Warangal with +2 mates

A day when I felt I'd enough of this software world, boring weekends with no fun, joy. I decided to take up the initiative to pull in folks to tour a place worth of a visit. All my CITY pleads every weekend is a good ride to the countryside. Though the response from folks was very disappointing, which I could foresee from my past experiences that these initial hiccups were not uncommon, I was successful enough to pull in 4. Travelling is like getting addicted to drugs, once one gets used to it, hardly he/she can get rid of it. I'm sure the ones who missed this opportunity would taste this drug very soon. At least, I got addicted to this :). A final minute switch in the destination, from Nagarjuna Sagar to Warangal, brings us to the famous place, WARANGAL, whose history goes back to few centuries from now. Folks aboard are Dillu aka Pradeep, Raj, VP aka ParthaSaradhi, MLN aka M.Lakshmi Narayana and I, v all studied +2 together back in 1999-2001.

11/07/2009, VP woke me up early in the morning @ 5AM, followed by MLN & Raj. It's unbelievably hard to get your *** up after you get into bed very late in the night @ 2.30AM. Finally, I got off the bed @ 5:30 and tried waking Dillu up. To no one's surprise, all my efforts went in vain. At last he woke up and took his own sweet time to get off the bed. We kicked off our journey @ sharp fifteen minutes past 6 in the morning. Dillu and I were joined by MLN @ Miyapur, VP @ Nijampet X Roads, Raj @ Tarnaka. CITY was then house full :) We were travelling @ 80-100 range and by the time it clocked 8, everyone of us feeling hungry. We found a roadside restaurant, Abhiruchi Hotel in Ghatkesar, which turned out to be a pretty decent one. We had few plates of Idly, Poori and hot hot Coffee. We resumed our journey @ 8 and now CITY seemed to have caught up more speed, might be due to the fuel dropped in my stomach. We've reached outskirts of Warangal in less than an hour and decided to take a halt @ Madikonda.

We visited Mettu Gutta (Rocksteps Hill), a famous Hindu temple that is located in Madikonda, the first time my CITY went uphill. We offered prayers to Lord Ramalingeswara Swamy and got to know that Dillu used to visit this place very often. I was little disappointed with the weather as I'd expected the rain, at least a drizzle, during day time. Nevertheless, happy with the cool breeze passing through. A little drizzle or a heavy rain would've added more spice to our trip. We then visited NIT (National Institute of Technology), Warangal. College where Dillu pursued his B.Tech Degree. I could see his face blushing while we were entering the campus. He quickly jumped out of the car and took a bow to kiss the land. Dillu took us to the college tour, explaining all the adventures he did during college days, his famous hot spots, classrooms, hostel rooms, what else, everything. He took a snap of each and every possible site he could. Auditorium and Library were the ones really impressed each one of us. They were huge from outside and got great elevation.

V then visited "Thousand Pillar Temple", constructed by King Rudra Deva in 1163AD, dedicated to Lord Shiva, Lord Vishnu & Lord Surya. This temple is famous for its richly carved pillars, screens and detailed sculpture. Maintenance at this site has taken everyone of us by surprise. Such a great temple, for a moment, seemed like not worthy of a visit. I'd plead the temple authorities to look after our great culture and possessions we have in temples. On our way to this temple, we stopped by an ice cream parlour "Chandamama", favourite spot of one of our dearest friend "Seela". He used to have loads of fun with his beloved here. We were out of the temple by 1PM. We headed to a restaurant, "Hotel Ratna", as suggested by Dillu, local lad. Food was sumptuous and delicious. Then we headed to "Kakatiya Fort", constructed during The Kakatiya period, which was rightly called the brightest period of the Telugu history. After two centuries into its establishment, Muslim rules had constantly invaded the fort when Pratap Rudra was the ruler. He'd survived at least two attacks before finally succumbed to the Muslim pressure, who then destructed every possible monument/possession/temple we'd kept dear to our hearts. Fort had four entrances, were unperturbed by Muslims, these were the only constructions which retained their place in the fort, and the rest was just the rubble remained after constant invasions, carefully decorated by the local authorities inside the compund. MLN had all the energy to walk around the fort and snatched few snaps for himself. Meanwhile, Dillu n Raj caught few quick naps, VP and I shared a quick chat. On our way back, we stopped by "Khush Mahal", which was not that great.

