PIFF this year for us; a cancelled movie last night and an incomplete screening today!
IMDB Rating: 7.9         My Rating: NA

Inspecteur Lavardin - France
A comedy/drama involving a murder investigation. Inspector Lavardin is left in a tricky situation stuck between his duty and his values.
IMDB Rating: 6.6         My Rating: 7

Byeolbit Soguro (For Eternal Hearts) - South Korea
One of those movies which leaves most of the people thinking after the movie "What just happened?!" :-) This was just after the lunch. Some people perhaps were sleepy too. An experimental movie.
IMDB Rating: 5.8         My Rating: 5

Material - South Africa
A refreshing movie about a guy in his 20s who works with his father in their textile store, but wishes to be a stand-up comedian. The best movie of the day for me and for many others who watched the movie with me.
IMDB Rating: 8.8         My Rating: 9

Blow up - Italy
Another famous movie by Michelangelo Antonioni, also receiving Oscar and Golden Globe nominations.  It is about a photographer who clicks few pictures in a park, which accidentally turns out to be clues to a murder.
IMDB Rating: 7.6         My Rating: 7

13th Jan, Sunday
Pele Akhir (The Last Step) - Iran
Another movie about afterlife, where a husband looks for answers after his death. A much better movie than 'For Eternal Hearts' which is also deals with afterlife.
IMDB Rating: 7.8         My Rating: 7


Asmaa - Egypt
Asmaa, the movie we missed on the opening day, was playing again at ESquare. After the Pele Akhir we headed there to catch the movie. The movie is about Asmaa who is suffering from AIDS; and how more than the disease the society is killing her! She is given some hope when a TV channel approaches her asking her to tell her story to the world, but it isn't easy to declare on television, especially in the Middle East, about a disease like AIDS.
IMDB Rating: 8.0         My Rating: 8


Noor - Pakistan
Noor, a Khusra(transgender) in Pakistan who wants to be treated as a man, is in love with a girl but her family doesn't approve of it. The movie is about the difficulties he faces in the society because of his gender and his quest for a girl in his life.
IMDB Rating: 7.1         My Rating: 6

I.D. - India
A guy who comes to paint Charu's house faints and dies the next day. Charu doesn't know any detail about the person, but tries to find out who the guy was. Academy award winner Resul Pookutty, producer of the film, was present at the theatre and spoke for a couple of minutes before the movie.
IMDB Rating: 8.0         My Rating: 6

15th Jan, Tuesday
My Father's Bike -
Got to PVR Cinemas in the morning at 9 to watch the movie with Karthik and Nivedita. It was an 88minute movie, so I thought I could get back in time for the 11.30 meeting I had on my calendar. A Polish movie about differences between men of three generations: a grandad, dad and the son. The movie was nicely made and I feel it is a bit underrated on IMDB.
IMDB Rating: 6.8         My Rating: 8

16th Jan, Wednesday
B.P. (Balak Palak) - India
I think BP was the movie with the best IMDB rating screened at PIFF. I went for the movie with KM. We reached just in time, at 7.15 but had to sit on the steps as all the seats were already occupied. I was  very much satisfied with that, as I feared not getting to watch it. Anyways, the movie is about a group of 4 kids in the age group of 10-13, who have lot of questions regarding sex popping up in their mind.When they do not get the answers from their parents or the other elders, they set out to find the answers on their own.
IMDB Rating: 9.4         My Rating: 8

This edition of the Pune International Film Festival wasn't organized in the best manner possible. There were power cuts, movie being cancelled, technical issues like subtitles not playing, movie having no audio or playing at a slow speed etc. But if when it gets back with the 12th edition of PIFF, if I am in town, I will definitely catch it! Why? Did I not mention all the reasons in the beginning? :-P

New Year, New Resolution

 And it is here; another new year. People try to stick with different resolutions at the beginning of the year. And it is very very common to drop the resolution after a few weeks.

But what is the reason for this? Is it that people choose resolutions they don't like to do? Or is it because they get bored doing the same thing again and again? I feel it is a little bit of both. Then I thought of this resolution which could handle both the problems.

