It’s a great little hill station which has not yet been commercialized (relatively speaking) and has a neat trekking trail.

If you’re looking for something fun to do on a Sunday, Yelagiri Hills is a great place to go, and it is just 150 km away from Bengaluru.

In the 3-4 days before the trek, we didn’t spend enough time on the preparation and hence we were worried. So I wrote a “Trekking Howto a.k.a. “The Checklist” which we can read before a trek so that we won’t have to rethink every time about whether we have taken care of all aspects.

It was a perfect trek in terms of weather and company. We had the most fun in looking back after every few hours and seeing how far we have come, since we could actually see the Mullainagiri temple while trekking towards Bababudanagiri.

How to do the Mullainagiri trek : Arrive at Chikmagalur. Hire a jeep to take you to the starting point of the trek, cost Rs.250. The starting point is a small iron gate that will lead you directly into the hill. Follow the path. After 1-2 hours, you’ll reach the topmost point – the temple. You can request the purohit here to stay for the night and they’ll even prepare dinner if you ask them. Wrap yourself up in your sleeping bag for the night because it is going to get really cold.

The next day morning, start early or late depending on whether you want to face the cold weather, but leave at least by 8 or 9. Make sure you donate a good amount to the purohit for being a good host. Follow the path downhill towards the right from the temple. After a few hours, you’ll reach the road. Cross the road towards the right and start trekking downwards. This is the start of a good long up-and-down route towards Bababudanagiri. Once you reach the destination, have some tea and pakodas at the stalls. Then either hire a jeep (Rs.10-20 per head) or walk down to the Bababudanagiri temple. Make sure you catch the 3.30pm bus which will take you back to Chikmagalur.

The photos are of low quality because they are taken using my mobile phone. Regardless, the rest of the photos are in my Flickr set.

Update: Photos by Vikram and photos by Varun.

Kodachadri is a mountain in the Western Ghats, in Karnataka. It is a famous trekking spot.

On Saturday morning, we reached Nittur, grabbed some breakfast and then proceeded towards Kumble, the starting point of the trek. Right there, I could see clouds playing hide-and-seek among the mountains and I knew it was going to be a good trek.

What I didn’t know was how awesome the 14 km of terrain was going to be. At one moment we would be trudging in the mountain avoiding branches and forcing through thick vegetation, the next moment we would be crossing a stream of water…

… Some time later we would be climbing up very slippery stones right next to flowing water, then suddenly in an open area and then walking along the edge of a cliff while it is raining and then walking in the clouds, literally. This was easily one of the best trekking spots I’ve ever been to, and I was so happy that I finally got to be there. We even got to drench ourselves in a freezing cold waterfall.

We stayed at the government guest house for the night. I didn’t get any sleep because of a broken window which made the howling winds and pounding rain make me feel their force even though we were inside four walls. Also, the combination of freezing cold weather and lack of a sleeping bag made me repeatedly mentally note not to repeat this mistake next time.

I also happened to do enough blood donation to our good ol’ friends – the leeches. I have become so used to them that I was almost completely unbothered by them, even though I have 3-4 bite marks on each leg. There were some new trekkers who were freaked out about the leeches and one of those girls even had nightmares about them that night and cried during her sleep.

On Sunday morning, we climbed up even higher to visit the Sarvajna Peetha where it is said that Sri Shankaracharya had meditated. After paying our respects, we went and sat down on some stones next to the cliff. It was a contrasting feeling to feel good to have scaled the mountain and be sitting on the peak and at the same time experiencing the power of Nature – the winds were blowing so hard that it was difficult to even stand!

We also visited the Ganesha Guha. The guide said that there are tunnels here that go all the way to Kashi and Gokarna! It was a little unbelievable but then again, who knows what the reality was thousands of years ago.

We started our descent and after an hour or so, I saw a remarkable thing. We’ve seen rain and clouds all our lives but to see the rain actually coming out of the clouds was surreal. And more so, when you’re walking around the edge of the mountain and you can’t see the ground below the cliff…

The fierce intermittent rain prevented me from taking snaps, especially when we were seeing the best scenery. In any case, photographs would have never done justice to what we were experiencing.

After we reached Kareghatta, the endpoint of our trek, we travelled to Kollur. Almost immediately, we dived into a hotel and feasted on dosas because we hadn’t had lunch amidst all that 10 km of trekking. Then we prayed at the Mookambika temple and headed back to Bangalore.

