What I did last Sunday..

Sundays to many mean – holiday but I decided otherwise. So after a warm shower I headed towards the place where I think I could get more of peace – a library.

Up till now I had no library memberships, so with a spring in my steps I headed towards British Council Library. The location is pristine as it sits opposite to the infamous ‘Vaishali‘ restaurant serving thousands of enthusiasts its famous South Indian delicacies.

My mind was as clear as the clouds flowing under the clear blue sky as my heart was filled with excitement and listening to P.O.D over my new iPod I simply made it to the library.  The entrance is guarded with a massive metal detector as its customary these days – if you’ve failed to notice we live in turbulent times. Once in you can easily check your bags and accordingly presented with a  token make your way in, and the first piece of furniture you see is the help-desk.

I simply waited my turn to come – to me it was a sense of relief as the place looked busy. With time and couple of meandering questions I simply faced the fact though the library is not technically stuffed but is equipped to stir my other reading interests. I did enjoy the ease and elan with the membership with the state of the art of  digital tablet for scanning your signature which is imprinted on your access card even before you can say something like – “hhhiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii –” OK its not that fast but sure is faster than the rest!

The ground floor houses a reading and children section (yet to see it), you can make your way up the stairs with numerous books, easily accessible by the on-line searches one can conduct using computers, with cozy chairs, stools you can use for reading. It also has a exam section though not sure what kind of materials exist there, but I’d grown a fancy towards the periodicals section – but the louse AC didn’t add to the healthy experience.

One best things is you can also use 10 of the computers to check upon the world by the not so sluggish net connection – if you happen to see an empty one as intensive research and discussions are conducted on them primary ranging from orkut, gtalk, blogs etc.. but as they every text is important as you make it to be, o’ well!

Having trouble finding the types of book I’d like to take away from my first day at this place I decided to leave with three – one autobiography and the other two being technical. Having spent a major part of the day there, my tummy enacted a nagging child crying out for attention – no wonder I fell in love with this place as  ‘Cafe Good-Luck‘ sits perfectly on my way back. I simply decided to sit next to the window with an order of bun-omelet and sip on my healthy black tea with a dash of lemon as I turn few pages along the way.

The journey up the hill.

You always feel a bit of calmness when you scale heights and I literally took to this thought. Until today food, conversing, music, movies, comic books has been more than a lovely friend of mine and has helped me express feelings, about things I like the most but with every new day comes a new beginning and today I started with my first trek – Fort Sinhagad.

For the clueless, Sinhagad is one of the many forts of Shivaji, localted at about 22 kilometres from the city of Pune. If you’re not from the city, might I suggest reach the city first! Then make your way to Swargate ST stand. Numerous buses ply for Swargate ST. If you wish to spend more then you can hire yourself car, jeep, and blah blah. There is absolutely no problem in reaching the fort except your will to do so. If you’re not in the mood to sweat it out for an hour long trek, a tar road leads right up to the top – though you’ll miss the scenic beauty that you shall discover while on your way up or coming down with immense satisfaction.

To begin with the journey I’d have to take you where it all began, around 5:30 am we met up near my gym which is near to Swargate – yes it was like one of the monthly gym activities which we took upon with much needed vigour. Late as usual I and my friend reached in the nick of time as the crowd were about to disperse and having not slept overnight didn’t make things easy. Our mode of transport well what was left of it after a super ride with soared bumps as speed-breakers were hard to see when the owner of the vehicle fails to repair his head-light and surely the springs would have cried their mechanical lungs out as it had to sustain me as a pillion he-he-he. I gladly asked one of our elder members if I could hitch a ride in his car – people believe me GO IN A CAR - he welcomed us, little did he know how thankful we were, but let’s not the drop the ball yet.

We were at the base of the fort sharp at 6 am. I was impressed at the degree of hospitality of our gym when they started providing trekkers with a bottle of water – so nice. Soon we began our ascent and to my amazement I saw hoards of people making their way down with warmth in their smile and upon close inspection I roughly calculated that 60-70% of them were oldies and none were panting! This brought me to a conclusion, start the trek at the wee hours of the dusk – 5 am to be more precise.

