This Sunday it is finally trekking :-). We chose Shivagange for small trek. I was not alone this time. Two of my office colleagues Rajesh and Sudhir also joined me. The plan was to start early from Bangalore and reach there by 10. However, I made it late ;-). Again same startup hiccups made me join them late. It was planned to gather around 9AM but I could only reach there 30minutes late :-(. We boarded Suvarna Karnataka Saarige bus destined to Pavagada. We had to get down at Dabaspet and take auto from there. We reached Dabaspet around 10:45AM. Fortunately there was no traffic nearby both toll gates this time. We enjoyed tasty sugarcane juice (all of us had 2 glass full!) and later took an auto to Shivagange. Usually if they carry in bulk, it would cost 10Rs per head. Since we hired it, he took around 50Rs.
We started our trekking at around 11AM. We had packed so many food stuffs to sustain during the journey. The first 10% of the walk path till temple is steps. Remaining is either plain walk path or uneven steps and sometimes very steep (especially last few sections). In between there are lot of monkeys. They easily identify photographers and do not disturb them or their cameras [Unless you are not holding food items ;-)]. They do not even bother taking pictures of them closeup [they actually pose well :-)]. I was taking lot of pictures of surroundings and my colleagues. Sometimes I was playing around Depth of field and Shutter speed.
FIRST VIEW
DON'T TOUCH MY KIDS
ONE MORE VIEW STILL UP
LANDSCAPE ;-)
NANDI & LANDSCAPE
NANDI FACING LANDSCAPE!
Almost half way up, there is a temple called Olakallu teertha (Water inside stone) where Veerabhadraswamy is deity inside a cave. Also there is natural rock water tub which has small hole. It is believed that if you can touch water, you are lucky. Ironically most of them could touch it easily :-) (me and Rajesh too!). Sudhir did not come inside temple since he was lethargic to remove shoes. You can have small offerings to deity too. Also laddus are available for 10Rs each which contains 2 in number. When we came out, Monkeys saw that and they were adamant to grab it. However Sudhir did some trick to disguise the laddus and they finally went away.
OLAKALLU TEERTHA!
The picture inside olakallu teertha was the first time I went beyond ISO-800. I could not grab much light at 1/15s and f/3.5. Decreasing shutter speed would have blurred out photo [I don't have steady hand ;-)]. This made me to bump up the ISO to 1600. One might ask was flash would not have been better? Yes but but it takes away natural look IMHO. What do you think?
Some more pictures!
THERE ARE LOTS OF SUCH EN-ROUTE!
ADVENTUROUS GOAT :-)
There are lots of snack shop along the way till peak of hillock. So do not listen to vendors in middle who misguide saying they are the last vendor along the way. There are huge number of monkeys too! If they see food packet, they do not hesitate to grab. If they start grabbing, make sure you hand over the food packet otherwise you will end up in misery! [Even they do not mind sharing :-)].
DO YOU HAVE FOOD OR ONLY CAMERA?
We were getting tired but our energy was still full! We were having water melon, cucumber and water to make sure body has enough liquid. Water melon and cucumber are really tasty and very good. Watch out for overgrown cucumber at some places. After some more trek we reached a temple place where beautiful Shiva and Parvathi statues were laid. We thought that was the peak. LOL :D, that was only beginning! The real trek point starts now with steep steps and walk paths. That was really tiresome. Rajesh was saying we had seen only trailer and movie is about to begin now!
WE THOUGHT IT WAS OVER
LOL :D. MOVIE HAS BEGUN FINALLY!
Despite of huge tiredness I took lot of shots in between. The best thing was to capture monkeys and their mischieves.
LOOK WHERE AM I
STILL MORE HARD STEPS
After few more hard walk, atlast we see the great Nandi carved from single stone! Hurrah we are on top now! We had 2 full glasses of buttermilk which was very tasty. There are also two small temples on top. There is a view point where two stone pillars stand tall. It seems during sankranti somewhere near these pillars, milk comes out which is used for rudrabhisheka. Not very clear, one of the vendor cited this. It will be crowded too at this point of time.
AT LAST WE ARE ON TOP
ONE MORE VIEW
CAN YOU DO THIS?
BEAUTIFUL NANDI
We could see many people at around middle of hillock but not much at the top. May be some people backout? Not sure. There were some people who had climbed the hillock barefooted. Really amazing with such hot sun and burning rocks. It almost took 3 hours to climb the hillock. May be because we took lot of stops to rest and take pictures. The most active on top of hillock were monkeys! They were checking each visitor for food packets. One of the monkey checked Rajesh's bag and his shirt pocket :-). They are fearless! The return journey is pretty much easy and only caution is to make sure to control the gravity pull. We took just an hour to come down.
