Love in Shimla - Final

Love isshtory

Cut to Shimla.
Oh before that you need to know what happened in Kulu. Well nothing really happened. We saw a plank with 'welcome to Kulu' or suchlike printed and our bus proceeded towards Shimla. Our itinerary read – ‘Reach Kulu’. So we did and left immediately.

As there was no possibility of finding snow in Shimla, our enthusiasm level was low. We reached Shimla sometime in the evening. I was missing River Beas. Shimla looked nice with lights and all but I just couldn’t get over Beas. This made me sulk. We reached hotel and began shifting our luggage. I was about to lift one of the heaviest bags when I had a YashRaj movie moment. A tall guy was walking towards our bus. It was hard to ignore him. He had a charismatic presence. Certain people have that effect. I kept a tight hold on my bag coz, who knows, he could have mugged us. He reached our bus, and a song played inside my head (trivia: I CAN be romantic). He was undeniably the best looking guy I had ever seen, I think (I don’t remember his face now). He looked at us and smiled. You know, one of those lopsided ones; like Milind Soman nah I’m just exaggerating. But he did smile, I remember.
Lesson number 10: I think its time we stopped obsessing over Milind Soman. He is old. He looks very old. Passé.

Nineteen year olds’ who are fed on Jane Austen and Mills and Boons can be unreasonably romantic in such occasions. A friend of mine giggled.
He said “hmm hi. Do you need help?”
I said nothing and pretended to lift my heavy bag. Few of my friends agreed. He picked our bags and walked back to the hotel. We all looked at each other and had only one thought running on our minds. “Is he staying in this hotel?” My friend broke the silence with - “Do you think he is a porter?”. We thought of using the non-existent knife on her for getting us back to reality. He disappeared into the darkness after dumping our luggage in the lobby. Yes. He was gone! Just like that. We couldn’t even thank him. I sulked some more.

Next morning our breakfast table hardly saw us eat and mostly heard us talk about the cute guy. So where was he hiding? What was he doing here in Shimla? Did he own the hotel? Or was he a porter? We didn’t see him that morning. We visited mall road, shopped and decided to return to our hotel. The sun had set several minutes ago coz it was surprisingly dark outside. The place looked very nice and you'd think nothing could go wrong. Well well to our luck there was no public transport. We had no choice but to walk. Locals were confident that we would reach our hotel in 20 minutes flat. But they were so wrong. It took us an hour to reach, not without some adventure.

There was no proper route to our hotel and we had to ask people for directions, which was not easy as there weren’t many people found on streets. We walked on the main road and saw a board with our hotel's name and directions. Happiness came. Then we had strange men in jeep follow us which made us take a diversion where we met an old lady who volunteered to take us to our hotel. We had to trust her coz we were tourists. Tourists don’t have choice. Stupid tourists.

Got back to our hotel, thanked lord of seven hills and the kind old lady. Of course we discussed about the cutie while we walked. By next day we had no hopes of finding him. Probably he was just another tourist. Or he was a figment of our imagination. Our tour operator had arranged a camp fire for us that evening. We all danced (I just moved from left to right). Other tourists were caught looking through their windows with a packet of popcorn. It must have been entertaining.

My friends and I unsurprisingly got tired of dancing and decided to click pictures as it was our last day in Shimla. We found a scenic place, a garden with lot of pretty flowers and were posing joyfully when we finally saw him. He looked better than we thought he did and was wearing an exquisite jacket (a big fan of jackets, that’s me). He noticed us and volunteered to click pictures. I just shrugged and looked around for support from swooning; well he was talking to me after all!
Lesson Number 11: My experiences with cute guys have been pitiable. I shrug or look away when they talk to me. Sample this. Don’t come to me for advice.

We all sat next to the garden and smiled goofily while he clicked our picture. We thanked him and he asked if we were having fun in Shimla. We replied something incoherent. He then enquired about our stay, my friend’s suspicion about him being a porter was growing stronger. And then he left with a wave. We giggled until Sr. S (our lecturer) spotted us and rolled her eyes. We reached our room and discussed whether his eyes were grayish blue with a tinge of brown or just gray or just blue. I lost track of shades after a while. I liked his eyes, yes, but I liked his corduroy jacket better. I should have asked where he got it from.

The following morning we narrated this incident to another friend of ours. Apparently she and her roomies were as romantically stricken by him as we were. With nothing else to do, we spent 15 minutes discussing the possibility of finding him in Bangalore. Whatever. My silent wish of a romantic encounter (a la Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jaayenge) almost came true; only mine ended before it could even begin.

