Suramya's Blog : Welcome to my crazy life…

This weekend we had planned to go for a Trek but as Jani had hurt her back we had a last min change of plans and instead went to Yelagiri hills. When I say last min, I do mean last min. We booked the stay about 10 hours before we left home. Since there were seven of us making the trip I wanted to rent a 7-8 seater car so that all of us can travel together, but since it was last min we were unable to find a car. Thankfully Shashank wanted to do a long bike ride so he and Shahrukh decided to make the trip on his bike and the rest of us took my car.

As usual we planned on leaving early from home to avoid the lovely Bangalore traffic. We had an early breakfast at home (Shahrukh & Jani made French toast) and we started at ~6:30am from home. The drive was quite nice and the company was better. The place we were staying at (Yelagiri Farm House) was ~150Kms from home and it took us about 3 ½ hours to make the drive with a single break for Tea/Coffee. The last stretch of the drive was though the hills and the views were amazing but since everyone except me was sleeping in the car they missed most of it. In a way that is good as most of them suffer from motion sickness and anything that avoids people throwing up in my car is good in my books. I had a blast singing while everyone was sleeping (Though I am not sure how they managed to sleep through my singing).

The Farm house was on a large property with nice big rooms. To give you an idea of the size all 7 of us could have comfortably stayed in 1 room. But we had multiple rooms so it was good. Once we reached the venue we just chilled and had our 2nd breakfast for the day. The weather was nice and cool so it was great sitting outside in the open relaxing.

Having the second breakfast of the day

After talking to the owners we found out that there were a few adventure camps near the farmhouse so after relaxing for a while we decided to check out the options. Shashank and Shahrukh explored and we found a nice place that had multiple options of games we could play. Since it was lunch time we had our lunch which was ok. The non-veg food was a lot better than the veg options as per the comments I heard during lunch but it still wasn’t bad. Post lunch we went to the Adventure camp and decided to do the Obstacle course, Artificial wall climbing and Zorbing.

Outside the Adventure Camp after lunch

The obstacle course was interesting and a few of the obstacles were a bit challenging but overall it was a lot of fun. The six of us attempted the course while Jani relaxed on the side and took pics. None of us fell so that was good and there was a lot of good natured ribbing going on when someone got stuck. One of the participant went into ‘pure survival mode’ when they got stuck but everyone made it through in one piece (and no I am not naming them).

Obstacle course at the Adventure Camp

The second activity we attempted was the climbing wall which was fairly challenging and only Bagri and Shashank made it to the top while a few of us remaining were close but didn’t make it to the top.

Artificial Climbing wall

The last activity we did was Zorbing. Usually this is done on a hill where you are rolled down a hill but over here the Zorb was floating in the water and all 6 of us got in at the same time. It’s a great place to be when you are with friends and we rolled around in abandon in the Zorb. Akanksha was elbowed in the face (by me. Sorry) and I had Shahrukh and Ayush both land on my back at the same time. If I start listing out all the other times folks fell on each other I will need a couple of pages. In all the 15 mins we spent in there was amazing and we were exhausted after we were done. Finally we had to head back as none of the other sports looked interesting (I did want to try the paintball but not everyone was interested so we left it.). Right outside the arena there were a lot of fresh fruit sellers and we ended up buying almost every single option available (except Jackfruit because it stinks).

Playing Frisbee

After we got back to the farmhouse, we spent a good amount of time playing in the field starting with Frisbee followed by cricket. Akanksha was given the woman of the match award for making the most runs in the first match. Once it got dark and we could hardly see the ball we retired to the room and switched to indoor games.
The first game we played was twister and it was a blast. Watching some of the positions people ended up in was hilarious (when it happened to others, not when you were in the position). We played a couple of rounds with Jani and a rotating set of people acting as a referee. It is a great party game but needs to be played with people who know each other quite well else it can get a bit awkward. After we were tired from Twister we switched to Jenga and it was fun as always. Some of the moves were brilliant and some were so bad that they should be admitted to the bad move hall of fame. Finally it was time to call it a day since all had been awake since early morning and I just crashed. I think Jani was talking to me when I dozed off.

