We reached Delhi on November 19th, from where we were to catch our Volvo bus to Manali. As we waited for our bus to arrive, Archana was excited by all the pot-smoking, pony-tailed hippies, also waiting for the bus and tried to flirt with them, who hardly batted an eyelid at her. By the time the bus arrived, we were beginning to shiver in the cold Delhi-night. At midnight, the bus halted at a hi-fi looking restaurant. Being on a tight budget, since organizing our trek had already cost us a bomb, we decided to ditch the restaurant and head for the shady looking punjabi dhaba nearby where we had our stomach’s fill of parantha and dahi, with truck drivers for company. The next morning, we were greeted by the beautiful sight of snow-capped mountains all around and our bus going through the narrow winding road. We could see deep valley on one side with Beas river flowing deep down in the valley.

First sight of snow

We arrived at Manali to be greeted by a horde of taxi drivers wanting to take us on ‘sight-seeing’. After successfully evading all of them, we drank piping hot tea, which was perfect to get some heat into our bodies, we checked-in to a cozy-looking lodge. We spent the day roaming around Manali, shopping for woolen stuff, eating tasty junk food, visiting Hidimbadevi Temple, hiking up to Kaushal’s home (which is a couple of kilometers from Manali) and clicking a lot of pictures. At Kaushal’s home we were greeted enthusiastically by Maggi (a Bhutia dog) and Bikki (a cross between a fox and a dog). Later we came to know that the reason we got such an excited welcome was because both the dogs were in ‘heat’ The view from Kaushal’s balcony was amazing. Imagine waking up to such a scene everyday! We settled down in his warm room with another round of chai and listened to his stories of past treks. Finally, after making plans for the next day, the first day of our trek, we headed back to the lodge.

View from Kaushal's Balcomy

We got dropped off at Telang near Kullu the next morning. This was the starting point of our trek. We were introduced to Rinku-ji (who would later turn out to be an amazing cook and spoil us all with his culinary skills), Happy-ji, Ratan, and a couple of other helpers who would be accompanying us for the trek and the half-dozen mules which would be carrying all our camping equipment, stoves, backpacks etc. The first day’s destination was a place called Dak Bungalow, which was a short 5km trek from the starting point. We camped on the slopes for the evening. We enjoyed a nice camp fire since it was a chilly night, ate an amazing 3-course meal (which would be a norm during the entire trek!) and retired into our respective tents and sleeping bags early.

Day one campsite - Dak Bungalow

Looking down into the valley of Jhingbhan

The next day, we continued trekking along the same hill to reach the top of this hill in about 3 hours. This was going to be the topmost point in our trek, where we saw what little remained from the previous year’s snowfall. The view on the other side of the peak was breathtaking. After enjoying this scenery for a long time, we started to descend on the other side to reach Jhingbhan, which was going to be our camping site on day two. Night comes early in the mountains, it was pitch dark by 6PM. Post dinner, after warming our hands and backsides by the campfire for a while, all of us laid siege to the girls’ tent where we sat listening to entertaining stories by Varun, which had us in splits the whole time and apparently the girls were screeching so loudly that the next day Rinku-ji complained to us that he could hardly sleep with all that racket.

The next few days of the trek took us through Dentbhial (day three), Mulling (day four), Barot (day five). The campsite at Dentbhial was probably the most scenic, add to the fact that we reached here after a tough 70degree-inclined climb most part of the way. Dentbhial comes very close to the imagination of Switzerland that I have in my mind. At Mulling campsite we could see a small settlement a little distance from our camp. We hiked up to this place in the evening to talk to the locals. People here were shy at first but opened up later and talked to us for a long time. Although it was hard for us to catch their Pahadi-Hindi, Sneha and Archana did a good job ‘interviewing’ them.

The route from Barot through Mute (not sure about the spelling!) and Rulling was very very beautiful. We came across small settlements and it was interesting to interact with local people on our way. One particular old man, who was eating his lunch offered ‘Rotti khaiylo’ in a very sweet way, which really touched us. We kept recalling this moment throughout the trip. That night we camped at a place between Rulling and Rajgunda deep inside a valley.

