Sivasamudram / Shivasamudram

Due to some laziness I am missing out on putting up some pics of my recent outings, so before I miss again, I just put up the pics of Sivasamudram. Description later or may be never… In short, the place is awesome, especially in groups and don't miss it if you get a chance. And if you don't get a chance, create one.

First View

Our group

First fall

Second Fall

A few brave men… and women too

Me, Puneet, Rawat and Shetty made some efforts to go down and this venue of so-called Dam. Rest of us prefered to stay in the cab. And boy, they definitely missed this opportunity. It was a perfect view ( a la Rang De Basanti – above two pics). Sitting on the cliff of looking down, wow!! that's awesome. 180 degree steep. We were out for a casual trekking and didn't take the camera, so didn't manage to have closeups of this breathtaking visuals.

While returning, although tired we were in great mood, with a biig hoopla, with all 'Dil' songs and some wonderla-remix 🙂 Detailed ( and better) description of tour by Anshu is here.

PS:- Pallavi mentions that the place is called Shivana Samudram. Wikipedia says both are same. Now I am really confused. Please someone clearify my doubts.

Was that just a weekend?

Sometimes you do so many things together that you forget that you did it in small time of two days? That was precisely the case with this weekend.

This weekend went out to a picnic courtesy Veritas. umm.. Where to start? Let's start where we started. It was not so hard to convince Gopal, who was enjoying his well-earned weekend sleep, to drop me at Parihar Chowk for the bus. Left Pune at 8. Things were going on as boring as this post on my blog is right now. Inspite of nice Pune-Mumbai express highway we were travelling on City roads as driver hadn't filled up the fuel tank and worst part of it is Pune Roads. It's talk of the town these days. Potholes everywhere and add to it traffic. and I was like Oh God! Why am I here? It would have been much better if I had been to Ahmedabad to bid adieu to my dear friend Jay, but things changed once we entered the express highway. When you are on way from Mumbai to Pune or the other way, travelling itself is a great pleasure. Throughout the highway, it's like you are in altogether a different world, especially in monsoon, where you are surrounded by green mountains and clouds and add to glory it was raining too when we were on our away and my agony?? just like that.. it's gone, nobody has ever seen since then 🙂

We reached Rishi Garden Resort which is around 100 km from Pune. And we were ready to rock!! Swimming Pools, Water resorts have some magical effect on me 🙂 It was long back at IITK when I used to plunge swimming pool, but adrenaline started pumping when I saw water rides and swimming pool and wasted no time before diving. It was total fun and frolic to enjoy after such a long time, albeit I had one regret that couldn't dance long in rain dancing as had to move for lunch and then to Alibag, a nearby beach. In the afternoon we were ready to move to Alibag.

The best thing about Pune is that there are lots of places to roam around in vicinity. While going to Alibag, we were moving along through different mountains and just after some time we were at beach!! That was pretty cool 😉 Alibag is not glamorous beach as Juhu or Nariman Point is, but that's the good thing actually. Not many people come here and thus no pollution, no crowd. It was wonderful evening. We had a walk, played football. Someone said that A man becomes philosopher when he goes to sea. True! Atleast for me, many-a-times, I just feel like sitting on the beach and keep thinking. I start putting facts in balance sheet of my life. Anyways, it didn't end there, we had been told that the fort of Shivaji (visible at the horizon of the sea in pic) can be reached just on the foot at the time of low tide. It didn't look probable as it was more than a kilometer away from shore, but again god helps those who help themselves 🙂 so four brave men started their journey and believe me although it looked very far water never raised above our waist. And we celebrated our triumph to the fort. Soon many other followed. We visited canons and temples over there and not to forget all our stupid Mangal Pandey acts over there.

