Dream, Believe and Make it happen

Diving in Temple reef, Pondicherry aka Puducherry

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Every since i dived for the first time in netrani islands, i am in love with the deep oceans. This pongal day i decided to dive in the east coast of india. I got to know of the agency which is organising the trip- temple adventures. Temple adventures is located very near to the pondicherry railway station and the government guest house.

Day one:

We started from chennai early in the morning by bus and reached pondicherry by around 11:00 am in the morning. We roamed around and could not get a decent room. We settled for a mediocre room just near the bus stand with the help of an auto driver. We put our luggae there and reached ‘Temple adventure’. They asked us to go and have lunch nearby. We had our lunch and joined them again for the pool sessions.

Pool sessions

On reaching the spot, we were given forms to fill in for our next day dive and shown some videos of dive site. Then we were taken inside a tank for our trial sessions, where we were trained for basic skills like breathing under water, removing water from scuba mask, equalising, hand signals etc., All of us did it with ease except the last batch who were doing at 4:00 pm in the evening. By the time water has become so cold, all of them started shivering including the trainer.

Dinner at hotel ‘Le club’

After pool sessions are over we returned to the room and then located this hotel using ‘Tripadvisor’ app. soon we were there. I ate to my satisfaction on saturday night at Hotel ‘Le club’. The hotel is situated near rock beach. You can either have your dinner and then go for a walk or vive versa. But the plus side of doing the former is you get yours seats early otherwise you will be sent back. There are lot of places nearby but thus one is a must if you are in pondicherry. Indian, continental, french cuisines are available here and they serve really fast. With the wine and spirits, and the wild breeze of the rock beach, make your mood light.

Relaxing at ‘Rock beach’

As the name indicates, the sea was stopped by placing rocks along the coast. The beach is very clean and long and it is really nice time, be it with family or friends. It can be easily reached from the bus stand as well as the railway station.

Day two:

On the day of the diving, we got up ealry in the morning and reached the office at 6:30 am in the morning. Breakfast was arranged by them, but we had lightly. It rained early in the morning and The weather was little rough. We had difficulty in plunging into the ocean. Once inside the ocean, It was very calm, even at a depth of 1 metre.

Temple reef is an artificial site, created by this team for discover scuba divers. There are twenty other dive sites in this area.

The artificial reef is made up of cocunut tree leaves, palm tree leaves, and many other recyclable materials only. Lot of fishes swarm the area and for begineers it is an aweful sight. For an experienced like me, it was not so awful. We should try for other real dive sites nearby. sine i went along with two little cousins, i choose to go for this site, which is really safe for freshers.

The open water course was conducted for a batch of students at this site.

I tried to take my camera(olympus TG-3), but felt uncomfortable with having camera in one hand and leaving the control to my diver. Several times my instinct took over and i paddled with my fins and created discomfort for my co-diver.

After the dive i felt that i should not have gone for DSD. I should complete my open water course soon and go independently. I was very comforable inside water and the only discomfort had was somebody handling me. I need my freedom. I have decided to do the open water course, but still not decided where should i do the course.

Lion fish- during my dive at temple reef.

Credit for all photos goes to the temple adventures team.

Lunch at ‘Hotel Bon Sejour’

As soon as we finished our diving, we felt very hungry and reached this hotel. The hotel is 1/2 a kilometre from the bus stand. As we stayed very near to the hotel in a cheap guest house, we launched into it. Food is served in both Buffet system or by order. We saw the variety and choose the buffet. Traditional tamilnadu food in full splendour. Salad, soup, biriyani, fish fry, payasam ended our trip.

So now i have dived in the east and west coast of india. Next in line is the andaman islands situated in bay of bengal.

A day trip to Hirakud

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Hirakud is a small village situated on the banks of the river Mahanadi. ‘Maha’ means great and ‘nadi’ means river. As the name indictaes the the river is really big. I could not sight the othe end. It looks like it is as big as the sea.

Hirakud can be reached easily from the industrial town of sambalpur, odisha. The dam constructed across this river engulfed many villages and temples. Around 200 temples have got submerged and i got to know that they are vsisble when the water level drops during the summer days.

The thing that appears like road is the hirakud dam across river mahandi. To get a view from the top goverment has constructed a small minar from where yu get beautiful views of the surroundings and the magnificent view of the mahandi river.

This minaret is named as gandhi minar and is perched on the top of a hill. You can either use machine power or muscle power depending on your willingness. I walked from the bust stop to this minar. It took about half an hour to reach this point.