The resolution is simple:

Every month do something for the first time in your life.*

* Conditions apply
- You cannot choose similar things more than twice in the year. Eg. You can't keep cooking different dishes each month or only visit places. The chosen items should be different.
- It is a new year resolution. It shouldn't be something that causes harm to your body. Do not take up smoking if you run out of ideas!

That should push me into trying different and new things. There are innumerable things out there to try; so running out of ideas should not be an option. Oh, that gives me the idea for January: running my first marathon! :)

The resolution sounds interesting to me, and if it goes well I would want to try it longer than a year. You could travel to a new city, try a new game or an adventure sport, cook something for the first time, join some workshop/classes, start a new hobby; and many more (suggestions welcome in the comments section). It definitely cannot be as simple as going to the neighbor's house for the first time or watching a new movie (making a movie could count ;-) ), or going to a restaurant!

 So who is joining me? Watch this space for the progress on the resolution.

(Cartoon source: xkcd)

Other posts you may be interested in:

Sendai Earthquake
White List
White List - II

Random is Good!

“One of the most beneficial and valuable gifts we can give to ourselves in this life: is allowing ourselves to be surprised! It is okay if life surprises you. Its a good thing!”
- C. JoyBell C.

Life brings surprises because of its random nature. Randomness is one of the best attributes of life, so live it that way! If you knew what is going to happen next, you could perhaps control the situation better; but it would definitely be monotonous and dull. I am not asking you to take it to the extreme, as The Dice Man, but sensibly.

Random Act I:  Read a random article on Wikipedia
You may have noticed a link on the left pane of Wikipedia which leads to a 'random article'. It would lead you to one of the 4.1 million English articles. I visit few random pages every day; and even have this link (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random) bookmarked on my browser. You come across different and interesting articles from the huge collection of the free encyclopedia.

Random Wiki Page

Display a random: Article Talk User Talk Wikipedia Talk File Talk MediaWiki Talk Template Talk Help Talk Category Talk Portal Talk Book Talk

Unpredictability, too, can become monotonous. 
- Eric Hoffer

Ofcourse, if you keep doing the same random act, it gets monotonous even if the outcome is not known to you. So you need to keep shuffling it up. Try different things each time. I have listed few more things you could try. 

Random Act II: Random trip

Pay a visit to a random place. For it to be random, the only condition is that you do not pick it. You may have to use public transport for this one, so that "you are taken" somewhere. So go to a bus/railway station and get into a bus or train without knowing the destination and get off say the 10th stop. Every city/town has a history, has a story to tell, has places to visit. This is something I have wanted to do for a few months now and I plan to do when I get a long weekend. The first two days could be spent boarding different buses and getting to unknown places and then the last day travelling back. You will find it on my white list soon. :-)

Random Act III: Listen to random songs: 

 Stop listening to the same old playlist. Explore! Tune into any of your favourite radio stations, that you have never visited before, or listen to any new artist. Try listening to songs in a different language! You may still have not found your favorite genre!

Random Act IV: Watch movies in different languages: 

 Watch dubbed movies, or movies with subtitles. There are wonderful movies made in every language, so don't be biased by few movies you may have heard about. People who arent from the southern states of India think that the South Indian movies are all about a fat hero in lungi singing with a pretty damsel and fighting a hundred fatter and uglier guys alone. But they forget the actors and filmmakers from the south who have made beautiful and sensible movies which have been critically acclaimed. Many people rate the Academy award winning movie, The Departed as one of the best crime thrillers they have watched. I too liked the movie; but I found the original film Cantonese film, Infernal Affairs far better. The prequel to the movie, Infernal Affairs II is also equally good. To make it random pick the language first, then search for good movies made in that language. Sites like films101 could help you.

Random Act V: Sites bringing you random pages:

 Of course you have sites like StumbleUpon, which introduces you to different web pages. Most of these sites allow you to mark your preferences, and then show you pages related to the ones you have "liked", given "thumbs up", "digged" etc. This is a good feature, but at the same time you may lose many interesting things out there. So it is good to keep checking pages outside the "Recommended for you" section. Reddit even has a link for showing you a list of articles on a random topic (http://www.reddit.com/r/random/).

