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How the ‘green’ is going out of Bangalore
“What we are doing to the forests of the world is but a mirro reflection of what we are doing to ourselves and to each other.” - Gandhi
It’s sad, it’s terribly depressing and it’s outright frustrating.
One day, there’s a massive tree towering over the road providing much needed shade on the road. The next day it’s gone. Mercilessly felled off to make way for more cars. The tree that took a hundred years to grow. Struck down in a single stroke.
Running the spiral at Auroville
On the Feb 16/17 weekend along with a gang of friends travelled to Pondicherry for the Auroville marathon. Auroville turned 40 on Feb 28 and this was one of the events to commemorate the occasion. Though I must admit that I shuffled and walked through most of this one since I had fallen and knocked my knee a few days earlier while running in Cubbon Park. But I did manage to complete the half marathon of around 22 kms.
A group of schoolgirls pass by a lovely yellow coloured building fringed by a bougainvillea tree in full bloom
The trail was lovely – I did more of sightseeing and admiring while going through some of these kaccha roads that I would never have found on my own! Auroville was a pretty sight with the yellow, orange, red, pink bougainvillea in full bloom adding so much colour to the atmosphere!
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A reader, Smitha, in my last post reminds me that I’m not posting frequently and I think I owe my visitors loads of apologies for that! It’s been an incredibly exciting and busy January / February with some interesting projects on the horizon so it’s been taking up a lot of my time and focus. But as she points out, I need to get back to more frequent blogging, and I’m definitely going to try now.
In the bad news, they’ve taken away access to pretty much everything useful including email and flickr during work hours. I guess we need to prepare ourselves for no Internet soon and the paranoia (especially in a large company) is understandable. Since mail a service that is taken for granted these days, you realise it’s absence only when it’s taken away. As a company, it’s justified to do it because of all the problems - bandwidth issues, people spending too much time, security etc. And it’s a service they provide us for free, so I guess they have an equal right to take it away too. But it’s just so very inconvenient and annoying when you need actually wait till you get home after the whole day just to go and check your mail.
Anyway, I guess we just learn to live without now and the only option is to get home and catch up on mail.
On another note, as Valentine’s Day is approaching but here’s something I put together for rediff.com. And besides, it’s always a good excuse to take another trip in case you’re looking for one!
Enjoy!
A week or so ago, we went for a team lunch to a place called Unwind Island somewhere on the Outer Ring Road. Don’t ask me why they call it that, I couldn’t really figure out as there wasn’t an island in sight :)
A few days ago, on the Xmas break, as we were being rowed across a river to a little island called Amgol, my first thought was: “Now this is the real unwind island!”
And it did turn out to be just that - a time to relax and unwind. But no travelogue for now, I’m going to hopefully catch up on all my pending travel pieces soon. I think I need a good 2-3 days of pure uninterrupted bliss to complete everything! I’ve been terribly slack lately with different things taking priority, but I do have the Coorg and Paro (Bhutan) pieces coming up.
I was talking to Ravi when he suggested that I do a teaser on my Bhutan trip to start off with. I was telling him that since I’d taken loads of pictures (as usual!) it would take me some time to upload everything and write my travelogues. So here it is, just a little sneak peek into the lovely and exotic kingdom of Bhutan.
We started our Bhutan trip from the border town of Phuntsholing and travelled to the little but charming town of Paro, where there are more street dogs than people.
The scenic approach road to Paro
“On partira de nuit, l’heure où l’on doute
Que demain revienne encore
Loin des villes soumises, on suivra l’autoroute
Ensuite on perdra tous les nord
On laissera nos clés, nos cartes et nos codes
Prisons pour nous retenir
Tous ces gens que l’on voie vivre comme s’ils ignoraient
Qu’un jour il faudra mourir
Et qui se font surprendre au soir
Oh belle, on ira
On partira toi et moi, où? je sais pas
Y a que les routes qui sont belles
Et peu importe où elles mènent
Oh belle, on ira, on suivra les étoiles et les chercheurs d’or
Si on en trouve, on cherchera encore”
- On Ira, by John Jaques Goldman
When: From October 12, 2007
Where: Up North
Why: Do I ever need a reason? :)
The open skies, the green mountains and the road calls again. I will be gone till the end of the month. And will be back with lots of stories and photographs to add to my already growing pending travelogues, yet to be written!
It’s a famous place. As soon as you land there, the coracle guy informs us about it’s claim to fame - it was featured in the movie Roja.
I shall have to go back and watch Roja sometime, I make a note.
The Hogenakkal falls itself is quite spectacular, with water gushing out through several channels and falling down a height of 5-20 metres at different places. Since it’s the height of the monsoons when we visited, the river is at its fullsome best, gushing out with abandon and fervour.
North East Chronicles: Located in the middle of the mighty Brahmaputra river, the journey to Majuli island is around 2 and a half hours in a noisy ferry. We visited the island on March 22 & 23, 2007 during our North East trip.
At the Nimati ferry ghat, the junction where you need to board a ferry to the island of Majuli, we were told that there would be a delay for about 2 hours. A bandh had been called the day before (which didn’t happen) but people were still under the impression it was on.
We had no option but to sit beside the river side and wait. We got quite a few curious glances from people around – I don’t think they are used to too many visitors in these parts. Someone asked us why we were going to Majuli and seemed rather surprised when we said we were there for a visit.
Majuli, is often called the largest river island in the world. However, one website clarified that it isn’t – it’s merely the largest freshwater island in South Asia.