Experience with the SNOW SNOW SNOW!!!!!

Everyone kept on warning me on how cold it might be in Cincinnati... I was wondering the whole while, how cold could it get?? The coldest i had seen in my life was -5 degree centigrade, that was last time when i went skiing in Lake Tahoe.. was wondering how cold can it be??
Still I had my warm clothing and my coat ON... I shivered in Paris when i saw the temperature as 0 degrees.. Trust me i was prepared for the same kind...
I landed in Cincinnati.... Opened the main door in airport... PHOOOOSHHH... A COLD AIR blew... i was hit by a big time cold air... It had not snowed yet.. So i could still see lot of brown and some one leaves on the tree still.. :D
With all my luck, the car didn't start.. Had to get a jump start done to the car... Finally trembling sat inside the car... waiting for the place to reach.. News was airtel people suck.... I never could get a chance to use my phone in US... Man it had taken me one day and 5K to get it activated and here i go, my phone never found network... :P

Managed to reach the hotel.... It was nice and cosy back in room.... Wanted to set the alarm and here you go, you are right, how can i set it right the first time.. :D Then got some help in getting it fixed and i had to get that heater thing work... I loved it warm and cosy... Since was tired i was fast asleeep....
My apartment has a beautiful view from the balcony... I can see a nice lake behind our apartment.. When i came in it was water.. trust me today i see its compltely frozen lake.. :D You can see kids walking on the lake. I dont dare to do that for now.. But might do it one day when i lose my fear.. :P
There started the COLD... i realized how worse can cold be... That weekend it snowed for whole day... I looked out of my window... enjoyed seeing the white and snow.. I place i stay has a balcony and it looks beautiful.... Just that tooo cold to stand out and enjoy it.. I did manage to take few snaps around.. I loved it when it snowed.... :) Whole weekend i just stayed back home and enjoyed watching movies.. I managed to watch few old kannada movies which i missed before.. ;)
Next day was the fun part.. The car was covered with snow completely... I was so amused.. i wanted to clean it myself.. :D.. I loved cleaning the car and clearing the snow myself... :D Man it was fun.... End of it, my hands were paining because of cold.. :D
Driving is snow is terrible too.... It skids while driving.. after the snow fall, people drive at the speed of 10-20 miles per hour... :D

COLD,COLD,COLD,COLD... this day had as low as -16 degrees centigrade.. Worst temp i had ever seen since a month... Was shivering so hard.. Car stops again.. :P And had to get help from one of friend....Finally went to get the battery changed, our luck it was late.. still went around whole of sharonville and finally got battery changed...

Weekends went on just by calling folks back home... missing everyone around and waiting for the christmas weekend so that i could visit sindhu and devi... :)
I still have to see the worst of the cold this and next month.... People say its baaaaaaaaaaad in February and here you go i am here for all winter... :D ALL OF IT....

America America... :)

After all the broken leg stuff being almost fixed, with half packed bags, all the fights with mom on what to carry and what not i finally had to start my journey..

Friday had looooooads of fun in team outing... Saturday was the only day i had to pack my bags... My mom happily had made my baggage almost twice than allowed... :D Thanks to her sense of interpretation which loves to take things her own way.. ;)

Finally the day was Saturday, had all my relatives at home, mom had a feast arranged... i was still running around picking a lot of things... Had to meet few of my pals and give a bid adeau... As the time neared it was hard for me to take the fact i would be off for 3 Long months... But that was the fact.... Finally with heavy heart i packed my bags and start...

My Folks came to the airport and dropped me there.. Finally my hard work on baggage weight helped me save some extra bucks being paid...

I still had 2 hours to go... That waiting period was really the time when i had mind full of thoughts... THOUGHTS and THOUGHTS...

last time when i flew, my mind was pre-occupied by the health issue i had.. Somehow this time i feel i had all the time on earth to think and think....

Sitting in the airport, mind wandered on loads of stuff... How things will be? Will be able to cope things up? Where am i going to stay? Whom am i going to meet? These are just sample questions.... :D

Finally it was time to board the plane. It was a Air France plane and finally it did fly as scheduled.. It was 10 and half hrs journey... I managed to sleep, eat and watch few movies....... Was sitting next to doves.. :P Anyways... Flight landed in PARIS with an hour delay than scheduled...