Next day we woke up around 8, had breakfast where we made sandwiches and tried all the fruits we bought the previous day. This was followed by a few rounds of cricket and general fooling around.

Group Photo in front of the Farmhouse

Finally we had to leave because we didn’t want to be too late getting into Bangalore so with a heavy heart we started back. This time everyone in the car was awake for the hairpin turns that took us back to the plains and thankfully the anti-motionsickness tablets worked so that was great. The drive back was fairly uneventful, with one long stop for a tea break. We started off with just tea (juice for some) and then ended up making and having sandwiches from our stockpile. Thankfully we bought enough from the vendor that we didn’t get kicked out for having our own food.

The drive back took a bit longer thanks to the increased traffic but was manageable, at least till we entered Bangalore post which it was the standard disaster we call traffic management in Bangalore.

After we reached home, we chilled for a while and then everyone headed home ending an eventful trip. We had so much fun that we have already started talking about the next trip.

Well, this is all for now. Will post more later.

– Suramya

Happy New Year! We (Jani & Me) don’t like doing the usual Party/get-drunk/passout for New Years so each year we try to come up with something more interesting and unique. This year we decided to go to WinterBurn which is a Music Festival/Camping event in Sakleshpur organized by Motorcycle Diaries. Initially only the two of us were going but then Ayush, Akanksha & Dipika decided to join us as well which made the trip more fun.

We started the trip early in the morning (5am) on the 29th with a light breakfast and lots of caffeine. The drive down was quite nice as we missed the lovely Bangalore traffic by leaving so early in the morning and we took about 4 hours to reach the venue even though we stopped a few times for tea/coffee and watermelons. When we reached the address we had to do a bit of off-road driving on a muddy track to get to the field where the event was being held. I would not recommend that you take any car with low clearance for this kind of trip as even with the new Honda Citi’s increased ground clearance we scraped the bottom of the car a few times during this last stretch and each time that happened it hurt me more than the car. 🙂

When we reached the place we had a pleasant surprise that we were allocated 2 cottages and a tent instead of 1 cottage, 1 shack and 1 tent. Plus the front of the cottages faced away from the rest of the dormitories so we had a bit of privacy with a nice sitting area in from of the cottages that faced the plantation. So we had pepper & coffee plants about 10 mts from our door and it was quite nice. Since we reached before the food trucks had finished setting up we joined the various artists for a late breakfast of local food which was surprisingly quite tasty (yes I have had bad experiences with local food a few times).

Early morning Breakfast

As nothing was planned for the day till late evening we spent the day doing a bit of relaxing Yoga to stretch our backs thanks to Dipika followed by a lovely walk around the estate. Saw a whole bunch of plants and even though Jani tried her best to tell us about each of the plants I kind of zoned out and just enjoyed the walk in nature. We did find some wild chilies that we picked for eating but still haven’t tried them. After the walk we just hung out and chilled for the most part. We spent a while talking and catching up with each other as some of us hadn’t met in a while or were meeting for the first time.

Stretching Akanksha’s back after the bumpy ride

Ayush, Me and Jani stretching our backs outside the cottage.

Dipika walking Akanksha, me and Jani through some stretching exercises for the back.

Just Chilling at the camp

Since we had an early start and nothing was happening at the event we decided to call it a night and crashed earlier than normal. The next day there was supposed to be a Yoga session organized at 6am but none of us woke up in time for it. The food-truck’s food wasn’t that great and since we had packed enough supplies for breakfast (the plan was to have it while driving to the venue but after eating watermelon we didn’t have space) Jani made sandwiches for all of us along with salad and Tea.

