Weekend highlights
– River rafting down the Seetha river.

– Camping at the Seethanadi Nature Camp in the Hebri jungle, which is a part of the Kudremukh National Park.

– Trekking to the Kudlu Teertha waterfalls.

– Getting bitten by leeches (yuckk!!) and a bloody foot by the end of the 10 km trek!

– Biryani in Udupi and roast chicken in Mangalore.

Couldn’t have asked for more excitement packed into two days!

Monday morning. Back to Bangalore. And to work. Aching bones and all! Nice colleague drives me to work in the new car :)

(Pictures and write-up will follow as soon as I recover from aches and pains).

Not too many words. Just a few pictures.

And a warm welcome to Ma Chérie, the latest addition to my family. Kit Kit is a little jealous of all the attention my possession is getting right now but I’ve promised her a ride soon!

Took Chérie out for a long drive towards Hebbal lake on her first evening. It was lovely. The weather was great. The lake looked really pretty with the reflected lights. Am maha impressed with all the lakes here. And thanks to both of you (you know who you are :) for making the first drive with my red machine so much fun. I don’t think I’ve laughed so much in a while!

Now she’s waiting patiently in the parking space at home, till I gain a little more confidence about taking her out on the crowded Bangalore roads…

To my brand new photoblog - The World Through My Viewfinder. Where I will post pictures, paintings and any visual work that might or might not be my creation, from time to time. Starting off with an acrylic painting I did sometime ago. And some pictures taken on Prabu’s camera phone during lunch time, in and around the office premises. Enjoy :)

And folks, I am not kidding. The answer is: The Forum. Bangalore’s latest happening mall in Koramangala. Now of course, when we set out for this place, we didn’t have clue.

We first got an inkling of the upcoming problem when did not find parking in the basement, first floor, second floor, third floor, fourth floor…. Whoopee! Finally, finally, we were overcome with joy when we managed to find a parking space on the fifth floor.

Only to find that life was not going to be easy thereafter.

For example, in the bookstore and the music store, there were an equal number of books and music CDs as there were people. No, really.

Now, let me tell you, I have been to crowded places. For heavens sake, I lived in Mumbai and traveled by local trains. But this, I swear by my computer’s hard disk, was the most ‘crowdedest’ shopping place I have ever been to. For example, at the ‘C’ section of videos, there were approximately 200 people going through 200 titles! I mean, where on the planet earth would you see such crowds (except for possibly Dadar)?

I found a little bit of space in the ‘M’ section and in desperation picked up the first people who looked familiar – Jlo and Ralph Fiennes. As luck would have it they made Maid in Manhattan together. Now, I know that’s not exactly a classic, but I couldn’t go to Landmark for the first time and not buy anything? And every other alphabet was taken! Phew, was I glad when we actually found a line that had less than 10 people at the cashier.

Feeling ravenously hungry, we ventured into the appropriately named Transit where there were about 20 food counters and a lot of hungry people. And believe me when I say ‘A LOT’! There were crowds around all the counters and especially a big one around Beijing Bites. The Indian’s fascination with Chinese food has obviously not been affected by the cold political relations between the two countries. If the queues were an indication, it is at an all-time high.

We realized that to get our turn, we would have to wait till the cold war was over so we beat a hasty retreat. And we also realized why the place is called Transit (there’s not much else you can do!).

Now, the question that comes to mind is that where did all these thousands of people (actually it was more like a million) people go when The Forum hadn’t existed a few months ago?

Anybody care to take a guess?

On Gautam Ghosh’s suggestion, decided to try out a Bong food joint called Victoria’s Corner on Saturday evening.

Along with a few friends who were game enough to join me on a culinary adventure in West Bengal cuisine, we reached the place at about 10.30 pm. It was obviously the wrong time, since they were nearly closing. So though tasty, both the prawn malai curry and the doi-mach (fish preparation in curd) they served were a little cold.

The second round of doi-mach however was piping hot and we enjoyed it much more. There were some exotic sounding vegetable preparations with karela and potol, but that’s for the second round visit!

If you have a yen for Bengalee food (that’s how they spell it on their sign board!), I’d suggest you try this no frills place near Domino’s on 100ft Road, Indirinagar. It’s in a corner (hah!) and you could easily miss it, so be very attentive! (Very cost effective too). Just go early. They close by about 10.30 pm.

Thanks, Gautam! If any of you have any suggestions or recommendations for good culinary adventures, you know where to park them :)

I was really relieved, when after my disastrous start getting onto a horse, this time around I actually managed to mount at the first go. Unfortunately though for me, Trilka (incorrectly called Trilla in my last horse related post) hadn’t had breakfast. So while trotting, she would suddenly look down greedily at the grass and make desirable noises leaving me clueless as to what I was supposed to do.