I was under impression Paris Airport is going to be any other airport where i can easily change and move around terminals.. I was WRONG WRONG and WRONG... :P

I had to move from 2C terminal to 2E terminal in order get connecting flight to Cincinnati.. I couldnt belive the airport could have been soo much a pain.. :P It took me one hour and 2 buses and one traim to reach another terminal.. I managed to reach terminal and there you go.. there was one biiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiig queue for security check.... I finally managed to finish that.. went running towards the boarding place 32E... No one was around, thought i missed it.. I did ask those poeple about the flight.. One guy said, no sorry you have missed.. Another person said.. We have just few mins.. Lets send her.. The last guy who takes the report on people who boarded and stuff, he took me in the van and i was just on time near the plane.. :D I finally got into the plane, though the last one... I managed to settle down since i had 9 more hours to go... I did sleep a lot more than i thought i would.. :D

reached the airport, done with security checks, immigration too.. Believe it or not i had more food in my bags than clothes.. :P Security check they asked me if i had any food.. I confidenlty said NO... :P

Was time to collect the baggages... Yes you are right, i was waiting infront of a wrong conveyer and wasted mine and suresh's time for around an hour.. :P I know this is sooo very much me.. Finally collected the baggage, one of suitcase handle broken.. :P Managed to reach hotel with the help of these folks...

Finally priyanka bandalu america america... :P

Raichur, Koodolasangama, Gadwal, Badami,Aihole,Pattadakallu,Mahakoota,Banashankari,Ilakal,Mantralaya....

I know its a real big list.. Though these places are not the part of my "To see places"(which is getting bigger day by day"... :D

Thursday night 8.30 was the bus.. I had board the bus from that never seen that part of the KSRTC bus stand.... Finally i managed to figure out where is Platform No.28 with help of lot of by passers and conductors... As usual one of my dear friend had to come rushing to the bus to catch the bus... :P We started the journey... chai and achala had packed the dinner... So happily ate it and tried to sleep.... 6 AM we reached Raichur... and went and checked into a hotel Nrupatunga.... My legs were swollen bcoz of the travel.... So we all rested for sometime and we had to go for bfast at achala's.. We went to her place where delicious food was waiting for us.... We hogged and thought we will go to Gadwal first... Since we had one bride(Rajashri) with us we all went shopping... Gadwal is a very small town where in there is nothing else than saree shops..

On our way we were did see one herd of sheep... I was asking achala how much might one sheep cost.. she said it might cost till 25K.. :D So i happily told her never in lief i would hve seen crores of rupees walking on road so safe... :P

Went to a place called sridevi saree shop, aunty(achal's mom) new the place... We were there looking at all range of sarees.... Such beautiful ones.. we all went crazy looking at all of it.. Finally did manege to choose a lot of them.. I alone bought 8 sarees.. :P I know... but real beautiful ones.. We did go and visited a place where they weave the sarees(Magga)....
On our way back and forth we did get to see a lot of rice mills.. Aunty told us there are more than 300 rice mills in that place and people are rich bcoz of mills.. ;)

Came back to raichur after all the shopping.....That day was nothing much came back and slept... Since we knew next day would take our breath out.. Our day was suppose to start at 4AM... :P

Next day woke up early and got ready, waiting for achala to come along with the cab.. But some problem with the cab she came by 5 AM finally.. We all had got ready and had already a nap and woke up... ;) We finally started.. today the driver we had to travel with was Mr.Siddu.... I have loads to write on this guy too.. :P will write when and where required.. :P

It was 7.30 and we were hungry stopped over for a bfast in a small town.. We went to a hotel which looked a little ok... we had nice bfast... infact chowchowbath was excellent... :)
We started our plan was to cover bijapur too.. Since we were running short of time, we had to cut short out plan but we thought we can include Alamatti dam along too.... We started out journey first was koodalasangama... Thats a divine place for me... Place was awesome, the temple is built inside water.. We need to walk on small bridge and that would head us to one set of stairs some 50 steps down and there is the temple of shiva... Very beautiful place... and another set of stairs to climb up.. Architechture of it is soo beautifully done, it is surrounded by stairs and it has 2 stairs for entry and exit, but when u look down you feel its the same set of stairs... :)

We were done with that and started from there towards badami,.... On our way.. we went to Alamatti dam and backwaters of krishna river .. Dam is not open for public to see.. so we went to the backwaters.. it was beautiful sight.. water was cold and we spent sometime enjoying the scenic beauty and water ofcourse...

Then our route was towards Pattadakallu..Pattadakallu is a place ruled by Chalukya with a complex of temples built in Dravidian and Nagara styles and even mixture of two.... Then we headed to Mahakoota...It is one more dravidian style of temples where a natural mountain spring flows within the temple complex and feeds fresh water into a large tank called the Vishnu Pushkarni which is called paapavinasha Thirtha.... There was one big pool inside.... Next was Aihole...


Aihole is There are more than 100 of temples scattered in the village. All have exquisite, intricate carvings. Aihole stands on the banks of the river Malaprabha..... One set of temples there too... more number of ruins.. remebered all the ruins we saw in hampi....We headed towards Banashankari temple... Devi there is really beautiful there... And headed towards Badami.....