I couldn’t stop smiling because it was such a satisfying trek. I guess this was one of the last few trekking spots that I’ve really wanted to visit in Karnataka. Of course, there are hundreds more, but I think I have covered most of the major ones so far.

The rest of the photos are on Flickr. Special thanks to Mr. Chandrasekhar for organizing this trek, and to the guides Aarya and Vijay for taking us through such good routes and keeping us safe.

At 4.30 am of Day 2 (June 01 Sunday), I was jolted by a shrill cock-a-doodle-doo sound. Soon enough, our leader Narayan woke us all up. I was surprised to see everybody get up immediately. At around 5.30 am, we all went out in search of sighting some animals. Unfortunately, we were too loud to get to see any animals. Even our footsteps, especially when crushing leaves, were loud enough to alert the sensitive-eared animals. Our guide who was in front saw some bisons but they ran away in lightning speed. I didn’t know they could do that.

We were soon enough on top of another hill and got to see another beautiful view. Heh, I’m such a landscape-voyeur.

And it was funny to see the things we do for poses in photographs.

What was amazing though was we could see islands in the Arabian Sea.

And then Narayana found viper snakes! These are poisonous snakes and one bite could have been fatal for any of us.

After the morning excitement, we got back to Padubeedu. Had a quick breakfast and headed out towards Goodana GunDi waterfalls. While walking, I thought to myself that I was happy to see a group so enthusiastic about nature and trekking. But mind you this was no nature walk, some of the paths were pretty rough and some were really slippery. And to get down to the waterfalls, we had to crawl and climb down rocks. Sometimes they can be really scary.

Once we reached the falls, we were in the water in a snap!

It’s hard to imagine that there are very few people who actually know about these places. This is a good thing because they are unspoilt and clean. Our organizer Sampath constantly reminded us to keep it that way. There were strict rules we followed about the usage of plastic and not leaving any artificial stuff behind (My shoes were so worn out that a part of the sole tore off. I carried that piece of rubber all the way back to Bangalore.)

Being IT people, we stuck to the specifications that our organizer told us – we didn’t get our backpacks for this part of the trek. Which means we didn’t actually think that we should get our plates for lunch. Uh oh. We ended up gathering in groups of 4-5 people and eating together out of the big utensil-covering-plates

While many of us relaxed, others went photographing crabs, others were wondering why butterflies were attracted to a particular guy’s shoes only and many went down the cliff to explore more waterfalls. My acrophobia kicked in, so I didn’t go for the latter option.

Then it was time to trek back to Padubeedu. I was saddened that we were done with the trekking so soon.

Once we reached, we gathered around for a round of feedback and views of the trekkers. Most people had a lot of positive things to say. And everybody thoroughly enjoyed it. My plus points were the good mix of people who came, the experiences such as the sugarcane place, exploring an area of Karnataka that I haven’t been to and the minus point was that we did a lot less trekking than I expected. I guess you can’t have everything.

And the next thing we knew, our kind host brought us fresh honey complete with wax that he pulled out minutes ago! This was just too good to be true.

Remember, folks, to suck the honey but don’t eat the wax.

Rest of the Day 2 evening was travelling back to Sagar and then Bangalore.

All in all, this was one heck of a weekend. Trekking, nature, new friends, non-stop repartee and fierce debates. I wish I have more of these weekends!

A few days later on May 30 night (i.e. last weekend as of this writing), I was on a bus to Sagar in Shimoga district with 13 other strangers I had never met before. Thankfully, all it took was a few smiles and laughs and we got along very well. There were people from varying age groups – 18 to 55 although majority were the young IT crowd.

Then the inevitable happened. Bangalore traffic jam. It took 2-2.5 hours just to get out of the city! There are so many bottlenecks especially near the Jalahalli cross. No wonder the bus drivers are so stressed out. God save us all, I wonder how much worse it can get. Because of all this hungama, we reached Sagar more than a couple of hours late which threw our trekking plans haywire. We had to ditch the idea of trekking till the Belli Gundi waterfall and do a shorter exploration of the area.

To start the day (May 31 Saturday), we got into an open jeep to transport us to Kattinakaru. We had a fun ride through the scenic locale. We even saw the Linganmakki dam from far.

After the food materials were distributed among us, we gathered our rucksacks and started walking from Kanchina Gadde along the Goodanagundi stream. Half an hour later, we heard a bear. Then we ate many wild berries that our guide Narayan suggested.