LANDSCAPE AND BOULDER
FULL LANDSCAPE
POND
ENTRANCE
We had cool drinks after we were back to ground. There are auto-rickshaws to carry back you again to Dabaspet. They were charging Rs.80 now for hire. May be earlier auto-rickshaw driver was resident of this place or had some work here, he took less money. We decided not to hire and waited until auto got filled. It costs Rs.10/- per head if you decide to board it as mass transport.
GOODBYE SHIVAGANGE!
At Dabaspet. we boarded a bus to bangalore but without a seat. Sudhir got early seat near Nelamangala but me and Rajesh could not get until Jalahalli cross. Make your own arrangements for food and travel. It is really tiring to travel standing on bus after trek. Moreover Dabaspet does not have direct buses to Bangalore and most buses run over the NH-4 fly over rather than entering town. Only buses from Pavagada area stop here. There are private buses but they do not reach Majestic.
Some mistakes I made while taking photos:
1) I did not pop up flash at shadows. Some portraits came in dark however corrected with GIMP. I believe this is the situation where you have to use flash even in broad daylight 2) Did not change picture style to portrait from landscape while photographing people. Pictures of portrait came up bit more sharper than required.
I hope I will rectify these during my next trips.
The video!:
Video time. I have one video as of now. The other one is yet to be uploaded! Watch humorous scene of goats enjoying tap water
ಸಂಜೆ ಕಾಫಿ ಜೊತೆಗೆ ನನ್ನ ಅಚ್ಚುಮೆಚ್ಚಿನ ತಿಂಡಿ ಚುರುಮುರಿ. ಕರಾವಳಿಯ ಮಳೆಗೆ ಸರಿಯಾದ ಹೊಂದಾಣಿಕೆ. ಇದನ್ನು ತಯಾರಿಸುವುದು ಕೂಡ ಬಹಳ ಸುಲಭ. ನಾನು ತಯಾರಿಸುವ ವಿಧಾನವನ್ನು ಇಲ್ಲಿ ಬರೆದಿದ್ದೇನೆ.
ಬೇಕಾಗುವ ಸಾಮಾಗ್ರಿಗಳು:
೧) ೨ ಟೊಮ್ಯಾಟೋ (ಗಾತ್ರ ದೊಡ್ಡದಾಗಿದ್ದಾರೆ ಒಂದು ಸಾಕು) ೨) ೨ ಈರುಳ್ಳಿ ೩) ಮೆಣಸಿನ ಪುಡಿ ೪) ನಿಂಬೆಹಣ್ಣು - ಅರ್ಧಸಾಕು ೫) ತೆಂಗಿನಎಣ್ಣೆ ೬) ಸ್ವಲ್ಪ ಮಿಕ್ಶರ್ ೫) ಸ್ವಲ್ಪ ತುರಿದ ಕ್ಯಾರೆಟ್ ೬) ಮಂಡಕ್ಕಿ.
ತಯಾರಿಸುವ ವಿಧಾನ:
ಮೊದಲು ಟೊಮ್ಯಾಟೋ ಮತ್ತು ಈರುಳ್ಳಿಯನ್ನು ಸಣ್ಣಗೆ ತುಂಡರಿಸಬೇಕು. ಸಣ್ಣ ಪಾತ್ರೆಯಲ್ಲಿ ೪ ಚಮಚ ತೆಂಗಿನ ಎಣ್ಣೆಯನ್ನು ಸುರಿಯಿರಿ. ಅದಕ್ಕೆ ರುಚಿಗೆ ಬೇಕಾದಷ್ಟು ಉಪ್ಪು ಮತ್ತು ಮೆಣಸಿನ ಪುಡಿ ಸೇರಿಸಿ. ನಂತರ ತುಂಡರಿಸಿದ ಟೊಮ್ಯಾಟೋ, ತುರಿದ ಕ್ಯಾರೆಟ್ ಮತ್ತು ಈರುಳ್ಳಿಯನ್ನು ಸೇರಿಸಿ. ಮಿಶ್ರಣವನ್ನು ಚೆನ್ನಾಗಿ ಕಲಸಿ ನಂತರ ಅದಕ್ಕೆ ನಿಂಬೆಹಣ್ಣು ರಸ ಹಿಂಡಿ. ಈಗ ಬೇಕಾದಷ್ಟು ಮಂಡಕ್ಕಿ ಸೇರಿಸಿ ಚೆನ್ನಾಗಿ ಕಲಸಿ. ಅದಕ್ಕೆ ಸ್ವಲ್ಪ ಮಿಕ್ಶರ್ ಸೇರಿಸಿ ಮತ್ತೆ ಕಲಸಿ. ರುಚಿಯಾದ ಚುರುಮುರಿ ತಯಾರು :-).