Breakfast courtesy Jani

After seeing the sad state of the festival the day before we decided to not spend the day at the venue and went on a drive to check out some of the local attractions near us. Using Google Maps we found a few locations that looked interested and started the day with a visit to Shettihalli Rosary Church which was about an hours drive away on some very picturesque and narrow roads. The drive took us a bit longer since we stopped a few times to enjoy the scenery and to pluck Imli (tamarind) directly from a roadside tree and eat it raw.

Jani trying to feed me raw Imli

The Shettihalli Rosary Church was built in the 1860s by the French missionaries and was abandoned in 1960 after the construction of the Hemavati Dam. The gothic architecture of the church gives it a haunted feel and even though its only been abandoned for ~60 years it looks a lot older and spookier. We spent about an hour at the church taking pics and admiring the view after which we decided to get some lunch as we were hungry. Lunch was at this little hole in the wall restaurant that kind of looked shady from the outside and you really had to know it was there to find it but it was one of the best lunches I have had in a while. The food was filling, tasty and only cost us Rs 230 total (for all 5 of us) including coffee.

Group Pic at the church

After lunch we drove over to Manjarabad Fort which was built in 1792 by Tipu Sultan. It is in ruins now but at its peak it would have been extremely difficult to attack due to its commanding position on top of a hill. Spent a bit of time exploring before we were kicked out when the place shut down for the night. Interestingly the way they make sure that everyone leaves the fort for the night is by herding everyone to the main gate of the castle that is locked, once the guy inside makes sure there are not stragglers he comes and opens the gate to let everyone out and prevents people coming back inside. It would have been a lot more efficient if there were two people doing this but it works so… can’t really complain. We had a round of coconut water and drove back to base where we hung out in our cabin for a while. The stage was finally setup so a few bands did play but nothing that really stuck out and made us want to sit outside. Went to sleep early again with a plan to *try* going for the 6am yoga classes but once again no one woke up on time for it.

Group pic at the Fort

We freshened up and decided to check out some of the workshops that were running. Ayush, Akanksha and Dipika tried their hands at pottery making while me and Jani watched and made fun of their skills. After lunch we joined the Dreamcatcher workshop run by Meghana. This was a great workshop and I realized that even though it looks easy to make it requires a lot of concentration and skill. Unfortunately Meghna refused to let me and Ayush use a rectangle as the base design so we spent the next 5 hours trying to keep threads tight enough and the design normal enough that it didn’t look like it was made by a drunk spider. After much sweat and tears we finally managed to create our dreamcatchers. By this time the bands were prepping so we freshened up and walked over to the stage.

Jani focusing on ensuring all the threads were tight

Ayush and Akanksha trying their hands on Dreamcatcher making

The first few bands were quite good but unfortunately the crowds we had expected/been promised didn’t materialize. In fact there were about 60-65 people total at the event out of which about 50 were the artists and workshop people. We sat next to the bonfire for a while but then the music wasn’t much to our taste so we went back to the room and all of us snuggled under the blanket waiting for midnight. As soon at it was midnight we wished each other and within 10 mins after that we were all fast asleep.

Happy New Year! Welcoming 2019 snuggled in bed.

We all woke up late the next day and properly wished each other since we were all barely awake at midnight. After another round of sandwitches/salad made by Jani we all packed up and headed back to Bangalore. It took us a lot longer to drive back due to the increased traffic and stops.

Reached back home around 8pm after dropping Dipika on the way. Had a late dinner with Jani, Ayush and Akanksha thanks to Swiggy and that’s how we ended 2019’s first trip. Overall the trip was fun though I was disappointed with the music festival. That being said Gagan (the organizer) did refund part of the money to us so I can’t really complain much. If it was just me and Jani doing the trip alone then it would have been a lot more boring but the excellent company made it fun.

Well this is all for now. Will post more later.