The climb was very easy although many chose to go by road. The views on the way are also breathtaking. You find that the continuation of the river is on the other side of mountain too.

The mahanadi river on the other side of the mountain. Looks like a sea but its not.

Viewed form the top of the gandhi minar, the rectangular nehru park can be seen adjacent to a lake created by spillways.

Nehru park is adjacent to the hydro station and the watering of the plants are done using the dam water.

Nehru park is a nice picnic spot for the people living in sambalpur as well as adjacent villages and small towns. The number one activity to do in sambalpur is visitng Hiraku dam and spend time in the park. There were lot of roses of different varieties and colors.

And then while returning from from the minar, you can see the following pictures.

If you see all the above pictures and think that they are made of wood you are completely wrong. They are made up of cement. The toilet shelter, The hand rails, Bamboo supports and the park bench are all made up of cement.

What appears like bamboo is completely made of cement and also what appears like the wooden slab is also of cement. The finishing works were so fantastic and the illusion it creates is marvellous.

What i learnt from traveling to remote places?

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Travel itself is a good book, which one should read often. If traveling to known destination is a good book then going and living in remote places is like mastering that good book. Remote places, Distant places and offbeat destinations may literally mean same, but different in a travellers book. While from your perspective these places seem to be distant and remote, in actual they are not the same for the people living right there. They will call your home town as a distant place.

Lesson-1: Distinguish between peaceful mind and empty mind

I lived in remote places in india, where there was no access to movie theatres, internet, no clubs, or any other form of entertainment. People come here to work and after completing their work, they leave these places. No body want to settle here, because people think there is nothing to see. I was born and brought up in a metro city and then I was posted in this place for two years. I longed for a peaceful place whule i lived in a city but when i got posted, i realised that a fighting life is better than a dead life.

What made this place so deserted? The place has seen many wars. Many kings wanted to seize this place to make an empire. There are are two rivers running in this place and why the hell did this place become so deserted, so remote without any entertainment.

After struggling for a while there, i started to look around. There were too many birds. I developed my photography skills by shooting the birds. I improved my bird recognising skills. Identifying bird while on flight is a challenge.

Peace of mind and empty mind will resemble each other. But over lapsed time you can distinguish between the two. While a peaceful mind will keep you satisfied, empty mind will make your life bored.

Lesson-2: Explore on your own.

Had i been prepared, i could have handled so many things, i could have seen much more beautiful places. Since i was new to the place I asked people around me about ‘places to see here’. People mentioned a few temples, a deserted fort. Apart from that nobody was able to tell much. Since everybody is migrant, nobody explored the area. Listening to the words i too did not explore much, only to later realised the time and oppurtunity i had wasted. There were numerous forts buried over time. They are visible over a hill, yet people dont see them. We are burying our history by neglecting to see these structures. From that day i started exploring the area.

Lesson-3: Have a cycle or Bike or car if you are going to stay long

I relied on rental cars for exploring these places. The driver will have no interest in locating new things and he will take you far away simply to increase the meter reading. You cannot also get your travel as you wish. You will have to pre-book, schedule the time and make a plan, which is not possible while exploring for these unnamed forts.There will be no roads leading to these forts/ temples and sometime even trees and bushes would have covered them completely.

Lesson-4: Learn the local language as early as possible

When you are looking for something which is not famous among locals, not in the maps, no details are even available in google or wikipedia, your only hint is clues from strangers. In this case you are a stranger to a local person and to get information from him you need to talk in his language and not yours. They will be very helpful in locating, as sometimes they themselves may be living right over these abandoned forts/temples.You get to learn new stories / myths / legends which may not be written or even known elsewhere. The biggest mistake of mine is that i did not learn the local language.

Lesson-5: Be open minded

Try local cuisine, absorb cultural shocks, go to places where people spend their time, observe, socialize, listen to their stories, enquire, collect information, and in the end you find something or may be not. I was a bit conservative at that time and that costed me a lot.

Lesson-6: Be prepared for surprises

Once(2015) i was in place where there will be power supply only for twelve hours. I had too many gadgets, ipad, iphone, two cameras. How do i charge all of them? I cannot wake up and replace the cable for the other device and then sleep again. Going to a beautiful place, which is remote, and returning without any pictures is not going to be good. And the real surprise came where my next stop is going to an uninhabited island, where i wont even have water, how can i think of charging my gadgets. Now i am always carrying an USB distributor with me when traveling to distant places.

Learning is a life long process and traveling to a new place is like reading a new book. So keep traveling.

Is it Trekking or pilgrimage or both together?