A village school enroute Rulling

We were in anticipation of the next day for a long time. It had finally arrived. We would be trekking to Billing, where we would be trying our hands at tandem Paragliding. The route to Billing was again, extremely beautiful, walking all along the mountain ridge to reach there. When we reached there, we were introduced to our respective pilots who would be flying with us. We would be jumping off at Billing and landing at Bir. It was an exhilarating experience, jumping off with nothing but a parachute was enough to give me an adrenaline rush. We landed at Bir, shaky but all in one piece.

Billing - Paragliding take off site

Off we go!

Our trek officially ended at Bir. We bid goodbyes to Kaushal, Rinku-ji and others. We spent the day roaming around the lazy town of Bir. We still had a couple of days to spare before returning to Delhi. So the next day, we decided to visit a small remote village close-by. After a lot of inquiring and browsing-the-net, we decided to go to this village called Thathi, which required a hard one hour trek up into the mountains. We realized that our legs were not obeying our orders loyally anymore. This village was a really interesting experience. We first chatted up with an old lady in her eighties who told us stories about her sons, grandsons and great-grandsons! Then we roamed about the village and observed all the ladies preparing for a festival of some kind. When we decided to leave, a big bunch of kids followed us. When we asked them to sing songs for us, though shy at first, they entertained us for a good half hour with their songs and then performed some kind of a dance which lasted more than half an hour!

The cozy village Thathi

Eighty year old lady complaining that her grandson doesn't work in the fields but goes to the city instead!

Shy kids

We came back to Bir for the night and travelled to Dharamsala next day from where we would be boarding our bus to Delhi. The girls had a field day at McLeodganj shopping for ‘precious stones’. We killed a day in Delhi with some more shopping and then watching a movie. Finally back to Bangalore with the heavy feeling that comes along with the end of vacation every time. I had a great trip with an entertaining bunch of people. Cheers!

Some of the snakes that we handled during the camp:
Colubrids: This is family of snakes which comprises of most non-venomous snakes like rat-snakes, corn-snakes, wolf-snakes etc. Or, so we thought that these were non-venomous. A recent study has shown that these snakes are in fact as venomous as a cobra or a viper. Its just that the fangs of say, a rat-snake is situated so far behind in its mouth that a normal bite would not be sufficient to inject venom. These are more useful when the snake has got a firm grip on the prey in its mouth, to envenomate the victim .

• Wolf-snake: A very small snake which can fit into the palm of your hand. Has a flat head and bands starting right from its neck going all the way down to the tip of its tail. It is often mistaken for a common krait, which is highly venomous. But kraits have paired bands which doesn’t start right from the neck. These are expert climbers.
• Rat-snake: A very common snake which has a distinctive zebra-shaped pattern below its mouth. It is usually confused for a cobra because of its size and colour, but it neither has a hood, nor the spectacled mark which the cobra has. Initially it thrashed around when we held it in our hands, but after a bit of gentle handling it calmed down.
• Bronze-back tree snake: This is a hyper-active arboreal snake. It disappeared from sight in a flash when we released him!

• Banded racer: Another very active snake, but it is not as quick as the bronze-back. Adults lose their bands.

After this, it was time for some real snakes!
Elapids: It includes venomous snakes like King Cobra, Spectacled Cobra, Monocled Cobra etc, which are mostly oviparous. They have short fangs situated on their upper jaw and these gangs are grooved, through which the venom (neurotoxic) flows. The amount of venom injected is controlled by a muscle and most of the time, when a cobra is trying to defend itself, it does not inject venom because producing venom takes up a LOT of the snake’s energy.