– Suramya

Last week while I was getting bored while commuting back from office I stumbled upon an article on LLB about Belum Caves which is the largest and longest cave system open to the public on the Indian subcontinent and it sounded fascinating so I reached out to friends and after a little back and forth 5 of us decided to drive down to the cave for a day trip on Saturday. Since we were planning to start from Bangalore at 5am Anirudh, Jani and Shahrukh came over to my place Friday night while Shakshi came over at 4:30am… Hats off to her for waking up so early and making it to my place on time. After a quick breakfast (and a Red bull for me) we left home at 5:15am. The drive was quite nice and since we left so early in the morning the traffic was minimal (which is a minor miracle in BLR).

To pass the time we talked about all sorts of random topics from astronomy to the percentage of water in various items like cucumbers, milk and human blood etc. By 7am we all started feeling a bit hungry so we stopped for breakfast and had a road-side picnic and I really mean roadside. We stopped next to some newly planted fields about 2 feet away from the road and had a lovely breakfast of sandwiches, paratha’s and boiled eggs. All we were missing to make this a proper picnic was a picnic basket.

Early morning Road-side picnic

After food we were back on the road and made good time to the caves and were there at about 10:40am. We were one of the first groups into the cave and so were able to explore the caves without having to deal with a lot of crowds. The caves were amazing and I am surprised that not a lot of people know about it.

Entrance to Belum Cave

Stalactites in the cave

We spent about two hours in the cave and visited all the important/noteworthy parts even though it was very hot and humid in there. Jani was the only one who was comfortable and enjoyed the temperature as her body’s thermostat is broken (She likes hot and humid weather). There were some pretty cool natural carvings/structures in the cave that looked man-made and some man made structures to host camera’s and ventilation ducts that were mostly hidden so we spend a good amount of time trying to identify which of the structures were man made and which were natural.

The Saint Bed where its rumored that Buddhist monks used to meditate/rest

At one point we were ~150 feet underground at Pathala Ganga which is the deepest part of the cave. Here there is an underground water source that looked quite deep and even though we considered pushing one of the group in the water to see how deep it was common-sense prevailed and we decided not to try. The caves are supposed to have a section that makes musical sounds when struck but we couldn’t find that section. In part it was because we didn’t want to walk around hitting random formations and because we were fascinated by the structures and forgot to search for it.

Group photo in the cave

Trying to ensure we don’t get crushed by the low ceiling

Looking at the structures I was reminded about the Thai cave rescue and it made me think how hard and scary it would have been for them to be stuck in a cave for so long without light. I do want to try cave exploring (spelunking) and have started looking for options in India.

After we came out we fooled around on the playground which was quite fun and then had a picnic lunch. This gave us the opportunity to relax, stretch and enjoy the fresh air. There is a restaurant at the site but has limited options in food. Basically they make about a kg of rice in the morning and if you are early enough you get your food quickly else you have to wait for them to cook the rice. If you are visiting as a big group and are planning to eat there it is advisable to place your order before you head down so that the food is ready by the time you come back from the cave.

After lunch we started back but didn’t head directly for Bangalore, instead we went to Lepakshi Temple which was about midway between the caves and Bangalore. The drive was again quite nice even though everyone in the car (except me obviously) had a post lunch nap during which I entertained myself by playing loud music and singing along. I have a feeling that Jani and Shahrukh woke up after a while just to stop me from singing 😉

The temple is beautiful and we spent a good amount of time walking around the premises and enjoying the carvings. Describing the wonders of the temple would require a whole another post so I am going to be a bit lazy and just link to this post over at the RevolvingCompass.com that describes the 7 wonders of the temple. About 1/2 Km from the temple there is a huge statue of Jatayu but we were unable to visit it because of time (it was getting dark and I wanted to minimize night driving on the highway).

