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".


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-Naneghat rappelling
-Duke's nose Valley Crossing