• Spectacled Cobra: This was by far the most awe-inspiring snake that we experienced in the camp. This snake is a part of the Big4- 4 medicinally important snakes of India which also includes Russel’s Viper, Saw-scaled Viper and the Common Krait. The Big4 is known to cause the most number of deaths due to snake bites in India and the only cure to their bite is the polyvalent anti-venom, which has anti-bodies for venom of all 4 snakes. The Spectacled Cobra is a short snake. It usually makes a coil from its body and raises a spectacular hood when threatened. It has loads of attitude and looks you right in the eye! And, it strikes with lightening speed at anything which is within striking distance. In other words, it can make you piss your pants. New respect. We were given a long hook to handle the cobra. We had to gently prise away its tail from its body and hold its tail, while using the hook to balance the hood with the other hand, and staying out of reach at all times. This exercise was meant to teach us to remove a cobra to a safe place in case we encounter such a situation. We had many attempts at this and by the end we got a hang of how it is to be done, although I am no way confident of handling it alone.
• Kraits: These are nocturnal snakes, which are cannibalistic in nature and their venom is highly toxic, possessing neurotoxic (affects the CNS) venom. We had a Common Krait at the camp but we did not handle it, as it was considered too dangerous for us.

Vipers: These are highly venomous snakes with huge fangs which can inject much more venom than a cobra, whose venom is hematoxic (attacks RBC) and cytotoxic (destroys the cells). They have hollow fangs which is filled with venom before striking. It is divided into Pit Vipers and True Vipers. Pit Vipers have a pit between their nostril and eye on either sides of their head, which help in sensing heat. Malabar Pit Viper is a very common snake of this species, whereas Russel’s Viper is a True Viper. We had a Russel’s Viper at the camp, but it was considered too dangerous to let us handle it simply because they are much more faster than a cobra and you need superior reflexes to be able to handle them.

We learnt how to identify the species of a particular snake. This was done by observing the scalation of the snake, especially on its head, tail, dorsal and ventral sides. Each species has a specific arrangement of scales which is unique to that species. Also we learnt how to ‘sex’ a snake – identifying the gender. We had to insert a steel probe into the cloaca (anal opening) of the snake, depending on how deep the probe travels inside we could decide the sex of the snake. In case of a male, it has well developed hemipenes (reproductory organ) and hence the probe would travel deeper inside, while in case of a female it is underdeveloped and the probe would not travel as deep.

Apart from all this, the camp was also a very nice opportunity to indulge in a bit of ornithology, as it was situated right next to a beautiful lake. I have practically zero knowledge about birds, but spending time with Soham, Chaitanya and Sharada was very educative as they could identify almost every bird which flew in to the lake. It was fun, observing birds through binoculars and comparing them with the ‘Book of Indian Birds’ which we had with us. We also had a drive-through visit to Nagarhole and were pretty lucky to spot a lone Tusker, a mongoose, a wild boar, a lot of malabar squirrels and many more birds.

A few more pictures from the camp can be seen here and here

Bhadra is divided into 4 ranges – Muthodi, Thanigebylu, Hebbe and Lakkavalli. We were 4 in number – Prashanth, Ananth, Varun and myself. We reached Muthodi Forest Office on 14th morning for an orientation program. We were to be joined by Ajith, Prashanth and Rajni later that evening. We had a good session by Deputy Conservator of Forest, Vijay Mohanraj. He spoke well about what to do and more importantly what not to do in the forest, in the presence of wild animals. He explained how the census was to be carried out. The elephant census was to be divided into 3 parts:

• Counting by direct sight – we note down direct sightings of elephants, simple as that.
• Line transect dung count – there would be a previously identified elephant-activity-line. We note down the perpendicular distance of any elephant dung from this line. This would be used to calculate elephant dung decay using some crazy formula to arrive at a number for the elephant density in that area.
• Water hole count – we sit at a water hole from 6AM to 6PM and note down the number of elephant sightings.

We were assigned to the Lakkavalli range and we would be staying at an anti-poaching camp at Jenu-Halla (translates to honey-pit).  Jenu-Halla camp is deep within the reserve forest, at least 20 km from any regular human habitation, The anti-poaching camp was covered by dense deciduous forest on three sides and the backwaters of Bhadra river on one side. The view of Bhadra backwaters from the camp was spectacular. The travel to this camp from Lakkavalli in the jeep is worth mentioning here. Due to heavy winds and rains over the last week, thousands of trees had been uprooted in the forest. A good number of them were strewn across the jeep track at many places. But the forest guards sawed them off patiently and cleared the trail without complaining. Ajith asked one of them ‘We software engineers don’t work after 5PM, how is it that you are sawing off trees at 1AM in the night?’ to which the prompt reply was ‘You work for personal treasure, while we work for national treasure!’. Wow!

