Travel

Khadakwasla Dam and Sinhgad Fort

Long ago, friends told us that Sinhgad Fort is a nice weekend getaway from Pune, finally, yesterday (Sunday) morning, we took out our getaway car and visited Khadakwasla dam and the beautiful misty land of Sinhgad. It was totally worth it.

[Travel] Hiking around Lake Chabot

Last Sunday, we hiked the 10-mile (15-16 km) Lake Chabot Loop with friends. It was amazing fun because of some new people we met, a beautiful lake and trail and it had been a long time since I had walked so much! (My legs informed me about that the next

[Travel] Monterey Bay

Last Saturday, we were hanging out with A R Karthick who was gracious to take us exploring the Monterey Bay – the three highlights for the day were: Mystery Spot was interesting and the strange phenomenon there could only be explained by some kind of magnetic force, we would literally stand

San Francisco

My wife and I are visiting San Francisco (I am here for the launch of Automatic) and in this past month, I have been experiencing San Francisco and the culture here. Obviously, this is all anecdotal but, hey, that’s what experiences are about. The first thing that I’ve

Delhi By Cycle

I had an interesting morning today cycling around Old Delhi guided by Arkash of Delhi by Cycle tour. Seeing a city by cycle was a great incentive by itself and was fun. But I ended up with a case of the Paris Shock Syndrome because of the state of filth

Taj Mahal

No matter how many times I have heard about Taj Mahal, it’s startling how big it really is. It’s amazing that it is built on top of water wells and special wood because the wet wood makes it resistant to vibrations and hence earthquake-resistant. Of course, Shah Jahan

Flying Fox in Jodhpur

After our previous flying fox / zipline experience, we were looking forward to the 6-zipline Flying Fox experience in the Mehrangarh Fort at Jodhpur and we were not disappointed, it was a picturesque location and the exciting ziplines went over water, fort walls and across the blue city scenery, ranging from

Camel Safari in Thar Desert

We had an interesting camel ride and fantastic night in the Thar Desert, thanks to Trotters, Jaisalmer, Rajasthan.

Doing the Flying-Fox at Vihi-Kasara

I came to know there was a water rappelling event organized by VRangers this weekend via the Mumbai Hikers blog. We booked it and only realized later that it was 220+ km away and we’ll have to be there by 10am. Ouch. We inquired for stays in Igatpuri so

Holiday at The Machan

My wife and myself recently had a great time at The Machan in Lonavala, Maharashtra, India. It’s perfect for nature lovers who want a weekend (or in our case, weekday) getaway and be amidst greenery and silence. It is certainly not the place if you’re looking for “activities

Paragliding in Kamshet

The Sunday before last, we went paragliding in a beautiful place called Pawananagar Dam, near Kamshet in Maharashtra: The idea was to go on “tandem flights” where a qualified instructor will take you as a passenger in one of these parachute gliders: When I experienced my turn, I realized that

Working out of Goa

I finally got to check one particular item out of my bucket list – working out of Goa. This was possible purely because of freelancing which means I can be anywhere as long as I’m getting the work done. When my wife and myself were planning this month-long road trip

Gokarna to Goa by car

Started the day (23-Sep-2011) with a visit to the famous Shiva temple at Gokarna. Good start to my birthday. Today’s journey started off with good roads. Me like. From Gokarna, we headed towards Karwar where we had breakfast, and stopped by the lovely empty Karwar beach: And passed over

Mulki to Gokarna by car

After the mrs. got surfing lessons in Mulki, we left early morning on 22-Sep-2011 from Mulki. Immediately, the roads started getting bad. Every few metres, there were potholes and big ones too. We stopped to have breakfast at Udupi. And after some distance, we suddenly revved into the road next

Surfing in Mulki

We are staying at the Hare Krishna Ashram a.k.a. Ashram Surf Retreat for the past 2 days (20-Sep-2011 to 21-Sep-2011). The wife wanted to learn surfing. It’s amazing how much surfing is picking up in India especially with a lot of surfing, including competitions, happening in Mahabalipuram.

Mysore to Mulki by car

After KTM, the next day (19-Sep-2011) we did a road trip from Mysore to Mulki (SH7 and NH48). We started the day with a visit to the auspicious Ranganath Swamy Temple at Srirangapattana and headed out via Pandavapura → Krishnarajpet → Channarayapattana → Hassan → Sakleshpur. We had lunch at Sakleshpur, which is a

Alleppey and a question on how to travel

Every time I go travelling within India, I have noticed that the foreigners always seem to find the best spots – whether it is hidden beaches in Goa or amazing lake-side guest houses as I noticed in a recent getaway to a houseboat in Alleppey, Kerala. “How do they do that?