Other Random Acts: 

The above mentioned are just a few things I could think of. There are innumerable things for you to pick from. Eg. Pick a random letter and then choose an author or a book starting with that letter for reading. Or pick an adventure sport starting with the letter for your next trip. Options are limitless; you just need to play the game. 

Explore, Explore, Explore, Learn!
- Unknown.

Links: 
The Dice Man
Biscuit Tin
Random Good Stuff
Wikipedia: Random
StumbleUpon, Digg, Technorati, Reddit, Delicious

Other posts you may be interested in:

Sendai Earthquake
Dzongri Trek - Days 4, 5 - The Ascent
Duke's nose trek and valley crossing
Rappelling at Naneghat

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!

The Sendai Earthquake, and later - as I felt it...

 Taka san and I were getting set for our daily call with the Pune team at 14.55 JST. Chris was just outside talking to Ron. That was when I had the same strange feeling as 2 days back on March 9th. Then I had initially thought that I was feeling dizzy until Chris told me what it was; but this time I knew that it was an earthquake!

 Within seconds, it started getting worse. The chairs started moving, then the doors, then the whole office was shaking! All of us were on the floor for some time. An automated message kept saying that it was just 3 on the scale and that the building was safe. We didn't trust the old building a lot; so we climbed down 22 floors by stairs and got out of the building.

 

The first earthquake - from the 22nd floor of the office.

There were obviously a lot of people on the roads then. 

Some interesting conversations when we just got out:

Taka san: Lets check out how the Starbucks is looking now!

.

Ron: I am worried about my wife and daughter.

Chris: I hope my TV is fine!

.

Me: That was interesting!

.

Chris: Dude! I am really worried about my TV! 

We didn't want to keep standing under the 28 storey building. So we moved to the adjacent Hibya park. The park was filled with people. Within 5 minutes of getting to the park, we felt another earthquake. This was a pretty big one as we felt it even on the ground! You can see/hear the manhole rattling in the video below.

The second earthquake, after we reached Hibya Park

You can also see the office building moving a little in the video below.

The office building, seen from Hibya park

Some of the people were trying to contact their beloved ones. The others were gathered around cell phones with television checking the news; there was news about a fire near the Rainbow bridge, another about a Tsunami! There were tense faces all around.

People gathered at Hibya park

Soon it was getting cold out there. Not many of us thought of the temperature outside when running down. We then went up to the building to pack our stuff. We got whatever we needed and climbed down the stairs again. As nobody really wanted to work at the 22nd floor of an old building, we went back home.

On the way back, I thought of getting into the convenient store to get something to eat, but there was a really long queue.So I decided to get something from the convenient store opposite my apartment. But when I reached there, this is what I found.

Convenient stores in Tokyo

There was also a lot of traffic on the roads; the main reason being the subways not functioning because of the earthquakes. I had not seen traffic jams here prior to the earthquake. When I reached my apartment, which is on the 9th floor, I could feel the aftershocks; the lamp-stand and the chair were moving quite a bit. So I packed some important things into my backpack and got out of there. There was no network on my cell phone, so I couldn't contact anyone immediately and there were long queues outside the coin phones. I walked around in the streets of Tokyo for sometime, and then got into a phone booth and contacted Taka san and Chris. They advised me to go back to the apartment after some time.

Stagnant traffic in Tokyo

And so I did. The apartment would shake once in every 20 minutes or so. I was getting used to it and stopped worrying about the small aftershocks. I kept my backpack, jacket and shoes by the door just incase I had to rush out. This time the backpack was packed more carefully; with my laptop and its charger, charger for the cell phone, camera, cash, some food, 10 and 100 yen coins for the phone booth and my passport.  And then, trusting the Japanese civil engineers, I went to bed.

Ready...steady...go!