V were then @ Bhadrakali Temple, a significant Devi temple located on the hilltop between the twin cities of Hanamkonda and Warangal. There was a pavement by the river side which had lush green plantations, much better place to spend a good evening. We returned from this place @ 6 in the evening. On our way back, we had sipped a cup of hot tea. We reached Hyderabad by 9 in the night. The highlight of the tour has been "MLN and His Love",who narrated his fun filled dramatic love story on our way to warangal. We all wish him a great success. I'm sure his story would make it to Telugu Cinema sometime soon :)

I'm sure you enjoyed my narration, feel free to drop your comments by.

Sugathi Team visited Samskar (Nizamabad)

28/03/2009, a day which I'd remember for years to come, a day where I could see hundreds of happy children together, a day where I'd put most of free time to the best use. Sugathi team visited Samskar (Nizamabad), formed by a lady, named "Hemalatha Lavanam", daughter of yesteryear poet great "Gurram Jashuva". A great initiative to help children of underprivileged women, who have no word in their village. She was successful in eradicating the problem to its grassroots.

Let me step back and explain you what Sugathi is all about. This is an initiative by few software enthusiasts, to help underprivileged children on having them educated. "Social Development through Child Education" is our caption, and we all believe in "Education is the backbone of our society". A group formed few years ago, growing from strength to strength, fewer people joining Sugathi every month who think alike, work alike and vision alike. Sugathi supports three schools through annual funding, funds collected from group members. Now, Sugathi is 40+ strong. We'd like to grow big time and fulfil our dreams.

Sugathi visited Varni, a place in Nizamabad district where Samskar is located, on 27th night 11PM. Sundar sir, manager head of the Samskar division Nizamabad, was kind enough to arrange us a cab reach Varni from Nizamabad railway station. We were group of 7, Srinath, Pavan, Venkat, Wazeed, Shabana, Samar and I. I slipped into sleep soon we'd reached the place. But, other folks were brainstorming with the activities need to be carried out the next day. They prepared the sketch of the activities and slept.

Woke up early in the morning, and done with daily shores. All of us looked very similar as we all sported the same "Sugathi" T-Shirt. We'd reached the place where children usually have their daily breakfast/lunch, it's a veranda where all children sit in rows and have their breakfast. We collected our plates and divided into two groups, and shared the space adjacent to the children. Got to meet few children there from standards 6,7,8 & 9. "Khichdi" was prepared in the breakfast, and we were impressed by the quality of the food served. I'd never eaten better "Khichdi" than this in my entire college life in Surat. I ate two plates of Khichdi, so were my other companions. We captured few snaps with the children and they were all eager to get involved in the activities. We could see the anxiety on their faces, as they could foresee this day was gonna be little different to any other day they had.

It was time to meet Sundar sir. We met him in office and understood the history of the organisation in detail. We also came to know about other initiative by Samskar, school founded in Stuart Puram to educate children of the dacoits/thiefs. After a brief talk with Sundar, we assembled all the students in a class room, with the help of the madam teachers in the school. We formed two groups, Conducted quiz, painting in parallel to these groups. Students were very creative and imaginative in their paintings. Their future looked very promising as they were spot on with the answers and sharp in their thought process, this school was inarguably the best we'd ever visited. It's lunch time by the time we finished the first round .Headed to the same veranda, where we had breakfast earlier in the day, and had lunch. Food was very delicious and tasty. Wazeed and Venkat prepared the needful for the treasure hunt, meanwhile remaining of us headed to the the class rooms and conducted the activities whichever we'd planned to. By the time, we are done with prize distribution, wazeed and venkat were ready with the chits. We formed 6-7 groups, each with 5-6 members in, and handed them the clues. To everyone's surprise, one group unearthed the treasure in not more than 2 minutes. All the efforts put by Wazeed and Venkat have just disappeared in a matter of two minutes. Now, time for few field events. We played till 5 and assembled all the students as it was time for few day scholars to leave. We gestured the students and students shared their experiences of the day. We left the place @ 7 in the night with loads of happy moments, thoughts, questions which no one has answers, ... I'm pretty confident that Sugathi would find answers for all of those.

