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No rafts, just people

By ⋅ July 28, 2005 ⋅ Post a comment

This weekend’s trip to Seetha Nadi was great fun. Short, of course. 2 back-to-back 12 hour bus jour­neys would have been back break­ing to say the least, but our enthu­si­asm lev­els made it bearable.

My cam­era died in the raft. We got stuck at one point. Water gushed in. Every­thing got wet includ­ing the cam­era, which stopped func­tion­ing after mak­ing uncom­fort­able noises. It served me well through the years (not the SLR, or I would have been heart­bro­ken!) so was rather crushed. Any­way, no pic­tures from my side.

So instead of doing a trav­el­ogue this time around, I decided to write a bit about the folks I met dur­ing this trip. I only knew one per­son when I started off. And another one, via email exchanges.

But one of the fringe ben­e­fits of these trips are the inter­est­ing peo­ple you land up meet­ing and befriend­ing! Some you will prob­a­bly never meet again. But with some, the bonds strike instantly and you know that you’ll meet again, some­time, somewhere.

So here’s pre­sent­ing the seven mus­ke­teers, in no par­tic­u­lar order.

Apra

Apra

A bless­ing in dis­guise he turned out to be! He had that one vital qual­ity miss­ing in all of us : the abil­ity to speak in Kan­nada. For many mis­er­able moments on Fri­day after­noon, I tried com­mu­ni­cat­ing with the bus fella, try­ing to con­vey to him that I wanted 8 tick­ets to Hebri. If we had con­tin­ued the con­ver­sa­tion, we might all have been on a bus to Ker­ala! Apra stepped in and took over effi­ciently :) A pho­tog­ra­pher to boot, he was found in many ver­ti­cally and hor­i­zon­tally chal­lenged posi­tions after our raft­ing expe­di­tion. I am not sure of the pic­tures he came up with but we applaud his flexibility.

Ansh

Ansh

Quiz ques­tion: Is it pos­si­ble for some­one to be in Ban­ga­lore for 5 years and not be on a sin­gle trip any­where? The answer appar­ently is yes, as I dis­cov­ered with Ansh. How­ever, this Del­hi­ite has not wasted any time dis­cov­er­ing places out­side India. Now, dis­cover India, I say!

Another enthu pho­tog­ra­pher, Anshu was accom­pa­nied by his flashy Olym­pus cam­era. He also gave us demon­stra­tions of his cool gad­get while we drooled (you know how we women drool over any­thing that has many buttons!).

G-Gal

G-Gal

She first signed on for the Hon­nemardu trip, but it didn’t work out. G-Gal was deter­mined to make it for this one and sms’d me from Chen­nai say­ing she was com­ing! Trou­ble was afoot when we boarded the bus and after about 5 min­utes she wailed, “Are we there yet?” And then more trou­ble when she told me that she would feel more secure if she was belted in. Like in an aero­plane? Aha. G-Gal hadn’t done bus jour­neys for a while. Nor had she roughed it out in the jun­gle with basic accom­mo­da­tion and cleans­ing facil­i­ties. How­ever, after this first encounter with liv­ing on the wild (and rather basic) side, she promises to go on more trips. We are count­ing on that G-Gal!

Wernie Boy aka Gypsy aka the Worm (actu­ally, you can call him any­thing and he’ll respond)

Wernie

What can I say about Wernie boy? Both G-Gal and I pounced on him the moment he boarded the bus : he is such a poun­ca­ble char­ac­ter. He thought we were the ‘evil twins’ after that and kept giv­ing us sus­pi­cious looks through­out the bus jour­ney. When he got a chance to stop eat­ing BJ’s head, of course. Werner belongs to that school of thought that believes in speak­ing, irre­spec­tive of whether some­one is listening!

Also, very impa­tient, Wernie Boy kept ask­ing, What’s the plan? What’s the plan? This when it was obvi­ous to every­one that it was rain­ing cats and dogs and pretty much all our options like trekking and walk­ing were impos­si­ble given the con­di­tions. I didn’t kill him because I sensed he was gen­uinely ask­ing the ques­tion. And not just act­ing dumb :>)

BJ

Bax

Mov­ing on to the Texan who, when we were about 2 hours from the des­ti­na­tion inquired politely if we could take a plane back. The bus jour­ney obvi­ously had proved a lit­tle too much for him. How­ever, BJ has been in the coun­try for about 3 weeks and one must say that with his ini­ti­a­tion into the India sea­son with the mon­soon, I was won­der­ing why he didn’t look more harassed. Even G-Gal man­aged to look more flus­tered at times at the lack of lux­u­ries! And then when we were all seated on the raft, all ready to bat­tle the ele­ments, he asks rather curi­ously: “What river are we on, by the way?” And then a lit­tle later: “And we’re still in Kar­nataka?” Geog­ra­phy lessons for BJ, anyone?

The Prince

The Prince

But we never quite dis­cov­ered what he’s the Prince of! This gen­tle­man has done 3 treks in his 4 months in India (Anshul’s jaw dropped to the bus floor at this point!). He’s adapt­ing quite well to the Indian climes and when asked if he liked India and Indi­ans, he said (look­ing in Wernie’s direc­tion). “Yes, until now!” Poor Wernie. I think he got too much of our ver­bal bashing!