Love in Shimla - Part II

A tale of back-breaking bus journey, parathas and snow

A couple of months back I was cleaning my room (a very rare sight) and found a picture that made me nostalgic and I immediately called my friend. The two of us spent an hour reliving our Shimla/Manali moments and agreed that we couldn’t have asked for a better holiday. During the course of our call we remembered an insignificant incident and tadah! that’s how I got the title for my post. Err this was just to give you a background which I now feel is pointless.

Agra was our first destination and our stay was uneventful.
Lesson number 6: Do not buy miniature Taj Mahal you find on the streets of Agra. It’s extremely tacky and easily breakable.

After Agra, it was time for us to head to Manali. The moment I got off the bus, I was in love. In love with Manali. For those who haven’t visited this place, please do. It’s a b.e.a.u.t.i.f.u.l place. River Beas, clear blue sky, narrow trails, mountains, street food, and tall trees will leave you enthralled.

We reached Manali after a horrible bus journey. Couldn’t believe our luck or the lack of it when we were made to sit in the last row. And it didn’t help when my friend, who has a spine that’s bendable in all directions and needs constant support while travelling, sat next to me. I am sure all of us have one such friend. These earthly beings invariably find your shoulder to sleep the moment they get inside a car or a bus, eventually occupy a lot space and almost chuck you off your own seat.
Lesson number 7: Sit next to the driver; you can at least enjoy hindi film songs of 90’s. Anuradha Paudwal and Kumar Sanu singing “jaanam jaane jaa.. janam jaane jahaan..” or if you are lucky you get to listen to some of the rare ones too, which have mindboggling lyrics- “kaisa yeh ladka hai.. baatein hi karta hai.. liar hai liar hai”.

Few of us who were awake chatted for sometime and I then fell asleep, not because I was tired but it became extremely difficult for me to laugh while the earthly being slept on my then bony shoulder. Sometime in the morning at round 6 our bus stopped near an old dhabha in Haryana. Our tour operator had arranged caterers who began the job of preparing breakfast for us - bread/butter/jam. Only a loser would have eaten bread when there were hot parathas in sight. We gorged on 10 bucks aloo da paratha with a big dollop of home-made butter.
Lesson Number 8: Never share your paratha.

I don’t think I can ever forget the taste. That was the only time I genuinely liked potatoes (exceptions - yummy French fries served in Infinitea and chips bought from local Hot Chips). Finally after a very long journey we reached Manali. Cold wind greeted us and we Bangaloreans were thrilled to get our jackets, sweaters, shawls out. We generally feel happy when we see wool. I could not sleep that night; I lay awake thinking about snow. The next day we left to Rohtang Pass.
Trivia: You may notice, I used to and continue to have irregular sleep pattern. Insomnia is my middle name.

The organisers took advantage of our good nature (read: too lazy to protest) and made us permanently sit in the last row for the rest of the tour. The journey to Rohtang pass was scenic; Beas flowed peacefully and I sat next to the window. Sheer bliss. The blue-green river made my heart skip several beats... err no, in reality the sleepy bus driver kept going tad too close to the milestone. I couldn’t take my eyes off those lovely mountains and the milestone. We reached Rohtang pass.

Oh! we were ecstatic. It was feet-numbingly and teeth-chatteringly cold. But of course I just had one thing on my mind- snow. We were asked to climb the hill to reach THE place. And so we did. Did we get to see snow? Yes and no. All we saw was dirty brown patch of snow coated here and there. 200 angry college goers were all set to turn murderers. The tour operator’s promise of “snowww.. veryyy slippery also.. you will enjoy” was still ringing in our ears. Dejected we all got back, tried finding a knife in vain and sat in the bus feeling terribly hungry.

Later we hit the streets of Manali and ate mind blowing junk food.

Next post: Part III (the final one, I promise) *grin*

Love in Shimla - Part I

En Route

“Did you pack two pairs of socks?”

“I am not going to carry cold cream. Ami, you do that no?”

“Whoa! Are those Crocin tablets? Plan to set up a shop there?”

“snowwwwwww (giggle)”

These were some random sentences uttered (sometimes even in our dreams) before leaving to Manali and Shimla. The excitement was sky high and the packing list endless. My mom and sister forced me to come up with a list of things to pack, which was a task by itself.

