Writing a 55 after a long time…

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Rajeev saw the cops undertaking a massive check. With no chance of evading, he searched for his weapon of choice.

Rolling down the window, he coughed hard into the handkerchief and asked, “Where is the Swine Flu hospital?”

The cop took few steps back and pointed ahead.

The paranoia had helped Rajeev steal another car.

I have been reading Harsha Bhogle’s book Out of the Box over the last two days, and I am captivated. It is a collection of articles written by Harsha Bhogle over the last 5-6 years and it is such a delight to read them now with the added advantage of hindsight.

In the bookstore I also found the book that was released to celebrate Gavaskar’s 60th birthday – a collection of 60 articles by Sunil Gavaskar – Straight Drive. I read 2-3 pages of each before deciding to buy Bhogle’s book. The collection of Gavaskar’s articles are also very good, but just cannot be compared to the writing style of Harsha Bhogle. It is like reading match reports in Cricinfo and Times of India – ToI will tell you X batted well, Y bowled well, and Team-Z won; whereas Cricinfo will tell you all those things in such a way that you feel sorely sorry for missing the match, and make a promise to yourself not to miss the live telecast of the match next time India is playing.

Back to Harsha Bhogle’s book, it is really hard to keep it down. Each article is just 2-3 pages only, and has a footnote about whatever incident/match is mentioned in the article. I am opening the book at random, and reading whatever article I land on, and till now (I’ve read about 50% of the book till now), there has not been an article that I skipped over.

Out of the Box is a must buy for anyone who loves to read about cricket and all cricket lovers

As I am driving to the office, the fuel in my bike runs dry. And as is always the case in such scenarios I was exactly in the middle of the two closest petrol pumps. One was a km behind me, the other was a km ahead in direction of my office. I started dragging my bike towards the petrol pump, under the hot merciless sun (by the way, has the summer already started again in Hyderabad?)

Scores of bikes/cars passed by me, nobody stopping to offer any help (not that I expected any, neither did I ask anyone for a lift) till I had gone almost half a km. The upward slope had just started and I was cursing Hyderabad for having such hilly roads (when I am driving – not dragging – the bike, I actually love the hilly roads – perceptions change a bit too fast) when I saw a guy take a U-turn about 50 meters ahead. He came back, stopped by me, and offered to drop me off at the petrol pump. I thanked him, but told him that I’ve no bottle to get the petrol in, and I knew that the petrol pump also does not have any shop etc. It would be pure luck if I get a bottle there. Lo-and-behold, he fabricates a bottle out of thin-air. Says he has been in same situation 2-3 times and knows how bad it is to be in such a situation. As he dropped me off at the petrol pump, I thanked him profusely. My faith in humanity & fellow humans was restored. Next time I see anyone stranded without fuel, I am surely going to offer help.

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Few hours later, I am back at the petrol pump, this time I drove my bike there to get some more petrol. There is a serpentine queue for the fuel, as only one of the pumps is working. Slowly I make my way ahead, and just as the guy ahead of me gets petrol filled and is about to move, a fat lady comes zooming past all the other waiting bikes, and plunks her Activa bang in front of me for fuel. My first reaction was wtf!, and I started shouting on her for not respecting the queue, and asked her to move back. As I had expected she completely ignores me as I was telling her what she was doing was wrong, and even she knew it, but surprisingly no other person in the line said anything, the two petrol-pump attendants – even they don’t say anything and start filling the petrol.

I’ve been going to that petrol pump every 10-15 days for last 4-5 years, and I have seen these attendants shout at people for breaking the queue, but I’ve seen them shouting at guys only. Since this was a girl who was breaking the line, nobody was saying anything. I never knew there was a separate “Ladies only Queue” at petrol pumps too.

Back to the story, I again say a few heated words to the fat lady, and her only reply, “Tum kyon wait kar rahe ho? Tumko bhi line tod deni chahiye thi.” (Why were you waiting? Even you should have broken the queue). My faith in humanity decreased many notches. I wish that fat lady’s activa runs out of petrol, and if I am around, I am surely not offering her any help.