ತಯಾರಾದ ತಕ್ಷಣವೇ ತಿನ್ನಿ ಇಲ್ಲವಾದಲ್ಲಿ ಮಂಡಕ್ಕಿ ಮೆದುವಾಗುತ್ತದೆ. ಆದಷ್ಟು ಕೊನೆಗೆ ಮಂಡಕ್ಕಿ ಸೇರಿಸಿ. ಮೆಣಸಿನ ಪುಡಿ ಮತ್ತು ತರಕಾರಿ ನಿಮಗೆ ಬೆಕಾಗುವಷ್ಟು ಸೇರಿಸಿ. ಇಲ್ಲಿ ನಾನು ಬರೆದಿದ್ದು ಒಬ್ಬರಿಗೆ ಬೇಕಾಗುವಷ್ಟು ಮಾತ್ರ. ನಿಮ್ಮ ಬೇಡಿಕೆಗೆ ತಕ್ಕಂತೆ ಬದಲಾಯಿಸಿ. ಚುರುಮುರಿಗೆ ತುರಿದ ಮಾವಿನಕಾಯಿ ಮತ್ತು ಸೌತೆಕಾಯಿ ಕೂಡ ಸೇರಿಸಬಹುದು. ಸೌತೆಕಾಯಿಯಲ್ಲಿ ನೀರಿನ ಅಂಶ ಇರುವುದರಿಂದ ನಾನು ಹೆಚ್ಚಾಗಿ ಬಳಸುವುದಿಲ್ಲ.
It has been around 1.5 years since I shifted my organization. The main burden is to get PF transferred. The people in new organization do provide PF transfer application which we can fill and they submit to Central PF organization. In our organization, the PF is maintained by trust and hence we could track our PF status every month.
It would generally take around 6 months to transfer PF from previous to current account [which may include initiation my current organization + previous organization + actual PF office work]. Mine was not transferred even after 8 months. Some people had got it transferred in 2-3 months time. I got frustrated very much. Inevitably, I had to track down on the status. I consulted the trust guys and they communicated that it has been already sent to my previous organization for transfer. I confirmed from my previous organization too! A grievance was raised with PF office too but no luck. The status was not updated for many months. My previous account status was showing that the account had been cleared and cheque has been drafted to deposit to new account. I am not sure where did that cheque travel to or was it a dummy entry altogether. Even trust was helpless since PF office will not entertain mangling with personal account. Finally I had no choice other than applying RTI. I looked around Internet for the help. After many searches I came across beautiful article in Jaago Investor on applying RTI for PF.
After following the procedure mentioned in the article, it was time to post it to PF office. A week after, I received acknowledgement for the reception too! After a month of wait, I finally received reply to my grievance that PF amount has been settled and transferred to new account. It takes one or two months for the actual deposit. For most people it may not be so much cumbersome, however my bad luck had turned things really bad. It took almost 1.5 years to settle it down. If I had not applied RTI, things would have not moved at all. Yes, it is duty of office to do it, however things are never reliable. Finally I am happy that PF is transferred to my new account, however not sure if they have included the interest for delay in transfer (I have not received PF slips for many years).
I once again thank Jago Investor article for help: http://www.jagoinvestor.com/2012/03/rti-for-epf-withdrawal-or-transfer.html
This is something we were planning during every car journey however could not make it due to various reasons. This time during our return journey from Bangalore to Kaup we halted at this place. Since we had started from bangalore around 5AM, we could easily reach here around 10:30AM. This place at the border of Dakshina-Kannada and Hassan district along NH-75 and belongs to Haanubaalu hobali of Sakaleshpur Taluk. Devi Chowdeshwari is facing eastwards. There is a small seva counter too! The place is around 9kms from Gundya Forest Gate. Gundya River flows besides the temple. There was not much water in river. During Monsoon, you will see it full vigor ;-). The hillock near by has railway tracks which runs between Sakaleshpur and Subramanya Road. It was very much hazy and could not grab good picture [can capture good train video with zoom lens of 300mm ;-)]. CPL filters would have done great job here since Sun was approximately around 90 degrees to plane. There is Nagabana here too! Lots of truck stop here to take blessings or just too have small rest (there are shops nearby) or to have fun in river [any of three may be applicable :-)]. We did not go near by river since we had to leave for Subramanya. Nevertheless nice place to enjoy temple with beautiful western ghats :-). Here are some pictures
