Dasara

Oct 16 to Oct 24 was the Dasara festival this year.

I had been thinking of celebrating Dasara by keeping Dasara dolls for the last few years, but never got myself to do it. This year, I finally decided that I would start, keep whatever I had, and then build my collection every year.

The festival is celebrated for 10 days in October and is called - Dasara, Dussehra, Navaratri, Gombe habba (kannada), Golu (Tamil). 'Saraswathi pooje' is celebrated on the 6th day where we worship books (Saraswathi is the Goddess of education);  'Durgashtami' - worship of Goddess Durga (Goddess of power/shakthi) is celebrated on the 8th day;  'Ayudha pooja' or 'Mahanavami' where we worship vehicles, mechanical and electrical appliances is celebrated on the 9th day; Vijayadashami - the day of victory of good over evil is celebrated on the 10th day.

Vijayadashami is the day Rama returned to his kingdom, Ayodhya, from the forest (Vanavasa) after killing the ten headed daemon Ravana. It is also the day Chamundeshwari killed Mahishasura.

So Dasara is celebrated for all the above reasons. The significance of celebrating this festival is to imply that good wins over evil all the time.

In Karnataka and Tamil Nadu, Dasara is celebrated by keeping dolls in 9 steps, and worshipping Gods and Goddesses. In the north, Dasara is celebrated as 'Ramleela', where they burn the effigy of Ravana on the 10th day. In eastern India, people worship Kali during the 10 days. All over India, people worship the Goddess in different forms - Lakshmi, Saraswathi, Durga, Kali, Chamundeshwari, Parvathi etc.

In our community, during a wedding the couple gets 2 wooden dolls called "Pattada Gombe" - God Vishnu and Goddess Lakshmi, which is given by the bride's parents to the bride. During my wedding, my mom's friend got the 'Pattada Gombe' from Tirupathi. These 2 dolls are the main God worshipped by us during Dasara.

The 9 steps of dolls kept for this festival signify the evolution process :

Top most step - God Goddess - Vishnu, Lakshmi

Kalasha

Sadhus, saints, Gurus

Human beings

Animals

Birds

Insects, ants

Sea shells, sea animals, tortoise

Bottom most - Trees, plants

I had collected a few dolls over the last few years. Preparations began on the Saturday  before Dasara, where we moved all the dolls to my fil's room where we had decided to keep the Dasara dolls.

A gave me the idea of setting up 3 steps. My office desk and an old table in the garage were of the same height, so that formed the first step. A glass center table became the second step, and a small 3 piece wooden structure that A had made many years ago was our third step.

The top most step had "Pattada Gombe" in the centre at a slight elevation. I got a temple tower (gopura) and made it look like a temple, with Basava in the front, and a man selling fruits sitting in the front. Since Dasara is mainly about Rama and Devi, I kept a wooden Rama, Laxmana, Seetha and Hanuman idol. I also kept Chamundeshwari on the top step. The first step had God related idols on the left and central portion and 4 elephants forming the Mysore Dasara procession on the right side. 

Pattada Gombe with Kalasha in front

Mysore Dasara Procession

I have a habit of picking up something unique from every place we visit so that it reminds me of that place. So I had a huge collection of small curios. I placed a big globe that I had bought in the US in the centre of the 2nd step, and kept all these curios around the globe. 

2nd Step

The last step was the 'musicians corner' :) 

Apart from the 3 steps, I had made a park using fake grass and real ragi. 

Day 1

My favorite of the lot was the Geethopadesha (Bhagwad Geeta) that my grand father had made from thermocol for me around 6 years ago. 

We had a big 'Santa Maria' ship model that we had picked up from Mauritius. 

Along with all the above, we had few gifts given to us by our family and friends. 

So overall, the whole room looked great, with lighting effect suggested by my fil :)

Everyday I used to do pooja in the morning and had invited my family and friends.