Ann ‘T’

AnnT

A com­mon friend intro­duced us know­ing our com­mon love of trav­el­ing. Ann mailed me one day ask­ing if I’d like to do some­thing over a week­end and thus plans were hatched. We zeroed in on the raft­ing plan. She asked if it was okay as she didn’t know how to swim! I said, all the more fun!! Ann T, thank­fully turned out to be calmer and more serene than G-Gal and moi, who don’t usu­ally know when to stop talk­ing and blab­ber­ing (and laugh­ing loudly!). Can you imag­ine 3 women talk­ing at the same time? Recipe for dis­as­ter, I say!

And that’s me!

Moi

No! Yoko Ono didn’t come raft­ing with us folks — it’s only me!

Discussion

21 Responses to “No rafts, just people”

  1. Fun descrip­tion of a fun-filled trip.

    Kudos
    Anshul

    Posted by Anita | July 28, 2005, 5:15 pm

  2. Some one needs to write about you too…

    Anita reminds me of a 60’s Hip­pie when she puts on her “super­man” glasses!
    Ini­tially I found the name amus­ing, Bora is Kang­lish for “Are you get­ting bored?” (Bora-A?). It was only later on I found out that she was no way boring!

    Other than start­ing a water fight with the other raft, she was pretty much harm­less. She insisted on call­ing her neigh­bour Sah rukh Khan and he refused to speak to any of us dur­ing the entire trip…

    Posted by Anita | July 28, 2005, 5:45 pm

  3. when we were about 2 hours from the des­ti­na­tion inquired politely if we could take a plane back.

    Have to say after many weeks I cracked up like hell and laughed out aloud. Luck­ily am alone at home. I am from a vil­lage near Hebri orig­i­nally so you can imag­ine why I am laug­ing like hell at this ques­tion. The clos­est to air­port is either Man­ga­lore air­port or the heli­pad at Kudremukh Iron works — both quite far from Hebri.

    What buses did you take to Hebri? AFAIK, there are daily at least two LUXURY buses to Hebri from Ban­ga­lore. Used to take every week­end when I worked at Bangalore.

    BTW any snake sto­ries? As you may know Hebri is one of the last places where there plenty of King Cobra snakes (Kaalinga).

    Later
    A

    Posted by Ananthapadmanabha | July 28, 2005, 9:22 pm

  4. It is said that even the jour­ney is tough if u have a good com­pany u can pull it through and actu­ally enjoy the hard jour­ney. Looks like ur trip fits the frame perfectly. :)

    Posted by Deepa | July 29, 2005, 12:17 am

  5. Test­ing comments

    Posted by Anita | July 29, 2005, 6:40 pm

  6. Amaz­ing. You make me miss Ban­ga­lore even more — and the desire to join you is at an all time high. Unfor­tu­nately I have no trips to India planned for the next 1.5 years.

    Posted by colours | July 29, 2005, 10:55 pm

  7. Hay

    anitha, this is regard­ing your 12 hour bus trip both sides… I don’t know what route you guys take, but here is an alter­nate route to Hebri..

    Take a bus from ban­ga­lore to shiv­a­moga, if you start by 9 in the night you will be reach­ing shiv­moga by 4–4.30. come out of ksrtc bus stand and you can see many mini-buses their ( these look like a nor­mal bus but short in length.)get in to any them they stop at hebri. By 7–7.30 you will be in hebri..

    One more thing if you start at 4.30 from shiv­a­moga you will be in agumbe by 6–6.30, keep your cam­eras ready because this is where the real scenery is (and you will also know why you can only take a mini bus).

    while com­ing back, you can go to agumbe from hebri. from agumbe you have good buses to bangalore…

    ( I know you guys have done this 2 times and would not plan to do it once again, but if you go next time to sita nadhi go to agumbe,and i know you will never regret it..)

    you may have to enquire at KSRTC for exact bus timings..

    Nag…

    Posted by Nag | July 29, 2005, 11:22 pm

  8. Hi
    loved the tex­ture of potraits and the descrip­tions. we had raft­ing of a dif­fernt sort in mumbai:)

    Posted by harini calamur | July 31, 2005, 11:06 pm

  9. Hey,

    Am com­ment­ing for the first time in this blog, but an avid reader of this blog.

    I really liked the won­der­ful trips you had made.I thought such trips can be made only by inti­mate groups and very rare…but you peo­ple are rock­ing actually …

    How i wish even i could join the group…

    Keep writ­ing…

    Posted by Vinu | August 1, 2005, 1:52 pm

  10. hey anita, next time u plan a trip just drop me a line…
    this time raft­ing aint fr me.. i knw no swim­ming..
    trekking, moun­tain climb­ing, just vis­it­ing places are all fine for me…
    btw, thats quite nice descrip­tion of all & u shld ‘ve writ­ten abt u also in 2nd per­son perspective.. :-)

    Posted by kris | August 1, 2005, 5:33 pm

  11. Nice snaps and also the write-up…
    pity your cam­era died..

    ps: the sys­tem is not allow­ing me to com­ment here !!!