Yelagiri Hills

A couple of weeks ago, we went to Yelagiri Hills (in Tamil Nadu) on a one day road trip. 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

Tadiyandamol Again

Eleven of us went trekking to Tadiyandamol. We ended up trekking more than 25 km on day 1, literally walking in the clouds, pitching our own tents, and braving the winds during the night. All in all, a beautiful place, awesome company and a memorable sunrise made it a great

Water Sports in Sharavathy Valley

Last weekend, I was back in Sharavathy Valley in Shimoga, but this time for some water sports. Here’s a photo essay of the trip: When we were reaching our camp area, the entrance itself was impressive, and I was excited by such clear blue water. We had Breakfast and

Mullainagiri, third time lucky as well

This weekend, we climbed Mullainagiri and Bababudanagiri. Even though this is my third visit, it never fails to delight me on its beauty. Mullainagiri and Tadiyandamol are my favorite trekking spots in terms of scenery. In the 3-4 days before the trek, we didn’t spend enough time on the

Trekking in Kodachadri

This weekend, one of my long-pending wishes came true: I finally trekked Kodachadri. 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

Sharavathy Valley Day 2

I thought I would get a damn good sleep in the night because I was so tired. Unfortunately, it was not meant to be. Not with the snorers around. On top of that, it was so cold and I didn’t have a jacket. I kept tossing and turning all

Sharavathy Valley Day 1

For a while now, I was annoyed by the fact that it has been more than a year and a half since my last trek. So when I saw a call for people who want to join a trek in Shimoga in the [Orkut Bangalore Trekkers group](http://www.orkut.

Biking to Ooty

It all started on Monday last week when Lakshman tweeted if anybody was game for a weekend trip.  Ashwin tweeted back saying yes. 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,

It’s the journey lah!

On Day 14 of my Singapore trip (Jan 04, 2008), it was time to head back home. It was a mixed bag for me. On one hand, I felt so liberated experiencing a vacation which seemed overdue. On the other hand, I was rearing to get back to my realities

Dream Running Route

I have this notion that you don’t get to really know a city until you’ve run in it. 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.

Urban Development

Around the recent gastroenteritis scare in Bangalore, NDTV was running a poll: 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,

Pulau Ubin Island

My favorite memories of my Singapore trip is Day 9 (Dec 30 Sun). We went to Pulau Ubin island. What is the only activity on this island? Cycling. It was fun to see people of all ages, from families to large groups of teenagers to avid cyclists all here for

How to defend India?

I’ve been provoked and I can’t stop thinking about it. Incident 1. It all started on Day 2 of my Singapore trip (Dec 23 Sun) when a hotel owner was too friendly. Maybe he didn’t have much work, but anyway, he got pretty chatty with us and

Promenade in Esplanade

On Day 7 (Dec 28, 2007) of the Singapore Trip, I visited the Esplanade – Theatres on the Bay. Esplanade can be compared to a jumbo-sized version of our own Rangashankara but on a much grander scale – while Rangashankara is a place where plays are produced and played (pun intended), Esplanade

How to recognize an American tourist?

True story. On Day 7 of my Singapore trip (Dec 28, 2007), Chinmay and myself were at ‘The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf’ shop. The lady in front of us in the queue said this. When we heard this, both of us looked at each other, with the look that meant

Ancient or Modern Society?

On Day 5 of my Singapore trip (Dec 26 Wed), Abishek and myself visited the Greek Masterpieces from Louvre exhibition at the National Museum of Singapore. This was the largest collection ever to be allowed to be borrowed from the famous Louvre museum in Paris (which you might have heard

Hitting the books

It was Day 2 of my trip (Dec 23 Sun). My plan was to go in the DHL balloon so that I can get a good view of Singapore. When I reached the MRT station, I suddenly got interested in randomly walking around. I really wanted to see the place.

Utopia

I never really could imagine what Utopia could be like, but having stayed in Singapore for more than a week, I can say I don’t need to imagine it, it’s already here. To be frank, it’s spooky, it’s eerie. I think it’s something taken straight

Singapore

The past month, I have been experiencing what I can only describe as a burnout). When I think about it, I have been juggling too many things, but they were not extraordinary tasks, so I wonder why I felt ‘stressed’. Things have been so hectic that I even missed foss.

Biking to Hogenakkal

Aug 10 2007 Fri 6 pm. After missing the last night drive that Azmi and Rishi went to, I wanted to go for a night drive too, and Azmi was happy to oblige. At 10pm, I was at his house. We opened up Google Maps, MapMyIndia and the Weather.com.