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If you have visited temples in india you can easily find most of them are located in remote hills or in a forest. Recent constructions dont qualify for this. Why was a temple built at the top of the hill where nothing is available or in remote places. you can easily argue that remote places have become remote over time But why most of them on hill tops? May be hill tops are cooler or it can be easily identified from a distance. Did it serve as a resting place during journey? or some identification point among a cluster of hills. The answer is upto ones own imagination.

People in the past be it any civilization, they traveled a lot. They built a home wherever they went. Home was not a place to live. How was a place for people who retire from traveling. even people who retired traveled once in a while and they called it pilgrimage. Over time it became a habit of going regularly and few lazy people constructed temples near to their homes and the habit continued and reached to a point where there is a temple in every street in south india.

For every imagination of human mind a god was invented and the process is accelerating at such a pace, history will surely be rewritten entirely erroneous, like i am deviating from the topic i have chosen for this blog. Now let us go for the topic.

Views on the way uphill to the temple. Do you want to miss this?

It was in 2011, i heard through one of my friends about the vaishno devi temple in jammu, India. To reach the place you have to hike a 13 km trail on foot. Only mode of transport availble then was horse or a helicopter. And i was 29 years old and had never been in a plane then. I joined my friend for the trip and plan was made.

A week before the trip we got the news that our executive director is going to visit our office. I know if i ask for leave, i will be asked to postpone. I decided to go without asking for permission. The flight was at evening 6 ‘o’ clock. so i thought i could attend my office and then slip away early in the evening without anybody noticing. But the meeting in a corporate world would extend late as usual. I did not enter the hall, and i escaped for my adeventure. I feel what i did was right even now.

We started from mangalore and reached delhi. stayed at delhi for the night and the next day reached jammu by morning flight. From there we reached katra by cab. We rested for an hour. By now i was totally relaxed.

We embarked on our journey and i was really over excited. The 13 kilometre uphill trail was awesome. People of all age group were walking. I could see from the clothing that both rich and poor, traditional and modern, men and women, boys and girls, kids, elderly people, all going in one direction. I really liked the place, climate, purpose and all stories. The feeling was unexpressable. It felt nice to be there, not a moment i thought about work place.

My friend was narrating the story of vaishno devi. The hilltop was the place where she hid inside a cave and did penance. On attaining the power, she killed the bhairava and later when asked for forgiveness, she forgave him and blessed him. The place where his head fell is also worshipped. The physically fit does not feel any difficulty on reaching the top and other take rest often. People go there round the clock and there was crowd even in mid night. Anybody must surely experince it atleast once in a lifetime to understand it.

Temple barely visible from bottom of the hill

You need not believe in the stories, but you will surely feel better because of the atmosphere. I wrote this blog in just under fifteen minutes. The memories are still afresh. A pilgrimage or hiking or trekking or both together- I am not able to tell. It is upto you to decide. If you have read “Aleph” by ‘paulo coelho’ you can empathise that.

Most of the temples are in hill top in india and it is definitely worth the trek to reach top.

An unexpected journey to patnitop

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Many in India doesn’t know about this hill station called patnitop. If you had asked me six years ago where is patnitop, I would have blinked. At that time I have never been in a plane. Me and my friend planned for a trip to Jammu and Amritsar. We have planned a hectic trip and yet we have completed the itinerary in less than 3 days. We had one evening and one night left, so we enquired with the driver. The driver was an enthusiastic person, who likes travel like us, and offered to take us to this place. We gladly agreed without knowing anything about the place.
Patnitop is a lesser known hill station in the state of Jammu and Kashmir in India. Need I tell more about the beauty of a place which is adjoining the famous Kashmir. We were traveling in the national highway number one. The road was not that good and not bad except for he few landslides taking place and getting cleared right in front of our eyes.

Our driver assured us that landslides have become part of their life and at times it takes whole day or two to pass through the highway to reach the capital of Jammu. Fortunately for us patnitop is only four hours drive from Katra. There were numerous monkeys on the way and birds singing, indicating that humans have not spoilt the area much. The weather was warm, or so we thought during the journey. We started the journey around 4:00 in the evening and reached 9:00 in the night.

Local people were rearing their cattle freely. The cattle too seemed happy for plenty of green grass to graze.

We stayed right on the hilltop area and found a suitable hotel to stay for the night. The temperature was so cold outside and as well as inside that could be felt even when an electric heater is on. We are to depart the very next day in the morning at 7:00 am. Will we be able to see anything at all? We woke up at 4:00 in the morning and got ready to go outside. It wasn’t dark and the first sun rise hit the hotel around 4:45 am. We could see pine trees all around, green grass, and some horses loitering there. These are used for transportation by local people and for tourism.