Few students noted down our mobile numbers, some on papers and few on their palms. It makes me feel happy as I receive occasional phone calls from them even now. I feel very privileged to be part of such an event. I'd cherish these moments for long time to come. I wish them all the great success and pray the Almighty for better lives.

APSA ReUnion trip to Divyagarh - Lonavala

06/02/2009, 8AM in the morning, five of us reached Pune from Hyderabad to celebrate reunion of our batch ( 2001-5 batch, Andhra Pradesh Students, SVNIT, formerly SVRCET ,Surat.) after four long years. By the time we reached the apartment, folks from Bangalore were eagerly awaiting our arrival. We all have been received with lotta affection and love filled hugs. All of us had quickly gone back to those good old days, when we used to assemble to celebrate birthdays of our dear ones, much excited to eat the ice cream or cake than wishing him on his b'day. we used to generate so much noise, enough to generate few MWs of electricity. Such were the noise levels in that apartment, I'm sure Pichayya would have received the mouthful from his neighbours after we'd left. Many of us, have met earlier in a group of two, three or four, but nothing matches this get-together. All of us had put on few pounds and few of us had healthy family packs :)
11 of us were present (6 others had ditched us) :
Musali (Myself)
DaKota (Sridhar)
Bothu (Hari)
Pichayya (Viswa)
Banda (Raghu)
Pindaal (Krishna Kishore)
Don (Durga)
Half Mind (Kiran)
Mestry (Chandra Sekhar)
Laughing machine (Nag)
Mouli (Mouli, only man who has no nick name)

We must be very much grateful to Pichayya n Nag who have taken care of all the arrangements such as the tempo to travel around and restrooms to fresh up :). We all had breakfast in a nearby restaurant, seated in two tables ordered few plates of Chapathi, Poori and Idly. Gulped few sips of Coffee and Tea. Waited at the apartment about an hour for tempo to arrive. Tempo arrived @ We had several plans on our table, featuring beaches, hill stations & treks, and nailed down "Divyagarh", a very famous beach in Maharashtra, well known for its rock solid shore. Pichayya n Nag have done all the necessary arrangements for stay and food.

V commenced our journey @ 12 in the afternoon and reached the outskirts of pune by 1:30PM. We got down near a Dhaba and had a very heavy lunch, few plates of chicken kebabs, roti-naans and biryani. We reached Divyagarh by 6 in the evening and settled under a roof. We just threw all of our belongings in the rooms and locked the doors. We just sprinted towards the shore, on our way we found a "thela" (kiosk) where aamchi Vada-Paavs were sold by a family (Husband and Wife). We ate several plates of it and resumed to the shore. It was pitch dark out there, and there was no concrete path to reach the shore. We had to pass under the moon's light, no sights of street lamps. It tooks us five to ten minutes to reach the shore. To everyone's surprise, the beach was so calm, no trace of any human beings around, much different to the normal beaches in Goa, or anywhere else you visit. Sand resembles the rock solid floor you have back home, I call it "Sand Bed" than just "Sand". We didn't get into the sea, as Arabian sea is much aggressive during the night.

The place is not very much commercialized, though it cost us dearly for dinner, lunch and breakfast. You won't find any lavish or luxurious hotels around to put up, stay is gonna be in normal houses where they spared couple of their rooms for the tourists and feed them. We just took one of that kind.

After few minutes, everyone had slipped into sleep after tiresome journey through hills. Cold breeze passing through, and full moon looking from top, decent enough to make any sensible human being slip into sleep. As one of us realized after a couple of hours, few layers of water had gone underneath our backs, and soon realized that water advanced its movement by several feet. Though we had kept ourselves at least fify feet distant from the tides an hour ago, we had to leave the place and shift our base to another fifty feet away from there. And this time, we kept track of the advancements by the tides and left the place after fifteen minutes.

Dinner was prepared in a home few metres away from the place we stayed, v had had a quick shower and reached the place. Food was very much homely and less spicy. Gone into bed by 12 in the night after having few cracks at each other. I'd never forget the discussion we had during dinner. I'd not want to name that friend here as he had had a couple of affairs with next door girl and a colleague in his office. He was trying hard to defend himself, nonetheless, "Pindaal" and few others of us had a different perspective altogether. We couldn't come to any conclusion that why was he doing that. He was happy in that relationships, so are we for him. We prayed the Almighty that he would learn his lessons very soon.

07/02/2009, woke up in the morning and had breakfast. We've been charged 20 bucks for a single plate of "Pooha", this is costlier than what we used to have in Surat, and that too of very less quantity. As I said earlier, Food is the biggest problem there, they always seemed to be in a deliberate mood to loot visitors big time. We went into the beach in this sunny morning. I'd take this opportunity to promote this beach big time. I'd visited numerous number of beaches across arabian & bay of bengal coasts, ranging from Goa (Arabian - Covalam, Calangute, Anjana,...), DevBagh (Arabian), Kakinada (Bay of Bengal) and Visakhapatnam (Bay of Bengal), ........ , I rate this beach right on the top of all beaches for various reasons. Water is damn pure out there, tides are not rough, Sand underneath is very much shallow. We jumped into the water and went inside for at least 100m, you wouldn't believe this, the water was still chest high. Any amateur or non-swimmers can blindly get into the sea and have fun, in fact, not many seas offer you such a comfort. We spent, spent and spent hours there, played cricket, football on the shore and dried up on our energy. All the calories we gained in the breakfast were lost. We came out and gulped few coconuts and regained our senses :)

Sprinted back to the huts and freshened up. We set our sights on " Jalzeera Fort" for the day. This fort is pretty famous and 30KMs away from Divyagarh. Fort is situated in the middle of the sea and few hundreds of metres away from the shore. We had to park our tempo in the town and catch a boat to reach Jal Zeera. This fort was constructed hundreds of years ago, during Shivaji's time by some of his counterparts, this was the only fort which shivaji's son couldn't conquer. Boat ride into the sea was pleasant and fort was decent. It was 3PM by the time we returned from that place and all of us were feeling hungry. We had found no decent restaurant around, settled ourselves to eat vada-paav/samosa and killed our hunger. In fact, "Half mind" went on eating spree and ate few tens of Vada-Paavs. I had to pay 500 bucks there in just Vada-Paavs, imagine how much he ate :)

Time had come for "Pindaal" to leave as he had few appointments in Mumbai. We said good bye to him and wished him all the very best. We thoroughly enjoyed his presence. We returned to Divyagarh by 6 in the evening and ordered for non-vegetarian meals. What next ??? We split on our views here, few of us were suggesting a trek and few others wanted to visit "Lonavala". Latter won the battle (Trek would be more tiresome), and former had no other choice, except to obey them. Gone the second day.

08/02/2009, woke up in the morning and left the place without any breakfast @ 6. We were on our way to Lonavala/Khandala. Visited the place by 2 in the afternoon, after tiresome 8 hrs drive, and had our breakfast on our way back. Visited Khandala View point, and had lunch in Lonavala. Not the best of the times to visit this place as there were no rains, and SUN was at his best. We came down to Lonavala and found out a place to rest our butts for that night. It was a government managed resort, situated right at the heart of the town. It didn't cost us much. We had dinner outside and slept for the day.