Earthquakes, tsunamis, over 500 aftershocks, nuclear radiation leaks, volcanic eruption, cold wind blowing from the north, stocks dropping low! I really hope this country recovers and gets back to normal as soon as possible! I had great respect for Japan and its people before coming here and it has only increased seeing the way they have reacted to and handled the situation so far. I think I would have been much more worried if I was in the same situation in any other country!

Hoping for the best!

PS: Back in India now. There was another thing I wanted to share on this post earlier, but I didn't want to freak some people out! So I am sharing it now after safely returning back home. On 11th March, when the earthquake and tsunami hit Japan, my roommate Ananth had searched for me on Google Person Finder. And the update he received there wasn't very comforting!

I have received information that this person is dead!!

So, do not just rely on these websites set up for finding your friends/relatives. They could be used to ease your search, but you cannot totally trust the information put up here as there could always be some people trying to play pranks without understanding the seriousness of the situation or some honest guys but without the right information.

Dzongri Trek - Days 4, 5 - The Ascent

Previously on The Dzongri Trek:

• Days 1, 2, 3 - Getting there!

We reached Jalpaiguri at 2 AM. Our cab driver, Shishir reached in some time and at 2:32 on the watch, we were off to Yuksom. We travelled along the NH 31a; we passed the new Jhola bridge, Teesta and Kalingpu on the way.  Most of the guys were sleeping as we entered into Sikkim at 4:10AM. We also came had to take a detour because a part of the road ahead of us just got washed away in a landslide.

A part of the road 'wiped off' in a landslide

The weather was cool and nice. The view as we drove around and over the hills were amazing; calm streams, tall trees, snow capped mountains far away, and waterfalls were all around. We stopped at Legship to have some tea. Legship is known for a beautiful Shiva Temple (Kirateshwar Mahadev Mandir) at the banks of river Rangit. We didn't visit the temple though; just saw it as we passed by.

Renzil and Masoon had reached Yuksom the previous day. They left Kolkata couple of days back and reached Yuksom after visiting Gangtok. We reached the Blessing Hotel at Yuksom, where they were staying, at around 8AM. All of us freshened up there in some time and were ready to go!

The previous evening, Ren had checked with Sherpa treks, a local group there which organizes treks to Dzongri and Goecha La. They agreed to take us for around 3k per head. We agreed as we didn't have enough time to find another guide and also there were many tourists there looking for trekking agencies and guides. The package included food for the 4 days, accomodation, sleeping bags, a guide cum cook, a porter (Norton, a boy aged around 16) to carry some utensils and help out the guide, a yak -  actually a Dzo (hybrid of yak and cow) to carry some of our luggage, food and the sleeping bags, and a yakman to tend the dzo. 

Our yakman loading the Dzo!

The initial plan was to get to Tshoka before sunset on the first day. But as we were a little late to arrive at Yuksom, we decided to halt at Baakim (14Kms from Yuksom and 2Kms before Tshoka) for the night. We started off at around 10.30 AM, a couple of hours past the initially decided time.

The route to Baakhim was mainly through the Kanchendzonga national park, known for the Rhododendron flowers, which I was told fills the place in the month of March.We did not get to see the flower. We had to cross 4 bridges on the first day, most of which were suspension bridges.

 

One of the 4 bridges we crossed on the first day

As hours passed, we could feel the weight of the bags pulling us down. Each bridge did tempt us to take a dip in the cold water running below; but we did not have enough time! We kept walking. It starts getting dark pretty soon here. The sun set at around 5.30PM; we reached Baakhim few minutes later. When we reached there we were starving, but nobody was thinking about food! ( I am not very sure about one person ;) ) We were all digging into our bags, and wearing all the warm clothes we had. In 5 minutes, each person weighed an extra couple of Kgs. 

We were served hot mugs of tea, which were gulped down in no time. We then got our dormitory for the night. There we had the popular beer in Sikkim - 'HIT'. Dinner was served soon afterwards. I do not remember many instances when I was more hungry! All of us kept appreciating the food! :)

The next day we woke up around 630, freshened up, had our breakfast and set out for Dzongri. Since we had halted at Baakhim instead of Tshoka, we had to cover an extra 2 Kms uphill.  We reached Tshoka in 1.5 hours. We could see few snow capped mountains from Tshoka including Pandim.  Our next stop was Phedang where we were supposed to have our lunch. The climb uphill was quite tiring. There were some preliminary symptoms of altitude sickness were shown on couple of us. Phedang is around midway from Tshoka to Dzongri. There is a small wooden cabin where you can prepare your lunch. We had some maggi and biscuits for lunch. 