The destination was the peak of the highest mountain of the Tadakalpudi Ranges at 2075 feet. The team comprised of Sridhar, Kosstubh, Guhan and me. I was the newbie in the group, the other three knew lay of the land as they had already been to these ranges, although the peak had yet to be conquered.

This time we did things a bit differently. We gave as much time to the preparation as much we gave to the trek. Maybe we even gave more time to the preparation, and trust me that was the one thing that drastically reduced our trek time. Each of us would open up Google Earth & Bhuvan-ISRO and would find out all probable routes for ascent and descent, marked out few spots that looked conducive to camping, found out as many paths and stream beds (which are the highways of the mountains) as we could, and in this way we chartered out three routes that we could follow.

Day 1 : 29th August, 2009

We reached Tadikalpudi just before 5 in the morning, and within 5-10 minutes we were on our way. The aim was to cover as much distance as we could before the sun gets too hot. To get to the base of the ranges we needed to cross fields, a small hillock, some more fields, and ground covered with shrubs & bush – a total distance of around 4 kms. Our plan seemed perfect, since the slope was east-facing, cover as much distance as you can before the temperature rises. What we had not accounted for (and could not have accounted for) was the very high humidity. It had rained heavily the day before and the sun was hot enough at 7:30 to turn the grounds around us into a sauna! Taking multiple breaks we laboured on. I was the worst affected, and was taking frequent breaks. Sridhar, Kosstubh, Guhan helped me with my backpack twice and just kept egging me on. During one of the short breaks, Sridhar said a simple thing which proved really helpful to me for rest of the ascent – time your steps with your breaths. As Kosstubh put it eloquently – “Chhoti, par moti baat“.

The steep climb, the ascent angle would have been easily 50-60 degrees.

The ascent was from around 600 feet to 2000+ feet and and the angle of ascent varied a lot. We started the ascent with a steep climb of 50-60 degrees for about half of the way, and rest of the ascent was a “trivial” matter of hardly 30-40 degrees. Around noon we reached a spot which we had marked as “Ascent Ends” in our route planning. This was at a height of about 1800 feet and the way to peak was now more or less straightforward – if you consider making your path through boulders and thorny bushes and skirting around drops (though not steep, but drops nevertheless) to the valley below and descending down the same valley for some distance to find a better way up as straightforward. When viewed in Google Earth I had felt that once the ascent ends, I would be able to trot to the peak – there were contours till the peak, but the height difference was generally just 100 feet. The path we took till peak just showed me how amateur I am, and how much can a satellite image be trusted. 100 feet from air is hugely different to the actual traversal of those 100 feet on the mountain.

As we were following this route to reach the peak we chanced upon a good clearing with ample shade and breeze. At this place Sridhar, Kosstubh, and Guhan went ahead to one of the lower peaks of the mountain (it has 4 separate peaks, actually view-points would be a better word as peak is the highest point; these 4 separate points are at a much higher elevation than the surrounding area) to reconnoiter the path to the actual peak, while I rested my bones – once again. They returned back with good news that the actual peak was close by, and they had even spied a way down the mountain. They had seen the saddle between two of the view-points/peaks of the mountain, and we had aimed to hit that and walk atop the mountain from there. We mistook some turn, and luckily for us we directly reached the peak that we had intended to walk to from the saddle.

On top of the Tadakalpudi Mountain Range Peak. This was on Day-1 afternoon

And at 1:40pm, we were atop the world! OK, I’ll stop exaggerating, we were atop the Tadikalpudi Mountain Range. Not a bad achievement at all. The cool breeze atop the mountain was refreshing, but much more refreshing than that was the knowledge that we had achieved what we had set out to do and that too in good time, thanks to the immaculate route planning that we had done. In all we had taken nearly 8 hours to reach the mountain-top.