Group photo in front of the Kalyan Mandapa

Us practicing the tree pose for prayer

It was a humbled group that headed back but that didn’t stop our stomachs from rumbling so we stopped for another road-side picnic. This time we found a ready made stone bench for us to use as a table and we made full use of it for a snack break. It was fun to make sandwiches and eat cucumber & tomato with salt and chili. Honestly speaking I could have sat there for another hour but we had to cut the break short because of the time constraints and start back for Bangalore. We made good time to Bangalore and then hit the Bangalore traffic spending a bit over 2 hours to reach home after we entered the city. We finally made it home at ~10:15pm at which point I was ready to crash since I had driven for over 12 hours in the day. But still it was worth the effort and drive.

Road-side Picnic for evening snacks

We ended the day with Ice-cream after which everyone went home and I crashed for the night. We will be doing similar day long road trips in the future as it was quite cheap and a lot of fun. The only limitation is the no of people we can take on the trip since I don’t want to have more than 2 cars. More than 10-12 people makes the group unwieldy and encourages the creation of sub-groups.

Well this is all for now. Will post more later.

– Suramya

This last weekend I went for my first trek of 2018 to Pyramid Hills which is situated in the Kolegal village near Shivanasamudra. The Trek was organized by Plan the Unplanned and was my first experience with the group.

The trek started at 10:30am from Bangalore instead of Friday nights like most of the Treks I have been to in the past which was a bit surprising. Since there were 7 of us friends going for it together and the pickup point was walking distance from my place we decided to have everyone over to my place for breakfast at 9am so that we start the trip on a full stomach. Everyone made to my place on time (yeah I was surprised too…) and we had a filling breakfast of Apple Pie, Eggs, Mattar Paneer and bread before boarding the bus and started the journey into the unknown (or rather to Sivansamudra).

Interestingly this group was a lot less diverse than some of the other Treks I have been to… in the sense that most of us were in the software industry and the average age was in the mid to late 20’s. (If you exclude me and Jani). Usually the groups are a lot more diverse but that could be because our group accounted for 7 out of the 14 people. That being said it was a fun trip which I enjoyed quite a bit and I made some new friends 🙂

Since a lot of us already knew each other, I was expecting the introductions to be a bit boring and repetitive. However I am happy to say that was not the case. The group leaders (Tarun and Aditi) asked us to act out our names or the name of our parent (if we had already introduced ourselves) using dumb charades. It was hilarious to watch folks trying to act out their names and it served as a good ice breaker for the team. The intro followed by an actual game of dumb charades helping us pass the time during the 4 hour drive to reach the base camp. We reached the camp just in time for Lunch and Ratna, the owner of Calver camps had lunch ready for us under an open air setup. As all of us were quite hungry at this time we attacked the food and finished in record time. On a side note, the food on this trip was among the best I have had on treks, usually it is just lemon rice and some snacks but this time it was really good and filling.

The Open Air Dinning hall and welcome area (PC: Durga)

Post lunch we rested for a little while to allow everyone to recover from the post lunch coma and then started on the first trek of the trip. Jani immediately inaugurated the trek by walking into thorny bushes and getting scratched all over. The first part of the trek was through fields that had recently been plowed but there was a clear path through so it was easy walking. The second part of the trek involved some steep climbing, with parts of it at almost 60 degrees. It was steep enough that none of us had breath to sing like we normally do during the walk. Most of us took it easy except for JD who had a bet with Ratna to reach the top within 23 mins. To all our surprise he actually made it to the top in 23 minutes flat to win the bet. The rest of us took quite a lot longer with frequent breaks but were there in time to watch the sunset.

Group Pic a the beginning of the Trek

The Trail to the top of Pyramid Hill (This is how steep it was) [PC: Tarun]

Taking a breather on the way [PC: Tarun]

We Made it! Group Pic at the top of Pyramid Hill [PC: Ayush]

After reaching the top we all relaxed on the rocks for a while, took a whole lot of pics before starting back down. Personally I felt that coming down was easier but not everyone agreed with me as the way down was slippery. At least this time we didn’t have folks having a contest about who would fall most often while coming down. 🙂 By the time we reached the bottom it was dark and we really didn’t have an idea of which way the campsite was supposed to be. So we followed the dog who had accompanied us for the climb, and it took us through a roundabout way but we finally made it back in one piece without falling into a ditch.

