H to Oh!

There was this weekend few boring weekends ago when me and my friends decided to check out the motherland of CCD - Chickmaglur. The day was Friday and we all were looking forward to the trip. On a scale of 0 to 5 my enthusiasm for the trip was approaching 0 from the negative side and anvi went into the imaginary scale to repsect the maximum limit of the scale her enthu was at 5 + 1000i. The cab driver was expected to pick abhinav at around 0030 hours from the streets of BTM and was supposed to pick the rest of us by 0100 hours. However, I probably wouldnt have written this post if there wasn't a but (/bhat/butt) in the story. And it goes like this - "But, the driver never turned up". After waiting till 0300 hours on the chilling secluded street with an auto wallah to give him company, Abhinav hung his boots, switched off his cell phone and eventually fell off into deep slumber, leaving the rest of us in the wind tunnel road apartment to handle the 5 + 1000i worth of enthu turned into anger. After a walk outside and some justdial calling, we decided that we would head to ShivaSamudram the next morning.

Period.

Sleep.

Alarm.

We left for Shivasamudram at 0700 hours in the morning. The ride on the most part was beautiful. After having a breakfast somewhere on the way, we reached the first fall, gaganchukki by around 11 in the afternoon. Let me pause here to give a bit of info. Shivasamsudram falls is located in the blah blah blah. Did I mention how awesome our driver was. He had a camera phone, could drive the car at 40 kmh while talking on phone and stopped at every random place, encouraging us to take pictures. This guy did another good thing. He took us to the dargah entry of the fall. This was the place where a 25 year old software engineer died (as according to a caution board on the other entry where the losers who dont have such an awesome driver go).

Gaganchukki falls is apparently the second highest fall in the country. The moment you reach close to the water and stand next to the mighty fall, a sense of belittlement captures you. My jaws dropped when I stood on the spot from where it was almost a 50m fall. After keeping our legs in water (exactly like how we used to do when we were little girls) for a while, we left in search for food. Fish was the only thing that was available however the ambience killed the hunger. We unanimously agreed to survive on packaged food.

After this we left for Bharachukki falls and reached there at around 1430 hours. After climbing down a few steps (it looked like steps, wonder what its called), we witnessed this beautiful sight. There was a boat ride. 100 bucks for a boat. Even a communist hypocrite would have agreed to pay for that. The boatman took the coracle almost under the fall and we were drenched in the mist rising from the water to water impact. If this was not enough to raise our spirits, the boat guy started rotating our boat, the flimsy piece of hemispherical container, crossing the threshold angular velocity for awesomeness.

We then crossed a small stream of water to reach a spot where there were dozens of uncles, aunties, wannabies and monkeys dipping their skins in water .For me the best point of our trip was standing directly under the falling water. I opened my mouth to growl, only to be silenced by the serene thunder of the fall.

After spending sometime there we started our return at around 1600 hours. The return was uneventful, except for some bladder issues. We were famished, wet and sleepy. So much so that when we reached Gramin for dinner, I was eating and sleeping at bursts (much like the I/O burst - CPU burst alternation). Okay now I dont remember what happened next. I guess I came back and slept off.

Things to remember while on a trip to Shivasamudram:

• · Take a driver who loves Kishore Kumar.
• · Check your blood for alcohol before leaving. While standing on top of the gaganchukki falls, the mind plays "I'm six feet from the edge and I'm thinking..." more than once.
• · Fish is the staple food of people of Shivasamudram. If you belong to McAloo Tiki generation then get your lunch prepared. There is a Barista outlet and a CCD outlet on the way.
• · Don't go on a rainy day. You don’t want to stand and watch the falls from far.
• · Take some lessons on Defense against Monkey violence ( I hear Arindham Chaudhari is coming up with a book for the same, to be added in IIPM's curriculum). Monkeys are fond of Haldiram's, even more than you.
• · Wear a pair of shorts. I am still not able to get my dirty jeans clean.