Camp was set up, we kept three sides open as temperature was very high

The peak-conquest was followed by a photo-session, a breather in the sun on one of the rocks that formed the summit, a satisfying lunch, finding a good camping spot, pitching our tent, and simply resting. We sat watching the beautiful sunset, while Guhan kept getting “Sridhared” non-stop.

Waiting for the sunset, the whole mountain range was aglow with the fading light of the sun

Each of us had carried 6 liters of water and as the first day ended Guhan, Kosstubh and me were left with only 1ltr, 2ltr, and 1.5ltr of water respectively. It had been a very humid day, and we were sweating almost non-stop throughout. We managed to keep ourselves hydrated, and were relying totally on the stream that we would encounter on the way down. Amongst all this Sridhar was sitting cool with 4 liters of water with him. Where each of us had drank 4-5 liters of water, Sridhar easily managed with 2 liters only!

Day 2 : 30th August, 2009

Conquered the other adjoining peak too. This is on Day-2 early morning

An event-less night later, we were up before dawn, to summit the next peak, and catch the sunrise. The sun played peek-a-boo behind clouds, but we were able to reach the other peak quite easily. I felt it was even higher than the peak we had conquered on Day-1 afternoon. We were not carrying the GPS at the time to verify the authenticity of what we were feeling, but it was a common feeling among the four of us.

The descent has started, and we kept finding pockets of water along with boulders and greenery all around

We packed the tent, our belongings, and started the descent along the west face of the mountain at 6:30 am. The descent initially was very steep and within half an hour we had reached 1500 feet. We kept crossing pockets of stagnant water, and we were crisscrossing across the dry stream bed, in search of the manna of life – water. We kept finding water, but not flowing water. Just after 8 we reached a pool with ample flowing water. We refilled our bottles, washed away the accumulated dirt of the past 30 hours, Kosstubh even took a dip, we had a sumptuous breakfast, and were back on our way down the stream towards the village. Now that the stream had ample water, finding our path across the boulders that made the stream bed, and even bordered it was getting trickier. Getting back into the mountains was not an option as the stream was bordered on both sides by thick bushes full of thorns. We kept hopping from one boulder to another, and after what seemed like an eternity (in reality only two hours) we were at the base of the mountain, left the stream, and took a turn into the flat ground filled with shrubs at around 10:30 am.

This was the water source where we were finally able to quench our thirsts and refresh ourselves. A miniature waterfall had filled up quite a decent sized pond

As soon as we entered the flats, the green top surrounding the stream disappeared and with it the safety we had from the hot merciless sun. Within minutes we were wishing for shade, but shade was hard to come by now as the trees were scarce. We were amidst a maze of fields, and shrub covered grounds and there was no clear path across them to the village. Sridhar went ahead on one of the probable path to see if it was good, while the three of us greedily ate the Glucose. Water reserves were again running low, as we had filled just 1-2 liters extra for the descent (no sense in carrying extra weight) and that meant eating glucose directly without water. We would surely have achieved a Master’s Degree in Water Management had there been any such thing! Sridhar called us from across the field saying he had found the way back. We encountered a well laid dirt path that led us straight to the village. Soon, at about 11:30 am, after enduring the stares of each and every villager (we were as good as aliens to them – people descending from the mountains with backpacks, and strange rolls [sleeping mats] hanging from the bags), we finally reached the railway station.

A very very tiring trek, but a massively successful one too. One to be cherished for a long time

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It helped a lot that we had distributed the responsibilities for the trek management earlier – Guhan handling the finances, Kosstubh and me planning the route, Kosstubh, Guhan and Sridhar handling the food, and Sridhar being the final authority on the path we planned, and everyone pitching in where required.

The total trek distance was nearly 15kms. 7.7 kms in the plains (village to mountain base and mountain base to village), and rest within the mountains.

Another point to note: if you are planning to ever do this trek, please do take appropriate guidance and permissions. The villagers are very suspicious about movements in the hills.

