In all the while I’ve been in Chennai through countless hopping visits on family holidays en route to elsewhere and through two jobs, the last two years that I spent there were probably the only time I ever, to some extent at least, liked being in the city.

And while I guess most of that was due to the old workplace, I think the only things that stopped me from actually proclaiming a liking for the place were - the weather (humid is a season!), the results of the last assembly election and that one huge negative of where I lived (and therefore, the awful commute it involved).

Getting from home to work or to the library or to anywhere where I could shop, watch movies, have a coffee, or even order a pizza (we were well outside city limits!) was a chore in itself, and actually involved 'planning'! The road I lived on was a stretch of national highway that was at best a country road masquerading as a 2 lane tar road, with potholes at regular intervals, frequented at all hours by trucks in all sizes and shapes at least one of which broke down at least once a day. Just reaching city limits could take the best part of an hour. I don’t need to describe what happened during the rains.

And then I moved to Bangalore.

And now the road outside my parents’ house is a 4 lane highway soon to become an 8 lane one, trucks are barred from 8 am to 9 pm and you can reach the city limits in 20 minutes. and this weekend, the weather there was slightly breezy, slightly cloudy and overall prety decent.

There is a lesson somewhere in all this, I’m sure. But I still don't want to return there.

Mondays bore me.

This is unsurprising but I feel compelled to state for the record that a Monday seems to bring with it all the pointlessness of the routine, and a reminder that the work you lugged home for the weekend never got done anyway.

Anyway, one more hike this weekend - to Rangaswamy Hills, part of BR Hills, and therefore a part of the Kaveri wildlife sanctuary, about an hour and a half down from Art of Living on Kanakpura Road.
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Edit: Also saw what was apparently a bear trail - the bushes had been manipulated into a sort of archway, at about waist height. Imagine bear on all fours ambling through the foliage. They apparently have a few regularly used trails which they use to go to the watering holes or to the villages at night, and hence the bushes remained shaped that way. There were no paw marks though.

The local wing of the yhai had a moonlight trek two weekends ago. It was as lovely as it sounds.

We drove up to Skandagiri, a hill outside the city, opposite the more famous Nandi hills.



It’s a reasonably small trek, 4 kms one way and not very steep at all. It was a full moon night, so plenty of light along the way, aided on by torches, barring the odd encounter with mist. There was some cloud cover too, and plenty of light drizzles on the way, which made walking up the smoother rock surfaces all the more interesting!

There’s a tank at the top of the hill, which steps going down to algae-filled water, and a small shelter near that. It turned out to be surprisingly windy and cold, so we needed a campfire at the shelter. We stayed there till a little before dawn and then climbed down. I wish I could say we got to see dawn over the hills but there was far too much cloud cover for that.

The group turned out to be a nice, fun one too, so nice yay trip:)
Pics here though not many of the moonlit phase!

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... but this was on the West coast. Almost all the way down to the end of it at Trivandrum. My friend got married there on Saturday.

The much anticipated and prepared for monsoon (Waterproof jacket, old sandals, cameras) however did not deign to show up. This left a lot of the people involved with the wedding quite happy though. The wedding itself was nice fun, and was followed by a yummy lunch reception. And then we all trooped over to the groom's house after that, socialised a bit, and then hit the beaches.

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These pics should ideally have gone up well, ages ago. But I’m lazy.

So, a couple of weeks before I handed in that pretty little letter to the employers, there was a long weekend. Long being translated as 1 day extra for Republic Day. And so, we finally put into action the Chembra trek, which was originally planned for some time last year. This was of course partly motivated by the fact that there were some of us who were planning, nay, hoping that we’d be out of here soon, and there aren’t after all too many 3 day weekends visible in the next few months, and all that. Anyway, pics of the Chembra Peak Trek ahead.

We took a night bus to Bangalore, and then the next morning a long day bus from there to Kalpetta in Wayanad, the town closest to base camp, which is Meppady. We did the climb the next day. The climb up took 4 hours. The climb down also took four hours, because I wasn’t the only one with a tendency to bruise her toes while going downhill. And then we returned to Kaleptta and took a night bus out of there to Bangalore, all aching toenails, limbs and all.

The trek starts in a tea estate, called Chembra estate. Surprise!

The trek is uphill all the way (no up and down’s). You climb some nine or more hills, each taller than the other, with very few flat stretches.

The lake comes midway up (and down, since we took the same route back). It doesn’t have a name, so is referred to as the heart shaped lake.

The weather stayed good all through, never too hot, mostly pleasant. And at the summit, there was mist!!!

( The part where it is proved that pics speak louder than words )

Re. The toes: The toes are healing and all now, and while I had threatened to photograph the broken nail with scabs underneath, I promise that that photograph is not here. In fact that pic is unlikely to exist because I never photographed it and now the scabs have healed.

Has turned out to be another one of those places where I've been but absolutely must go again. It's beautiful.

It's tiny, and doesn't even have a bus station - you get off on the road, before a bridge and walk down a lane into the village.

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And that's about all we did.

I went to the seaside for the weekend, which sounds a little silly when I say it considering I live on the coast. Well, I went further down the coast about 7 kms short of Mahabalipuram, and had fun.

I took a lot of pics too. That’s where the issue arises. I forgot to check the settings on the phone, and therefore, other than a couple of sensible pics that clicked themselves all right, the others are all prettily sized at 160 x 120. Which however lends itself well to nice collages.

So here’s the weekend in collages.

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These are by now a couple of months old, but I decided I wanted them up here - pretty, pretty pics from the Ladakh holiday in June.

I'm a little distressed though that we didn't indulge in foodie pics. I'm guessing I was overwhelmed:) This was after all the long, long desired holiday to Ladakh:))

( All those pretty mountain places... monasteries... a lake... and a few yaks... )

There were still a lot of places that we didn't see, and a lot of things we didn't do. Sooo.... do I want to go there again? Yes! :)