I was trekking like a man on a mission until I took a moment of pause to soak in the beauty that can only been seen when one is at an altitude as such – no wonder Jack and Jill went up the hill. I was very happy of the fact though perspiring as if I was a leaked water pipe but I wasn’t panting – see the benefits of hitting the gym regularly. I’ve been trekking roughly half an hour, though quite a long distance to go I took on one of the hardest trail or so popularly termed as short-cut; the first was easy but after taking the second one I thought to myself why must I stoop to short-cuts and miss out on enjoying the trek or so to say I just wanted to reach the top safely and not like the old dog with his tongue out! But such sanity doesn’t prevails over every soul and my fellow friend decided to follow with my other friends who worship their bodies at the gym – little is left for imagination for the type of trail they would set foot or hands; at time when I’d look down they would be rock climbing – and the after effects was seen evidently when he slept like a baby next to me while coming back!

At time when I was making my way to the top I was beginning to ask me questions such, “Why the heck am I here? I can’t go up? I can’t even go down!” [ ] So you make sure you have a purpose – A purpose to reach the top!

Finally I was at the top, after the harshness of the climb with the torrid sun and dirt I was amazed at the sudden change of scenery when I saw vendor stalls selling lemonade, tea, pakodas (fries), dahi (curd), poha(yellow cooked rice-flakes) to you name it. Though in my back-pack I had biscuits but if you are not medically obliged to feed yourself every other minute I would suggest trek only with adequate amount of water – enjoy the delicacies of the village people, you’d love it.

I soon joined with the rest of the gang and it took me around 50-55 minutes to reach the top – not bad huh! for first timer. As I comfortably sat I couldn’t help but admire the city down below, to the scenic dam, to the lovely sun and feel the breeze that blows across the top and also the television tower on top. As we clicked our glorification we scaled a set of stairs and firstly we took to the left where I began to experience some sort of biological dysfunctional ties and a bit of glucose sip did help. So we made our way back and went to the right, where tapris (small huts) with local people serving delicacies came and inquired if we would like to order some, glad we didn’t as upon meeting up with the rest of the members we were served with nicely made sandwiches and the food simply kept on coming. They took care of ordering pakodas, chaach (butter-milk), matka-dahi (curd) – and it was all on their tab, now that’s pristine hospitality, I’m glad that I went on my first with such a lovely group of people.

Once you start to grow muscles, the brain cells begins to shrink or so they say – the doctors you know, mean people with weird looking glasses. The trainers gladly showed their respective assets, one flexing his biceps, the other his rock hard abs and one with his thighs – seemed the like the modern age monkey crap of Gandhi – but made better sense than his teachings. People started cracking jokes, laughter echoed the mountains as far the eyes could see – I simply saw the beauty and was enlighten with some history as Tanaji conquered the fort for Shivaji (Its best you google it, if you wish to know more). Finally we all gathered for a group photograph with people pouring from sides, the shot was taken from three different positions so as to take care none was left out.

With fun and frolic we started on our backward journey. Be very careful while you’re coming down. By the way its better to start coming down early as staying up late isn’t much fun. Keep walking at a slow pace. No hurry, no worry. Go slow and steady. You must be very careful while choosing the downward path. We lost our path once and it was this steep slope which took more than had I taken the longest one. Don’t worry too much, you will eventually reach the bottom [ ]. Though I was very careful and successfully made it to the bottom of the hill without a single slip I kept on witnessing people losing grip and the thundering sound of falling flat on their buttocks. My friend happened to be one of them. I missed the falling you know, sounds strange but I did!!! Better make it a point to fall down next time he-he.

The trip down to the bottom of the hill was the trickiest of it all. With a sense of relief as pebbles made way to flat ground I met up with the person who drove us and I explained how hard it was in the middle of it when I took a wrong turn, this guy was jolly enough to wait it out for half an hour extra – thanks dude!

If you’d want a piece of advice listen to this – DON”T LISTEN TO OLD FOLKS! THEY KNOW NOTHING ABOUT OUR BODIES – if you wish to rest simply do, sit, drink (but few sips so as not to get dehydrated). But I didn’t as it would have made me more lethargic he-he. Make sure you take each step carefully. The rocks there don’t mind twisting your ankle for free.