Day 1

I set out with 2 forest guards for the ‘counting by direct sighting’ method. It was a hard and an extremely tiring day with hardly any luck. The terrain was tough and the foliage was very dense. We had to hack through it and i was completely covered with scratches and bruises. Once we were walking around a small hill, we suddenly heard a lot of bamboo-breaking noise. We immediately climbed the hill and waited silently.  We saw the head and the tusks of what would have been a huge tusker. We were scared and thrilled at the same time. I think he sensed us too and stood completely still for a few minutes and then moved away from us. It is a totally new experience encountering an elephant on foot. It is the most feared animal in the forest by the forest guards. I developed new respect for this magnificent beast. We came back to the camp in the evening, tired and slightly disappointed. I jumped into the water and lay there lazily and the water seemed to soothe my aching muscles.

Day 2

We woke up to some heavy rain and thunder. We set out to do the ‘counting by line transect dung count’ method in very wet conditions. It was an extremely boring job and we did not have any animal sighting on this day, although we got news from a neighboring camp that they saw a king cobra attack and kill a monitor lizard! Wow, that must have been some sight. Also we heard that Rajni and Prashanth spotted a Russel’s Viper, a Python and a Sloth Bear and Varun, a Black Viper. We were transferred to the Sukhal-Hatti Inspection Bungalow. That night we had a ride in the jeep, hoping to spot some animals. We saw a herd of shy Gaurs, which had 2 huge bull males, a dozen females and a few calves.

Day 3

This was by far the most exciting day of our trip. We were driven in a jeep to Mavina-Halla Cove and from there we took a ferry. The forest guards in the ferry had powerful binoculars and we could see some amazing sights on the distant shores. One sight which stuck to my memory was, a herd of 100-odd deer running and a dancing peacock in the foreground with all his feathers spread, as though showing off to the deer. We also saw a herd of wild boars through the binoculars. Varun and myself, along with the forest guard Malleshi were dropped off at Hosalli Cove. This was a beautiful place with savanna-like grassland extending upto 1km from the water and dense forest from there on. We settled ourselves at the edge of the forest, facing the water, waiting expectantly for the elephants to arrive.

Soon, we heard a small noise from a distance and we were greeted by the sight of a fully grown male tusker! He happily shook his trunk and slowly walked from the forest cover towards the water. We drank in this sight for nearly an hour and clicked away with the cameras.It was an out of the world experience. He walked away after a while and then we spent the whole afternoon without any luck and soon i fell asleep. I woke up to find that both Varun and Malleshi were nowhere in sight. I decided to refill my water bottle and walked towards the water. In the far distance I spotted a herd of Gaur. Wanting to get closer to take a few good pictures, I started walking towards the herd. Then I saw Varun and Malleshi walking towards me gesticulating excitedly. All i could make out was ‘elephants’. So I dragged them back in the direction which they came from. I was met with the most wonderful sight – a full family of around 25-30 elephants! At a distance of less than 100 meters from us. We enjoyed this beautiful sight till the family moved away.
We started walking back, when we heard a rustle of bushes very close by. Malleshi guessed it might be some deer and we walked on. Suddenly, a huge elephant head with tusks and everything popped out. We turned and ran for our lives! The tusker, on seeing us, hurried back into the bushes. We had almost collided with him in our excitement of having seen a whole family of elephants! We then made our way towards the ferry, which had arrived by then to pick us up. We were dropped off at Lakkavalli Inspection Bungalow, where we had a nice get together of the volunteers from various camps followed by a sumptuous dinner.

It was an amazing trip, the highlights being, a forest which is absolutely untouched by commercialization, great forest staff whose dedication is touching and the magnificent animals we managed to see.

