The gist of it is – about a week and a half ago, I had a fall while cycling, landed on my right knee and may have suffered what the doctor calls minor ligament damage.

This implies, in the doc's own words - no running, cycling, or window shopping for a few weeks.

Argh.

In the process one managed to postpone a not yet planned holiday.

I think my brain is beginning to rust.

Monday: I hated where I work. Note: where I work, not my job.
Tuesday: I reconciled myself to where I work, because I realised I actually like my job.
Wednesday: Same as above
Thursday: More of the same
Friday: I hated where I work. I realised it's where I was going to spend most of the weekend.
Saturday: Guess where I am, doing anything but work, mostly a lot of hating, and thinking up nasty curses aimed at other people who work where I work.
Sunday: Let's see, but prolly more of the above.

Next week:
Monday or maybe Tuesday: I think I'll stay away from where I work, it might help reduce the nasty thoughts.

I think I may have been wrong. Tuesday needn’t worry. It comes after Monday. On Tuesday, the world seems just a little better.

Or maybe it's the weather.

It started off as the famed beach trek. The 'beach trek' is a couple of days’ hike along the beaches and hills that line part of the western coast of India. You start off from Gokarna (or sometimes further north) and go on south to Kumta (about 25kms down) or Honavar, or further south. Essentially, you climb up a hill or two, stop and admire the sea down below at spots, walk down the hill wherever you see a beach, walk across the beach to the cliffs at its end, climb them, traverse another hill or two, go down to the next beach and so on... you cover quite a few beaches that way:)

It didn't go quite as planned, but it was still a good weekend!

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It was all really a lot more exciting than the description, but the pics should say that well enough!:)

Well, I might get a holiday after all starting in 2 days, or I may not - we're still trying to figure it out. Judging by the way things have been so far - *fingers still crossed*

Anyway - pics from a weekend trip, last month to the Periyar Tiger Reserve in Thekkady, Kerala. The reserve runs a couple of programmes, of which is titled, rather splendidly, The Tiger Trail. the Periyar Reserve is part of Project Tiger and has about 80 of them.

None of those deigned to give us a glimpse though:(

The Tiger Trail itself thought is a lovely programme. They equip you with leech socks (!), guides, and a gunman, guide you on a trek into the forest, set up a camp for you, feed you awesome food, take you on a bamboo raft and then further into the forest, and basically ensure you have a nice time away from civilisation. It's supposed to be rough, and manages to be to some extent:). I got invited by a friend who was planning it with other friends and got my aye in, just in time. They cap the number of people at 5:o

You get to see animals running away from you [we saw bison, wild boar (they look exactly like they do in Asterix comics:)) and sambar deer running away and two elephant families, not running away since we were fairly far from them], pretty flowers, fungii, and a lot of the Periyar reservoir. The reservoir itself makes for an interesting picture - the tree trunks still poke out of the water!

( Picses of fungi, flora, elephants and other animals! )

It’s still a lousy year, but the foodiness has been decent and the reading, for a chnage, has been good. I particularly liked The Woman Who Thought She Was A Planet and other stories by Vandana Singh.

I thought the title was brilliant. It’s simplistic yet manages to scream ‘read me’. And read I did.

It’s a collection of short stories, and I liked most of them.

The title story, the one with that fascinating name, was decent. It doesn’t quite live up to its name, but it has rather good characterisation. There’s also a vague-ish story about a mathematician in search of answers, which rambled a bit. But the rest of the stories were pretty good. Like all good short pieces, they are neat and succinct and leave very few loose ends. Plus they're mostly fairly uncomplicated.

If January is any indication of how this year is going to be, I don’t think I want any part of it:(

I’m not saying there isn’t a mix of the happies (new shoes, nice little relay thingy that a bunch of us ran, a lot of long weekends ahead, a promise of company for two mountainous trips which may or may not happen, but at least the thought is there), and the sadnesses but somehow the negatives right now (workplace angsts that are surprisingly unrelated to the R-word, and therefore completely unempathised with by others, cancelled wildlife holidays, ailing family and the ilk) seem to outweigh the positives so much that it’s all really very, very non-happy.

*sighs and whines needily and pathetically for hugs and chocolate:o*

I’ve wanted to go to Shillong for a very long time now. Well I wanted to go when we’d done the family holiday in Assam, and places like Shillong were not as crowded as they are now, and (since that was in May), would have been awesomely cloudy and damp and all:o but that didn't happen. so, when work came up there, I jumped:)

Anyway, finally landed there for a day last week. It’s a nice little town, albeit a little crowded as hill towns tend to be. But it's very pretty and green and full of little waterfalls everywhere and a lake and a botanical garden and flowers.

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I also managed to squeeze in a trip to Cherrapunji. It’s known to be one of the wettest places on earth, but it’s rather dry this time of the year.
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The road en route is pretty though probably much greener during the rains.
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The place to be is at these awesome cliffs. During the monsoons, the water falls all the way down these cliffs into a river at the bottom of the valley:o
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There’s spelunking to be done too. The state of Meghalaya has a 1000+ caves. The Mawsmai cave at Cherapunji is just one of them. It’s all lit up inside, a nice yellow light that makes the whole picture look very Alan Lee-ish.
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And what I loved the most...

Enroute to Shillong falls Umiam Lake, also known as Barapani. When I was a kid I'd read Lila Majumdar's Barapani, about a little boy who lives with his mother and his granduncle in a small village in the hills. his ftaher is a forester in the western himalayas I think. It was a lovely story and full of these nature facts kind of things – all about trees and animals and a picnic at a forest department thingy where they’re taught all about forest fires, and all through the story the kids keep eating! The name comes from the granduncle wishing to go down to Barapani for something. I’m not entirely sure whether it had a symbolic meaning or not, but the book was really, really good.

So I was pretty excited to actually see the lake. It’s amazingly beautiful, and as the wikimapia link shows, it’s HUGE!

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I spent a day in Kolkata last month. Not long enough to have any real fun but just about long enough to eat egg rolls at a street corner, desserts at Flury’s, work(!), and squeeze in a joyride on a tram!

Kolkata is one of the few cities that still has trams. They run on very limited routes now, though, and in a lot of places, while you have the tracks on the road, the service has been discontinued. It took a bunch of phone calls to Mumbai (old Kolkata hands residing there), a few random conversations with taxi drivers, hotel staff, random passengers on the metro, a little badgering of the people at work – till we finally found a small tramable section between the workplace and the airport. It was a ten minute stretch, no more, but ooh so much fun! It’s ridiculously economical too!

Kolkata itself was awesome as ever.

( Tram pics! )
And then sometime later last month, I hopped over to Guwahati. Been there before and had only a day, so didn’t do much, apart from stop and stare at the Brahmaputra a bit.

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And just so we get the Mighty aspect of this river clear, here's how it looks like from the sky

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I did actually have other stuff to post - pics from tram ride in Kolkata, rivers pics from Assam, and some nice pics of a marathon trail

But I’m too lazy for the accompanying ‘prose’, so here goes instead...

Every November or thereabouts Bangalore turns a nice pinkish purplish shade for a few weeks, because of the Tabebuia avellanedae. One of the best places to catch that is the ole favourite run site - Cubbon Park. I hopped over a little later than the usual morning run time and just before the Sunday morning traffic time and managed to get a few pics…

( clicky for the pwettiness )