Shimoga… The Beautiful face of Shiva…

The last week end of 9-10 September I spent roaming around the Shimoga and around. It was a short and sweet picnic with only 6 of us around.

It was perhaps first picnic where our small group of 6 traveled in three different units. I traveled in a first class sleeper bogie. This was first time in my life that I traveled in those typical old Hindi movie style bogies with a door for every compartment and all.

We reached Shimoga early morning. We had only two days so without wasting much time we started off with the endeavor.

In local language Shimoga means Face of Shiva.

This entire region is lush green forest. Even when I am going about various places and all, one can stop anywhere along the route. Entire region boasts the full beauty of the Western Ghats. It’s green and only green everywhere where... it may be the thick Teak wood jungles… or the Rice fields… or the coconut or betel nut farms…

The very first place to visit was the Gajanur Dam. Nothing special; it’s a normal dam. The only specialty was that this village is associated with kannada actor Rajkumar. This is the place where he was abducted by Veerappan.

Just ahead of the dam is the Sakrebyle Elephant training camp. We could not see the elephants being trained… but we got to see them bathing in the dam water. Also at this place I got to see what I would like to call forefather of the reinforcement process. The houses were built with mud and reinforced with Bamboo.

From there we went to another place….Mandagadde Bird sanctuary… again I did not find much interesting since I don’t have much knowledge about different types of birds…

But still it was a good site to see hundreds of birds with their nests and all.

Next came the Thyavarekoppa tiger-lion safari. Again this too was no different from the various other safaris… but the most interesting point I noticed was that, the animals here were too passive towards the tourists. At one time our vehicle stopped literally a few inches away from a sleeping tiger. That animal did not even bother to move a bit. Same story repeated with those lions.

From there we left for the Famous Jog falls…

It was around 5 pm in the evening when we reached there. We had our arrangements for overnight stay in the same vicinity, so we decided to spend some time and then come again in the morning.

All of a sudden it started raining there. I enjoyed the rain like anything. After a year this was the first heavy rainfall I was experiencing… so the jeans… sport shoes nothing mattered… it was raining for almost an hour and I was out there for entire period.

Next day we went to the Linganamakki Dam. To be frank we could not go to the actual dam. But the areas surrounding the dam were too beautiful. So we spent some time there.

From the dam we again went to the falls. Due to the rains earlier day, the falls had good amount of water flowing. After spending some time there we left for the Murudeshwar.

The route to Murudeshwar is a really beautiful one. It takes you from the high hills of the Jog falls to the seashore where one can see the huge idol of lord Shiva from miles away.

On the way we visited one place called Idagunji. This place is famous for the Ganapati temple. Since they were not allowing photography inside, while others entered the temple with some religious thoughts… my sole purpose was to take a snap of the idol. I came out of the temple with a snap of the idol in my phone camera…

After spending some time we had to leave the Murudeshwar early at around 4 00 PM because we had no shortcut to reach Shimoga and had to all the back first to Jog falls and then back by the same route we came.

By around 8 00 PM we reached Shimoga and after having some roaming around the city we left for Bangalore by train at 10 00 PM…

Ganapati 2006…8 days full of joy…

Last year I had missed Ganapati…
So this year I had planned for the week almost two months ago…
I simply did not want to miss it this year.
I was at home a day earlier so that I don't miss anything right from the preparations.

Since last year we started celebrating Ganapati at one more Amit's (my cousin) house too… so two places to enjoy at…

I really like this Ganapati days… we get to meet all the relatives. In that sense Ganapati celebrations become more important than even Diwali.

First three four days…. Simply full of fun…
We a bunch of brothers' n sisters gather and look after the decorations part at both the uncle's houses where we celebrate. The activity goes on till late night before "Ganesh Chaturthi". On the eve of the festival we all go and bring the Ganesha Idol home.