We were lucky to have such a knowledgeable and trained guy like Narayan. Interestingly, the guide Narayan, the organizer Sampath and a few others are the only ones who organize trekking trips in the Shimoga area. They know nooks and crannies of this area that most of humanity doesn’t!

Sampath does this for interesting reasons – to show people that fun can be more than just boozing and partying, to encourage people to lead more simpler and ecofriendly ways, to sensitize people towards rural people and at the same time, provide a source of income for the locals by way of us travellers! I thought it was a beautiful way to combine all these goals and Sampath, an avid trekker gets to trek himself. Lucky guy.

And then, we were reminded the monsoons were coming. Why? Leeches. Slimy crawly blood-sucking leeches.

After much discussion, I arrived that the magic to avoiding them is a three-pronged strategy – rub your legs and feet with dettol (the strong smell repels them), sprinkle salt over your socks and shoes (they can’t tolerate salt) and put a chakravyuha of lime paste/salt/chunna on your shoes. I am not sure if the lime paste makes a difference but the dettol and salt are very important.

Leeches will still manage to get on to you. If you find yourself doing some blood donation to these creatures, just put some salt over them, they’ll curl up and then you can remove them. You may be able to pull them out directly but that way you’ll end up bleeding more.

Yep. It sucks. Err, the leeches suck. Ugh. Whatever. I’m bad at humor.

Surprisingly, I was less bothered by the leeches this time. I guess some experience in dealing with them made me okay about it.

The best part (or worst depending on your point of view) undoubtedly was stopping in the middle of the forest at 4 pm and our cook Umapathi prepared anna-saaru right there! We devoured it like we haven’t seen food in years.

After that, we continued trekking towards Padubeedu. I realized that I so missed the forest. It’s good to get away from humanity once in a while, especially the daily bhaag-daud, and be amidst nature. They say that the color green is good for your eyes and I was seeing plenty of it.

Our night halt was going to be at the home of a tribal Chota Nayak. Their family were friendly and fun to converse with. After a little relaxation, we started walking to a place where they crush sugar cane. We got to see some beautiful views of the DevkaaNbare hills. If only we could have reached 10-15 min earlier, we could have catched the sunset.

When we reached the sugarcane place, I was amazed to see a crusher machine in the middle and two bulls walking in circles to crush the sugarcanes!

The crushed juice goes down a pipe to collect in a huge vessel. And they were kind enough to let us drink the fresh juice made right in front of us. It was simply heavenly. What you get in the cities are so diluted. This was fresh and pure. The difference was remarkable.

And it seemed, the best part was yet to come. We got to taste fresh liquid jaggery! I personally don’t like sweets but this was so good. So good. It’s apparently referred to as ‘joNi bella’.

Thinking back, these are the kind of experiences that I look forward to in a trek/travel. Money can’t buy you this stuff. It was remarkable that they didn’t take any money for this and yet encouraged us to drink and eat to our heart, err, stomach’s content. I guess it’s true that villagers are more open-minded and more giving than urbanites.

Our group’s non-stop jokes and banter continued during the short campfire and we even played dumb charades. And then Umapathi did it again with sumptuous palav for dinner which was the perfect way to end the day.

We were all so tired especially with the back-breaking journey and the leech-avoidance running and dancing. We just crashed on the mats in the open area.

Next: Day 2 of the trek

Later they asked me over email. My reply was “Why Ooty!?”. They replied saying “It doesn’t matter. We’re going for the drive.” Two days later, we three were driving to Ooty on bikes at night.

My descriptions below are in twitter style as an ode to how the trip happened. ( But of course, my usual writing style will resume after this post )

We started off at 8 at night. First stop was some lip-smacking food at Kamat Lokaruchi:

9.10 pm : We’re on the way! 3 twitterers on bikes.

9.25 pm : Getting out of Bangalore is the toughest thing.

9.30 pm : @scorpion032 says 2020 will also be the year of the linux desktop.

10.32 pm : @cruisemaniac and @scorpion032 are tweeting away…

1.40 am : Taking a break.

2.33 am : Admiring the mysore palace…

3.16 am : Sleep getting to me… But we’re taking breaks and having fun. In Nanjangud.

3.20 am : Another break.

3.34 am : Listening to My Sacrifice at 330 am at 70 kmph on bike with the wind in your hair is something to be experienced.

4.10 am : We find a freakin’ coffee day in the middle of nowhere. Waiting for capuccino.