Mumbai Family Trip

It was a crazy 4 day trip. Crazy because it was 8 related families going together, that’s a total of 23 people. 23. It should be easy to imagine the cacophony that followed… The highlights of the trip was something like this: sultry mumbai atmosphere, hare krishna mandir, watching

Sights of a little town

I visited my “native place” Holenarsipura after a gap of one year… it felt good to be back in a little town. Better yet, was getting out of the house at 5.30 am to go for a run, get distracted by a huge green field, and then cross the

Brahmagiri

A couple of weekends ago, most of the trekware gang met up for a weekend trek. This time we headed to Brahmagiri. To reach Brahmagiri, take the bus to kuTTa (Madikeri district) but get down in Srimangala. Meet the forest officer (they come in at around 10 am) and it

Anthargange

It seemed the long run on Saturday was not enough, so we took off early on Sunday morning as well, but this time in a car instead of on foot. We headed towards Anthargange. Supposedly, it is a spring (source of water) which explains the name. We were interested because

Trip to the Dark Side

Wanting to do something different, yesterday I made a short dash (if you can call a 12-hour bus journey a ‘dash’…) to Hyderabad to visit an ex-yahoo colleague Kiran as well as a few other friends. And I visited the Microsoft campus :) What’s the first thing I saw? People

Night Drive

A month ago. Saturday evening. Calls at 7.30 pm. 5 friends arrive at 9 pm. We take out the Karnataka map and decide where to go. I suggested that we plan such that we can go to Shivagange for the sunrise and that we should take the shortest route

Tadiyandamol

Some weeks ago, 8 of us yahoos went to Tadiyandamol for trekking. Directions to reach Tadiyandamol : Take the bus from Bangalore to Virajpet. Catch a local bus to Kaikamba, which comes before Kakkabe. From there, you can ask the locals for “raja mane” (King’s house) and you can start

Malaysia Day 4

21st March, 2006, Tuesday It was Day 4 of the Malaysia trip, the last day. So much stuff had happened in the last 3 days, that I actually woke up early, and wrote down everything I wanted to remember in a notebook and wrote for an hour. Then, I went

Malaysia Day 3

(Continuing my tale of Malaysia…) 20th March, 2006, Monday The third day morning, we went to the Batu Caves where the Murugan temple is located. The huge golden colored statue of Lord Murugan was a sight to behold. There were quite a number of visitors for a Monday morning. I

Malaysia Day 2

19th March, 2006, Sunday The second day morning, I got up early but I was not in time for sunrise, I went out for a walk alone anyway, and got to see a lazy Kuala Lumpur waking up. I strolled for about half an hour and went quite a distance,

Malaysia Day 1

Finally, I’m getting around to writing about my Malaysia trip… About six months ago, my cousins and myself had been to Talkad to show the beach to the youngest of the cousins (< 10 years old), and during the journey, I planted the idea of watching a Formula 1 Grand

Truly Formulasia

I had won 2 passes to the Radio City Live concert because I had voted for 2 bands which made it to the RCL concert but too bad, I couldn’t use it myself, because I’m off to Malaysia tonight to watch the Sepang Formula 1 Grand Prix.

Sunrise at Devarayanadurga

![95657707][Small][] ![95658236][Small][] ![95658754][Small][] ![95659236][Small][] ![95659475][Small][] ![95659647][Small][] ![95659705][Small][] ![95659807][Small][] ![95659883][Small][] ![95659994][Small][] ![95660140][Small][] ![95660206][Small][] ![95660266][Small][] ![95660401][Small][] ![95660482][Small][] ![95660645][Small][] ![95661020][Small][] ![95661155][Small][] ![95661314][Small][] ![95662018][Small][]

Physically here…

… but my mind is still there : ![85600405][Medium][]

The Dalhousie Trip

I’m writing this a few days after coming back to Bangalore, because I had to get over my holiday hangover. It seems unfair to gain so much, make so many new friends and have so much fun, and suddenly let it go, and that too, back to the daily

Off to Himalayas

I’m finally getting a vacation, so I’m off to trek in the foothills of the Himalayas. Incidentally, my new year celebration will be trekking 10 km in the snow, from Khajjar to Mangla.