Lesson No.1: Remember a twine rope, safety pins, mosquito repellent and a torch can complete any list.

So I added all these and much more, packed two bags and set out. My college had organized a trip to Kulu, Manali, Shimla and other must-see-places-if-you-have-gotten-off-at-Delhi-railway-station. I was with my group of friends and other college mates. How many? umm..around 200. Fun aye!

The train in which we traveled (Karnataka Express) had to accommodate 180 manic teenagers and some tweenagers along with some lecturers (yup lecturers. We had to take them along. Rules I believe). Our fellow passengers looked very nervous. They looked intimidated by the sheer racket we all created when we got in. 3 days? No way, they all must have thought. One of them was seen crying next to a stinky wash basin muttering “death.. death.. take me” (note: you know how I love to exaggerate). We found our ‘berths’ and I got a last minute do’s and don’ts from Dad. The train was about to move. I impatiently looked around for my sister. She was stuck in a traffic jam and I was worried that I wouldn't be able to see her for another 20 days. But she made it. Wheeeeeeeeee I said and exchanged hugs and some cash (working sibling=ATM. We younger one’s are so nasty *evil laughter*). After saying our goodbyes we got back to our seats and wondered how to sort the crisis that needed our immediate attention. Few of our friends were in another compartment and we had to move them. So we went around asking our co-passengers:

“err escuse Mister large man with a frown can you please shift to berth number 43, pliss?” Lesson No. 2: Never mess with such people. just smile and offer a packet of Frooti.

“um sorry, kind lady with a badly behaved child, can you take that fabulous seat number 50 and let our friend sit with us” -so on and so forth.

Even after all our pleadings and drama two of our friends ended up in a different compartment. We didn’t bother much as we had other important issues to tackle. Like dinner, for instance. So we sat down and gobbled yummy curd rice and chutney puDi with chapaatti. We failed to notice that there was a man sitting on the edge of our reserved berth and shouting very loud in a voice that could give Rajdeep Sardesai a run for his money. “Train ko kharida hai kya?” he yelled. We all took a couple of minutes to look away from our food.

Lesson No. 3: Know your priorities while traveling. Food should be your first priority. Always.

We looked up and gave one of our get-the-hell-out-of-here looks. He was upset that most of the seats were booked before he could. Our world famous get-the-hell-out-of-here look didn’t work; he kept other passengers entertained with his sulk-sulk-blah-blah. We kept ourselves entertained with curd rice and pickle. He left after sometime. We had already decided that none of us would sleep during the journey and planned to stay up the whole night. Yes, stupid teenagers. We kept ourselves awake by talking non-stop (read: bitch*ng session). But I noticed most of my friends were yawning after 11PM. I for one can never sleep while traveling so I didn’t want them to sleep. I asked them to be strong and keep themselves awake.

They left and slept peacefully.

I kept waking up from time to time, trying my best to read the names of all stations. I was on the middle berth, a difficult spot I would say, but I managed to read 'em all. Or so I thought (they were written in Hindi and my hindi reading capabilities from a distance is err how do I put it, questionable). The train was too slow for my liking and it was ~5 AM. As it was the first time that I had woken up so early in my life I thought of making the best use of it by brushing my teeth and eating some plum cake that we had packed. Hey! you feel hungry while traveling.

The whole freakin train was asleep. How can they all sleep so peacefully I wondered? With nothing much to do after eating plum cake I went back to sleep only to be rudely woken up by eunuchs at around 6 AM. Four or five of them were all around the place - *clap clap clap* “aye hero utho..” *clap clap* “haan ..haan good morning” they wished us. I needed coffee. But they kept clapping. It hurt my head. Somebody please give me coffee, I pleaded silently. For us Bangaloreans waking up to find no coffee is like going to Tirupati and not hearing MS’s Suprabhatam or going to Tirupati and not standing in queue. More claps followed forcing me to peep through my shawl. One of them caught sight of me peeping, thinking I was a guy (don’t ask me why) tried to wake me up. After s/he found I’m in fact a girl, asked me to go back to sleep. Sweet, no? I murmured ‘coffee?’ sleepily (threw in some sympathy angle muhahahaa. clever me!). “coffee?” s/he asked me with a frown and *clap clap* called the coffee chap (who had just walked into our compartment) and moved ahead to harass a cute guy who was sleeping on the ‘passage-wali’ seat (ahem.. a cute medical student. more on this later)

Lesson number 4: Don’t infuriate eunuchs. Stay calm and smile or act sleepy. They’ll help you. Really.