6.15 am : Mudumulai forest.

6.20 am : Animals! Elephant, deer, peacock, mongoose, eagle, woodpecker, … All right there next to us… Thank heavens the elephant didn’t think we were pesky…

6.45 am : Exiting Mudumulai forest.

My favorite photo from this trip (notice the clouds and the bike):

The killer part of the trip was the 36 hair pin bends required to scale Ooty for more than a kilometre of altitude. The bikes started choking. Even the Pulsar bike had issues with the climb!

7.31 am : Ooty has nice scenery.

Rest of the trip was simply crashing for sleep, waking up for food, and sitting in the patio in the cold night discussing everything from Steve Jobs to big company goofups to…

… the guy who was taking a snap with the lens in the opposite direction and never realized it.

The ride back to Bangalore was equally tiring but faster (9 hours vs 11 hours):

It was a picture-perfect trip throughout. Probably because the wavelength of the three guys matched – we were ready for anything and enjoying the ride was the main thing for us. We didn’t have any planning except for the start times of the to and fro journeys leading to doing things on-the-fly.

And I totally cracked up at the geeky humor we shared. For example, not many people would laugh at statements like “Q: What do clinic allclear shampoo and KDE4 have in common??? A: both are bad ‘gooey’/gui things!!!”

The stay was comfortable mainly thanks to Shammi’s Rooms and Cottages for being such hospitable people. Maybe its because they opened just a week before we got there and they’re fresh at these things, but it was totally worth being there. I highly recommend them if you ever happen to go to Ooty.

Bottom line: Twitter is “social networking done right”. Because people get to know each other by their thoughts and not their profiles. The fact that three people got together for a road trip and had awesome fun is a testament that twitter (or if you’re from the Web 1.0 days, IRC) as a network works!

Second bottom line: As Ashwin reminded us, if you want to really understand why people like biking, you have to understand why dogs stick their heads out of the car.

This trip was interesting from many perspectives. For one, I had simply no agenda. I landed in a new country with 13 days and no plan whatsoever. I started off by reading some magazine cutouts on the plane. Later, I figured out that the info was all online.

I ended up going up in a hot air balloon to take in the awesome sight of a lit-up Singapore at night, seeing more than a thousand toys at a toys museum, cycling in an island, sleeping in a library, deep in philosophical conversations by the beach, trekking alone for 20 km in a water reservoir area, watching a 12-year old kid strum ‘Hotel California’, have my roots shaken, admire ancient societies, saw an Indian National Army monument, visited the world’s largest fountain, had mouth-watering Indian food at Bombay Express Cafe, grooved to Felix Da Housecat’s mixing skills at the Zouk Club, prayed at the Krishna Temple on the first day of the new year, saw animals like mousedeer, bat-eared fox, sugar glider and east african bongos at the Night Safari, saw remote-controlled kites being flown, and so on.

There were two big things for me in this trip.

One was spending time with my friends Abishek Nair and Ashish Dantu. Thanks a ton guys for being such great hosts, for the conversations, for making me watch Russell Peters at 2 am, for all the fun we had, and for teaching me so many things without ever having to say anything.

The second thing was coming away inspired. Inspired by the pulse of the city, inspired by their belief that “it’s possible.” ‘It’ just needs a vision, a decision and a team to execute. On the other hand, I’m terrified that people are progressing so fast and working towards their dreams and I’m getting left behind.

I had a lot of time to think, inside out. Putting life into perspective. As Einstein once said “The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them.” So, it’s good to step back once in a while and think about the big picture of your life. The challenge is to avoid getting lost again in the daily grind, which is so hard.

In fact, it’s interesting how many people actually go through these step-back-and-breathe phases, it’s just that it is completely hush-hush, and understandably so, it’s a very personal thing.

On the other hand, there’s so much happening out there from things like man-made islands to the King Abdullah Economic City, an entire city being built on the sea!

This trip made me see how the world is changing and how I should change, rather than me just being a ‘frog in the well’ and not knowing what’s really going on ‘out there’.

Travelling is a necessity for me, not a luxury. It’s my way of overcoming implosion. Our ancestors understood this. As an old Kannada saying goes: “desha noDu, kosha vodu” (roughly translates to “Travel the world, Read books”).

So, I ran a couple of times in my Singapore trip, and I liked the route so much that on Day 13 (Thu, Jan 03, 2008), I started taking photos.