The night and next day morning was all-filled up with games. Housie, Ad Mad Show, Treasure hunts and what not… BTW, no luck for me as I didn't win in any game until next day morning Naval's Ballon blowing, my puzzle solving did the trick and we won the first prize in the team event.. yeah!!! and won a nightlamp enabled clock with alarm 😉

We had planned a trek in early morning to the fort (visible in the pic) and Karnala bird Sanctuary , but we were advised not to move early because of very dense forest and high probability of snakes. so we moved after lunch, but only 6 of us as rest of us decided to stay and resort only. It was yet another joyful patch of our trip, although we couldn't make it to the top of the mountain due to time constraints, but atleast we moved up quite a lot and guess what!! we also got full mobile coverage over there, which was not at resort 😉 and came back. Yet another daring act by few brave men (and yes a woman 🙂 ). back to base and a photograph session courtesy our photographer Nitin.

During this trip I had some strokes. Strokes of dance. Unsufficient time for rain dance, DJ arranged by another group during first night, and garba arranged by Gujarati group who arrived there Sunday afternoon, all added to my desire to dance and that was finally fulfilled when we started disc in the bus itself, this time courtesy Girish. Dumb charades and Antakshari followed soon. Speaking in 7th standard student way, masti masti mein Pune kab aa gaya pata hi nahi chala!!! Yeh trip mein zindagi bhar nahi bhuloonga. It was indeed a memorable trip! During trip I couldn't carry camera as I didn't have one. Some memories are best kept in hearts than in photographs (or probably that's other way to say Damn!! I should've taken a cam with me.)

PS:- "someone" might notice that there is no solo photograph of mine this one. Don't ask me who that is. He knows I am pointing at him.

Road Trip

It's rather unusual for me to have post on blog for consecutive days 🙂 but, here I am after yesterday's wonderful trip.

After submitting thesis and having done some of the formality stuff, I was thinking of starting making presentation, but just then these guys came up with proposal of going to canal. Ah!! my long chersihed dream. Since last year or so, I had thought that I would go to this canal nearby, but plan never materialised, but when they asked me, I didn't hesitate for a second and that was just the beginning of a beautiful road trip.

We (me, Sheetesh, Rawat, Ritesh) chose the road behind the Hall-7. Oh yaa, forgot to mention we were on our bicycles, well and biking in that terrain was no less adventurous then tour de france. up-and-downs, right-and-left and not to mention all of them just kachcha roads. That turned out to be the best start of the trip. Going through such a rough patch, was kind of biking I was doing after a long time. Makes you feel like no you still have that dare spirit inside, you are not rotten after sitting in airconditioned office and keep looking at stupid computer screen all the time. 🙂

Soon, we reached the canal and a tree fallen on the road, automatically decided our returning point, as it was already getting darker and it would be difficult we don't return from there itself, but it was the best place we could have stopped at. The trunk of the fallen tree was extending to canal itself, so added a bit fun to stay over there and doing all the childish masti. Sitting on trunk thinking we have done such a dare act, wetting legs in the flowing water, splashing water over one another. and yes not to forget, our photo-session all along the trip. When Sheetesh is with you, don't need to worry about documenting your trip. We clicked some nice photographs over there. These photographs in blog are clickable.

On the return trip, we decided to choose another route, which will be touching GT Road and eventually to IITK. And all along the road, it was like a typical village, such as in a Yash Chopra movie ;). Lush green fields on both the sides all-along till your eyes can see. Yesterday nature too was in aesthetic mood and we got to see some beautiful colors in the sky and yet again, we didn't miss to click it. Took so many photographs there too. Unfortunately, Sheetesh missed to recharge his camera and we soon ran out of battery, so our photography session had to end there itself, but the fun didn't end there. Road trip continued and after long paddling got to see the road again. and this time it was Lance Armstrong act for us. On the highways, we enjoyed some fast biking. It was also dinner time and we decided to stop on dhaba on the way. Bijji da dhaba is what it was called. Well particularly not dhaba but modernized dhaba. We were suspicious about the kind of food, we'd get. But somehow this tour was meant to be great and the dinner to didn't disappoint us and food was much better than what we get in CR (our Campus Restaurant). well, it was a treat from my side owing to my thesis submission :D. On the way back, when we thought we were not far, it took us really long to reach back to IITK, but in the end all of it was worth it. We did atleast 15 km of bicycling yesterday!! and my long cherished dream was a reality thanks to these guys.