Rantlog
August-trek, Part I: Trek to Nandikund-Ghiyavinayak Pass, via Kachni Khal, Madhyamaheshwar [Failure]
The Himalayan Beckoning
For months, my brother and I had been planning a Himalayan outing. It would be his first and my first in a while. Life had been unreasonably hectic, especially over the 2 preceding months. The trek was to be the vent for all my stack piles of frustration and fatigue in work-life.
A summary of travels in Gujarat: Mar 2010
March was especially travel-hectic. The primary motivation was that of work and involving quite a bit of alternating between Delhi and Mumbai.
A week in Dilli and things had cooled down (albeit for the weather, for my spoilt BengaLuru-body) to the extent that my presence would no longer be homicidally conspicuous. On this uneventful Holi weekend (Uneventful for me. Some snake-dance godman called IcchAdhAri bAbA was making hilariously entertaining news in the local channels for apparently running a prostitution racket right next door in Saket), I decided to "abscond" for a few to visit to my brother and his family in Ahmedabad, Gujarat. Unlike previous visits, I had concrete motivations to do some travelling this time around.
Report: ASE2010
Pre: Madurai - Day I
After the Epic failure that TSE 2009 turned out to be last year, The Annular Eclipse of January 15th 2010 remained the sole hope of seeing a central eclipse anytime soon. Although it wasn't anywhere close to as exciting as a Total, It certainly did live up to my expectation.
Preparation for the ASE began pretty late. The announcement on The BAS Website took quite some time to get up. After some dilemma on whether to organize things formally (or not), We decided against it. This would be a smart decision since Rameshwaram (the destination a majority of us picked on) was indeed very crowded and managing a crowd would have been the last thing we would've wanted on our hands.
Final plans took shape pretty late. Naveen made a last minute change in his plans to hit Kanyakumari instead. Amar also preferred to stay off Rameshwaram and chose to go to Nagarkoil instead.
Ombattu guDDa: Part (1) so far.
kArya-kAraNa (Cause and Reason)
Owing to a frustrating lack of Adrenalin over the months, My brother (hereinafter referred to as 'Guru'), Rakesh (alternatively referred to as Raknath) and Nikhil (Pai, for short) decided to venture out into Ombattu guDDa on the second weekend of November.
Pre-trek Casualties
2 individuals opted out at the last minute (ah, the flexibility). One of them made it to the KSRTC bus stand to provide us moral support. Unfortunately, he was the only one in the group who had been to OG before. His prophetic vision still rings in my brain: "Most people find their way till dEvara haLLa. But there are people who lose it before that".
But coming back to the KSRTC bus stand, it's only after we made it here did we realized that Pai had messed up. He managed to bring all paraphernalia but for the GPS (loaned generously by DMK). It took some complaining before he and Rakesh decided to go back home and fetch it. For all the fuss this took, it would be the smartest thing we did over the next couple of days.
On truth, art and propaganda
This comes in the wake of Mallika Sarabhai's 'Dance to change the world' performance(?) at TED India, Mysore.
I find the plot (a curious perversion of the ahalya-gautama episode), the characters and the message conveyed to be assumptive, offending, incoherent and obnoxious.
Two very obvious things:
ಪರಿಚಯ
ಸ್ವ್ನಾನ್ವೇಷನೆಯ ಪಯಣ ಸಾಕಷ್ಟು ದೂರ ಸಾಗಬೇಕಿದೆ. ಸ್ವಪ್ರಶಂಸಾಪೂರಿತ ಪರಿಚಯ ಓದಲು ಕುತೂಹಲವಿದ್ದಲ್ಲಿ ಪರಿಚಯ ಪುಟ ನೋಡಿ.
