Bangalore Photowalk 4.0

The fourth Bangalore photowalk was held as per plan from Alankar Plaza to Malleshwaram circle. This time Karthik gave me responsibility of leading the walk as he was traveling out of Bangalore on the same day afternoon. I along the with my friend Hemanth reached 'Alankar Plaza' at 7.45 am. There two people Deepak and Vinod joined us. Also, my colleague friend - Sundeep Gupta joined us at sharp 8 am. The low turn out was expected due to serial blasts in Bangalore and Ahmedabad on previous two days. The unfortunate developments might have dampened the enthusiasm of the participants.

There weren't any latecomers and at 8.10 am sharp we started the walk with five partcipants. Blast or no blasts the show must go on! First we crossed the K.G. Road by walking over the overbridge. Then we took a right and continued the walk on SC Road. There we walked in front of Triveni, Aparna and Kapali theatres. A few steps further, we came across locally famous Anamma temple and a old cinema hall Movieland .

Seeing cameras in our hands many touts in the vicinity considered us to be tourist and approached us with offers of accommodation, sight seeing trips! Ignoring these people we continued and reached Anand Rao Circle Flyover. From Anand Rao Circle we took a road towards Seshadripuram circle. In the stretch we came across old Bangalore Supply Company building which now belongs to BESCOM. Before reaching the Sehshadripuram circle we walked under a railway bridge.

At Sheshadripuram circle we took photographs of fruit and vegetable vendours in a market next to the Police Station. Considering the volatile situation, we intentionally avoided snaps of police station to avoid any headaches. At the junction we took a left, after Nataraj theatre we took a right and continued our walk on Sirur Park Road. While walking on this road a Ragpicker insisted us to take his photograph. A few yards further we came across a playground in which more than five cricket games were going on simultaneously, not unusual in a city like Bangalore! A 5 minutes walk(including a right and a left) from the playground led us to the Malleshwaram underpass ending the quite longish photowalk.

To continue the tradition of previous photowalk i.e. having breakfast at a famous or a low-brow eating outlet, this time we had breakfast at Hallimane which is just two cross away from the Malleshwaram circle.

Snaps:
- My photographs are shared at flickr set - Bangalore photowalk 4.0
- Find deepak's photographs at deepurocks -flickr

Rottikallu Homestay

Distance: 250 kms from Bangalore.
Activities @ Homestay: Trekking, Stream Walk, River Crossing, Volleyball, Tarzan Swing.
Cost: 1750 per head [July 2008]
Transportation: Preferably by own/hired vehicle. The last mile can be covered either by foot or a Jeep.

After hundreds of e-mail exchanges we the members of Ctrl-Esc-Boys group decided on a destination for a weekend trip. The discussion started off from BR Hills, K.Gudi, Kemmangundi and finally ended at Rottikallu - a homestay amidst sahyadri trails near Sakleshpur. The task of planning and organizing the trip was done by Yeshwanth.

People on board: Thode(Naveen), Bade(Praveen), Sandeep HR, Venki, Anil, Chote(Praveen), Vikram, Anand, Yeshwanth, Abhilash, Shande

Our Activities at the homestay:

• Day-1: We started the proceedings by playing cricket in a ground which is 10 minutes walk from the homestay. After breakfast we did a stream walk (2kms) on Hemavathi river. The stream walk concluded with natural massage bath under a waterfall. After that we trekked for getting to top of Halu kola peak. In evening there was a fire camp. Boozers had their usual stuffs and the rest had a good time with non-alcoholic home made wine.

• Day-2: After breakfast, we had a shooting (with a rifle) session, in which we struggled to strike even a easy target. Later we had 'activity of the day' i.e. volleyball next to the stream. After volleyball we played with Tarzan swing and subsequently played with water in the stream.

Activities in pictures:

Started day-1 proceedings with cricket. It was amusing to play in a ground surrounded by lush green hills!

Stream walk: It was kind of different adventurous activities we had done till date. We walked on stream 2-3 kms for more than a hour.

Atop Halu Kola peak: we completed the ascent inspite of momentarily changing weather with rain, sunshine and mist.

Shooting session: Initially looked easy, but was difficult to execute. I was able the hit the target after 4-5 attempts.

Volleyball: It turned out one of the exciting activities. The above snap shows a close moment of the play. Have a look the expression of boys.

Tarzan Swing: Abhilash undergoing water splash.

Food:
I was the lone vegetarian in the group, but didn't faced any problems as sufficient veggie stuffs - sambhar, palya (malnad style) were served. More importantly they served curd with every meal, which is very unusual in remote places. I cannot comment on non-veg stuffs, seems my friends were disappointment because of improper preparation.

Veera Venki the Poet:
Through out the trip we were kept entertained by Venki and his poems(padyas). He had got printout of his collection and his recitation used to increase enthu and energy levels of boys. Venki's dedicated listener was Praveen V.N. aka Chote Miya, many a times taking his words seriously and asking doubts, questions. Venki's blogs his poems at veeravenki.blogspot.com

Restrospect:

• It's a good initiative by the owner and management of Rottikallu homestay. The official website looks flashy and informative, but at grassroot level i.e. in conduct of actual activities there is a lot of scope for improvement.
• Our instructor didn't plan the activities properly. Other than stream-walk and trekking he conducted some random activities here and there. Many a times we ourselves took the initiative and played the sports like cricket and volleyball.
• If we consider endurance level of a normal human being, then doing all the activities in two days is bit too much. So the cost of 1750 per head for 2 days is bit expensive.
• Ignoring a few negatives, Rottikallu is a ideal place for a group having people different endurance levels. Lazy people in your group can just stay in cottages and enthusiastic people can go for outdoor activities.

