One temple, One year, two visits, two different times - TTTT 34.

I have to be shameless to admit that I have not visited any local temples this year. I remember visiting none closeby home this year. Not even on my birthday. I feel extremely gutted as I write this. But I have been praying at home, I should thank God for keeping me alive and kicking.

There is one such temple which I visited two times this year, two different seasons, and this temple happens to be almost 500 kilometers from home.

This place is Gundabala village in Honnavara and the temple is MUKYAPRANA LAXMI VENKATESH DEVA. Believe me, first time when we visited this place, there was a marriage celebration going on and someone from the bride side offered us to have evening snacks (all in return for speaking in Tulu, though we denied).

This time, we went again in the month of October. Boy o Boy, though not in Bangalore, I can claim to have visited a temple. The amount of peace which I got in return is priceless.

Cheers,

One more tale from the Himalayan trek - TTTT 33.

One such funny incident happened during my this year's Himalayan trek. This happened after we had crossed the Pin pass on day 8 of our 10 day trek. [we completed our 9+ 1 rest day trek in 8 days by the way].

During the first few days of the trek, I had refused to eat wild apricots and berries from the forest. I had done this to avoid any upsets to my stomach. I had put in lots of money for the trek, and preparation too. I did not want an upset stomach to bring down my chances of completion.

After the pass crossing, I found myself roaming around the campsite, bare footed. I was not wearing any slippers or footwear, just to feel extra comfortable. I did feel comfortable too.

But my colleagues warned me of frost bite once. Mother earth was not that cold. So I ignored their words. But second and third time, they told me, how did you muster so much of courage to walk bare footed ignoring frost bites, where in you acted like a chicken to taste wild berries and apricots!

I was in a dilemma, I just escaped the argument, but honestly, speaking, I still feel, the chances of frost bite was a bit less, where as chances of upset tummy was huge, plus eating wild fruits was during the first 2-3 days of the trek!

Never mind, one more tale from the trek!

Cheers,

When we were at the recieving end of a food giveaway TTTT 32.

Many a times, I have had the opportunity to distribute food which we had cooked in excess. I do not count it as huge number of instances but atleast few times. But till date was never at the recieving end of this.

Imagine a situation where you travel and you take your cooking utensils, you cook and cook a bit extra, instead of disposing off the food, you try to find people whom you can distribute the extra food to. Yes, exactly, this was the exact situation, I am trying to write about.

We had completed playing for sometime along the beach and also in the beach waters of ApsaraKonda. So it was time to get a fresh water bath at the ApsaraKonda waterfall.

We did have a shower at the Apsarakonda fresh water fall. While going to the waterfall, we noticed, few guys had parked their van and were having a late lunch. It was around 5 pm. We were wondering, these guys were lucky to have found a nice place and shade to park, cook and eat.

After we finished our bath and were returning, we were waiting for our van too, to come to the same place instead of we going there, also, few of our guys were slow in finishing their bath and hence we decided to wait, and we sat opposite but at a bit far distance from these people who by then had finished eating.

Within few minutes, few of their guys came and asked us if we would like to have biryani. We 3 people being vegetarians said no. But we asked few of our team members who followed shortly, and it turned out around 4 people readily acknowledged.

The people who had parked their van were from Harihara, the satisfaction on my friends faces after consuming biryani was priceless, plus in a way they helped a cause too. instead of wasting food, its always better to volunteer up!

Cheers,