I thanked the kind eunuch, which went unnoticed, paid Rs.5 to the coffee chap and had my first sip of “Brooo instant coffee”. I immediately felt dizzy. I will never be able to describe the taste of Broooooo. But my fellow coffee lovers may I request you to join me in requesting Indian Railways to ban this dreadful blend of warm water, three spoons of sugar and coffee powder tin’s lid thrown in for the effect. I vowed to drink only Tea for the next 20 days, any day better than Br-ewww.
Lesson 5: You might have already guessed, yes, say NO to coffee while traveling. It.should.be.banned.

Rest of the journey was uneventful. Oh yes the cute medical student (no, he is not the protagonist of this story). To be honest I didn’t find him cute, in fact none of us did. Much to our amusement he slept throughout the journey and kept throwing furious glances at us. Well I dont blame him, coz our chatter matched the decibel levels of the train’s engine.

And thus we reached our destination.

Now, let me skip the rest of the places we visited and head to Shimla, alright. Or on second thoughts...

to be continued....

Feeling hot hot hot

I haven’t traveled for a while now. I only dream about traveling. I watch shows on Travel & Living and sulk. My travel plans flop the minute I get excited about it . For this reason I have stopped planning my vacations. But the future does look bright and hope my travel plans don’t bomb like Harry Baweja’s next movie. I h.o.p.e!

The last I traveled was to Chennai on an official assignment, that too for a day. I couldn’t really look around the place as there was no time at all. But the good part was I got to eat some yummy food at Saravanaa Bhavan. What a fine place! I thought of getting a Xerox copy of the cook’s feet but they didn’t let me inside the kitchen. Can you believe that? Apart from this minor regret the trip was fun, thanks to my colleagues who were with me.

*note: dare you say- “official trip but traveling by train-aa?” hmph. I work for a start up. This justification should suffice, no?*

The train journey turned out to be uneventful, for us. Our fellow passengers felt otherwise. They almost threatened to throw us out as, they thought, we were talking too much. One man after tossing and turning for hours lost his sleep (poor chap, you’d think) and with nothing better to do he kept scowling at us. What nonsense. Another guy threw dirty looks at us every time we burst out laughing (which by the way happened every 2.67 minutes once). We did not feel guilty though. It was only 11 PM; tell me who sleeps so early?

Talking about sleep it is necessary to tell you that I normally can’t sleep while traveling. And so when everyone went to sleep, I put on my headphones to listen to music. I got bored listening to my own playlist and let my thoughts wander. I remembered the time when I had first traveled to Chennai. That was eons ago.

As kids we never had a choice. We had no decision making power (unlike today’s kids). We were happy with any kinda outing. “Trip-aa?” we’d ask our folks eagerly. The place didn’t matter to us as long as we had company.

That’s how the first Chennai holiday took place. I remember going to the beach and walking down the street feeling clammy. I remember having tough time sitting inside the van coz there hardly was any place to stretch my leg. I remember going to VGP from Chennai. I remember waiting to come back to Bangalore, coz I couldn’t take the heat.

Technically it was not a vacation. My uncle had some official duty there and with nothing much to do after finishing his work he thought he might as well throw few stupid kids into the water. No, he didn’t do that. He very sweetly asked us (meaning my entire crazy family) to accompany him on his trip. Amidst all the excitement we forgot it was the month of April. Need I say more? We realized it would be extremely hot and for us Bangaloreans any place above 25 degrees Celsius is considered hot. But none of us kids wanted to back out. Well obviously, how can you say no to a sponsored trip? Besides summer holidays were meant for fun. So the thought of beach in Chennai/VGP got us very excited.

I don’t recall the rest of the tour, except for the humid climate and as a result the urgency to get back to Bangalore.

While we are on the subject of hot places let me also narrate to you about our other expedition to another hot destination. During one such summer vacation we (my family and another friend’s family) traveled to Bijapur, Aihole, Badami and Pattadkal. Summer in North of Karnataka is hot. To put it mildly, we thought of cooking hot BeNNe dosey (Butter dosa) on top of our car. As we didn’t find butter on the highway we decided against it. But seriously, it was burning hot. Coming back to our trip, despite the heat and dad’s friend falling sick we had loads of fun. We all traveled in our Premier Padmini. All of us (eight people including four sweet 'little' kids) were squashed inside the car and we didn’t really mind (more so coz there was no choice). The heat didn’t prevent us from having fun. Between our journey, there was an unexpected stop over at Koodalasangama and with no hotels around we took refuge in a small dormitory. I still remember we slept on the floor and found everything exciting -the spookiness of the night, the dim lit room, the whole idea of an adventurous trip and the constant “ssshhh sumne malkoLI” (shut up you crazy little monsters) uttered by our elders. We even made up a song on Kudalasangama. Boy! What fun.