Resting after conquering Pyramid Hill

Once back we all freshened up and then relaxed for a bit playing with the kids. The original plan was to do a bit of star gazing before dinner and a movie but as it was cloudy we couldn’t really see anything except for the moon and that was also mostly covered, so we just fooled around for a bit while Tarun and Aditi tried to get the projector and sound system working for an outdoor movie night. Tarun had brought a good collection of movies to choose from and the majority (or at least the loudest) wanted to watch a horror movie, because that would have been a lot of fun. Unfortunately Tarun’s hard-disk’s connector cable died so we only had a choice between two movies and we choose ‘Three Idiots’. This was the first time I have attempted to watch a movie during a trek and to be honest I wasn’t in big favor of it initially but it was quite enjoyable.

Our Movie Hall [PC: Tarun]

We watched half the movie and then stopped to do a bit of star Gazing as Nikhitha & Mahesh noticed the sky was finally clear enough. Unfortunately we were only able to see the moon clearly as Jupiter was not cooperating in getting focused. We spent quite a lot of time just chatting and watching the stars which they both worked on getting the telescope aligned.

Trying to find the moon at 1am [PC: Nimisha]

After the star gazing session we all decided to sleep outside in the open itself as the cabins felt a little hot as compared to outside and since there were no mosquitoes choosing between overheating or getting eaten alive wasn’t a concern either. Most of the night was quite comfortable but it got chilly in the morning to the point where 3 of us (Me, Shahrukh and Shashank) ended up sharing a blanket (all of us were too lazy to walk up to the cottage to get another blanket).

Sharing a blanket as it was cold!

After a heavy breakfast me and Jani spent the morning lazing around the campsite while the rest of the folks attempted the second trek (I had a twisted back). They all survived the trek and came back in one piece in time for lunch which was again quite scrumptious. Post lunch we went ‘fishing’ in a nearby river. Our expectations were that the water was deep enough to swim in so folks who wanted to fish would do so and the rest of us were planning to swim. Unfortunately due to the heat and the fact that the dam upstream hadn’t let out much water that day, the water was only knee deep at the deepest end. 🙁 We still spent some time soaking our feet in the water and tried to get a fish pedicure. In the end we decided to call it a bust and walked back to the bus.

While walking back we saw a mango orchard next to the path and decided to pick a few mangoes to snack on. Me, Aditi and Nimisha were picking the mangoes when all three got an electric shock from the fence as it was an electrified fence which we didn’t know when we started picking the mangoes. Thankfully it was a mild shock but still stung. We collected our bounty of 3-4 mangoes and gave up on collecting more and boarded the bus to go for a coracle ride. Since that was on the same river as the fishing spot the water was not inviting enough to tempt us so we had a whole lot of coconut water and then started back to camp to collect our stuff before leaving for Bangalore. Just as we started back to camp it started raining heavily and we enjoyed the cool rain during the drive. Thankfully it stopped raining by the time we got back to camp and we avoided getting drenched while loading our luggage into the bus.

The drive back was fairly uneventful and while a lot of the folks slept some of us talked the entire time and I am surprised that none of the folks sleeping threw things at us to shut us up. We reached Bangalore by 9:30pm and as we hadn’t had dinner yet and didn’t want the trip to end some of us decided to have dinner together at my place. We picked up food from a restaurant near my place and spent the next few hours chatting away. We would have stayed up longer but everyone had office the next day so we had to call it a night with a heavy heart.

I would recommend the trek to anyone who doesn’t mind staying in a place that doesn’t allow smoking and drinking but serves the most amazing and simple food.

Well this is all for now. Will post more later.

– Suramya