One of my friends made tamboola bags for me to give 'bombe bageena' to people as I did not want to use plastic covers. The bags are perfect and can be re-used for many things. They are very sturdy and look good as well. Thanks Joe :)

Loved each and everyday of Dasara :) I had so much fun and was super excited each day to do pooja and have people over at home.

Kudremukh

I am a nature lover. Someone had once asked me what I like, and I had said I like anything that is green :) I LOVE trekking and camping.

Oct 2nd, Tuesday being Gandhi Jayanthi, was a national holiday. We took off Oct 1st and got 4 days of vacation time.

4 of us started from Bangalore around 7am on a Saturday. We took the Tumkur road via Nelamangala. Right after the Hanuman statue on the left side of the road, we take a left to continue on the Bangalore-Mangalore highway. There is a Coffee day on this highway, for pitstops. We didn't stop here. After Channarayapatna, we stopped at Kamath Upachar. There is one more coffee day right next to Kamath. We had good breakfast + coffee at Kamath, and continued our journey.

NH73-Hassan-Hagare-Belur-Mudigere-Banagal-SH106-Kottigehara-Balur-Javali-Hirebyle-Gaaligondi=321km.

We reached Gaaligondi at 1.30pm. Our idea was to trek to Kudremukh peak on this trip. Kudremukh town does not have many places to stay (as per my knowledge). So we searched for places nearby Kudremukh town. We found a homestay called "Thangali" in a place called "Gaaligondi" which is 12km from Kalasa town. We liked the info on their website and booked it.

Thangali is a lovely homestay, has 4 rooms + tents. The 2 rooms we stayed in were secluded on a coffee estate. Our room door opened to coffee plants and the balcony oversaw coffee estate, tea estate and western ghats!

View from our room

Coffee plants

We had lunch - lemon rice, heserbele payasa, rice, rasam, beetroot palya, tambuli, curds - food was very good.

After lunch, we rested for a while, I sat in the balcony watching the moving clouds - white and green view of the mountains.

Smell of ole uriyodu - coal stove, clouds moving super fast, seemed like a green painting on a white sheet of paper.

I used to turn off and keep the camera down after taking 5-6 pictures and pick it up again to capture a different view :) I did this at least 6-8 times! It was amazingly crazy to see the green mountains for 2 minutes and then see a complete mist in front of me the next 2 minutes. It was as if nothing existed. The visibility used to change from 40 feet to 100s of km every couple of minutes :) Just see the pictures - it was all taken in the span of 15-20 minutes.

Felt so happy looking at the scene change! One of the Happiest Moments :)

It was so quiet , absolutely no activity, then saw a single leaf fall from a long tree near by.

After the rain stopped, I could hear different kinds of birds and insects and nothing else, peacock making the loudest sound.

We went down, around 4.30pm, had tea and pakodas. Met 2 of the 4 owners of the homestay - Harsha and Srinivas. 4 friends have leased 8 acres of coffee plantation, and built this place last year. They opened this place on Sep 25, 2011. They have done a great job, great food, good rooms, lovely location.

The cooks were great. After tea we went for a walk for 40minutes near the estate. It was a nice walk - with coffee estates on either side of the road. We saw a peacock and a scorpion. We got back while it turned dark. Hot kashaya was waiting for us in the hall - hot water, jaggery, pepper, lime juice. Good in this cold weather.

A little bit about the place - in general people grow coffee, cardomom, adike, pepper grown on silveroak in their estates.

Scorpion

Peacock

We showered and went down. It was dark and completely misty :) It was beautiful! The homestay guys lit a bonfire for us. It was just the 4 of us in the whole homestay, with no one else around. We sat in front of the fire, in the mist with drinks and snacks! It was sooo silent. Visibility was 15feet. It was amazing, as if we were inside a cloud :)

We sat out for a long time chatting. Then had dinner and slept as we had a long trek planned for the next day.