Now when I look back I don’t understand why most of our summer vacations were spent in places such as these- hot, dry, sultry and humid. Well who cares as long as it made us happy.

This post, my friends, was a leaf out of my travel journal. I do hope to write some more some other time.

Coming up next: Love in Shimla

Ah! I remember you

I am thrilled. My music teacher still remembers me! I mean my very first guru whom I haven’t met since 15 years or so, still remembers me as a good student. Yay! She recognized me when I went to meet her last week. Wooohooo.. I rock!

I started learning music at a tender age of *ahem* … err ok will start again.. –
When my Dad got transferred to Hubli, many years ago, I was extremely unhappy to leave Bangalore. I threw tantrums and cried for a month. After a couple of months dad and mom (who couldn’t take my “I want to go back to Bangalore” whine any longer) made me join some music class (vocal. I can’t play no instrument) very close to our house. And Mrs Shirodkar was my first music teacher who taught Hindustani classical music. Initially I never liked going to class coz there were no friends to learn along with. But as the classes progressed I came to love music (I still do). I wouldn’t be exaggerating if I say it’s from here that I started my journey of music which, by the way, has been very eventful.
This time when I visited Hubli, I thought of saying ‘hi’ to my guru and was delighted when she said she still talks to her family about me. Well that’s something for me to feel elated about isn’t it?

My My Mighty!

Remember my jungle lodges trip post?? Our trip to K Gudi? Remember? Ah good good.. this is in continuation of that post.. You have to read this I don't care. Anyway the first day, as I had mentioned in this post, we went on a Jungle safari. We settled ourselves in a jeep, open jeep mind you, and took time to get used to another bumpy ride. Its jungle for Pete's sake and what did you expect? F1 track? You guys are so not wild I tell you ;) So we set off.. we were all excited obviously, standing and balancing ourselves throughout the ride.. Well, initially we saw a bunch of Spotted Deer.. again some three or four of them.. then some more deer and then an occasional Sambar.. more deer.. we were losing patience. Then our driver took a turn, away from the others who had left along with us. After driving for 3 or 4 minutes, we saw a Scorpio parked in the middle of the track with a man standing out of the car, with a tripod and on it was a super duper camera.. we were very impressed (ahem ;)) The guy was rather sweet and gave us a chance to look through the lens. We saw an Owl that he and his friends had found. The Owl was auburn with bright yellow eyes. I loved him. The Owl silly, what did you think? Anyway we had to move coz the Scorpio guys moved ;( we followed them, now hoping to find something interesting, but alas they took a different route, leaving us alone boo hoo ;). Our driver had super sharp eyes and found a herd of elephants! Yeah yeah I hear you say -"Come on even we can a spot an elephant".. But wait there was a Tusker with the rest of them. We clicked pictures, talked in hushed voices (coz elephants don't like to be disturbed you see) and someone popped a question "sir, Tusker yaavaagaadru attack maaDidyaa?" (has the tusker attacked anyone before?) The man replied a cool "Yeah" . We were at loss for words.. more pictures and hushed voices followed.. Those elephants were chilling out. Taking their own sweet time- eating grass, shrubs and walking slowly, I mean completely at home.. Our driver, through his walky-talky told someone that he has found a Tusker and so asked that someone to come to that spot. Apparently it had been 15 days since they had seen a Tusker. So we were a little proud of ourselves to have found him hehe.. We moved closer to the herd.. They did not notice us.. They ate.. looked at nothing in particular.. We were waiting for them to move. We were bored of watching them gaze. But we didn't see one thing coming though. A sight that is unforgettable. The Tusker pushed a whole damn tree right in front of us. Just a light push and voila! the tree was on the ground.. We were awed at its strength .. And the only thing we regretted later was that we couldn't take a video of this whole tusker-making-the-tree-fall episode.. I guess I'll crib all my life. It pushed the tree and started walking forward. Chased a Deer which I guess had just popped in to eat some grass.. We went forward as he did and just watched him.. But this tusker made a lasting impression on me and ever since this trip, I have read a lot about tuskers'. Poor things are getting killed these days.. either because of their violent nature or because they get electrocuted while straying too close to an area where human beings live.
Hmm so that was my safari story. nothing great.. Not too adventurous,,.. We hoped to find leopards etc but did not.. Though this Tusker was as good as any other wild animal. Isn't he cute? (picture below).