    Posted by Prashanth | August 1, 2005, 5:52 pm

  12. haha­hah liked that Yoko ono part :)

    Posted by Pallavi | August 4, 2005, 10:14 am

  13. Nice pictures..Kinda like an indie movie promo which is pretty cool. You should have taken your extra­or­di­nary cat on your trip. That would have been fun.

    Posted by Suchintya Paul | August 4, 2005, 10:01 pm

  14. hi.
    this is off topic.
    could you change my url in your blog roll from to the cur­rent one. tnx

    harini (i am in there as gargi — which is the name under which i post)

    Posted by harini calamur | August 5, 2005, 12:23 am

  15. I hope you have bought another cam­era now. You should con­tinue with your photo rich travelogues !!!!

    Posted by srs | August 5, 2005, 3:21 pm

  16. Wow Anita!
    This is a Wow that is long pend­ing! Came to your blog from Vaishnavi’s and Usha’s a long time ago, and have been mean­ing to tell you that I admire the way you do so much with your life, the way you cre­ate hap­pi­ness instead of just wait­ing for it to hap­pen, the way you con­nect with peo­ple, the things you observe, and of course the way you write!
    I share your inter­ests in travel, pho­tog­ra­phy, French (taught French lit­er­a­ture for 7 years!)books — and cats! — saw your raft­ing invite and wanted to come, but did not hap­pen — would cer­tainly love to accom­pany you on any other trips you plan!
    Would love to get to know you bet­ter, do mail if you have the time. All the very best!

    Posted by Asha | August 6, 2005, 7:04 pm

  17. anshul: thanks man!

    apra: super­woman glasses, you mean! i won’t for­get the expres­sion on charu’s face when i called him shahrukh! and there i was think­ing i was so lucky to be sit­ting next to the name­sake of bollywood’s most famous idol ;)

    anan­tha: we cracked up too! and no cobras thank you, though one of the adven­ture guys did warn us about them!

    deepa: so very true :)

    colours: that’s rather sad. but you can keep read­ing about them here ;) and when you come, please do join us for a trip :)

    nag: thanks a lot for that infor­ma­tion! we didn’t get book­ings this time and ther­fore took about 2 hours more than the usual time.

    harini: yes, have been read­ing all about it on mum­bai blog­gers blogs!

    vinu: thanks for com­ment­ing and please do sometime :)

    kris: will do def­i­nitely. am plan­ning another trek soon. and btw, you don’t need to know swim­ming to raft! a lot of folks didn’t. all you need is a life jacket :)

    prashant: thanks!

    pallavi: sad, but true ;)

    such­intya: i wish i could take her for all of my trips!

    harini: done!

    srs: actu­ally, it was my back-up cam­era. my slr is still intact…

    asha: thank you soooo much. that was a really nice com­ment that made me smile. espe­cially this bit: “the way you do so much with your life, the way you cre­ate hap­pi­ness instead of just wait­ing for it to hap­pen, the way you con­nect with peo­ple, the things you observe, and of course the way you write” i went through a phase in life where i waited des­per­ately for some peace and hap­pi­ness and realised that it wasn’t going to hap­pen, unless i made it hap­pen myself. you’ve been teach­ing french lit­er­a­ture! wow, i am already impressed. and you like cats. okay, that’s it! i don’t really need any­thing else! will be in touch, definitely!!

    Posted by Anita | August 8, 2005, 9:23 pm

  18. I am new to blog­ging. Besiders I get so lit­tle time. So now I get up at 5 am to do blogging.

    Ok so it was very nice to come across your blog. Its quite com­pre­hen­sive. I enjoyed read­ing it.
    All the best
    Mohammed
    Karachi

    Posted by Mohammed Elias | August 20, 2005, 10:50 pm

  19. Wow!! i like your spirit! I admire peo­ple who know how to live their life and I feel you are one amongst them!

    Found your blog thru google as i was plan­ning a trip to kudremukh myself. You have described it so beau­ti­fully that I am long­ing to get there now.

    Hope you have many more such adven­tures (minus the leeches :) )
    Enjoy!!

    Posted by Tanu | August 25, 2005, 4:49 pm

  20. Hey Yoko ( a way cuter ver­sion of the original),

    great Post . Sounds like a very cool trip… your descrip­tions of ur fel­low mus­ke­teers was hillar­i­ous , espe­cially the one about wernie, poor boy sounds like he was ver­bally molested by u guys ! woul have loved to see pics… is there a post­ing by any­one of the oth­ers where the pics would be avilable?

    TC and keep those posts coming…

    Willy

    Posted by Wilbert | August 29, 2005, 1:28 pm

  21. Dear All,

    It was nice to read your expe­ri­ence of trav­el­ling to HEBRI..

    I am also from Hebri

    Thanks

    Posted by Ravindra Shetty | June 8, 2006, 6:48 pm

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