Furthermore, the instructor kept shouting, “Baby, raise yourself, raise yourself. Keep you body straight. Look in front between the horse’s ears.” Now I don’t know if you’ve realized (besides that the fact that I am definitely NOT a baby), but it’s rather tough to do all these things at once and keep your balance on a horse that is both hungry and trotting in circles.

My next lesson: Mounting a horse and keeping my balance and doing all the aforementioned things and looking cool :)

Since I’m planning to take photography a little more seriously, I signed up with the Bangalore Shutterbugs (group of photography enthusiasts) and attended my first meeting this Sunday.

Went along with Arun and met lot of enthusiastic budding photographers including Shankar, Lavannya and Renith amongst others.

Prabu (aka floatingcreeper.org and a former blogger) also joined in, and after knowing his online persona for a while, got to finally meet him in person. Found out that we both work in the same company. I was thrilled since that gives me one more person to have chai/caaffee with during breaks :)

While my first idea was to buy a digital, I’ve decided to invest in an SLR instead. That will allow me to fiddle around and learn the finer points of photography, which a point and shoot digital will now allow. Once I master the basics, I hope I can then go on to invest in a good digital camera.

The theme for this time’s contest was Urban Life and members showed their entries and talked about the background, how they took the photographs, etc.

It was a pretty interesting experience.

Meanwhile, I decided to take some personal inputs from Arun, who uses a Canon EOS 300 and Prabu who uses a Nikon F65. It turned into a heated Canon vs Nikon debate and I nearly thought they would come to blows ;)

But, they were really helpful, giving me lots of fundas about exposures, apertures, UI issues, DOF, continuous focus, IR ports, USM/SWM, so on and so forth. At the end of it, I was none too wiser. But, still determined to make this difficult choice pretty soon!

In the evening, both of them invited me to join them for some night photography at the Vidhan Soudha. It was a beautiful evening. There were faint traces of pink in the sky creating a really interesting effect behind the monument’s domes. Sadly, the lights were not on that evening.

Both of them tinkered with their respective cameras while I tried and put in my ‘expert’ touch. Prabu’s camera nearly toppled over once (he would probably never talk to me if I had damaged his equipment) but it was saved in time.

We had several passerbys stop and ask questions. One particular gentleman went a step further and even pointed out compositions (despite the fact that he doesn’t actually know much about photography). Some people wanted to look through the camera lens to see what we were upto.

Just when we were about to pack up, Prabu discovered the shot of the day (or should I say night). I can’t really describe the shot, but if it does come out well, I’ll definitely put it up here. And Prabu promises to walk upside down on his head for two minutes if he gets what he wanted!

Discovered yummy fruit salad at a place called Tindi Bidi (aka Market Street) near Lal Bagh. It was nearly midnight and probably the only place open in Bangalore.

Turned out to be the best fruit salad I’ve had in while!

(I had fiddled around with Arun’s camera when we went to the 13th floor. Here are the results! Well, what did you expect? I’m still learning ;)

One advantage of being in Bangalore, I’ve quickly discovered is the plethora of things to do. Besides getting back into my old loves - badminton and swimming - I decided to get into another activity, horse riding.

So bright and early on Saturday morning, landed up at the Race Course and enrolled at the Bangalore Amateur Riders Institute (BARI). About 1/2 hour went in locating BARI, which was at the far end of the huge field.

Several jockeys were out early morning racing their horses. Up close, I can tell you, they look a little scary, especially when they are galloping hard. And horses don’t neigh as much as they wheeze. It’s not a very pretty sound.

After doing the necessary (that is, paying up, filling form) we were led to Trilla, a 16-year-old horse. She seemed pretty calm, except for a strange noise that she would emit once in a while. I think she was irritated with the flies. Or it could have been me.

I had seen swashbuckling heroes getting onto their mares effortlessly (in movies, they don’t exist in real life, sadly) so I had that romantic picture in mind. Up close, I realised that the horse was much taller than I had earlier envisoned. And with my height, I had to struggle getting my foot into the stirrup and hoisting myself into the saddle. Now, I know, it should be relatively easy. Like the above mentioned swashbuckling hero.

Not so. After about 5-6 attempts I was huffing and puffing, looking furtively at Trilla to check if she had noticed my rather clumsy and unsuccessful moves. She didn’t bat an eyelid. Finally, with some help I managed to get into the saddle. Wow! At the end of it, I felt I had achieved a major milestone in equestrianism.

That was, in a nutshell, my first and rather brief foray into horse riding. Next lesson: sitting on the horse and looking cool :)