We the Junglees

The plan for the trip began a month before the actual date.. err yeah, this was the first time I guess there was planning involved in our trip *applause and some drum rolls please ;)* My friend Nihal, the initiator, got us so excited about the trip that we were actually counting days, very much like kids who look forward to visit their favorite uncle's farm house. After a lot of behind-the-scenes-"yes/No/Maybe" to the trip (that always happens when you plan so much.. hmph), after getting to know that Nihal would have to drop out (we missed our in house Schumi during the trip :(), after a lot of downs and a bit of up's we set out to Biligiri Rangana Betta or B R Hills. Asifa, Rohini and I parked ourselves in Kiran's car, clicking pictures occasionally and chatting non-stop. Shasank, Vishu and Aanch were in a cab, sleeping throughout the journey no doubt. We got to see some lovely country side I tell you, good for our health and our camera. But but but the road that we took was terrible. Actually it was just a path.. it was muddy, rocky and bumpy! Kiran's car was pleading us to get down and carry it :p.. Finally, after a terrible journey we reached BR Hills. Yayy! Now we have a Kahaani mein twist ;) we were not staying at BR hills but were driving up the hill to K Gudi (Kyathadevarayana Gudi) - to Jungle Lodges. The road to K Gudi was good, we were back on track, as in all excited and cursing Zilla Panchayat for the pathetic condition of the roads. We reached K Gudi at 2 PM I think.. Right time for lunch. Even before we could think of food, the Jungle lodges representative gave us "instructions". Sounded very organized and everything planned (sigh! not again. We are not a group of disciplined individuals' you see :p). The place had a charming view -it was raining and the whole place looked lovely. Green and beautiful. I loved the place instantaneously. We got into our "tents" and had a reasonably good lunch. Then we all set out for "the jungle safari". (The Safari story will be covered in detail soon, in a separate post :D) BTW we got to see loads of spotted deer during the safari.
Next day all of us woke up early.. ah! that made us wise (remember the saying??? hehe). It was a lovely sight. The mist and the green, together formed a great combination. We enjoyed sitting outside our tents sipping coffee and occasionally shooing a monkey away. By the way the place is full of monkeys, apart from us that is. Later at round 10 or 11, I don't really remember, we went to Biligiri Ranganathaswamy Temple. We got to see some beautiful plants and trees on the way to the temple (picture above). After lunch we all just lazed around doing nothing. Extremely relaxed. Asifa and Rohini tried their hands on Table Tennis. I read a wildlife magazine.. had coffee.. . Also watched a wildlife documentary movie (something about tigers I think) did nothing in particular.. We couldn't resist the tree houses and rope nets and so climbed/rolled.. There were hammocks to relax.. Sometime in the evening Kiran, Shasank and I went on a drive to a nearby town and on our way back we saw some good wildlife - a turtle (??), Bison, Wild dogs and some more spotted deer (not again!!). Spotted Deer apparently are like dogs you find in Bangalore, they are so common you see. Overall a superb lazy (except for our unexpected night safari), day at Jungle Lodges. loved it... Next day we went trekking into the jungle.. Oh Boy was it tiring or what! We huffed and puffed our way into the forest.. Spotted a root legged spider.. yeah an itchy weed. And another Elephant! Trekking is fun but is very tiring ..Tires you like crazy without getting to see much. Except for a "cute" flower here and a thorny itchy weed there, our trek wasn't eventful. But it was fun… It's the state of mind you see; if you want to have fun you can have fun in every sense I say!

All in all it was fun.. Of course the Jungle Lodges people would have been definitely happy to see us leave hehe... We the junglees loved the jungle...

Few facts about the place follow:

Distance: 226 Kms from Bangalore

Best time to visit: Feb - June

K Gudi Wilderness Camp Area: 540 sq kms

Cost (incl Breakfast/Lunch/Dinner): 2250 per night.

Few Wild facts:

There are 600 Elephants (Tuskers' included :p), 75 leopards (we did not come across even one of them), innumerable monkeys, wild boars, wild dogs, Bisons', Birds and Deer.

Would suggest everybody to visit this place :)