From next day start those magical days…
I really enjoy singing… at the time of "Aarati"… well classifying whatever I do under "singing" will be insult to the word…. Let's call it shouting… whatever it is I m good at it by default.
This time I got to do it 4 times a day… twice in the afternoon and twice in the evening…

Then come the "Jagaran" or keeping awake the whole night…
We had arranged for a traditional folk dance show known as "Balyaa Dance" at one of the uncle's home… All the elder public was enjoying the dance and at other house… the younger public was enjoying…. What we call as "Madira" ;-). Al though I too was part of this act... I did not like it somehow… later I felt that at least we should not have done it during Ganesh Festival… next year I shall oppose it…

Last day while taking the Idol for immersion…we tool it on a handcart.
I was the one pushing one. There is no steering mechanism in it. So you have to lift the rear wheels a bit and then turn it... put it back and push…

This one act all of a sudden raised respect for all those people who whole day roam around city selling various items on hand cart. This was an empty cart with just an idol on it. What about the people who go around with a cart full of onions and potatoes?

Only thing I missed upon during all this period was that I could not visit any of the relatives and friends for the festival. Mainly because we were too busy taking care of the people who visited uncle's home for the festival.

I visited Vinayak's home after a long time for Ganapati.
Another major event during this vacation was the inauguration of my cousin Pushpak's new office. He started off with his own lawyer practice.

I was simply not willing to return to Bangalore. But I had to…
So finally on Sunday night I headed back for Bangalore….

Four damn hectic weeks...

A bunch of four damn hectic weeks…

Past three weeks had been a pretty hectic with no time for these "extra curricular activities" from office like blogging… study… reading…
Generally I manage to find some time after office hours for these activities but this was first time I was unable to do so…

Weekdays were busy and so did the weekends…
Past four weekends the story had been simple….
Beginning of Ganapati vacation (well... actually leave)…so obvious travel to Mumbai…
Then the end of that one beautiful week at home so travel back to Bangalore…
The immediate next weekend at the Jog falls…
Next weekend I was already on my way to Riyadh for a short official mission…

And here I am writing from Riyadh after successful completion of it… and here lie another weekend of travel back home… ;-)

All these busy days had already shattered my plans to clear the SCJP exam on last 16th... and the fate was sealed was sealed by my sudden travel to Riyadh on 16th. I had to reschedule it for 30th.

I had thought that the beginning of his "Blog year" will also be with a blog about Ganapati, but that does not seem to be the case.
Anyway…

I would prefer such busy weekends… full of short travel…
Somehow I love this traveling to places… that too in this pleasant whether… it is a lot of fun.
I am already thinking of which next places to cover and aiming at covering maximum all those beautiful lesser known places in south India. Let see… how far I can go.

Somehow photography interests are on rise…. I am feeling like buying a SLR camera and taking some basic course in photography….
Latest thing now on my agenda is the SCJP exam which I hope I will clear on this coming 30th…

A lot of blog backlog is pending…A lot of photo's to be uploaded… and I shall clear it now…

My Blog Anniversary…

It’s a year since I started this blogging activity…
I posted my first blog on 7th Sept 2005!!!

I initially started it off as a time pass activity to kill boredom I felt in Jeddah…
But over the period of time I succeeded in keeping the spirit up…

Now when I look back to the first blog… that was about Ganapati… and then scroll through the posts I have put up till date… it’s a nice history of a year in my life… my thoughts…different moods…. frustrations…sorrows and joys…

It’s it surprising… life was so eventful for a year….
Incidentally next blog too will be about Ganapati…thus completing the whole cycle and starting my next year of blogging again with Ganesh…. The god of wisdom…

In past I tried to maintain a diary…writing events every day and all….
But those attempts never lasted more than a few days. Because I used to find that the same story was repeated most of the time and this took out the interest…

But now I find it’s really nice to maintain this open diary… because I don’t write every day but only when there are some noteworthy events…or when I feel like writing.

When I read my early posts, I feel amazed to visit those memories again…Certainly I don’t remember those events now with same detail…So it’s a journey back in time.

A month ago I put a counter on the blog page out of curiosity to see if anyone read those posts apart from me…

I was again surprised to see that more than 40 people (to be frank 40 different IP addresses…) has visited various pages in a month. I think some of them had accidentally stumbled upon my page…while others were directed by Search engines while searching for some Marathi words… How else can I explain people from Egypt and France visiting my blog!!!

I hope to continue this writing experiment for a fairly long period….

Thanks to Sachin…. It’s because of him that I seriously looked into this nice idea of starting a blog…