Vinayak Hegde

It has been a string of long weekends (I could get used to this ). On a whim my friends and I decided to go to Karwar on the Northern part of the Karnataka coast. It was organized by the Bangalore Mountaineering Club. We left on Friday night via Tumkur to Jog Falls. The road to Jog Falls was not good and we could not get much sleep on the overnight journey. Finally on Saturday morning we reached the Jog Falls. I was disappointed to see that there was not much water in the river (due to less rain in the region and a dam upstream) and the waterfall was almost dry. They now have stairs which go to the bottom of the waterfall (about 1600 odd steps). We did walk down to the base of the waterfall, but it was hot and humid all the way down with the sun beating down on us all the time.

We then left for Karwar and checked into a hotel near the beach. In the evening we went to the beach but it started to rain. But after the sunset, the rain subsided and we did get some good photos. On the way back we had a whole array of delicious seafood (oysters, mussels, prawns and crab amongst others) at Amruth Restaurant. The food was fantastic and very cheap as compared to Bangalore or other coastal cities.

The next day we tried out various kinds of aquasports such as canoeing, rafting, coracling and kayaking. I saw some islands from the shore and started kayaking towards them. The water was fairly calm and I was enjoying the kayaking and negotiating the waves fairly easily (they get higher as you go more into the sea) but the people from whom we had rented the boats were not confident that I could come back as people do not venture so far into the sea usually. So they sent the boat to look for me and I had to return on the launch. I almost managed to reach the island (just 200m away from the island’s coast). The island itself was about 7 kms off the beach shore. Later when I turned back, I realized that I had ventured so far into the sea as I could not see the coast but could see a few fishing boats. It was about mid-afternoon and we just spent rest of our afternoon floating in the sea with our lifejackets on. It was time well spent.

Later after going to the hotel in the evening, we went to the far side of the beach as the sea had become rough and it was tougher to do the banana boat ride in the sea. While awaiting for the our turn for the banana ride, I got to take some photos of fishermen returning with their daily catch. We found that there were some exotic fish they had caught such as the the Kopra (the large fish with the mouth wide open) and the sting rays.

I tried to take pictures of the Banana ride while sitting on bow of the launch pulling the inflated banana boat but it was extremely difficult as the waves were hitting the fast launch and causing it to jump in the air. Also there was a danger of the camera getting wet due to the splashing water. Nevertheless I did get a few photos but not as good as expected. The Banana ride was eventful as we kept falling in the sea ensuring good laughs for the bystanders . Later in the evening we went to the Amruth restaurant again to hog on seafood, this time with a larger crowd before catching the bus back to Bangalore. Karwar is a good 2 day trip from Bangalore if you like a good beach and great seafood. I felt it was much better and cheaper than the over-hyped and crowded Goa coast just a few kilometers up north from Karwar.

Some notes on Preparing for the Europe trip. Posting on my blog for helping out people plan out their trip.

Currency and Transportation
Easily the most important of the three if you are planning a long trip is your budget. Check the cost of living in each country, that you plan to live and then add maybe 50% because you have enough safety margin in case you get things wrong or the information online or in the guidebooks is outdated.

If you are travelling across several european countries then I recommend something like Thomas Cook Global Money card (also known as “Eurocard”). It’s way better to get money in local currency than traveller cheques. There are ATMs anywhere in Europe and once you load this prepaid card with money, you can go to pretty much any ATM (with Mastercard/Visa) and withdraw money. I used this across 7 countries and never had an issue. Also the transaction charges are pretty reasonable, the exchange rates are good and you don’t waste time hunting around for the best rates. Also you can use it at most places for purchases.

I used a variety of transportation for traveling as seen in my earlier post. Other than the air tickets I had bought the Eurail Pass online. It works out well if you are doing long journeys on certain days. Also there are some other benefits as you get discounts on ferries and bus journeys as well in some places. The Eurail pass enables you to travel on your chosen days no matter how many train journeys you do. This is a good way to travel especially as many of the train journeys are scenic as well as the comfortable. There is also the added benefit that most railways stations are in the city centre and along side local transportation hubs unlike many airports which are outside the city limits. The only downside is that rail travel in Europe is expensive but I felt it was well worth the extra cost. Also it is great for flexibility as train tickets (and reservations) are often easier to get at the last minute.