From afar the mountain looks deceptively easy to climb, from Google Earth it feels it is nothing, but one lesson I learned the hard way on this trek was – never ever judge a mountain on how it looks in maps and from afar. Till the time you set your foot on it, you do not know the mountain.

The Successful Trekkers

]]> http://kunal.wordpress.com/2009/09/01/tadikalpudi-peak-conquest/feed/ 21 kunal Ascent Peak1 Home away from Home View from the top just before sunset Peak2 Descent Waterfall during Descent The Trekkers http://kunal.wordpress.com/2009/09/01/tadikalpudi-peak-conquest/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/wp/kunal/~3/T9AeXo-o20I/ http://kunal.wordpress.com/2009/08/25/aam-aadmi/#comments Tue, 25 Aug 2009 06:15:42 +0000 Kunal http://kunal.wordpress.com/?p=572 ]]>

It was drizzling when he heard her plea, “Can you help with this flat tire?“

He weighed his options – get wet, help her or ignore her, stay dry.

He got wet.

As he hoped she’d offer him a lift, she tipped him 50 bucks.

He finally realized the pitfalls of not owning a fashionable wardrobe.

She was beautiful and hiccuping constantly. I offered her water quipping, “I hope it isn’t your boyfriend remembering you“, – my best pickup line.

Accepting the bottle she whispered, “Just a second“, and answered her phone. Turning back, she smiled, “You were right“.

For rest of the journey I shut up and stuck to my book.

Narsapur Forest – till a few days back, I had never even heard of this place; it was only because of the Office Travelerz Club that I came to know about this place. Sridhar, as is the norm, was the starting point of the planning and soon five of us – Sridhar, LSP, Raghu, Kosstubh, and me – were ready to trek through these unchartered forests. Google was of no help this time, as there is hardly anything about Narsapur Forest on the web even though it is just 30kms from Hyderabad. Tried to judge the lay of the forest as best as we could with the help of Wikimapia, and we were off.

We had planned to start off at a small Ayyapa Swamy temple 2kms before Narsapur, and enter the forest (which was on both sides of road for nearly 10kms before Narsapur) along a river bed nearby. We were so engrossed in admiring the lush green jungle that we missed the temple and reached the outskirts of Narsapur before realizing our mistake. Anyway we did not let this deter us, rather this helped us in finding a safe parking spot courtesy Sridhar and his awesome people skills. We walked a hundred meters down the road to find a good entry point and found a bunch of kids (2 guys and 4 girls) from Hyderabad who wanted to trek through the jungle without a drop of water & a morsel of food to “celebrate Friendship Day”! I am sure had they gone into the jungle it would have been the start of a C-grade horror movie. Anyway we left the road and entered the jungle, within 8-10 meter we had lost sight of the road. Sridhar had been marking our path on his GPS and finally it helped us a lot to navigate through the jungle.

The forest was much denser & beautiful than what we had expected!

Even though we were in the dense jungle, for the initial half hour we could still listen to the sounds of civilizations (read the horns of the passing vehicles), as we were traversing a route that was roughly parallel to the road.  We kept passing cattle trails and soon the parallel way was thrown away and we embraced the perpendicular direction. We crossed over a hillock full of big boulders (the whole time my thought bubble was reading – “this is ideal tiger territory”) and this is where we took our first break after about an hour of trekking. The weather was amazing, it drizzled for a while and we took shelter under the umbrellas of the two seasoned trekkers – Sridhar & LSP. We resumed, descended the hillock and took another 10 minute pause to satiate the photographers’ thirst, the subjects being a cut log & a cow skull. And no this was not the only wildlife spotting – we saw a Greater Coucal (I think it was that!), a Green Bee Eater, what we felt to be a Mongoose, and the best of all a Monitor Lizard running along.