After seeing the Elephanta Caves seeing badami was one dream too.... On our way Mr.Siddu the driver started Overspeeding and he did lose one of the mirrors on the side... we just missed one accident(thank god)... then we asked him to slow down and no hurry......

On our way everywhere we saw loads and loads of ganapathi's.. People singing, dancing, playing holi and spilling the color all over, bursting crackers taking the ganapathi's for visarjan.... We saw one and someone told, u should atleast see three... Trust me i think we saw more than 30 the same day... :)

Reaching Badami, i got down from the cab and wooooooow... It was all big rocky mountains, just rocks and RED in colour... Beautiful it was... We bought in the tickets and couldn't wait to see each one of it... Inspite of all big boulders and rocks.. the place is well maintained and beautiful..... There were 5 caves there.. Enetered the first cave looked more or less the same kind of carvings as seen in elephanta...But here work was more intricate than elephanta... Beautiful carvings... and pleasent to see it... each cave lie few more steps above the present one.... We enjoyed seeing all the 5 caves and we were tired infact by the time we were done...

There was one awesome view from the top most cave which had one lake on the other end of lake was one beautiful temple... We wanted to go there too.. We rushed there... We had to walk a little while to reach it.. Past us was one nice river bank... Loads of dhobhi's and ofcourse lush of green as well as nice red rocks on the other end... It was simply superb...

That temple was quite isolated.. not many people were around.. But beautiful one.. The river bank looked lovely from the other side... here near the temple it was a stinker... :P the green which pleased us from the other end was just molasses.. :P But still the river looked calm and nice... We did a few photo sessions there..... and left from there..

Now we were around 300 kms away from raichur.. The challenge was to reach there before midnight.. On our way lyed Ilakal.. It would have been a crime if we let go this oppurtunity.....:D We went there and didnt waste much time and we started towards Raichur..

On our way, it was around 8.30 one of the tyre was flat... In a real hurry, all of us helped siddhu to change the tyres and now tension was built bcoz it was late and all girls troop.. :P
Now is the turn to explain Mr. Siddhu, who almost killed us a couple of times by his overspeeding and his dumb attitude... Had never seen anyone who would drive like mad ever... :P He speeded a lot and suddenly started riding the cab on the right side of the road.. Probably he wanted us to get scared and all that... Alas.. He never knew he was with US.... Somehow we managed the situation and we reached Raichur finally at 12... :)

Next day we didnt even wanted to get out of the bed.. with lot of difficulty we crawled out of bed and got ready... We went to Aunty's school.. We did see the school and saw the ganesha there... :) We did see Raichur in day light.... And again loads of ganesha's on the way...We did see a lot of temples, The Tank bund.. It was superb...

It was 2 and we were suppose to leave to mantralaya... We went there by train.. reached there took a hotel room and dumped all our luggages and headed towards the temple... We were just lucky to get there in time, not many people that day.. Temple was quite empty when compared of anyother day of the year... After darshan we went near the river bank... Sat there for sometime, seeing few people doing the ganesha visarjan in the middle of the river using Choracles...Then we did see few girls who were applying mehendi... I did get one nice idea.. why don't we get tattooed that way.. :) All of us got one stamp each on our arms.. and was real fun.... It was real fun day.. we head back and started to Bangalore...
Journey back wasnt fun at all.. One very young couple got into the bus with their 9th month old kid, which was severly ill... They said there is no primary healthcare avaiable in a place like matralaya.. they were rushing towards the next town which was 45 away... We all prayed that the kid survives..... We slept with the same thought on mind....
Reached bangalore at 4.30 AM and a big jam in the bus stop.. we walked back to the BMTC and there the buses were yet to start but the bus stop was more crowded than the peak hour... :)
Finally came home with lots of memories ... :) This is one tiring but real nice trip...

Kemmanagundi kathe.......

