The Blue Mountains

The Blue Mountains or the Nilgiris as they are known as is a must see place. It is listed as one of the 400 natural wonders on the earth and is a unique patch of green on the planet (quoted from the book The Nilgiris) Last week, we drove down to spend couple of days in and around Ooty. First stop from Bangalore was Mysore, stayed there for night and then early am started for Ooty. What was supposed to be a 3 hour drive from Mysore turned out to be a 6 hour one since the road from Mudumalai via Masinagudi to Ooty was closed for repairs and we had to take a detour via Gudulur. This road is pathetic and full of potholes. A 60 km drive took 3 hours!

We had booked ourselves at Kurumba Village Resort.30Kms from Ooty beyond Coonoor on Mettupalyam road. The resort is situated inside an amazingly beautiful valley with a small waterfall within the resort . (Just surprised that while the Nilgiris are touted as a Eco-Region, how did the resort get the permission to construct deep in the valley, disturbing the eco-system?). The locals say that Nilgiris is not just to be seen and left in a hurry. But we did quite the opposite, even though we were booked for 2 nights in the resort, we quit after a night since  we did not feel safe. There were hardly any other guests at the resort, it isn’t a child friendly place, plus the fact that they switch off outside lights after midnight and with no cell phone coverage, it made the place seemed much worse than it actually is.

And then to Ooty. It was the off season, so hardly any tourists, it was a pleasure driving and walking on the roads. Parking was not a problem and the lovely weather made it all the more worthwhile! And the food everywhere we ate was outstanding! For a change we went to all the tourist places, took photographs at all the locations, acted and behaved like tourists!

It was however distressing to see the local municipal waste van emptying the garbage just outside Ooty in the valley. The road all the way from Ooty to Gudulur is in a pathetic shape. Same is the case of the road from Nanjangud to Bandipur forest. And there is a large scale felling of trees for about 2kms after Nanjangud towards Bandipur. It is heart-wrenching to see large trees being cut down for road widening!

Our plan was to go to Masinagudi and spend a night or two in the jungles out there, but since the approach road to Masinagudi was closed, we tried to see if we could stay at either Mudumallai or Bandipur, neither worked out. One has to book at the respective offices in Bangalore or Mysore.

Will post the photographs in due time.

For now it is back to Bangalore and the traffic and the pollution.

Back…..and then into a hiatus again!

Several of you written to ask me as to why I stopped posting. The answer is simple, I don’t write if I don’t feel like it. So the mood for the last few weeks have that been of introspection and not of expression.

I wanted to introduce you all to a new blog by Vikram Hazra - a senior faculty of Art of Living Foundation. If you haven’t heard Vikram sing and watched him play Guitar,  you have missed something! Checkout his blog Footsteps To Freedom

Meanwhile, I am going on a break out from the city to the Hills and to see some wildlife. Catch you later with some pictures next month

Travel Notes

I am in US for a couple of weeks on work. I usually don’t have a jet lag when I travel to the west, but it was different this time. I was waking up at odd hours. Instead of fretting over it, I decided to utilize the waking hours by adding more rounds to my Yoga and Meditation practice and it has been wonderful so far.

Coming from India, one thing that strikes straight away is the lack of noise in this place. Just sitting and observing this noiselessness takes me deeper into meditation.

Aside:

I don’t drive in this country and that makes it feel like I am in a jail all the time. And I have to be dependent on someone or the other for all small errands. Wish they had better public transport. Maybe a case for exporting some Autos from Bangalore!

End of Aside

Update:  Just read this article titled Reflections on Stillness by Desmond Tutu in Yoga Plus

I am deeply thankful for those moments in the early morning when I try to be quiet, to sit in the presence of the gentle and compassionate and unruffled One, to try to share in or be given some of that divine serenity. If I cannot or do not spend a reasonable amount of time in meditation early in the morning, then I feel a physical discomfort—it is worse than having forgotten to brush my teeth! That is one way I know that I would be completely rudderless and lost if I did not have these times with God.

What’ new in US?

In my post earlier, I had written that I was travelling to US and the posts would be few since I wasn’t sure as to how well I would be connected.  How wrong I was! Connectivity was never an issue. All my earlier travels to US, I had primarily been dependent on vendors such as AOL or NETZERO to connect to the web from the hotel rooms.

This time round, I am in for a pleasant surprise. I no longer depend on wire-based connectivity, the buzz word these days is Wireless LAN and I am making full use of it. 

Imagine the comfort of posting a blog from your bed!

Having spent most of my time in this trip so far in the confines of a hotel, both in the east and the west coast, I have noticed two significant changes from my previous trip earlier this year:

a) the availability of high speed WLAN across all hotels that I have stayed in so far and
b) the X-box/Playstations in most of the hotel rooms.

I’m hooked onto the WLAN concept. How long before we adopt it back home in India?