Equipment
I bought a Quechua Backpack (70Lt) and Sleeping bag (ultralight version) from Decathlon Store from Esteem Mall in Hebbal. Quechua Backpacks and the sleeping bags were of good quality. I was frankly disappointed with the quality of the backpacks (both in terms of material used and the design) from Wildcraft and Adventure one. I found that both of them did not have good back supports as well (which matters a lot if you plan to carry your backpack around for a long time – I carried my 15kg backpack + 7kg in another sling handbag long enough to qualify for a sherpa certification ). If you plan to do any serious trekking and want your backpacks to last and last I would highly recommend them. I later found that Quechua (and the North Face) are pretty popular brands in Europe as well.

In addition, I had a DSLR camera – Nikon D80 and accessories – A backup battery and a backup 8GB memory card as I shoot in RAW, a sturdy tripod by Velbon, A IR remote and two filters (A Circular Polariser and a UV filter – Hoya Brand). I had a backup battery for my laptop as well which was useful in longer journeys.

Research
I generally read about the places I visit – Culture, History, Transportation systems and Food – so that when I travel I have atleast a rough idea of what to expect and what to do. While this might seem obvious to do, I have found several travellers do not do this and are stranded or get sick by not eating the right food and rub locals the wrong way. In this respect, I did not have much choice but to do it as my schedule was pretty punishing and as I was backpacking solo, I could not afford to get sick. I found the following sites extremely helpful for for my research

1. Wikitravel and World 66 – This was really useful in planning my trip with short articles about many obscure places
2. Lonely Planet Thorntree Forums – Extremely helpful travelers here.
3. Couchsurfing Travel Forums – for accommodation and local help – simply indispensable for travel in Europe.
4. Hostel sites for cheap accommodation – in order of preference – Youth Hostels , Hostelworld , Hostel bookers , Hostels.com – if you have a YHAI card you will get discounts in Youth Hostels as well as others. Just ask.
5. Flickr – Weird as it might seem, I found a lot of offbeat places just searching (using the “interesting” parameter) for the cities and countries that I planned to visit. Some of the places were surprisingly not even known to the locals.
6. Seat 61 – If you want to plan your route using rail travel, Seat 61 is an invaluable website with loads of information.

Also I have heard BootsnAll is a good site for researching for international travel but I did not use it. For travel within India, Indiamike is another site which is extremely helpful for travel related research.

Travel within in Europe is both easier and more difficult now as most European countries have moved to the Schengen Visa. It is difficult to get the Schengen Visa due to the large amount of documentation that you need to produce but once you get the visa you can travel within any country within the Schengen area without any border controls.

With winter approaching fast we are also into conference season.

ACM Compute 2010 – 22nd & 23rd Jan, 2010.

ACM Bangalore chapter is organising ACM Compute 2010 which is into it’s third year now. This year the broad theme is Cloud computing and Information retrieval, management and analytics. The aim of this conference is to bring together researchers, practitioners, technology market movers, and thought leaders, with a view to advance the state of the art, and the state of the practice in applied research. This year we are planning to do something special – details soon The Call of papers (CFP) is out for sometime now and the last date for submissions is Oct 1 2009. You can also submit a proposal for a half-day or day long tutorial. Last year we had a bunch of good tutorials and also the symposium on Cloud Computing co-located with ACM Compute 2009 which was a great success.

Disclaimer: I am on the program committee of ACM Bangalore and am the secretary of the ACM Bangalore chapter.

Pycon India 2009 – 26th & 27th Sep 2009

Also this weekend (26th and 27th September 2009) India’s first Pycon India 2009 is being held in Bangalore. There is an interesting list of talks lined up. So do register if you are interested in attending.

Foss.in – December 1-5, 2009.

Foss.in shifts to a new venue this year NIMHANS convention centre. This year promises to be interesting as the venue is available for longer durations. Also there are going to be hacker evening/nights where tinkerers can meetup and talk about a whole range of stuff not restricted to just FOSS. My educated guess is something on the lines of CCC in Germany. Definitely something to look forward to. Plus I think there will be atleast one evening where we will have music . So join the mailing list if you are interested in presenting/attending as more details should emerge soon.