He he he... Back with a bang.... Long time had not written anything... :)
Kemmangundi, bababudangiri, mullyangiri.... all these were places in my TO VISIT list..... Finally 3 more places are lessened.. ;)
I had been to all these places loooooong ago.. so long ago probably in when i was in school.. 5th std i guess.. i remember that trip soo very well.... Me,deepanna,sandesha,sanjanna and my uncle,aunt had been on this trip..... awesome trip it was... I still remember seeing all those places.... The Green, trek to mullayangiri, deepanna pulling my hand and running to take me up and down the steps.. I can never forget those moments.. I have one nice pic of that time.. deepanna had collected few flowers and made it a bouquet and had taken one snap.. i just love that one....
Now that after sooo many years thought should re-visit the place to refresh those memories.. We all planned to visit the places.. me,chaithali,rashmi,achala and ofcourse rukku....
Since all girls trip, traveling,staying was lil thing to be taken care of... We did manage to book the place to stay(Uncle booked a cottage up the hill in kemmangundi)..
Finally the day came.. with all the help of rukku we managed to leave bangalore by 7 :P Reached there by 12... Thanks to the driver he stopped wherever he can and went as slow as possible.. :D
Choo,rash and achala reached hassan early.. happily had their dinner and were fast asleep before we reached.... :)
Next morning we started with all the enthu..... Had stomach full of dosa and were off to chickmagalur.. Reached chickmagalur we werent finaly planned what should be route taken or the places covered... Had one Awesome coffee at town canteen...... We were yet to buy some salt(sake of leeches).. We headed directly to thippanahally homestay.. This is Achala's cousin's place(Arpitha).. This place is like HEAVEN... Its in a coffee estate which belongs to Arpitha.. We quickly changed and rushed to mullayangiri...
Got into the vehicle to reach sithayanagiri... It started drizlling... we got down in sithalayangiri.. visited the temple.. asked teh pujari whether is it safe to trek to mullayangiri and all that... We started to TREK.. and Wow... drizzle turns to rain.. and wind and what not..... girls thought could trek with umbrella.. Guess what the wind was sooo much that we had to go closing our umbrellas,else chances were more they would flyw ith it..:D
Initially started the trek.... as usual i m bad at directions we couldnt find the right path.. Then kept on walking... it was raining,lots of wind... finally after 15 mins.. could find the path.. :D Yipppppie I could find the way... :D :D :D :D and we had one small dance over the top of the hill on the occasion of finding the right path.. :D He he he he he he he...
Started singing the whole while... started with a nice song.. suddenly a song pops out... "Na Koi Umang Hain.." ... We did make rukmini shut her mouth,... Next turn was for singing few ravichandran hits.... " idu nanna ninna prema geethe chinna.....","Allz Well"...... finally reached the tip... On our way there we had few photographs taken with the help of umbrella(Probably only place the umbrella helped... :D) All drenched we enjoyed the awesome climate.... We all were drenched and dead hungry... Driver was waiting for us up the hill.... We all hogged nicely and took few pics.. It was soo windy that we were worried few of us might even fly.. :D While getting down we took few shots where in we all gave ad for fastrack.. ;)
Came back to Arpitha's place.. she had prepared real nice lunch for us.. Hogged and hogged.. The Mango Hlawa and the Cheese cake deserts were really awesome.... She is a wonderful home maker as well as an excellent cook... After our luch, we did have a look around her.. the garden was awesome... i mean everything about her place is sooo inviting.. I did use my photography skills to take few shots at her garden.. :D I mean it was a wonderful experience... We had few photo sessions and the we left to Kemmangundi..... On our way visited bababudangiri.. Alas some renovation was happening and we couldn't see the place..... we headed towards kemmangundi..
On our way we happened to see one small waterfall.. it had nice steps to get on to the top of it and there was one place where the water crossed the bridge.. water was dead cold.. we loved the exp of it.. it was awesome too.. then started travel again.. it was just around 25 kms to reach the top of the hill.. but it took us more than 2 hours to reach bcoz of the bad roads and ghats... drive was quite dangerous too.. We enjoyed every bit of the travel and scenic beauty....
We reached kemmangundi by 7 i guess.. now started the fun.. none of had network to call up the guy whom we were supposed to contact... and that fellow had gone missing...Belive its hard when it is govt guest house.. people aren't so helpful... :P Then we had to talk to one guy there and finally we managed to get one cottage... we got one cottage with 2 rooms in it... we ate our dinner and we were soo tired we just hit the bed.....
we had plans of visiting hebbe falls the next day morning.. due to the climatic conditions, we had to cancel it and we had to see only kalatgiri and come back to chickmagalur.....We went to have a look into the rose garden in the morning.. Guess what we go there and it started pouring.. We were totally drenched and enjoyed the rainy walk in the rose garden and the z point too.. :) It was lovely getting drenched... After a long time... it was awesome.........Kalatgiri is one more nice place to visit..
Rashmi had to head back to mysore since she had exams on sunday... so we 4 were left to go on with out next plan... Then thought will see belur,halebeedu and my native pushapagiri temple.. managed to visit all the places in time and head back to hassan....
Once we came back.. "Bisi holige and Maavina hannina rasayan" was waiting for us.. royally ate and slept that day.. Even that day we were too tired bcoz of the travel and all....
Had one more real memorable trip.. Three cheers to ALL GIRLS...
Hip Hip Hurrah !!!!
Hip Hip Hurrah !!!!
Hip Hip Hurrah !!!!
WE ALL ROCK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!