I start right from getting out of Abishek and Ashish’s apartment and getting down the stairs.

This is a proper urban area, not outside the city. Don’t be fooled by the greenery.

Was listening to “Heartbeat – Instrumental” from ‘Kal Ho Naa Ho’.

Was listening to “Far Away” by Nickelback.

I love the wide open spaces they have kept for public usage right in the middle of a square area with huge apartments on all sides.

Was listening to “Ninnindale” from Milana (Kannada movie).

It was good to see so many runners around. The best part is that people accept it as normal behavior. And cyclists are given their due respect.

The most startling thing was when I was waiting to cross the road, the vehicles will stop (irrespective of traffic) and ask you to go ahead first. It was actually irritating at first to experience this, but soon got used to it.

Was listening to “Endings” by Dusty Hughes.

Was listening to “One Thing” by Finger Eleven.

What more can a running enthusiast like me ask for?

P.S. If you’re curious on why people run, watch the trailer of the Marathon Movie.

Then, there was this whole one hour dedicated to hearing viewpoints from Veerappa Moily, Swathi Ramanathan and the general public regarding Bangalore’s infrastructure.

Okay, okay, I know most of you by now are saying “Oh, come on, don’t you have anything else to talk about? You’re so boring”. Maybe I am, but when I shift most of my “outside” chores to the middle of the day just to avoid traffic, and hate going out on Sundays because of long queues for everything, it affects me and I’d like to know if the situation can improve or not.

I liked how Swathi Ramanathan explained that the business people have come together to pitch in their part. The way they’ve analyzed the 15 critical junctions leading to the Bangalore International Airport which should have good roads otherwise traffic will bottle up here and will throw us into further crisis, err okay, I’ll stop here.

It reminded me of the Singapore 1:1 Island Exhibition I visited on Day 12 (Jan 02, 2008) of my Singapore trip.

(To be honest, I was a little hesitant to write about this topic, even though this is my space, my blog. The last time I wrote something, people wrote in to say that I’m not Indian enough because I talked negative about our current situation and asked me to go ‘home’ to Singapore or USA!)

You can see many more photos in my Day 12 photo album.

I absolutely loved their Skyline newsletters where they discuss the upcoming developments. Do check out their last Nov/Dec 2007 edition. I can almost guarantee you that you’ll come away inspired, especially the Design Wonders section.

It’s not so much about Singapore that amazed me, it’s the fact that they have such a vision about the place they want to live in, and the effort that goes into planning of such things, the importance given to design and architecture, and finally ensuring proper execution.

And it is a seemingly open process. Visiting the Urban Redevelopment Authority website shows the first sidebar on the left which says “I need info on Master Plan / Land Use Planning / etc.”

Maybe that’s what we need for cities like Bangalore?

It would help if things were more transparent, instead of the government hiding facts like a part of Lalbagh that would be razed for the metro. Or something like what Stefan Magdalinski did with TheyWorkForYou?

CitizenMatters.in seems to be a step in the right direction, but at the end of the day, it’s just competing with the hyperbolic news channels. I think a more useful idea would be a website with a categorical depth of works happening in the different parts of the cities, the government offices involved, what is being done, and so on. But the website is still useful, for example, via an article on ward works came to know about this:

Coalition Against Corruption Guru Ravindranath Tel: 65734444

If you have noticed any governmental apathy in your area, CAC and Guru Ravindranath will guide you in fixing things.

Question is: Would I call Mr. Guru if I do come across something? I have this eternal fear regarding these issues about getting into something that I’ll regret.

It was fun to see people of all ages, from families to large groups of teenagers to avid cyclists all here for the same reason. It reminded me of Cubbon Park on a Sunday evening.

The first thing you see on entering the island is shops on either side to rent out cycles. We went in, took cycles and started pedaling, all in a matter of a few minutes.

Those giant “Thailand coconuts” were simply fulfilling.

Next, we randomly cycled and ended up at Chek Jawa. We read about the sea life conservation efforts that go on here. The highlight was the bungalow, along with the view of the sea.

The above few dark sunset photos are courtesy of Abishek Nair (just to make it clear that the good photos here are not taken by me).

We had become obsessed with the view here and just enjoying the sunset. Finally, we had to push ourselves to explore some more and return back the bikes. We even did some bird-watching (seriously).

I was sad to take a bumboat to get back to the mainland, but I did get to see the planes dive to land in the airport which is right next to the beach.