09/02/2009, returned to Pune to the same apartment where we'd all started a couple of days ago. We thoroughly enjoyed each others presence and shared wonderful time with my old buddies. I met Bhavesh and Ashish during the day and caught a bus in the evening to Hyderabad.

Bike Ride down to Karwar (From Bangalore) on new year eve 2009.

V were 007 in number, Our first bike ride which surpassed 1000K mark. Folks on visit were Apna Manu Bhai, KT, Dipu Da, Jammu Aatankwaadi, Naval, Maddy and Myself.
V all kicked off our butts in early wee hours of 1st January 2009. What a day to commence our journey, the very first day in the year. All crazy riders set off on four bikes. A windy drive to the outskirts of Bangalore, travelled around 15 KMs and were about to enter beautiful NH4 stretch. By the time v crossed KR Puram, Manu punctured his bike tyre. There was no mechanic in the vicinity. Manu and KT set off in search of a mechanic. Rest of the folks, all combinations were just passing through our minds. Aditya wanted to put an abrupt end to this tour. Jammu n Naval were not speaking up. Dipu da was busy having smoke. I stood there with all the dimmed hopes that any good would happen. Clock was ticking and it took 90 long minutes to settle down. V had the bike ready by 6:30. Everybody was on high, yet again. V kick started our bikes and set off. It was 7AM.

Gone 50K. As our backs started burning with the heat off engines, took a halt at CCD (Cafe Coffee Day). Had few bites of choco, samosa and Capuccino. We, now, set off to much longer ride. V took left @ Tumkur to NH206. V drove, drove and drove. Gone Tumkur, Gone Tiptur. As the clock ticked 2 in the afternoon, V were all feeling damn hungry. We found a very good Dhaba to eat. Re-filled our stomachs and set off this time.

Gone 70K. Clock ticked 6PM. We reached shimoga and refuelled our bikes. I was on to Thunderbird this time and Jammu was the pillion rider. V sailed through the thick forest for at least 50KM, one of the best rides I've ever had. Road was little patchy for a couple of kilometers. V reached Shimoga finally by 7:30PM and found a decent hotel to stay in. Spent a whole night there.

V reached Jog Falls by 9AM on the second day. what a sight that was, sheer delight to one's eyes. V trekked down to the bottom of the fall, which took us at least an hour. We had to walk through rocks lying under. It felt good to have those water being sprinkled on to your face. V spent an hour or so, and resumed our journey back to the top. Captured some snaps and Zooooomed from that place. The best time to visit Jog is Monsoon.

Next halt was Gokarna on the arabian coast of Karnataka. V set off from Jog for a ride through Western Ghats to reach Gokarna via Honnavar. V had our lunch in Honnavar. It took us five long hours to reach Gokarna and put up ourselves in "Gokarna" international hotel for that night.

It was a decent place to stay for a night. V woke up early in the morning and did the daily duties. We knew that we had to have our stomachs filled that day as we had to ride our bikes under scorching SUN. So did we reach a small tiffin centre placed in the same build we stayed that night. It all started with Bread-Omelettee and went on, on and on. My friends would never forget this breakfast as Jammu and I were on eating spree. Our immediate target was, Om Beach. V vacated this place, 3rd January. V reached Om beach and tattooed ourselves on shoulders, biceps, forearms,....all possible places on our human body. Om beach is much famous for its shore forms the symbol OM (Hindu God). V walked down the shore and found out a place for ourselves to have quick chilled beer. V'd left that place @ around 11AM.

As we reached third day of our trip, everyone of us was low in energy levels. We all were left with two options, 1. Resume our journey n head back to Bangalore. 2. Reach Karwar and spend sometime on some island, none of us had idea about how that island is gonna be ? Half of the group was willing to go Karwar and the other half to head back. Finally, v all decided to go Karwar.