Having a mug of steaming hot tea at Phedang

We were told that the climb to dzongri was steeper than the stretch we had covered earlier during the day. That wasn't very encouraging. We started from Phedang in half an hour. The path ahead was all foggy. We couldn't see more than a few metres ahead for sometime. Within an hour we saw snow. Though it was quite cold out there we didn't hesitate to make balls of snow and shoot at others. I had never seen snow before. We kept walking and in around 2 hours after we left Phedang, we reached Dzongri! We were pleasantly surprised that we weren't too exhausted. I doubt if our guide/cook added some secret ingredient-x in our maggi for lunch!

Our guide arranged for our cabin for the night. We kept our luggage in there and then walked around the cabin enjoying the view. There we witnessed something which for me was the most beautiful sight I had seen till date! 

 

 

Altitude of Paradise = 13,200 feet?

But was this going to be the most beautiful sight of the trip? The foreigners we met on the way, who were on their way back to the base, didn't think so; they told us that the sunrise at Dzongri has no match in terms of beauty! We would know that in a few hours! Until then we kept admiring the bed of clouds on front of us. It was freezing cold outside; but we waited there till sunset. After sunset, we could no longer stay outside; the temperature dropped to around minus 7 deg C!

Ready to get Bamboo-zled!

The guide told us that he would get us the local brew - Bamboo! It is made of fermented millet and served in bamboo stem, cut and used as a tumbler. All we need to do is add warm water to it; wait for 5 mins...and...voila! You've got something that tastes like wine! Once you finish the drink you just need to add more water to the fermented millet and wait for 5 more minutes to get your refill!  It does get milder after a few drinks though. If you go to Sikkim, this is another thing you must try!

After that we retired for the night. We had to catch the sunrise at 4 AM the next day. Would it turn out to be as beautiful as many people we met and all the reviews on the net said? We only had to wait for 6 more hours! And you only have to wait for the next blog-post. :-)

PS: 15 shots of bamboo - Not Advisable! ;-)

Links:

• The Dzongri trip from Ren's keyboard.
• Yuksom on Wiki-travel

Trek to Torna Fort

Masoom was coming to Pune and he told me that he was interested in joining me at the Alang Madan Trek I was planning for the Christmas weekend. But later when he learnt that we would have to do some rock climbing and valley crossing, he said he would not be able to do it this time as he had just fractured his finger when he visited Jog Falls last month. So we thought of trekking another fort for this weekend. We quickly decided on Torna Fort.

Torna Fort, also known as Prachandgad, was the first fort conquered by Sivaji at the age of 16. Located at over 1400m above sea level, it is the highest fort in Pune district.

I reached Swargate bus station at 640am. Masoom too reached in sometime. But we just missed one bus to Velhe village(the base village of Torna Fort). We then had to wait for another hour to get the bus. We left Swargate at 8AM. It took the bus 1Hr45Mins to reached Velhe, which was its last stop too.

On the way uphill

We got down and had a quick breakfast at a small restaurant there. We began our trek to the fort after that at  around 10:10AM. It was quite sunny then, but a nice cool breeze was blowing. So we didn't feel the heat at all. There were not many guys trekking there on the day. On the way we also met a group coming down after camping there for the night. If you start from Velhe you will enter the fort through the Bini Darwaza". We reached the top in around 1Hr 50 Mins. There are a couple of temples on top. We checked the temples and then went around the fort.

 There we met a group of 3 elderly men in their 60s. We spoke to them for sometime, they told us somethings about the fort and offered us some tasty chiwdas and laddoos.They were full of energy and their face did not show any sign of fatigue. They were frequent visitors of the fort. They showed us the ladder that had to be used to get to the 'zunjar machi'.