Woke up at 4.30am the 2nd day, left room at 5am with a backpack. Had coffee, and the cooks packed breakfast (Akki rotti), tea and lunch (Uppittu and gojjavalakki) for our trek. The owners have a deal with Rajappa Gowdru who stays in Mullodi - about 20km from Kalasa - we had a jeep pickup and drop from the homestay to Gowdru mane/Mullodi and back, and we were given a guide to accompany us to the trek. Plus Gowdru took care of the permission from the forest department. We left Thangali around 5.30am in the jeep and reached Mullodi at 7am. It is the bumpiest and narrowest mud road I had travelled on. We went thru tea estates and reached Samse. Till Samse, the road is just narrow but good. From Samse to Mullodi - nearly 6km, its a mud path which runs up and down and is steep. And since it had rained the previous night, it was a mud slush. It was a scary drive :)

We had breakfast and tea - akkirotti and dosa from gowdru at their place, applied odomos on our shoes to keep the leeches away. But it was useless.

View from Gowdru mane

Karnataka is one of the most beautiful states! Every time I visit a place within this state, I fall in love with it even more :)

Kudremukha peak is the 2nd highest peak in Karnataka with an altitude of 1892metres ~  6000+feet. It got the name Kudremukha because of the shape of the top most peak - it resembles that of a "kudre mukha" - a kannada word meaning horse face.

Started trekking at 7.45am with the guide - Arun. It was one of the most beautiful mountain ranges I have been to. The greenery is amazing! There are multiple peaks here. We saw a peacock as soon as we started our trek. The male peacock was walking around, while 2-3 lady peacocks were flying to the trees.

The initial stretch was easy, as it was mostly flat ground. The first stream we had to cross, we tried not to step in the water, by trying to walk on the big stones. But I slipped and fell and got wet. After that didn't care about getting wet :) The weather was perfect, very pleasant weather. Since it had rained the previous night, we knew there would be leeches. When the first leech climbed on my shoe, I did not freak out too much. But there was a leech attack with 5-6 leeches on my shoes at a time, and I freaked out! We were told that deo sprays help in getting rid of them. So we had carried old spice deo. We used that and it worked. We had to spray and then tap it out.

The first stream

The path

After my first leech attack, I learnt the trick:

1. Don't stand anywhere for a long time, especially near a stream.

2. If a leech is on the shoe, just pull it out with your hand.

3. If the leech is on the skin, spray deo to loosen its grip on the skin and then pull it out.

4. When the leech clings to the skin, we can feel a slight prick

5. Its not a big deal if the leeches bite, they anyway fall down after they are full sucking the blood :).

We could see leeches wiggling on the ground through out.

It took us 5 hours to reach the Kudremukh peak, with multiple stops on the way. We also had to pause every now and then to take in the beauty of the place. We had to walk throughout by looking at the ground, as it was a narrow path. So we used to stop and look up to see the beautiful mountains surrounding us. There are 3 very steep climbs, few flatstretches and few lesser steep climbs. We had to cross around 10 streams, the water was cold. We drank fresh sweet cold water from the stream - the tastiest water I have had :D fell down many times, the peak seemed to go further away as we went ahead. Our guide's favorite dialogue was saying that the peak was just 2km away.

The guide had given us a fat long stick at the beginning of the trek. This helped us a lot both while climbing up, and while coming down. I would have fallen 10 times more if I didn't have the stick. We kept munching on snacks whenever we stopped. And drank lot of water.

We had taken our small camera as we knew it would be difficult to be careful with the big one. It was difficult to click too many pictures, as (1) if I stopped to take a picture, leeches would attack me (2) the rest of the gang kept moving, and I was left behind :) Of course it didn't stop me from clicking pictures :) I was the only enthusiast in our group about pictures :) Everything was just so beautiful that I wanted to capture as much as possible in my camera.

Near Lobo's house - half way

Gateway to heaven :)

Cold and sweet water stream

The last stretch

We finally reached the KUDRE MUKHA (horse face) peak at 12.45pm. The clouds cleared just for us for few minutes, and we enjoyed the view from the top. We were exhausted, and just sat for a while enjoying the nature. Then had our packed lunch, relaxed for sometime and watched the mist cover the surroundings. 