I and a bunch of friends decided to go on a day trip to Lepakshi at the last minute. Lepakshi is a temple town, north of Bangalore just across the border in Andhra Pradesh at a distance of about 120 kms. You can reach it by going via Doddaballapur – Gauribidanur – Hindupur route or take the NH7 towards Anantapur and then take the internal road from the Kodikonda checkpost at the Andhra border. We took the latter route. We left early at about 7.30am and stopped at Kamat’s Hotel on the way for breakfast. All along the way as we approached Chikkaballapur we saw vineyards growing grapes.

The diversion from the Kodikonda checkpost (on the left if you are coming from Bangalore) towards Lepaksi is unmarked and so hard to find. The road is narrow and just better than a dust road. Lepaski is about 10 kms down this road. Most people are familiar with the word ‘Lepakshi’ as it is the name of the handicrafts division of Andhra Pradesh Government. For example you can find Lepakshi Handicrafts stores allover Hyderabad and other major cities of Andhra Pradesh.

The Virabhadraswamy Temple complex in Lepaksi with it’s principal shrine dedicated to Shiva is of the Vijaynagar times and style. It’s contruction in 1538 AD is attributed to Virupanna – A noble man and merchant prince of the times. The Natyamandapa (Dancehall) supported on 70 pillars is the centre of attraction – the central group having life size forms of dancing shiva, brahma, nandi, tumbhara, rambha and other gods and other celestial playing on the drum, veena and other instruments in accompaniment. The Virabhadraswamy temple ceiling is covered is with murals which depict various scenes from the scriptures. I have made a composite from 8 images of a mural which can be seen here. A little farther down the road from the temple you can see a large Nandi Bull carved from a single monolithic rock. You can see the complete photoset on Flickr.

After the IETF conference I have been travelling around Europe. The backpacking trip across Nordic Europe (Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Finland) and the Baltic Countries (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania) took 5 weeks. On this trip I travelled using quite a few modes of travel – air flights (5), ferries across seas and lakes (8), car (2), inter-city bus(11), mini buses, trolley busses, trams (6), domestic trains and intercountry fast trains (total of 11). The map of my travels is below:

Colour Code : Blue – Ferries, Black – Trains, Yellow – Bus and Red – Air Flights. Stockholm was the starting and ending point and it is marked in red on the map. Other cities which I stopped are marked with Blue placemarkers.

View Scandinavia and Baltics Trip in a larger map

The cities visited in order of traversal (can think of a better word were Stockholm (Sweden), Turku, Tampere ,Helsinki (all three in Southern Finland), Tallinn, Parnu (Both in Estonia), Riga, Salaspils and Liepaja (all three in Latvia), Klaipeda, Vilnius, Trakai (all three in Lithuania), Tromso, Narvik, Fauske, Trondheim, Oslo, Bergen, Stavanger (All in Norway from North to the South), Gothenburg (Sweden) and Copenhagen (Denmark).

Along the way I visited 7 World Heritages sites in Europe.

1. Historic Centre (Old Town) of Tallinn — 1997
2. Fortress of Suomenlinna, near Helsinki — 1991
3. Historic Centre of Riga — 1997
4. Vilnius Historic Centre (Old Town) — 1994
5. Drottningholm Palace, Theatre — 1991
6. Bryggen — 1979
7. West Norwegian Fjords – Geirangerfjord and Nærøyfjord — 2005

The journey took me from the cities to the national parks, from the fjords of Norway to the harsh Russian military prisons of Baltics, from the big industrial towns to small fishing villages. Along the way I met young people who had served in Kosovo, Latvians who had spent most of their life under Russian rule, entrepreneurial Estonians who are rebuilding the their country after the Russian rule (Skype was the product of an Estonian company), environmental scientists who are studying climate change in the arctic circle, Finnish cyclists that undertake cross continental bicycle journeys and the Iraqi immigrants seeking asylum in Denmark. In the process, I took more than 7000 photos of what I saw. Soon I will be posting the photos (with the stories) and the preparation that I needed for making this trip. So subscribe to the feed if you are interested in listening to the stories.