Initially we had to walk through the fields for a short distance till we hit the base of the hillock. Once the ascent starts, the climb is pretty steep – almost at an angle of 45 degrees. I found myself tiring easily, having not done a trek for more than 3 months. The midday sun did not help at all as it beat down upon us relentlessly. We were completely dehydrated. Thanks to the surplus supply of water and oranges we carried, we survived. We made it to the top in about 2 hours. The view from the top was breathtaking. At the top, there was a small temple, a couple of huts and a pond of ice-cool water. On talking to one of the hut-dwellers at the top, we came to know that people grew ragi and domesticated goats, cows and buffalo for a living here. He suggested that we should do this trek again such that we reach the top by evening and plan to spend the night there. He also told us that they were frequently visited by pachyderms from the neighbouring thickly forested regions during the rainy season. We decided that we were definitely coming back here at a better time. We relaxed under the cool shade of a huge rock till the sun went down and then trekked our way back to the base village.

All in all, it was a good trek but a reality check for me to get my fitness standards up. We rounded off the day with Anki’s treat at Samarkhand. We filled our bellies to the brim and relaxed our tired legs. A saturday well spent.

A few pictures taken during the trek.

Varun, Uttaran and Ayushman (Uttaran’s bro) started towards Gundya near Shiradi on Dec 25th morning. Sharath and myself would meet them at Gundya forest checkpost the next day. The 3 of them visited Belur and Halebidu temples enroute and reached the forest Inspection Bungalow at Gundya. After a bumpy overnight ride in the bus, Sharath and myself joined them early next morning. Soon the guide also joined us and we were ready to start the trek. We were disappointed since the highly anticipated neerdose was not available for breakfast.

We had to ride in an auto for 8kms to get to the starting point of our climb. We got off the road and were immediately met with dense forest. Thankfully there was no rain in the past few days and hence no leeches to trouble us. Some of us were carrying heavy baggages and found the steep ascent pretty exhausting. After a tough half hour climb, we emerged out of the forest into a grassland. Although this was not very steep, the going was still tough as the sun beat down upon us relentlessly. We had alternate patches of grassland and forest every half an hour.
By midday, we had exhausted all our water resources and turned to oranges which we had brought in generous supply. We soon reached a patch of clearing where we were to have lunch. We gobbled up all the mtr ready-to-eat stuff which we had brought. The guide disappeared for a while with all our bottles and then miraculously appeared with fresh river water. We resumed our climb and within an hour reached the spot where we would be spending our night. It was on top of a grassy hill with a small patch of trees. We were thankful for the shade and settled down among the trees. There was also a peaceful stream of water flowing nearby. All in all, we felt in perfect harmony with nature and slowly we nodded off to sleep.

Evening. The guide promised us a good view of sunset and we set off to the spot which was a little distance away. While we waited for the sunset, we had a royal chit-chat, on topics ranging from geeky tech stuff to music, movies and what not! We could even spot the Sakleshpur – Subrahmanya railway line at a distance, and the scenery was picture perfect. The sun suddenly decided he’d had enough of our jabber and hid behind a cloud, refusing to come out. We were disappointed to have missed what would have been a really good sunset. We returned to our campsite and settled down. The guide prepared hot tomato soup and upma and we had a really heavy dinner.

Now for the fun part. Prior to starting from Bangalore, the guide had confidently told us that it hadn’t rained at Shiradi for months and we would be perfectly fine without a tent. So we had come all this way with absolutely nothing to shelter us in case of rain. The guide prepared a bed for all of us by cutting some wild plants growing on the hill, and we made ourselves comfortable on our makeshift bed out in the open, since there would be all kinds of insects and frogs within the patch of trees. We lay down around the fire which he prepared for us. Suddenly we were completely enveloped in a thick blanket of mist and we could hardly see a couple of feet ahead. The guide got up with a torch and said he heard/saw a wild animal in the misty distance. We were slightly freaked out at first, but after a frantic search for ten minutes, didn’t spot any animal. At this point there were a few drops of rain in the air, but we just stayed put, ignoring it. But soon we were running for the tree cover, as it started to pour madly. After drenching completely for half an hour, we got a slight respite from the rain, and we headed back into the open space to revive the fire and get some warmth into our body. But soon enough, we were hit by another wave of heavy rain. This continued all night and the guide had to bring all his experience into play to keep the fire going. We practically spent the whole night shivering around the fire with rain beating down on us mercilessly. We had never felt so helplessly shelterless before! So we decided to just ignore our condition and continue our evening chat on music. We discussed all kinds of bands starting from the 50s, with varun giving us all rock n roll history lesson