That’s enough. Go and enjoy this experience and try to do it in the morning as you’d have the rest of the day for anything your heart desires.

It was a perfect way to begin the month of March for me.

Goa Trip Day 3: A paupers life!

One sure way to know its time to head back home is to take a peak at the wallet, and this wasn’t a good day to start – empty; and so were all the ATM’s – dried to their electronic bones! To my pride it felt good that I wasn’t the only one spending like a maniac he-he. Without wasting much time, we tried our luck at every ATM and were disappointed by the closed shutters, but this did not stop us from having the last breakfast at ‘Infant aria’- en route to Bagha beach- which I’d eyed for the past two days.

If I hit that place next time, I would satiate my epicurean desires but today it wasn’t to be. With handful of cash but plenty to make a perfect breakfast we ordered what we could see. The place was packed so we decided to pack and have it in the parking lot that’s just up front. I’d like to believe this place being simple and neat with a tidy ambiance, gentle attendants, tasty food and the ever mouth-watering desserts(which I never tasted) would make for a perfect place to have a delightful meal.

After a tiny fiesta, we went further down the road and finally decided to have our share of health-food at ‘Subway’ well more so of budget constraint you see – you’ve no idea how much happy I was to learn the fact one of us never used ATM’s; he was loaded he-he. A bit of package deal and we found us sitting next to the see through glass, as the sun blazed torridly we enjoyed the cool AC or not so much cool, anyways it was different than the rest of the days- well what’s more fun than the unthinkable right?

After have tried and failed to kill time we were in a dilemma to visit places or slothfully stroll around the place and make the slow walk towards the shore. Well, we did not have much of a trouble to make up our mind because as soon we had stepped out we found our ever jubilant cabbie, yeah! With little left for discussion we set forth for the ever famous Aguada fort (I kind of wanted to see it, as it was one of the nicest scenes from the movie DCH).

I mean this all so seemed nice, but we still needed cash and finally the ATM’s were filled so after a moment of comforting pause and easing us with some greens we resumed. If you remember how much I’d said this driver was the best of the lot, this time I’ll tell you why. He dropped us near Aguada fort and asked us how much time we needed, after a acknowledged nod we decided on a couple of hour, he excused as he had other errands to take care of but trusted us and never asked for money – I mean we are gentlemen and you don’t have to look beyond us you see; but its hard to find such people these days.

Fort Aguada seemed to be most prized as it is so large is envelops the entire peninsula. And to one side sits the light house which surely acted a responsible part of guiding in vessels safely. At the base of it, the construction reflected more so like prison. Looking around I finally made it to the ever so lovely place where our three protagonist of the movie made this point so magical – but it was hard to get a seat as over-enthusiasts couldn’t decide on how to shoot themselves. The view from up above is splendid, magical – I would love to see the sun rise or set from it. In time we got a call from the cabbie he was on time, impeccable this guy was man!

We finally got back to Calanguate and still time to kill we decided to just enjoy the view from ‘Asiad’ and sip in some of our favourites. At a certain point a soothing silence engulfed us as we kept looking at the sun which we have seen so much over the past few days, and the more I looked at it, the more its beauty grew on me. After a certain point our waiter showed genuine concerns over my taste of liquor as I was going flat ‘on the rocks’; I’d to calmly make him understand I just don’t look big I’m big in taste as well – jeez dude take a chill pill.

With every hour the shadows began to lengthen and the sun being less lethal we planted our feet’s on the warm sand and went for a slow walk on the shore, I just couldn’t resist making mine wet he-he. As time waits for none we again found our very own cabbie who happily dropped us at Mapusa. We prepared our journey back with bags of chips and handful of water bottles and loads of happy memories of food, jokes, places, people and the warmth of Goa.

We kick-started our journey at 7:30 pm and once the driver was out of city limits he knew nothing about brakes. I can’t map out our way back home as after the filling late dinner (I ate a lot – hunger can make you do silly things) I swiftly shifted to sleeping mood. And in the brink of an eye my fellow friend woke me and up, it was 5 am and I was near my place so though introspective I obliged to his better judgement of the area and got myself off the bus and slowly I made my way back where my bed was awaiting me and I finally found myself in its comfort after a much needed weekend spent well.