The flowers were very vibrant and colourful and i decided to capture them in my lens.

We spent until 7:00 am as planned and then departed for our return journey. Even during the return we were busy taking photos at many spots. We just went, slept and came back- this is not what is to be told. All those precious moments there mattered to us. It was a terrific getaway from our daily routine corporate job. We needed those moments. I cherish those moments. I thank from the bottom of my heart to the driver who has introduced me to such a place. He was a Kashmiri guy. I have felt the hospitality of people of Kashmir. They are warm and nice people. Hope terrorism dies sooner than later. I am still dreaming of living in such moments although I have had many such.

It is those journeys that make me repeat always “sometimes journey is more beautiful than the destination”

Glimpse into a tibetan temple in south india-Part II

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Of late i am very busy. Could post only photos.

Glimpse into a Tibetan temple in south india- Part I

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Of late i am not finding time. Let pictures speak.

The grass on the other side always looks greener

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I am on an official visit to hyderabad, India. Sitting inside the guest house and rewinding my travel memoirs, 8 years of traveling and yet still going, juggling between my job and free time to travel, This job has taken me to places where i would have not landed, even if i had plenty of money. On the other side, This job has not allowed me to travel when i want to(see my earlier post).

180 kilometres from Hyderabad, there is a place named raichur, which was once a great place and today known only for the thermal power station.The old fort at raichur was used as jail and then converted to library and office and so on and on. The place has literally nothing to do or so i thought,like everybody thinks the place to be. This place inspired me to travel as hard i can. I started overnight journeys on saturday night, sight seeing on sunday and then return overnight back to work on mondays.

I started pursuing my old dropped hobby-Bird watching, from this so called nothing to do place. I practised photography targeting the winged visitors to the river krishna, which was barely 1 kilometre away from my room.

From raichur i visited bijapur , goa , dandeli , mahabaleshwar , mysore , bhopal , bangalore, haridwar and rishikesh, delhi, mantralayam, dandeli, belum caves, yaganti temple, hampi, tunghabadra park, and hyderabad.

Always look around you with your inner eyes open. You can see lot more than what you perceive. And now after 6 years i finally realised, from this nothing to do place(raichur), The grass on the other side always looks greener.

If you ask me ‘Will you go back to raichur?’, my answer is ‘no’ even now because, I have realised, from here, ‘The grass on the other side will always looks greener’.

Are real travellers too much greedy?

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This post is straight from the heart, from a personal experience, a soul crying inside or so during expat life. I am an indian interested in traveling and i got an opurtunity to live as an expat in Indonesia. I was very happy about it till my tenure was over and then felt that i still havent seen anything of indonesia.

The project was in the island of borneo, third largest in the world, rich rainforests, only place where you can see orangutans in the wild, where human intervention is very less, and people are very friendly, thousand of rivers flows, it rains almost throught the year, and numerous offbeat places which the world has never even heard off(Whole world knows about bali, but not even heard about these places) and i had an oppurtunity to live there and i stayed there, enjoyed my life and after my tenure is over, returned to india and then i read this blog by wildwayfarer why i choose not to work abroad and the i straight away commented about the pain i endured rather than what i enjoyed.

First let me list my joyous things i did there.

Experienced south-east asian hospitality.
Made new friendship with the local people.
Savoured delicious indonesian foods
Cycled around 1000 kilometres mostly inside borneo rainforests.
Island hopped around 7 islands.
Trekked and hiked at least every month for an year.
Visited Jakarta, Yogjakarta, Bali, Ubud, Balikpapan, Samarinda, Bontang, Berau……..
Learnt to speak a little Indonesian language
Inspired locals to go cycling from sangatta to bontang
Swam in labuan cermin
Swam with stingless jelly fishes.

And yes experiences cannot be quantified or measured. The are treasures that stay in our memory as long as we dont out do what we had done earlier.

Painful feelings

Have to go to work despite knowing that these many things can be done. You are living in the rain forests and yet you are spending your time at work. What is the point in working inside an AC room when you can breathe frsh oxygne from the abundant forests just outside your home?
Indonesia is an archipelago made of 17000 plus islands and visiting only 7 island and few other cities did not do justice to my stay there.
I could visit most of the places there only like a sight-seeing tourist and not as the traveller i was.

And i leave it upto you to decide whether travellers like me are greedy that i am asking for more traveling and time?