On the way back:
We terminated our stay on Day-2 afternoon and decided to visit Belur and Halebeedu which is around 2 hours drive from Rottikallu. More about it in a separate post.

Photoalbums:
- Shande's Picasa album:
- Yeshwanth's Picasa album:
- Praveen's Picasa album:

Travelogues are Boring ?

Half of my posts are about travel/treks and as a result intentionally or unintentionally my blog has also been coined as a 'semi-travelogue'.

So what's the purpose of a travelogue ?
According to me in a travelogue the author has to take the reader through the journey experienced recently. Majority of my posts have been written with the same intention. Also, in some posts I have highlighted the important information in order to make job easy for the people directed by search engines.

Many of my trips have been interesting and with some exceptional incidences, automatically the corresponding travelogue posts have been interesting. In addition I mention, how exactly the trip/trek was planned and various funny stuffs associated with it.

But, if the trip itself is boring, then there are very less chances of making blog interesting. One of the regular reader of my blog gave a feedback for my Dodda Alada Mara(Big Banyan Tree) post that my posts have became monotonous and predictable. I had to gracefully accept her feedback. Actually I too was bored writing about the trip with same phrases and one liners.

In the next subsequent post, about trip to Maidenahalli Blackbuck Reserve Forest, instead of narrating about the trip in a chronological order, I chose present the experiences in somewhat unusual Q&A format. It turned out to be a pattern breaker and many of my readers complemented for the same.

Is there any other way of sharing experiences about a trip?

• Photoalbum: One of the usual way is by sharing a photoalbum with captions. It can be circulated among friends and relatives but people in need for the information(searching in google) won't have access to the information.


• Video: The other way is by composing a video about the trip. Radesh Bhat documented his recent Sarpass trek through a 9 minute 11 seconds youtube video with sliding photos and having A.R. Rehman's Roja music as background score. The video was good to see for intial 2-3 minutes but in later stages it became boring because of similar of kind of content. A crisper video would have been more worthwhile to watch.


• Poem: One of my friends, Sudhir aka ski blogged about his recent US Road Trip in a 20 line poem. One has to read between the lines to understand his feelings.

So what's your intention about a travelogue. Let me know your opinion through comments.

Some travelogues I follow regularly
- Arun Bhat: India Travel Blog.
- Sandeep Unnimadhavan: Trekkalogs.

20000 !!!

June 25th 2006: The beginning!
Jan 8th 2008: 10000 mark!
July 5th 2008: 20000 mark!

For first 10K visitors it took around one and half years, but the second 10K visitors it took less then six months ! Thankyou for everyone who has visited my blog.

Shande ? What does it mean ?

For last 2 years ... blogging years to be precise, Shande has been my identity on internet. Outside blogosphere this has been my nickname and has persisted for several years !!! Normally, bloggers think a lot that to keep(select) their internet id or blog name. In contrast ,I didn't even thought for a second ! How exactly this nickname originated ? I am not very sure about this. In primary school there were two Sandeep(myself and Sandeep.T.S) in the class and to annul the ambiguity my classmates gave a nickname Tassa to Sandeep.T.S and gave somewhat a weird name "Sande" to me. The reasoning was that my closest friend was "Ande"(I still don't from where the word "ande" came from). Then after 2-3 days the name refined to "Shande"(शांदे, ಶಾಂದೆ), so that it sounds cute! The main person behind this drive was Chandan[at present more famous as a Radio jockey at S-FM 93.5]. The nickname intentionally or unintentionally has carried on from primary school to high school to college and even to workplace. It has become so common that some of the people close to me feel very weird when they try call me by real name :) Variants: Like any other names, my nickname too has got many variants like 'Shandu', 'Shade', 'Shande Man', 'Shande Boy', 'Skande'. Some Anecdotes: At work place many people with whom I just have acquaintance (sort of hi-bye non professional relationship) don't even know my real name!

• "I thought you were other Sandeep!" : Apporximately one year after engineering I chatted with my classmate Sachin Satish using yahoo messenger. The chat went on for a while and we dicussed about usual stuffs such as "Howz work" etc. Then all of a suddent Sachin started to ask me some weird questions which were totally irrelevant to me and my reply sounded even more weird to him. Then he asked me "Are u really Sandeep H.R". He was able recognize me only when I said that I am Shande. The root cause for this was that my yahoo id didn't had 'Shande' as substring. A few months after this incidence, while creating my gmail id I made sure to have 'Shande' as substring.
• At Seoul Railway Station, South Korea: I had traveled all the way to Seoul from Gumi with Subhajit. At Seoul Station we met Mazeeth and he guided us with some basics to explore the city. In order help us for accommodation he called up the onsite manager and said "Subhajit and Shande have come to Seoul" ... (!!!) ... I had to immediately interrupt the conversation saying that my name is not Shande :) it was really an embarrassing moment ... till that time Mazeeth didn't even know that my real name was Sandeep!
• Searching 'shande' in employees list: At workplace there was kind of chess challenge with Brijesh Gowda(works in a different BU). The loser was supposed to treat winner with a glass of orange juice. The game didn't materialized for a long time. But one fine day enthusiastic Brijesh tried to call me for the challenge game. He search for my extension number in ip-phone, company intranet etc. On the same day in evening while going home he asked me "Man ...What's your phone number. I searched for 'Shande' at every place, no where I can find your name!".

These anecdotes are just a tip of an iceberg, there are many similar hilarious incidences and bound to happen in future.