What's new?

I've added some new cool (???) features to my blog recently.

To start with, you have this blogmap which shows you a map of the place where am supposedly blogging from ;) Not much use though, but gives a nice feeling on the whole.

I've also added a "I frequent" list - a list of blogs that I check out everyday or so. I shall keep adding more sites to this list as and when I come across new blogs. You are as always free to leave this site anytime and check out the other blogs :)

If you have any suggestions for any new features , do drop a mail anytime.

Nickelback rock !

I got to hear Nickelback's "Figured You Out" a couple of days back for the first time. I had seen the video once when I had gone home sometime back and I thought it was quite good then. Now I feel the song is really cool and so have decided to listen to some of their other songs.

The song "Someday" from the new album "The Long Road" has got to be their most amazing track by far. You can also try listening to "How You Remind Me and "Too bad" from the other album "Silver Side Up".

I wasn't much of a Nickelback fan until now though I liked "Hero", the one which became quite famous coz it was one of the soundtracks for the "Spiderman" movie. Now I guess, am slowly on the way to become an ardent fan...

Trip Update #1

I just happened to go thro my Abe's blog. It has a mention about our recent trip. Do check it out. The "Things Learnt" section is hilarious;)

The Valparai jaunt

I know its been a while since I promised to blog about my trip to Athirapally but I was a bit busy(cliche #1) and so couldn't find time. Anyway, here goes.

My pals (Abraham, Anand, Karthik & Sivakumar) and I had decided to go to Ooty (cliche #2) on Saturday, the 23rd of Apr but on Friday, Abe came up with a splendid idea (????) of going to Chalakudi falls via Valparai.He reiterated that he wanted to do a circular jaunt and being the affable guys that we are, we readily accepted*.

Since Sivakumar (am not used to this, will call him Polls from now on) is from Pollachi, we decided to pick him up from his house as we had to go to Valparai thro Pollachi. Saturday dawned bright and beautiful and we left Coimbatore at 6.05,reached Pollachi around 7. Polls was kind enough to invite us to his house for tea and we had a good time there though Polls was quite keen on us leaving his house rightaway (I really thought we interacted well with his parents )

From there, we moved on to Atakatti around 8.20 which is on the way to Valparai. We had tea again in Atakatti and the tea shop owner did a favor by agreeing to take a snap of all of us together. It was time to part and we reached Valpari around 10 after a really good drive through tea and coffee estates.

Breakfast was in Valparai at a very good hotel (thats what we were told though I thought it was far from it.) After a not so quick breakfast, we left for Sholayar dam around 10.30 and reached there around 11.45. Took some pictures at the dam site and decided to move on. Till this point, the roads were navigable and our driver made it look real easy.

I feel the best part of the journey was the route from Sholayar dam to Athirapally falls and we thought we would be able to cover the 80 odd kms route in 2 hours or so. Little did we know that it was through a dense jungle with such pathetic roads (that would have seen better times) and that it would take 3.5 hrs to reach our destination but the route was by far one of the best ones I've ever been to. I guess the only person who became a bit tired at the end was our "able driver" in spite of us giving him an extra large helping of whatever we had carried with us to eat. Jokes apart, I felt he did a wonderful job of handling the car all by himself while the rest of us were pulling each other's legs as usual, completely oblivious of the hardship Abe was facing.

Completely jaded, we reached Athirapally falls around 3.20 only to find that it was beginning to rain. Luckily the "Rain God" was merciful and it stopped raining in an hour or so. The falls was really a sight to behold (cliche #3) and after having left cbe at 6.00 in the morning ,we were more than jubilant to have a look at the awesome waterfall some 9 odd hours later.

Finally, it was time to leave and we left the falls around 5.20. I really dunno why Abe was a bit apprehensive about going back thro the same route though I thought it was really scenic ;) We ceded to his request this time too* and decided to take the Thrissur, Palakkad, Cbe route and reached Cbe around 9.20 pm.

At the end of the day all of us were dog-tired but knew that we had taken one of the craziest routes to Athirapally and that was far more satisfying than anything else !

You can find all the pics at Abe's page here

* - It was more like we didn't have a say as there was no other "able driver" to drive that far. Two of the guys didn't even have a 2 wheeler learner's license and the other was a bit rusty (ahem!) though he had a valid 4 wheeler license.