Zunjar Machi

We went down there, found a nice place and sat down for lunch. Masoom's mom had prepared some very tasty pulav for us. We ate that quickly and rested there for 10 minutes; enjoying the pleasant breeze on top of the fort.

Raighad in the background

We could see the Raighad fort from Torna. Many people trek cover Raighad and Torna in a single trek. We then returned back to base after taking a few pics. It took us a little over an hour to reach the base. After having some refreshments at the base, we got into a shared jeep that dropped us at the highway from where we could catch a bus to Swargate easily. 

The best time to visit Torna, or most of the forts around Pune for that matter, is during the monsoon. I hope to do revisit the fort, and if possible clubbed with Raighad trek.


Other posts that you may want to read:

• Dzongri Trek - Days 1, 2, 3 - Getting there!
• Dzongri Trek - Days 4, 5 - The Ascent
• Rappelling at Naneghat
• Waterfall rappelling at Vihigaon
• Duke's nose trek and valley crossing

Theatre Acting Workshop @ Pune

About a couple of months back, we just finished a major release at work. So I definitely had some free time ahead of me; at least during the weekends. So I started looking for an interesting workshop in Pune. That was when I got a message from Niche Stagekraft that they are going to have a workshop on stage acting starting the very next weekend.

Niche Stagekraft is into english plays. It was founded in the year 2002 by Mr Jitendra R Powar. W had gone for their 25th production 'Candles in the Wind' - a collection of 7 short plays, and we had a great time watching. Some of the plays were really good; so when I reached back home, I registered at their site with my email id and cell phone number for their updates. That's how I got the message regarding the workshop.

So that weekend, I started going for the workshop. Acting is not more difficult than it seems; acting is a different world. You try to become another person, try to think like another person. It is not easy. We were taught different elements of Stage Acting including different emotions, body language, stage movements, training your voice and many more things. We also learnt different exercises for the facial muscles, for the tongue and for the voice. It was really nice to know all these things.

They are now conducting more workshops, starting this and next weekend (from Dec 5th and Dec 11th). The workshops will be held twice a week on Saturdays and Sundays, for four hours each in the afternoon. You can come for the workshop, and then if you wish, continue with the group. And who knows, you may find yourself on stage in a few months.  Their upcoming plays include Taale Danda (a Girish Karnad play) and Rest's Silence.

You can contact them on the the number given in the image, or through the mentioned email id. If you have any problem contacting, feel free to get in touch with me.

Trust me, it is going to be totally worth the time...and much much more!

Dzongri Trek - Days 1, 2, 3 - Getting There

 Das told me about the trek just a fortnight back. He and Ren had missed out on telling me when they were planning the trip. I always wanted to travel to the east and this one being a trek, I didnt have to waste any time thinking. I got my trekking bag from Wildcraft (Alpinist -55L) that evening and I booked my flight/train tickets on the same day.

Following was the plan:

October 30, 315: Howrah Duronto to Kolkata

Oct 31, 7 pm : Reach Kolkata, 

Nov 1, 350pm: Meet rest of the group; Saraighat express to New Jalpaiguri (NJP)

Nov 2; 2AM reach NJP; Cab to Yuksom. Reach Yuksom in the morning. Start 4 day trek to Dzongri


View Larger Map

A - Pune, Maharashtra
B - Kolkata, West Bengal
C - New Jalpaiguri, West Bengal
D - Yuksom, Sikkim


"Bhaiyya...thoda jaldi chalaiye na!"  I told the auto driver. I was late for the train! I was The driverwas racing against time, with the heavy traffic of Pune. I managed to reach the station 5 minutes before the departure. The Howrah Duronto (non stop from Pune to Kolkata) was waiting there for me at Platform one.

Das and Muneeb with our ride 

 I met Das and Muneeb at the station. The three of us got our berths in adjacent coaches. It was a long ride to  Kolkata. We were chatting about our college days and friends most of the time. The only time we went back to our places was to sleep or when the food was being served. We didn't have to order food. It was part of the ticket as this was a non stop train. The food was pretty good and had enough variety too.

