Trip to Honnemardu

The blue sky at Honnemardu

Breathtaking Sunrise! If you observe closely, the two pictures are exactly of the same scene taken just a few minutes apart, during sunrise and after. There were no photoshop touch ups applied on any of the photographs.

After a gap of almost four months, I was finally able to make a two day junket (if thats the right word) to Honnemardu ( Linganamakki reservoir ) and Jog falls in Shimoga district. Went with a amateur albiet enthusiatic team of NCGs (New College Graduates) from Nvidia. Kudos to the Adventurers club for running and maintaining the place.

The weather was extremely pleasant and though we had to spend the night in tents at the island under pouring conditions, it was nevertheless fun. The highlight of the trip was having to coracle back to mainland from the island after night fall in order to get dinner for everyone. The peace and quiet and the dark blue water all around you is one of the best chance you can get to connect with nature. A truly uplifting experience. Another highlight was to just lie spread eagled on your back in the reservoir (we had on life jackets) right in the middle of the lake and close your eyes. You just lose all the cares in the world and its probably one of the most relaxing things that I have ever done (even more so after you have just trekked for ten plus kilometres and swam for atleast a kilometre).

Jog was a disappointment in the sense that there wa hardly any water at the falls. But the height of the waterfall still takes your breath away, especially when you look down the sheer cliff from where the water falls off.

I'm too lazy to post a detailed log, but here are a few pics for everyone's viewing pleasure.

A view of the mainland from the island

Jog in all its splendor

Cheers!!!

The Eagleton Experience

It was on the occasion of employees day that we went to Eagleton golf resort sans the golf facilities. The first thing that struck me was the huge acreage which they had managed to buy. And this was excluding the golf course greens. I was of course wondering why anyone would bother driving thirty odd kilometers out of the city in order to get to this place. Thats when I saw that along with Nvidia, there were five other companies celebrating some occasion or just giving a breather to their stressed out employees by taking them out to the reaort.

The facilities were pretty impressive too especially for a sports enthusiast like me. Billiards, Squash courts, table tennis and badminton, Foozball, multi level swimming Pool, and of course Golf. They even have rooms if you plan to stay the night at the resort. So its quite a tempting experience for the sports junkies. Personally, I felt that the time we had there was not enough to explore all the facilities. I could only use the squash, swimming pool and the foozball. Squash was really a great experience, probably the game I have enjoyed the most after tennis. I'm really looking forward to playing it again sometime soon.

The new thing I tried was flying a kite. There were two experience kite flyers there namely Harpreet and Sahil and they managed to get the kite so hgh up that it became merely a speck in the sky! What was even more exciting was to see that the kite was even higher than the bird which was flying right up there. I never imagined that flying kites could be so good. And evening there was a DJ and we did some good old dancing on the dance floor. Although there were a little too many punjabi songs on the playlist, I had a good time. By the end of the day, I was thoroughly exhausted and now that i think of it, I would definitely like to go there again.

Oh and by the way, this was the first Nvidia party that had drinks on the house.