Finally, at 6 we decided to pack our stuff and start the descent. We actually had a further 2 hour climb to reach the top of Aramane Gudde, but decided against that after our night’s ordeal. It was still raining as we started our descent in treacherous conditions. The visibility was almost zero due to the thick blanket of mist all around us and we just had 2 torches. We made our way down very slowly, careful not to step on any loose stones, as one slip would lead to a fatal fall into the deep ravine on one side. We were totally oblivious of our wet clothes and wet baggage. After 3 hours of walking downhill, we reached the point on the highway where the trail started. We flagged down an oil tanker and had a nice ride back to the Gundya checkpost in it. We had a pleasant drive to Bangalore, partly in rain. All in all, it was quite an adventure i would say.

But it is also exciting. Gets me back to my hostel days when me, Sodi and Saio used to play hours on end. And the way me and Karteek used to play mind-chess – no board no pawns, just go on playing as long as our not-so-great memory would hold. We used to do this as we had countless number of hours of power cuts to kill.

So, yeah, getting back to the topic, anybody genuinely interested in playing during the weekends, reply to this post. Hopefully the group will grow by the word of mouth.

I can categorize the vacation into two phases.
Phase1 – A normal, easy trek organized by Youth Hostel Assosiation, India around the Dalhousie base camp.
Phase2 – Insane!

Varun, Uttaran, Ozzy and myself boarded the Delhi train on the 21st. The journey from B’lore to Delhi was pretty uneventful. We played cards and chit-chatted a lot to pass the time. We also had an elderly couple for company and they taught me a few nice card games. Also a lot of interesting stories came out, particularly from Varun
Reached Delhi. Cheezo joined us from Pune here. We had a whole day to kill, before our connecting train to Pathankot. So, we just roamed around Delhi like zombies and had a major foodie day, tasting all kinds of stuff. Sadly, our local boy Uttaran did not find his bearings right and he dint take me to the much promised ‘Parathe wale gully’ in Delhi, although the non veggies had a field day hogging at the Karim’s :-/ (they cooked for the Mughal Emperors).

Took the night train to Pathankot (don’t miss the awesome yogurt and aloo paratha here) and took the morning bus to Dalhousie. Dalhousie is a clean, cozy little town with amazing scenic beauty. The Youth Hostel base camp is very close to the bus stop. The most impressive thing about YH is that they are extremely well organized and keep time. You also get excellent 3 course meals, generously served. And piping hot tea.

We were joined by Cheezo’s friends Hemanth, Arvind and Mini at Dalhousie. The trek spanned over a period of 4 days, beginning with acclimatization on day1, when we had to get up at 5am and stretch our lazy bones with streneous exercises! Day2 was our trek to Kalatop. It was more of a hike than a trek. But, the surroundings were heavenly. Kalatop was the highest point that we reached during the trek.

Next stop was Khajjiar. This is called the Switzerland of India. It truly is an amazing place. Supposedly an asteroid has struck this spot in the forest and so we have a huge bowl kind of a region with a crater at the center, filled with water and absolutely no vegetation in this bowl except lush green grass.

The next day was our hike to Chamba Valley. The route from Khajjiar to Chamba is a photographer’s paradise. Uttaran and myself, being photography enthusiasts tried to exploit our cameras to get the best out of this place. But the beauty of this place simply cannot be captured by a camera. Nevertheless, you can check out some of the pics I took here. We reached Chamba, and roamed around this moderately big city. The next day we were transported back to Dalhousie Base and we say bye-bye to Cheezo and his friends. End of phase1.

We decided this trek hasn’t excited us enough and we wanted some real action! So after a lot of running around enquiring at the Himachal Tourism dept and some research on the internet, we decided to go to this tiny village called Coogti. The reason why this decision was unanimous was….bears! The guy at the internet parlour had been to Coogti village the previous year and he had taken some gorgeous pics of huge brown bears! We had a rush of adrenaline and decided we had to do this, despite warnings that the road to this place might be totally blocked because of snowfall. So we take a bus to Bharmaur, which is a mountain village enroute Coogti. The road to Bharmaur is very very scary! Trust me you don’t want to be driving here. Narrow road, deep deep ravine on one side and huge rocky mountain on the other side. Quite treacherous. Bharmaur is the last bus stop and there are no buses to Coogti, which is still 30 kms from here. So we convince a jeep guy to take us till Dhalaul where the jeep track also ends. We are still 6 kms from Coogti. Now we are in bear territory. So we start walking, trying to make as good a progress as our heavy backpacks would allow before darkness envelopes. I must say, this is one of the best sceneries I have ever seen. Absolutely untouched by any kind of commercialization and so pure and its all nature.

We finally reach Coogti after a hard 3 hour trek uphill, and the very kind forest guard let us stay in his house, gave us hot rotis and a cozy room to stay. We were extremely thankful to him. I’m sure we’d have frozen to death otherwise! Sadly, we were told that this is the time when bears hibernate and so we wouldn’t be able to spot any. We thought nevermind, this place is so awesome and totally worth all our efforts. Next day afternoon we left this place and started our trek back, and after a roller-coaster-ish bus ride, we reached Chamba. This was the 31st night. We caught a bus to Amritsar at 11pm and spent the beginning of the new year in a rickety old Himachal State Transport bus, shivering in cold! Spent the new year at Amritsar visiting Golden Temple, Jallianwallahbagh and Wagah Border, and returned to Delhi the next day. We had a full day to kill before our Rajdhani at 9pm. We were supposed to meet Prerna at Noida, but we ditched her and watched Madagascar2 instead.

This was one of my best vacations – thanks to Varun, Ozzy, Uttaran and Cheezo!

So, off go mom and sis for their shopping while I settle myself at Nagasri Book House. Ever since Priya recommended this place to me I’ve been a regular here. This is a cute, small bookstore adjacent to the now non-existant Puttanna theatre. Looks could be deceptive. This place has every title that u can think of. Be it an Indian/Non-Indian author, Fiction/Non-Fiction/Classic so on. Its an excellent place and if by any remote possibility the title you are looking for isn’t there, the really helpful storekeeper promises to get it soon. So, I hunt around looking for nothing in particular. I decided to buy this one called ‘The Peacock Throne’ by Sujit Saraf. According to the preview, this is a fast moving story set in Delhi, which brings out the chaos and violence of Indian urban life. Interesting enough. I pay the bill and wait for mom at the corner of 4th block complex. I see 2 guys in their early 20s trying to make their living by selling some cheap leather purses and stuff. Yes, agreed, they had illegally spread out their stuff on the footpath. This doesn’t mean that the traffic police have to drive right over those stuff that these poor guys have spread out! The cop parks his bike at a distance, comes back and gathers as many purses in his hands as possible and walks off. Wtf!? I was really shocked by this. How can he get away with stuff like that? Moreover, doesn’t he even feel anything about what he did just then? Those poor guys just looked on helplessly.

Hmm…

One. I had my first commit into the linux kernel! Although it was just a minor debug fix, it feels great. This was one of the to-dos listed as a part of FOSS.in kernel workout. The workout was very well organized and we had a lot of kernel experts around to help us. It was good fun. Anyway, yay to my first patch!
Linux kernel community is a tough place to be in. I realised this after getting totally battered by the community the first time i sent my patches. There were a few styling issues in my code and my code was ripped apart and thrown unceremoniously back at me. Collegues told me that such things are a commonplace once u enter the linux kernel world, and so not to worry too much. Anyway, things could only get better after this right?

Two. I bought a guitar
I have been learning the art of playing guitar for the past 2 months, and immensely enjoying the experience. It is a perfect breath of fresh air from my regular work-home routine. So, finally yesterday i decided that i needed a guitar of my own to get better at it. I was recommended Aruna Musicals in Basavanagudi by my friend. I found this place and the folks in the shop extremely helpful. Finally, the guy gave me a big smile and wished me all the best with the guitar. Nice!

That rounded off a very pleasant day.