Skandagiri Trek

Skandagiri is 73km from Bangalore. Located at an altitude of 1750 mts, its a beautiful location for moderate trekking. This is essentially a night trek, but we decided to trek in the morning as girls were accompanying us. The trekking day started off with me searching for ATM at 4:30 AM. I then picked up Manish and Uttaran. Arun and Kiran were right on time. So the only people who were late at the start point(EGL) were Ozzy and Prerna.There can never be a trek without at least one person getting late. We never thought getting out of the city would be a problem, but it turns out Uttaran (Our Navigator) has not done his “classwork”. We were roaming around the city to find the exit to Bellary road. Finally, we were out and cruising along the highway. Reached Chikbalapur at 7:30 AM, and soon found our way to basecamp of Skandagiri. We parked our cars at basecamp, and found a guide for the trek. Although a guide is not needed for the morning trek, we decided to hire him nonetheless. We started the climb around 8:00AM, and it took us 3 hours to reach the top. We had few first timers with us, so we had to stop at regular intervals for them. Irrespective of the stops we made it to the top in good time. On the way we saw all the 6 circular fort walls as stated in the wiki .

Trip To Kakinada & Yanam

Phani’s wedding was something i was looking forward to. The wedding was to take place at Vizag and the reception at Kakinada. I planned on attending only the reception. The main attractions apart from the wedding was food. This town is supposed to be famous for crabs and peserets (dosa). I reached on 23rd morning and headed to the hotel. I met couple of my college friends who had also come for the reception. Knowing that the reception is only in the evening we decided to take a cab and head to Rajamundri. We wanted to spend sometime at the banks of river Godhavari. The moment we stepped outside the room, we felt the heat and we rushed back to the room. The rest of the day was spent watching movies on my laptop. The food at the reception was extraordinary. So after a heavy dinner we decided to take a cab to Yanam. Yanam is a union territory, about 24 km from Kakinada. Booze is supposed to damn cheap at Yanam, so we made sure we go there that very night. Little did we know that Yanam was a very small town and a decent accommodation was not possible.

A Week Of Iranian Cinema

After the trek, it was time to relax. Nothing befitting than watch some good movies. Thats my idea of relaxation in city.I had 3 movies lined up for viewing. The first one was “The Dark Night”, “Children Of Heaven” and “The Color Of Paradise”. Dark Night is the latest batman flick which everyone is talking about. The “excellent” casting of Heath Ledger as joker is often raved about. I have seen it on dvd before and was not all that impressed about it. But after lot of people recommending me to go to the theaters, i decided to give it a shot. Surely it was not as bad as i thought. It was very good entertainer and worth a watch. I guess its the best batman movie so far. This blog entry is not to talk about this movie, rather about two Iranian cinemas i have seen on the same day. I was a bit skeptical of Iranian movies as i thought it would be about some religious nut cases trying to make a point. But it turns out to be way more than that. It makes Hollywood/Bollywood movies look dumb. I guess they are dumb when compared to this.

Trek At Muthati

After week long anticipation of the trek at kodachadri (near shimoga) that was planned 1 month in advance, the air was filled with disappointment. We learnt that shimoga was flooded due to heavy rains and trek was not possible. The long awaited trek had come to an end even before it started. We had 3 days to kill and no plan in place. Sensing this few of my friends decided to head home rather than wasting their time in bangalore doing nothing. We were down to just 4. We decided to drive down to nandhi hills near bangalore. We knew it was not a trekking spot, but at least it took us out of the city. Nandhi hills trip proved to be a good time pass, but there were far too many tourist to actually have fun. In matter of 15 mins we decided that we shall trek Muthati the next day. Raja and Joe were the people who worked out the logistics for the trek. I took the responsibility of driving and kicha, hmm sleeping. We started from bangalore at 6:30 AM on Saturday. We had enough food and water, as there would be nothing available there. We left the city via kanakapura road. The roads were very good, so we cruised at around 80kmph.