January 25, 2006

Tuticorin Trip


Lush Green Paddy Fields

I went to Tuticorin to visit my cousins almost a month back, didn’t had the time to update the blog. The last time I went there was almost 10 years back and the place looked totally different and I could not recognize many of the places there.


Nazareth Church

Myself and cousins we decided to go to a place called Idayangudi, which is a village down south around 60km from Tuticorin. They have a church here and they were celebrating their 125th anniversary, so we decided to go and visit this church. This church was build by SBC missionary organization. Along the way almost many of the villages have churches built by these organizations and also they have schools and hospitals build by these organization.


Old Idayankudi Church build in 1842


New Idayankudi Church

Still don’t understand why they went to remote villages 100 years back to setup all this. Wonder how these villages will be if they didn’t setup all this?


Choir Boys


On the way back (forgot the name of this place)

The highlight of the trip was the ending. We were returning to Tuticorin and on the highway I was crossing a cyclist, and this guy decides to take a U turn with out seeing what is coming and I could not stop my bike. I hit him pretty hard and I lost balance and went and hit another cyclist, now there were two cyclists on the ground. The first guy knew that it was his fault and didn’t say anything, we offered him to take him to the hospital but he said he will take care of it. The second guy, since it was our fault we took him to the hospital gave him some money and we took off. We were lucky that no one was seriously injured. I guess I am still not used to riding or driving here.

Posted by Sam at 11:10 PM | Comments (4)

November 26, 2005

Trekking – Mukurthi Peak


The Gang - Shyam, Kasi(trek guid), Hari, Sam, Vijay, John (missing in the picture)



Destination - Mukkurthi Peak (check the left hand side top, you will see a small peak, that's the destination)



Stay - Mukurthi Bungalow



Getting to the forest bungalow



Trail View



Another view on the trail



peak view



Sighting - Wild Buffalow



Sighting - Sambar Deer


More pictures...

Posted by Sam at 04:59 AM | Comments (15)

October 17, 2005

Bheemeshwari Camping Trip - Bangalore Weekend Getaway


Picture Perfect Campsite

Some of my friends were talking on Thursday about the weekend and all of a sudden we decided to do a wilderness camping, but unfortunately no one had much information about wilderness camping. I looked at some of the books I had and searched on the internet. But looks like everyone was talking about camping but no one seems to provide enough information about were to camp, where to get permission and stuff. Anyways we decided to just go there and find out.


View of Cauvery from the tent

On Saturday morning we set out for camping, we reached Muthathi and got hold of a local guy, he showed us some place were we can camp. But those places were all really dirty. We decided to look around some more. And we went to Bheemeshwari which was another 5 kilometers from Muthathi. There was a Cauvery fishing camp there. We talked with the watchman there and he told us that there is a secluded place 2 kilometer from there and we can probably camp there. We drove for another 2 kilometer and we found a really nice place. We pitched out tents there, but after that we found another really nice place very close by, so we just carried our tent to that place. It was a picture perfect campsite.


Misty Mountains

We meet some local people in the night and we had a small dancing section and a small game section with the boys. It was fun, because we couldn’t speak their language. But still we had fun.


Rain Drops

In the night we spotted a fox, which was for some reason just watching our tent from the bush. There were supposed to be elephants also in this place. But unfortunately or fortunately we didn’t spot any.


Sunrise

To camp in any forest you need to get permission from the District Forest officer. Unfortunately I had no clue where to get permission, all I knew was I had to get permission. We also followed the ‘leave no trace behind’ policy.


Gang

It was really fun. I felt really bad to come back in just a day. I would love to do more camping, so if you guys know any good place close to Bangalore please let me know.

More pictures...

Posted by Sam at 08:06 AM | Comments (7)