Month: June 2004

River rafting, a beautiful waterfall and lots of yucky leeches!

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).

Ma Chérie

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…

Where does the whole of Bangalore go on Sunday?

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, …

Doi-mach and other delicacies

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 …

The Horse Files

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 🙂