Mesmerized

This was the gang's mesmerizing journey to the heavens. The mist, clouds, green, forests, streams, falls, food.The gang leader was real big now and was leading the gang thru forests, falls and streams.I havent seen him enjoy anything like that in Bangalore. For all the kids (sorry the leaders) in the gang, we will definitely trip to heavens once in a year at minimum. Wouldn't they love going out in forests and streams themselves. Just imagine Abhisha holding Digu's hand and confidently walking him across the resort, into the forests and then to the stream and then palying that swing where papa came down heavily.

Abhisha : Digu, this is where papa fell down. He doesnt know how to swing.

Digu : Did my papa fall down too?

Abhisha: Your papa cant fall down even if he is swinging on holding a leaf.He was climbing all these trees around.

Digu: Come, lets swing. We will teach your papa how to swing.

THUDD... THUDD... THUDD... we will all be running to get them out of water.

Abhisha: Digu, you know what happened when we came here some 3 years ago. Papa, mamma, Shantha mama and Nettu mama left me in the car with doors locaked and windows closed. I woke from sleep and found none around. I was crying, u know... You don't sleep in car when these papa's and Mamm's and mama's go out of car okie.... be careful..

http://picasaweb.google.com/jprashkumar/Mesmerized?authkey=WDdmUpR2YO4

Independence trip in Aug 2006

We missed it as Shoba was pregnant then. For the sake of records!

The gang's third independence day trip in Aug 2005

The gang leader was now a big 1.5 years man. Look at him.
http://picasaweb.google.com/jprashkumar/TheGangSThirdIndependenceDayTripInAug2005?authkey=GbbRm2hFpJ0

Small picnic to Bidadi-manchinbale dam

A small picnic during May 2005 to beautiful manchinbale dam and nice thatte idli's in Bidadi
http://picasaweb.google.com/jprashkumar/SmallPicnicToBidadiManchinbaleDam?authkey=myZNZobZ-8A

Back to Virajpet in April 2005 for a Naming ceremony.

http://picasaweb.google.com/jprashkumar/BackToVirajpetInMay2005ForANamingCeremony?authkey=pb5XZ31mf-Q

The brightest thing of the trip: There was our new gang leader - Abhisha.

Neeli gang's independence trip in Aug 2004 - back to Coorg

http://picasaweb.google.com/jprashkumar/NeeliGangsIndependenceDayTripIn2004?authkey=7FbD7wLcCuU

Our first independence day trip in 2003

http://picasaweb.google.com/jprashkumar/NeeliGangOnTheirFirstIndependenceDayTripToCoorgIn2003

One more video of kallathi falls.

One more video of the falls and a view from top.

Kallathi Falls. The conquer and the conquered.

Definitely wanted to be on top of that heavenly kallathi falls. Nettu was not in a mood to go back to heaven so soon. Ashu really wanted to but had familly commitments which he couldn't escape.
It would have been tough for Jyo and Shoba to trek to top of the heaven.

Finally, Shantha was ready with Jaggi, Prahlad (both from Lucent) , Manju and Rajendra (my classmates in UVCE) to conquer the Falls.I had just shown the photo of the falls which we had taken outside the rangers camp resort to these guys. None of us had any clue on how we can get to top of the falls. Forget about top, we didn't even knew how to reach bottom of it :)- and that's precisely what I liked about these guys.

They were just with me and knew will have fun.

We were back to our favorite resort again. we started enquiring details about the falls as soon as we landed there. To our surprise, it was none other than the kallathi falls which we all knew but we didnt knew that, that actually was the falls we were about to trek and that it falls from the heaven. Fernandis - the manager of the resort was actually a very good soft spoken man unlike the impression we had from our previous stay there 3 weeks back. He gave us 2 ways to trek.

1. One from Shanthaveri village - The easy one where we could have just waked to top the top of the falls.
2. From the bottom of the Kallathi falls through the coffee estates and mountains to the top.
I knew the gang would choose the 2nd and they did.

We started to trek on next day morning along with Suresh - the guy from resort who knew a way to go on top.
Here are the conquering steps:

And here are the moments when heaven conquered us:

This is when I missed you people so much. If we all so much enjoyed the kallathi falls stream which flowed down, we all would have gone mad seeing that falls falling down so beautifully. That image of kallathi falls flowing down like pure milk is in front of my eyes always.
It's probably the second most beautiful thing I have seen in nature. Of course, Diganth tops my list.