We reached Howrah station at 650 pm the next day. We had some time in the night to explore Kolkata.As suggested by a friend on the train, we walked towards the Howrah bus station looking for a lodge for the night. Next to the bus station there were few decent lodges which didn't burn a hole in the pocket, where we could crash for the night. We left our baggage there and got out to explore the cultural capital of India.

We walked along the Howrah Bridge.  The first thing I wanted to get my hand on there was Rasgulla. West Bengal and Orissa are known for good Rasgullas and I love them too. We got into the first bakery we found and had few Rasgullas and Rasmalais there. Muneeb wasn't a great admirer of sweets, but Das and I relished having them.

After having the sweets it was time to have dinner. All three of us were starving; we met an elderly couple on the street and asked them for their recommendation for a good Non-veg restaurant. He suggested we go to Park Street, where we could find a lot of joints. So we took a taxi to Park Street( recently renamed as Mother Teresa Sarani), but Park Street was a lane with many branded outlets, pubs and continental restaurants. But we were in the mood to have some good Indian Biryani. There we met a group of guys in their early 20s who strongly recommended we go to a restaurant called 'Arsalan'. As we had time and enough patience we hired another cab to Arsalan which was in Park Circus road, a couple of miles away.

People waiting outside Arsalan

When we reached Arsalan, we found a around 50-60 people waiting outside to get in for dinner. We were a little upset as we were hungry and had to wait; but at the same time the long queue meant we were in line for some good food. We waited for about 10 minutes and then when inquired, we were told that it would take around 20 more minutes. So we decided to check the street until then. Right then a tram stopped in front of us! We looked at each other, nodded and then hopped in! Kolkata is the only city in the country to have a tram network (maintained by the Calcutta Tramways Company). Started in 1902, it is also the oldest operating electric tram in the whole of Asia. We had a short ride in the tram and then got out at the next stop. We then walked back; checking a small fair on the way. We were at Arsalan right on time. We got in an ordered some Mutton Biryani and Chicken Tandoori for us. We weren't made to wait a lot; we were served soon. The Biryani was pretty good; but we had spent few years in Calicut, a place known for its good Biryanis. After dinner we went back to our lodge and slept.

The next day we again hung around Park Street, Camac Street and Chowringhee Road before it was time for us to set out for our next destination. On our way to the station, we saw the Victoria Memorial and the Eden Gardens stadium. As suggested by the the Cab driver we got down in Babu Ghat so that we could take the steamer to Howrah.

Howrah Bridge as seen from the steamer

This time I reached the station with some spare time to go :). We met Nirmal, George and Rashmi at the station. They had just flown in from Bangalore. We chatted at the station until the train arrived. The train (Saraighat express) left the station at 3.50pm. We played poker on the train for sometime, after I gave others a quick poker 101. We found people selling all sorts of things on the train; snacks, sweets, cold drinks, tea n coffee, bioled eggs, saris, stationaries, electronic items and many more things! After we had our dinner, Das, Nirmal and I sat there talking. Others went to sleep. We were expecting to touch New Jalpaiguri in a couple of hours. And a cab ride later we were scheduled to start our trek.

It was going to begin the next day; on Day 4!

PS:
Next posts in the series:

• Dzongri Trek - Days 4, 5 - The Ascent

Similar posts:

• Duke's nose trek and valley crossing
• Rappelling at Naneghat
• Waterfall rappelling at Vihigaon

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

6-legged cow

Two-faced kitten(Two Face and also Frank and Louise), two legged dog(Faith),  snake with a foot, one eyed cat(Cy) - there have been so many odd and mutated animals born around the globe; and I got to witness one yesterday: a 6 legged cow!

At first sight, I thought a cow was having problem giving birth to a calf, and that it was being taken to a vet. But coming closer, I noticed people taking pics on their mobile and a person standing next to it talking of some miracle. Only then I realized what it was.

The cow seems having no problem in standing, but the extra limbs are definitely discomforting, and are of use only to the owner, who was trying to make some money yesterday with the display.