Reached the place Karwar by 1:30 in the afternoon, situated 50KM from Gokarna towads north no NH-17. Road was very , heavy trucks were on our way and very hard for the riders to march past them. We had split on our way and made kaustav alone @ the back our group. He was very much pissed off with the other riders, he was much right in his context. We had to calm him down a bit. We gathered information about the island and found out that it is called "Devbagh". We visited the office of Jungle Resorts who look after this island. We were charged 1500 bucks per head for a day stay, starts @ 1 in the afternoon to 12 next day. It includes lunch, dinner with drinks (of course, you have to shell the bucks of your pocket), breakfast (next day). We parked our bikes in the same compound this office is located.

V all got into a steam boat which took us to Devbagh. It was a chilling half-an-hour, boat had to go against the tides and water sprinkled on to our faces as a resultant. By the time we reached the island, lunch was ready to be served. We all had a very quick lunch (unusual to our standards) and headed to the shore. The place was such an awesome one, very calm, no connectivity on mobiles, no traces of motor-vehicles, no crazy traffic. Played a couple of volleyball games, I teamed with Kaustav and Aditya, against Manu, Naval, Dipu n Jammu. We perspired enough to secure a loss :) We all moved into the tents and took a nap for an hour or two. There are two kinds of stay available here : 1. Tents (Only bachelors prefer this) 2. Cottages (for bachelors and family). We woke up in the late evening and dinner was arranged on the shore with drinks. Dinner was very tasty and few of us had a couple of pegs, as well. We had a very friendly chat while having dinner. Along with us, few honeymooning couples and a group of ten (may be more) men. We had spent much of the night time on the shore and went back into tents to catch some sleep after 11.

Woke up early in the morning @ 6, and missed the first jogging train, I mean a little jog circling the island. We compensated this with a few sprints on the shore and burnt few calories. After having spent close to an hour or two on the shore, we were all very tired and hungry. Had healthy breakfast and a quick shower. Dipu and Kaustav headed towards SPA to get a good body massage. Meanwhile, we thought we would get the taste of sea on having few water rides. Among us, Manu and Jammu were keen to do some snorkelling. To their disappointment, men (present at the site) refused to take just two guys to the snorkelling. They wanted at least a group of eight, we were way short of that number. Time to do some rowing, we hired three rowing boats paired ourselves up into three groups. Went into sea and rowed as far as we could and returned from there. That did not give us enough joy and fun we would have liked, still short of something.
There comes BANANA RIDE for you. One of the most awesome rides (including dry and water) I've ever had. All you gotta do in the ride is just get your hands off the banana when your master signals to do so. Am I confusing you, let me make it more clear ! There is a banana shaped balloon which can accommodate at least 6. You gotta sit one after another on it, and you have a clamp on either side to hold onto. This banana is now connected to the boat's rear end. The master takes the boat to a very high speed and takes a sharp U-turn and signals us to take our hands off the clamps. As a resultant (sharp U-turn) banana tilts a bit on to its side and you kind of get a dive into the water. Imagine, you are in sea water which is at least 40 feet deep. You get a deep dive into the sea , with jackets on, you don't get drowned. Master comes again with the boat and you will be helped to get onto the banana. You get three to four such deep dives. I promise you banana will make an indelible mark in your memory and you will cherish those moments for a long long time.

We took a different route while returning, Karwar - Hubli - Chitradurga - Tumkur - Bangalore. Started @ 2 PM in Karwar and drove whole day and night, and reached bangalore next day morning by 9AM. 500KMs, 19 long hours, with few breaks here and there. This concludes our trip to Karwar, covering Sagar, Jog, Gokarna, OM, Devbagh. A four day trip on four bikes, 1200KMs, what a way to star the year 2009. Hope you thoroughly enjoyed my narration. Please keep a tab on my posts as I'm a very keen traveller.