Hebbe Falls Trek

![72745385][Thumbnail][] ![72745605][Thumbnail][] ![72745691][Thumbnail][] ![72746989][Thumbnail][] ![72747478][Thumbnail][] ![72749002][Thumbnail][] ![72751030][Thumbnail][] ![72752430][Thumbnail][] ![72752932][Thumbnail][] ![72753014][Thumbnail][] ![72753167][Thumbnail][] ![72753251][Thumbnail][] ![72753752][Thumbnail][] From riding on the roof of the jeep, to walking 10 km, to diving in freezin’ cold water, to feasting our eyes to lush

Thrissur again

I was invited back to Thrissur to present a talk to engineering students. Since I didn’t want to give the same ol’ introductory Python talk at the same place, I decided to talk about TurboGears, since that’s been pretty much the only new thing I’ve had time

Getting off the chair

Over 300 close family and friends in your home on one day + followed by Ramanagaram trek on Saturday + Savandurga trek on Sunday => me happy Ramanagaram ![44640711][small][] ![44640924][small][] ![44643060][small][] ![44645132][small][] ![44656573][small][] ![44660547][small][] ![44662949][small][] ![44663124][small][] Savandurga ![44626245][small][] ![44627195][small][] ![44627312][small][] ![44628839][small]

Faith and Life

Last weekend, I had been on a pilgrimage with my family to Rameswaram. I have heard that Rameswaram is supposedly the biggest temple in India, although I haven’t been able to confirm that. The highlight of the pilgrimage was that we had to take bath in, or rather poured

Mysore Moments

Two weeks ago (Apr 9-10), I had been to Mysore with family.. I was going through the pictures and many of them have come out really well. I just had to note some of the memorable moments: ![9387789][Small][photo] ![9387930][Small][photo] ![9388108][Small][photo] ![9388370][Small][photo] ![9388476]

Journey to Trichur

I am giving a talk on Python tomorrow at the  Renaissance 2005 festival at Government Engineering College, Trichur, Kerala, India. Renaissance 2005 is a festival about Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) – they have many talks, seminars and competitions planned for the 3 days. As they say in their website:

Trek at Thusharagiri

After Saturday’s long Python talk, we returned to the guest house in the evening and I simply crashed on the bed and had a great sleep. On Sunday morning, I was woken up by Dilip saying ‘Hey, its 9 am. We have to go trekking!’. In an hour, we

Blogging from Calicut!

I’m blogging from a Ubuntu Linux desktop in the awesome 24-hours Computer science lab in NIT, Calicut. This place is so big! Coming back to the event that we had come for – the FLOSS Meet @ NIT Calicut, it was very successful and we had a great time today. Actually,

Talk at FLOSS Meet tomorrow

There is a FLOSS Meet tomorrow at NIT Calicut, Kerala and I will be giving talk on Python along with Pradeep. The organizers informed me that around 100-150 students are expected. Also, apparently, today’s edition of  the New Indian Express features news about the event as well :) Other speakers

Python workshop at NIT Calicut

I’ve been invited to conduct a workshop on Python at NIT (formerly REC), Calicut, Kerala. It’ll be most probably on 29th of this month (date to be yet confirmed). I’m glad to tell you that Pradeep will be joining me – we’ll be conducting an on-hands session

Biking to Green Valley

Update: Photos are now in Flickr. Yesterday night, me and my ol’ PESIT gang decided to go for a biking trip today to GreenValley. The decision all happened quickly and we just decided to go there, not knowing what we were actually going to see there. Green Valley is about

Parties should be like this….

I got back on Saturday night from the Yahoo Year End Party and it was just way 2 cool… :) We had left from our office on Thursday night in 4 buses… about 120 people in total I guess … Having worked all night on the day before on this new blog

Yahoo YEP

We, the Yahoos, are leaving for MGM Beach Resort in Chennai tonight to celebrate our Year End Party tomorrow! Lot of things to look forward to – games, beach, skits, music, cocktails, disco, antakshari in the bus, lots of fun!! I’ll be back on Saturday night with lots to update

Mullainagiri photos

Check out the snaps of my latest trip – trekking at Mullainagiri – the highest point in Karnataka!! I’ll add a writeup of it soon… I’ve been unable to update my blog much nowadays… but I am thinking of shifting my website to one of the popular open source CMSes

Sunday == Funday!

Yesterday was such a blast with all my friends! 8 of us travelling on 4 bikes leaving at 4.30 am to travel more than 110 km (one-way, total of 220 km for the day) to go see a mango grove!! We were woken up by each other through sms’

The Adventure of Shivanasamudram!

My friends and myself went on another rockin’ trip this Sunday!! This time it was a planned one ;-) (see Nandi Hills photos if you didn’t get that one) We, five guys – Azmi, Gaurav, Subhojit, Sudheer and Swaroop, had the most amazing fun – we did rock climbing and trekking