Kumar at Bangalore...

We had a really great time talking and interacting with Kumar where each of us had a really great time... this was followed by lunch at 'Atria', where we had a lavish buffet and talked about everything from the early days of Virident to the Marathon running of Joe and Kumar... It was real good fun....

Here are a few glimpses:

Here are the rest of the photos:

With the treats down memory lane...

This post is a reverse-chronological glimpse at all the treats that I have covered over the last few months at virident....

First we have Ganesh's treat at South indies that gave us a splendid flavor of south indian cuisine at it best... This coincidentally happened on the 7th of July and we've just got our spanking new virident T-shirts!!!




All the pics are here in this slideshow...

Going backwards, we had shiba's treat... where he took us bowling ( Which all of us enjoyed tremendously) while we figured that Vivek and Shiba were really gooda at it... And then we had that amazing dinner at Angeethis...

These images are the slideshow below...

Here's a video of the Viridentites at action during the bowling session:

Rolling on down memory lane we come to Viswesh's treat during which we got a flavor of Kerala at Coconut Grove...

The last treat that I'd covered was Viveks treat at Indijoe's with that amazing buffet whose desert section still lingers in my mind...

There are a couple of treats here in the middle which have gotten missed out :-( , Mohan's , Indranils and all the ones before... I'm sure we'll cover your future treats! :)

Cheers,

Manas

Journey to the top of the world...

As we set out on Friday night, little did we know about all the fun that we were about to have in the coming two days. It was a novel idea - this trek and it began smoothly with some meticulous planning by a whole bunch of people. Vishwesh and Yagaty had already made sure of both our travel and the stay well in advance which made the whole process smooth... After leaving the office at around 10:30PM on the 27th. We picked up the two Ajiths on the way :) And I had already started taking snaps of people by flashing the camera on their faces...










The journey in the bus was filled with fun while we discovered the hidden talents of our Viridentites. Swamy began the show with an amazing performance with his singing that made us keep asking for more. Vineet (no H please) followed up with a hilarious display of dramatic talents. [ The contents of his act is confidential and hence cannot be disclosed ].

We spent the next few hours some trying hard to sleep (Vivek and Ganesh), some sleeping away to glory (Ajith K and Vishwesh) and the rest of us enjoying the movie "Ghosts in the darkness". The highlight of Ajith's(For all future references, Ajith is Ajith Kumar and Yagaty is Ajith Yagaty ;) ) sleeping tenure is displayed in the following pic.

We reached there early in the morning around 6:30 AM. The home stay called coffee country turned out to be a beautiful little place with waves of lush greenery lying all over in abundance.

The place where we stayed

Settled down


The lush greenery that surrounded us

There was a lot of energy in the air and nobody wanted to get anymore sleep. So we decided to go for a walk. When we returned at around 8:30, we realized that the weather was amazing...and that there was going to be a slight drizzle all through...thus plans were changed and we decided to do the trek the same day... In the picture below some of us are getting ready for the trek.

Vineet and Vishwesh using the snuff powder... they had the last laugh

All geared up!

The trek itself was full of energy and excitement as we pushed ourselves uphill for a total of 7 kilometers. The first 3 km were concrete road and the next 3, a paved path. The last kilometer was the toughest as we had to climb the hill up the path made by the flowing water.

Tromping up the hill :)


We were surrounded by such amazing sights all around us...


Yet another breathtaking view...


All drenched in the flowing water... [ We found our first leech right after this...]

Here is where I confess to going overboard and running up the hill, pushing myself and feeling real good about it...but I wasn't prepared for what Vishwesh later termed "Manas went running up the hill and came crawling down it". Leeches were a constant pest...which initially had us worried, but later we became used to them get us once in a while...

The top was amazing and we really felt like we were on the top of the world....

Elated....at the top!

We were so into the whole trek....that if our guide hadn't warned us away....we would have continued on to the next peak....

Slowly heading down...

Once we headed back down ( I was the last...could barely walk ), a good few of us hid the beds and fell asleep while others visited the coffee plantation nearby...

It was an exciting journey for us and each of us who were part of that little group that went up and conquered 'Thadiyandamol' had formed a bond of sorts... which is evident even now when we talk about the trek and instantly our eyes light up....

The way back was amazing too, where we visited the Buddhist Monastery in Bailkupe...but all that is another story...maybe another time...this is about the time we conquered the peak...
And for our little lives...a journey...all the way to the top of the world... :)

Signing out,

Manas

PS: Here's a slideshow of all the pictures we took if you want more... :)

These are the pics taken by Ajith: