Velliangiri Trekking

During my course of life, I have come across many worst and best days. But if I need to point a day that was both my best and worst day at the same-time, its 16/July, the day we decided to trek Velliangiri hills. 

We were a team of 6 including me, volunteered to trek the hills. Our trekking plan was simple, 

1. Start to coimbatore from chennai on Saturday [16/July/2K11] morning

2. Reach Velliangiri by afternoon

3. Start trekking by evening

4. Reach hill-top by midnight - Stay a couple of hours in hill-top

5. Step-down by early morning and catch the afternoon train

6. Return to chennai by Sunday night

The plan sounded fantastic..and we all agreed to it. Acting a bit professional, we watched for the Coimbatore weather report a day in advance and knew it was raining there. So our trek bag implicitly had a Raincoat along with other items. [Torch, Glucose, Snacks, Dinner, Additional clad].

As planned, we all started by 16th very happily without being aware of the nightmare waiting for us. On the way to Velliangiri foot-hills from CBE railway station, we heard our first demotivating dialogue from the cab driver, who has already trekked the mountains 5-6 times. He said "Trekking at this time? Its heavily raining at the top and you cannot cross even 4 hills. Iam not sure even you will be allowed to trek.."

Having heard enough of it, our worries were all about whether trekking will be allowed or not. With our pulses raising, we reached the foothills of the mountain, and heard from a localite that trekking is allowed.. Felt a bit relaxed we said to ourselves "No one can stop us.. :)"..

By then, it starting drizzling in the foot-hills itself. We casually enquired a local shopkeeper there about trekking who nodded his head side-side and replied strongly "Dont trek now. Its heavily raining at the top and you cannot cross 4 hills. Its very risky"  - Same piece of caution as said by the driver. 

Hearing the caution twice, we had a opinion from one of our friend to "return back safely, rather taking risk". I think thats the time we saw a group of young chaps coming down the hill after a successful trekking. They have started trekking in the morning [7am] and have reached down by 3.45pm. Damn energetic. We again enquired them about the situation at the top, and the reply was - SAME, but with a bit positive statement. "If you have raincoats and torch lights, you can trek". Those guys must have thought we are professionals :)

Hearing these words, we got the courage to say "Lets make it up"... Wise decision indeed.

After finding a suitable "third-leg" [cane of course!], and throwing all burden on Lord Shiva, we entered the zone..

Before going what happened next, a quick intro into what the mountain is all about.. Velliangiri, is a stretch of 7 hills that we need to trek to see a shivalingam on the top of the 7th hill. This hill is not as popular as Sadhuragiri or other spiritual places, and hence still remains a natural hill. Its very raw, shows no mercy  and very few people are trekking now. Professional trekkers rate this in "intermediate" level of trekking. For amatures like us, its obviously "advanced" level. Pathway to trek is clear but very "mountainy"..

1st and 2nd hill - Steps laid using rocks - Close to 4000+ steps, that will test your patience

3rd hill - Climb a slippery rock - Steps carved for better grip

4,5th hill - A Rough path - No proper steps and way full of rocks. Covered by Trees on both the sides

6th hill - A Rough path - No proper steps and way full of rocks. Open landscape without any trees

7th hill - A steep climb to the top. Hill in open space without any trees

Each of the hill demands atleast 45-60mins for trekking..

After 2hours of non-stop climbing in the steps, we reached a small Ganesh temple located at the end of 2nd hill. Meantime, it started raining. Sensing the situation going out of our hands, we had only two choices

1. Stay that night in the temple itself and proceed trekking the next morning

2. Get down and travel back home.

With this discussion going on, we saw a couple of military guys crossing us to trek the hill. Added surprise, one tamil guy was stepping down the hill after his successful darshan. This gave us an additional boost up to take the third option that was not in the list earlier - "Lets proceed"

We walked up, walked up and walked-up is what i could say.

The third hill and the fourth was enjoyable to walk, since both the sides were covered with trees, it was chill and drizlling like heaven. But one thing we kept on hearing above us was the howling of wind.

When we stepped on the fifth hill, lighting fell off and darkness started surrounding. Torches ON, we couldnt see anything next to us. The fifth hill has no trees surrounded, its just a plain area and the wind played a storm here. With heavy wind and severe rain around, we could sense chill up down our spines. To be honest, i have never been in a situation like that before. It was enjoyable, daring and life threatening. I never even imagined in my wildest dream that the sound of a wind could be such scary. More than rain, the wind - its chillness and the sound it made was a perfect mix to make one scared, if he is all alone.

Sixth hill was a real challenge - it was like playing a game where challenges gradually increase with levels. With sixth hill, we had the toughest challenge of our life-time. Wind was so heavy that many times we are about to get pushed-off. If at all, not having the cane for support, we are close to be carried away dead. Such an intense wind. We were literally praying [and joking as well] that lightning/thunder should not happen. We are in midst of the rainy clouds there. If at all, two clouds clash, our scream will be the thunder for the night. Now the rain became very thick and continous and we are walking with bare-foot immersed in water for close to 6hrs - feel the pain.. 

More pain is hearing the sound of rain drops hitting our rain-coat. 6hrs of hearing the "SSSSHHH" sound continuously, it was hell like watching DD channel when signal is cut. Biggest risk again is that at the sixth hills, we are just wakling on the edge of mountains with the deep-side just few metres away and there are is no support to catch if we fall down. Even if could catch the grass and other stuff, we are sure to get sucked by leeches to death. [kirumi-bojanam?]

Completely exhausted, we reached the foot-hills of seventh hill and its one hour straight climb from there. Ela was saying us the seventh hills is just opposite us, but we couldnt actually see even the shade. If at all we couldnt even see such a big mountain in front of us, think of our condition. Just trapped in dark. Such a darkness around us, and looking up for a second will fill our eyes with rain water.

One of our member called for a adhoc meeting at the foot-hills to confirm "Whether to take this ultimate risk".  While many of us were mentally fit to make the ride, our physical conditions showed a lag - 

1. Drenched in rain for 6hrs, we could feel chill down the spine. We were for sure unable to bear the cold. 

2. Wind around us was getting mad [rudra-dhandavam] as well damn chill making the conditions even worse. 

3. Rocks were already slippery with water flowing continously and taking a ride on a steep hill is tough

4. Even if we get to the top by midnight, we cannot stay there for that long to enjoy the sunrise during morning

Finally it was decided its more than enough risk taken till 6th hill, and not to bet nature anymore. Its was 9.30pm or so we took the stand to return back. Biggest challenge again was to walk-down the hills for 6 more hours without any break. But we had no other choice, rather taking it up.

After a non-stop walk for 5hrs - by 2.30am we reached the temple at the base on 2nd hills. Frankly, I have never walked 10-12hrs in my life continously. The trip was such tough, and sucked up all our energies. Biggest pain was we still have to trek 2 more hours to reach the base. Luckily, there was one other group staying that night in the temple and they have already lit campfire. That was a big releif for us to get ourselves warm and had our dinner [or breakfast] that we took with us. After a 30mins break for warm-up, we trekked  [stepped] down 2 more hours to the base by 4.30am.

Other fun down the base was that everyone's alternate clothes were also dripped wet in their bags, except me - for i had them wrapped them in polythene cover. Though it sounds simple, that was the need at the moment - a dry cloth to wear. After managing somehow, call-taxi reached there by 6.30am to get us back to railway station. Luckily rooms were already booked near the railway station in a decent hotel. A good hot water bath relieved all physical pain. 

Though the mission wasn't complete as planned, the experience we had was at its extreme. Even if we had trekked all the 7 hills on a fine breezy day, this raw experience would have been lost. We witnessed a part of how fierce nature could be at its den. Neverthless, Iam not sure if i will face such situations anymore in life - and I dare not. That's one other learning we get from such trekking - face the toughest; and we had it till our spine. But this is not going to drain away our desire to trek the mountain again - if time permits and shiva wishes we will trek once again to kiss the peak. 

PS - After we reached home safely, one of our trekking member informed that he saw a cobra during our way up watching-us in its full-form [padam eduthu ninnuruku]. Not to create any panic, he didnt inform us, but did alert us to take different side of the path. Appreciate his care towards us, but still we missed watching the cobra in a jungle. Anyhow, will watch it next time and write a big blog on it.

Fun part of the trip  -
1. One funny part in this trip was from our team mate Naneswaran [Guy with red-cap in the below picture] who was trekking for the first time [excluding his mini-trek of 1000 steps at kolli hills as preparation for this trip] . At 9.30pm when we decided to return back from 6th hills, he said he was hungry and wanted a dinner break. But since it was heavily raining at the top, we couldn't stop for break anywhere. In 4th/3rd hills, we were under trees and had some shade [only leeches problem here], and he again prompted that he was damn hungry. From there every 10mins, he was reminding that he was hungry and Ela was consoling him that we will reach the temple at end of 2nd hills and plan for dinner. No one cared for stop for him. For us all, it was "lets end the trip somehow". Food was secondary. Finally, it was at 2.30am in the morning Ela allowed him to have his dinner. Though everyone was hungry, he suffered a lot. Poor chap.

2. After reaching the base of 2nd hills at 2.30am, there was one other team who already lit campfire and were warming up. When we reached there, one of their folks asked us to collect some firewood scattered few meters away, since campfire is running out of fuel. Since we were completely drenched and not in mood to face rain again, we just started warming up. After sometime the guy who asked us to collect the firewood, said that he saw some "bright-eyes" in the dark woods and hence scared to go and collect woods. He was cleverly throwing that risk on us. Though we came up from the same path where he said he spotted "two bright-eyes" we were more desperate to warm-us ourselves than getting scared. Ela was consoling us that it could be some forest dog sniffing around. Hope it was so, else we would have missed watching a tiger/cheetah face-face.

Just one sample photo taken at 5th hills on our way up @ 8pm.. This picture says me hell a lot of stuff...

Read Velliangiri Trekking - Part 2 here

MPT Autograph - Guest lecture

One fine day, Mr.MSK FYI'ed me that he has "committed" APS sir about presenting a session on "Networking basics" to our MPT juniors. There is no big surprise element in this news, since everyone in our batch know that Mr.MSK is a MPT-Alumni member, and he always gets insight into whats happening there. No wonder one day he becomes a Board member of the very same polytechnic where he studied :)..

After being tired of his multi-dimensional service to MPT, MSK passed on this opportunity of guest lecturing to me. Since I had no pressing [or even normal] commitments for the week-end, I thought of giving it a try, atleast in the name of "giving back to the society" or more technically a "knowledge transfer" session to current students of where we came in from. One thing I really wasn't sure of what to present, and I kept asking Mr.MSK to send me the syllabus till 11th hour, so that I could prepare something on those lines before going in for the session. [Finally Mr.MSK passed me the syllabus when standing before the students, the 12th hr]

So, it was decided that the session will be conducted on Saturday, 20th August between 10am to 1pm - a 3hour schedule to let students know [not understand] the basics of what networking means. A surprise news from APS came in Friday stating that there will 90 students attending the session and drawing hall is blocked for the event. I wasn't really thinking about that big audience, since we had only 26 members in our batch. I was expecting some 30-35 students at max for the session in PCB lab. Somehow, making up my mind, I  refreshed myself on the OSI layers, Hub, Switch concepts and other basic fundas of networking. A nice reading for me indeed. 

The next-day, myself and MSK were there in MPT by 9.50am - a 10min ahead schedule. A call from APS to MSK said that "APS was on his way still and he will be here in next 15mins.. actually he forgot to bring the drawing room key and he is going back to fetch that".. So, now that we had a extended 15 minute window, we just went through roaming around the campus. The first sight itself was astonishing - a group of 20-25 girls under the tree near the electronics lab all clad in blue. Few boys roaming here and there in small groups. We could see a very good difference between what we were those days and what these guys are now... Boys wearing Reebok shoes with cell phones in hand.. I ain't sure how many of us really know atleast the "Reebok" brand when studying, and cell-phones, not even existing at that time. Only those small pagers and very rich guys having that "brick" model phone.

Now back to story - It was all nostalgic walking through the campus, a trip from the principal room - auditorium - canteen [double decker now] - new building besides canteen - international standard cricket ground [when it was just a ground, it really served its purpose. Now its a cricket ground, but no students to play] - PCB lab - Sheet metal [mallet] lab, mechanical lab and back underneath the tree.. We sat there for few minutes awaiting APS arrival, and finally he came.

Iam really shocked to see APS after a very long time... Though identifiable, he became very lean to what I remember him last. Time shows no mercy to anyone. He really couldn't recollect me, and confirmed with MSK whether I studied in his batch only. Then, he opened the drawing-hall, which is nothing but our old Auto-CAD room where all PCs are removed and benches are now placed. Needless to say, how can one forget this room, the place where we really saw how a computer looks like, a place where we took days to learn how to draw a line from point-A to point-B, a place that VT madam and Philomina was sitting with lot of books and record notes in the center-table, giving the room a hifi computer room look... Its all gone now folks; except the memories..

Within next few minutes all students gathered up in the drawing hall - a close to 70:30 girls:boys ratio. Not sure why there are less boys. When myself and MSK entered in the drawing hall - all students stood up and said "good morning sir". [nammalayum periya manishana madichi....] A quick chat with students, we came to know that there were two batches attending the days session - ECE regular and ECE sandwich making up the ~80-90 headcount. APS sir was sitting in front row with a notepad for taking notes. He is still learning.

Around 10.30am, MSK after his quick into, started the session in his own style, throwing up the first question on "what is networking" and  then going a bit into some postal-address to IP-address mapping,  then handed over the session to me. Just before getting into the session, APS  sir gave us the Networking syllabus with a surprise message that these students will undergo that syllabus only in their next semester, which means the audience in front of me dont know anything about networking. An additional responsibility on us to make sure we don't incept any wrong impression on networking into these fresh minds. 

After making sure everyone knows Tamil, and requesting everyone to close their note-books [as usual everyone has opened up their notebooks to take reference] and only listen to what the concepts are being told, I just started up explaining the same old "lets make two PCs speak through OSI layers". To my surprise, students are really brilliant catching up the concepts to speed. Atleast they looked like they understood. They even throwed back questions like 'what protocol means', 'what is MAC', 'what is Transport and Networking layer doing' and stuff like that.. I really have to dilute the OSI layers to its very simple, just for the students to understand that a packet traverses through some virtual layers before being spit.

After a 5 minute break by 12, we again gathered up for an introduction on Hubs, Switches and Routers. By 12.30, we closed the session with a Q/A part. You will be surprised if i say that all questions that we asked on the OSI layers, Products, Products-OSI layer mapping are answered good. Not sure whether they will remember these concepts for days to come, but I was really satisfied that I have done my job to my best.

Finally, APS sir stepped up on the dias and requested few students to come-up and share their feedback. To be honest, it was the real funny stuff guys. A guy came up and said that "I did not know anything on networking, OSI layers, but now i learnt things.. Thanks to these people".. Next APS called in for a  girl to come up and speak. After a brief silence, the first row girl stood up the repeated what the guy said - just with some is/was changes. Now, APS requested one student from ECE-Sandwich to represent her department. Same old story. One girl came up and repeated the same story - as if she is enlightened on every networking aspects; though we didnt cover even the basics to its fullest. But good, from being "knowing nothing" to "knowing something" makes a difference. For them what we taught is the whole of networking now.

After a successful wrap-up, APS sir collected my details with a note that, an engineer with 10yrs can come as external during examination - which MSK is already doing. I really dont want to step in there, but just gave my contact details for courtesy. 

Overall, it was a very nice experience for me taking a session for such fresh minds, and i need to thank Mr.MSK for presenting the chance and special thanks to APS for organizing it. Later we were informed that these students need [are compelled] to go in for a upcoming 2 day self-paid session by DOT. Without knowing anything on the basic fundamentals, APS is not much comfortable in making these students shell money out of their pocket, which obviously the students are resisting to attend now, and hence this pre-requisite session as a teaser-trailer. 

I really appreciate his care towards the students, taking such a responsibility of catching MSK to organize such session, requesting students to attend, coming-in over a week-end [which is not a compulsion for him], and he himself sitting in the front row taking notes. Its really hard to see such dedicated personnel these times. 

But it was a bit painful for me to hear some comments passed by the current students on him. They right now dont understand what people like APS is doing to shape-up their career. Its all fun for them now, as we had 10 years back. 

1. "Pls dont pass on the session to APS sir - neengale edunga" - This is a common comment and I believe we would have done the same thing if we were in students shoes

2. "When APS is taking networking or C class, he is often jumping into explaining capacitors/optocouplers" - This was really shocking comment I heard. Why the hell an electronics expert like APS is teaching (or asked to) computer networking/C programming? Is polytechnic feeding grass to tiger? An expert should be allowed to become domain-expert, rather making him "Jack of all, Master of none" type. How immersed APS should be with electronics, if he jumps explaining capacitors from C programming that are no way related..

After coming home, I really felt that I should have taken the last couple of minutes to explain students about APS and his dedication in arranging such sessions in the interest of students future. No one was really there to explain us these things when we were studying, but now we are there, just to say them that there are  still "ladders" like APS to shape them up.

HTC Incredible S - Review

After using my HTC Incredible S for successful 10 days, I thought of scribbling a quick review. I'aint going to write anything new apart from tons of review data that is already on Net. But still, as a end-user, will share few honest pros and cons of this phone.

Before getting into the review, just need to say that mobile market has changed. Days are gone where we selected mobiles based on features like dust-proof keyboard, torch light and color display. These are no more considerations now. Differentiators are now Processor Speed, Single/Dual Core, Operating System, OS version, ROM, Camera MP, display size and make.. No more mobiles, they are smart-phones..Unless one has some knowledge about what processor means, which OS is best, its very easy that they fall spending thousands on a wrong device. Whatever we spend is just for the hardware and not for software. Its like purchasing a laptop.

Lets start with Pros -

1. If your requirement is just a mobile, a Nokia 1100 is the choice. If you are thinking of a smart-phone then the second best available phone in the market is HTC brand. Needless to say IPhone tops the chart still. Samsung Galaxy S2, the  new competitor for HTC is picking up market. But it has its own limitations. The display size is big and cannot easily be handled. Cost of Samsung is also high.

2. Android - This is the only word that keeps HTC topping the chart, even overtaking Apple and Nokia counterparts. With Apple running their iOS and Nokia running Symbian, downloading gadgets for those mobiles simply mean shelling few bucks. A monopoly market.With Android, powered by  Google and millions of developers breaking their heads to publish gadgets in Android market, its now your choice on how to mend your hardware. A simple phone or a super computer..

3. Gorilla-Glass display - Chemically hardened scratch proof glass displays. Same like iPhone. With 4" display, viewing web-pages as-it-is [non mobile-version] is easy and you really dont need to strain your eyes. 

4. Sensitive Touch - The display is damn-sensitive is what i would say. Let it be single or multi pinch, the processor recognizes and does the job easily.

5. Apps - Android market is the webspace where all android OS gadgets are available for download. With tons of free Apps, you really dont need to spend anything, except if you need some really cool apps like games. Quick list of Apps loaded in my mobile

Games/Entertainment [Angry birds, Sudoku, Unblock Me, Drag racing, Talking Tom, Trashcan]

Utilities [GMail, GTalk, Mail [Microsoft exchange], YahooMail, Opera Browser, Dolphin Browser]

Others [Youtube, Facebook]

Believe me or not, there are anti-virus [AVG] apps that are available in market for download and use. I havent seen iphone market yet, but Android market has tons of useful apps.

6. Always Connected - HTC has all possible options to connect data - WiFi, Edge, USB, Internet bypass, Bluetooth etc. GPS comes along for navigation. Just enable data connection, and you are live on net. Anytime check your personal mails, publish photos/videos to facebook, chat using Gtalk or get your office mails delivered to your mobile. You really dont need a laptop. Its all there in your hands, very compact. Connect the phone to your laptop and you get a USB disk. Enable Wifi-Hotspot and transform your phone to be a internet gateway for other devices.

7. HTC Sense - This is the HTC theme (Front-end over Android) that is incharge of all GUI capabilities, be it be the multi-home capability to drag/drop/installation/removal of Apps to complete customization of your phone. Very cool GUI. IPhone 4 has comparable features like these in it. 

8. Pricing - HTC comes with a decent price compared to Samsung Galaxy or iPhone 4. Despite paying heavy price iphone lacks adobe flash support, which in my opinion is a very big drawback. 99% internet sites in this world have flash content loaded. Even some versions of Samsung phone dont support flash. However Galaxy S2 supports flash and HTC supports flash in all their models.

9. Audio Quality - HTC provides surround-system [SRS] effects when listening to audio files, and the effect is really cooool... Coupled with their branded ear phones, hearing songs is joy. But a slight disadvantage is that the audio is not loud. I have listed this in negative.

10. Multitasking - No need to exit your Internet browser, when you are addicted to angry birds. Just load the browser, type your URL, go back to phone's main window and start playing your favorite game or do any other mess while your browser still loading your data in background. The phone does effective multi-tasking. 

There are most positives to list, but no time to write.. Now, no product is complete in all aspects, atleast from a tester's view. Few negatives I observed with HTC Incredible S.

1. Pocket-Answering - This is a damn big GUI issue that many HTC users are facing [as seen on HTC blogs]. When your phone rings, you need to "drag-down" the arc-slider to answer or "drag-up" to decline the call. With sensitive touch display, when taking the phone out from your shirt/pant pocket for picking the call, the slider is either dragged up or down when it bruises inside your pocket. Most of time, I take the phone out of my pocket to see that the call is already accepted and someone at the rear saying "helllllo".. A simple solution to this issue is to go for a "slide-side-to-answer" like iphone rather "drag-to-answer". But HTC  doesnt support this swipe-slide model style. Iam planning to purchase a flap-pouch for my mobile, just to overcome this issue. "Workaround" is to purchase a new app from market supporting the slide-style costing few dollars.

2. Unicode Support - This phone doesn't directly support viewing tamil sites or checking a mail scripted in native language using Gmail, Facebook, Mail or YahooMail Apps. A very big setback I observed. Anyhow the workaround now was to use Opera browser that could transform tamil fonts as bitmaps and display it on the phone and this works for now. However, direct unicode support should have done the job. 

3. Audio volume - With our ears used to listen  "mariamma" songs in a high decibel cone tied in front of our door, this phone outputs a decent audio volume, but not enough while travelling in Indian Roads. Even with 100% volume, the traffic noise overtakes leaving no clue of the lyrics heard. But in a silent environment, even the smallest instrumentals used can be clearly noted. With audio Surround enable, you get a good theatrical effect.. Pleasant to hear. Best to use with car audio players.

4. Battery life - If used only for attending calls/SMS, the battery life is damn-good. A charge once in two days should do. But if data services are enabled [mails/gtalk/youtube/GPS/Maps], the phone turns a battery-monster eating up complete charge within a day. Though its understood, batteries needs to be more rugged.

5. Keep an Eye - If its Nokia 1100, we dont mind dropping the phone a couple of times or travelling in a crowded bus with the phone in shirt pocket. [8 years back my Nokia 1100 was pick-pocketed on the way from Teynampet-Central :( ].. But with this significant cost investment, its always pain to watch out whether the phone is still ours. Its just not the phone that gets stolen, your complete Gmail, FB , Yahoo, Outlook, Gtalk accounts are compromised. Its like losing your personal laptop where all passwords are browser-saved.

This is it for now folks. Will write sometime later if i come across any other interesting issues/updates with this phone... Till then, I  look for any comments to this blog or any other counter blogs from new blog-owners...

PS - Spl. thanks to Sarah for her wonderful pose with the Incredible HTC  in hand...