View from the Kudremukha Peak

At the TOP :)

It started raining heavily, and so we started our walk back at 1.30pm. We put on our raincoat dreading the slippery ground :)

We walked back slowly, trying to avoid the slippery stones, and trying to walk on the grass. There are a lot of steep and very narrow paths, so we had to be very careful. The 3 steep downs were the toughest, where we had to slide down on all 4s. And we were so exhausted that our knees would not bend while coming down :)

I did not care about leeches on our way back. We were covered with mud, water and leeches when we finally got down!

The rain stopped after a while. But it was completely misty. The visibility was about 40 feet. It was again an awesome feeling, felt like walking in the clouds :)

A walk in the clouds :)

We had to stop in between to take rest. But we also wanted to reach before it got dark, as it was too scary to be trekking in the dark. Since the muddy path was slippery, wherever possible, we were walking on the grass. The sight of a poisonous snake right ahead on the grass where we were walking was not what we were expecting :) We also spotted a huge bear on one of the mountains that we had passed by. Though we were very far from the bear, we could see the bear stand on his 2 hind legs and hear it howl loudly as if it was acknowledging us. We stopped at Lobo's house, and couldn't believe that we had reached just half the distance :) So the last few kilometres, we pushed ourselves to move faster. I started concentrating on the various sounds in the forest - stream flowing, different birds chirping, insects welcoming the night - this really helped me, it was as if the nature was encouraging me to walk :D 

We finally reached Gowdru mane at 6.45pm right when it got dark. We had tea and left Mullodi in the jeep. The jeep ride back to our homestay was another experience :). We reached thangali at 8.30pm.

I had just heard about "feeling each and every bone/muscle in the body". I could actually count all my bones/muscles that day :p :D A very hot shower gave so much relief, and a good dinner - chapathi, aloo beans palya, garlic lemon rice, lemon rasam, rice.

The trek was unbelievable, an amazing experience!! It was very tough and crazy but a memorable experience :) - 12km each way - so a 24km TREK :)

3rd day - After a full night's rest, we woke up around 7am and went down to have tea. It was a misty morning. Chatted for a while and had breakfast -neer dosa with red chillies, jeera, coconut chatni, avalakki, tea.

Tent accommodation

Ledge overlooking the ghats and estates in the homestay

Entrance hall

I strolled out for a while and sat outside on the wooden bench watching the mist, plants, trees, mountains, listening to birds and insects. I could hear peacocks walking to each other :) One from the left side would shout, and the one in the middle would answer, followed by the one to my right :)

I sat here alone for about 1 1/2hrs with my camera :) - one of the most peaceful time! I enjoyed each and every moment here.

The wooden bench

Path leading to the homestay

Our 2 rooms on the top

Freshened up, got ready and went to Horanadu through Kalasa which is 20km from thangali (6km to main road from Thangali, 6km till kalasa, 8km from Kalasa to Horanadu) took 1hr. We were back by 3.30pm, had lunch - puliogare, ginger tambuli, rice, cabbage palya, cabbage water rasam, rave payasa.

Rested in the room, sat in the balcony watching the amazing view! We could see the mist  pass the mountains in front of us so fast, it was like someone was pulling curtains on the green stage :p We sat outside mesmerized with the nature and the various sounds. Had tea and bajji on this beautiful evening.

Just outside our room door

When it got dark, we went down and sat out in the misty night with drinks and snacks, chatting. had a late dinner - chapathis, aloo onion palya, lemon rasam, rice, lemon rice -  and retired to our rooms.

Woke up at 5.40 am on the 4th day, packed everything as we had to leave that day. It was raining heavily. We went down, had breakfast - idli kadubu, chatni, sambhar - yummiest! and coffee.

We left the homestay at 8.08am and reached Blore by 3pm - Gaaligondi-hirebyle-javali-sh106-Balur-kottigehara (coffee break)-NH73-banagal-mudigere-belur-hagare-hassan-kamat upachar lunch-channarayapatna-Nice road-home=334km