Skull of a cow/buffalo that we came across while trekking

We followed the dry river bed for a while, and soon realized that we had come in a long way and should think about returning now. Among the two options that we had – retrace our way through the jungle to starting point, or aim for the main road and walk along till Narsapur – we decided for the latter option. Trying to find a way back, soon we were lost in the jungle, the GPS was not that helpful this time as we had missed to mark the points on the main road while driving along till Narsapur. Anyway nobody was perturbed by this as we all had a good sense of the direction in which the main road was. The only question was whether we would come out a km away from where we parked the car, or 4 kms – we had no clue of determining where we would exit.

As green as grass

We had already trekked for nearly 4 hours by that time, and I was getting ravenously hungry. Sridhar seemed to read my mind and took out a box of apple juice which he seems to have hidden in his trekking bag along with God-knows-what! We entered a stretch of forest that seemed to be the originating point for the phrase “as green as grass”. Had I not seen it myself, I would have thought that it was done by photoshop, the grass was that green! Soon we were atop another hill from where we could see the first sign of civilization that we had seen for a long long time – an electricity pole, but it seemed to be at least 4-5 kms away, and we were sure that the road was not that far off. We were indeed right, and soon hit a jeep/tractor trail that was leading us to the main road as was apparent by the horns of the passing vehicles. We stopped for the last time for our lunch (which we had got packed earlier, when we had stopped for breakfast) and soon hit the main road at the exact same point where we had earlier expected to start out trek (near the aforementioned Ayyapa Swamy temple). A refreshing 3-4 km walk in the jungle was followed by a really tiring 2 km walk on the hard unforgiving road and we were back at the Raghu’s car, ready to return to Hyderabad. Only on the return journey did I come to know why this place is so offbeat/obscure, the Narsapur Forest is reputed to be a Naxal hideout.

All in all a Sunday very well spent, at such a beautiful forest so close to Hyderabad.

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How to reach et al…

From Balanagar Bus Stop take the road that goes towards Chintal, Shapur Nagar i.e. the Medak Road. Follow it for around 30-35 kms to reach Narsapur. On way you would pass Gandimaisamma X-Roads, Dundigul Air Force Academy, Gummadidala before the forest starts on both sides of the road till Narsapur.

For food we stopped at a roadside place, and got our lunch packed from there. You need to carry water, at least 2 liters for a 4-5 hour trek and preferably soem food – trekking can get tiring. Also the jungle on the right-side of the Gummadidala-Narsapur road seems denser than the one on left side. And if you go and ask Forest officials for trekking trails, you’ll realize that trekking in these jungles is not allowed, so if you plan to venture in there, go at your own risk. Nobody would have your back but yourself.

Amazing start by Schumi, overtaking Vettel, Button on the first turn…

Alonso didn’t stand a chance, Schumacher had been gaining on him steadily …

They are trading blows faster than Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier … what stunning maneuver by Schumacher to snatch the lead from Hamilton…

Schumacher returns with a win!

I stop daydreaming…

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The heart is ecstatic that Schumi is back – it hopes to see him kick Hamilton’s ass; the brain says – don’t expect too much, he is an old man now!

Hoping the heart is right!

After many years of chastising the social networking websites’ users over any possible positive use of facebook, orkut et al – having deleted his own account years ago because of the simple reason: he hated socializing – he finally found a positive use, though slightly debatable, and promptly opened his facebook account.

Texas Hold’em Poker awaited him.

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A tiny amount of persuasion from @vidit & @_skp was all it took for me to rejoin a social network for the sole reason of playing poker with friends. Played Poker as soon as I joined, but unluckily the beginner’s luck was missing. Maybe, next time lady luck will ride with me

“How will she notice me?“

“You need some conversation starter.“

He wore torn jeans. Nothing.

He donned a multicoloured shirt. Nothing.

He sported a funky hairstyle. Nothing.

He combined the three. Nothing.

He even tried a dhoti. Nothing.

He stopped, and went back to his normal getup.

She, “Not trying to impress me today, eh?“