Wilderness camp

After a long time, I had chance to get out of my routine life and gather with my school friends.

This gathering was not for other friend's marriage or any other bachelor party. We gathered to get closed to nature. To be precise wild.

After sniffing for tourists places on the way to Mysore from Bangalore on Friday (24/Feb/2012). A night stay at Mysore gave us little rest, for the next day adventure.

Next day morning, we started our journey towards the actual spot. Finding the way was little difficult, though we took the help of GPS, local peoples [with out knowing the language]. We had quarrels bcoz of inquiring the route but changed them to fun and enjoying it. We finally reached the check-post to enter 'K.GUDI'

K.Gudi is a forest area on top of BR hills. It is time of transition from summer to autumn, all the trees welcomed us bald(lost almost all of their leaves). But we were waiting to visit in such a weather. We were driving for few kms, except our vehicle's engine growling there was no sound. There was little fear in us, reason: its migrating time for elephants(to nearest water bodies) and we should not disturb them. Tossing a car is none of the matter for them. But fortunately nothing came in our way except few spotted deers and jungle fowls. 10 kms drive on the hill and we reached the jungle resort.

Since we were traveling for the second day, we thought of relaxing a while in the tents/huts we reserved. We then warmed up our muscles by playing Table Tennis (Actually, we wanted to empty our stomach. Bcoz there was delicious lunch awaiting ;)). After sumptuous lunch, again some relaxing. But this time we were binding ourselves into the silence of the jungle.

Mid of the day,  even though sun was smiling generously there was breeze. The silence of the forest makes you feel lighter. A quick power nap, it was 4PM. Time for Jungle safari (the most awaited). We got ready with all our optical devices (cameras, binoculars etc). 3 Hrs of safari in an open jeep with a friendly naturalist cum guide. Nothing much to see except few common sighted animals like, spotted dears, sambhar dears, barking dears, wild boars, languors and herd of bison.

From the moment Sun went down, temperature inside forest started dropping drastically. We have to return to our dens. Again delicious dinner, few hours of talk under light which was powered by a generator. Person in-charge gave a warning call that he is going to switch off the generator. We came to our tents to prepare our bed. We had a surprise guest visited inside. A wild spider, 15cms in width. Security nearer helped us get rid of it.

Next day, morning 5.30am we woke up for a safari again with the same person. Now he became socialized with us, and started explaining about things in and around the forest. Except this chat and two hours of drive we had nothing to see.. We were returning to our base disappointingly. "Chances of animal sighting is more in evening. Morning it will be less" - A dialogue told by another naturalist while dinning last night came to mind. We all with sad faces and clicking the dry trees for the sake of coming.

All of a sudden, our naturalist friend spotted a 'Wild Dog'. Wow! it was not alone (as-usual), their was eight of them. For few minutes we were following them. Then we understood that they are searching for their prey. With the intention not to disturb them further we returned back to our base happily. There were two other vehicles in to forest for safari but they didn't spot any animal. We were LUCKY.

To top up the feeling of wildness, we came back to Mysore zoo saw few rare varieties of animals. And now back to square one. With almost two to three less-slept nights and 1000Kms of travel I am tired as-usual :)

PS: Photos are still in cameras, will share them once I get a chance.

Accept the Change

I remember a SMS which I received sometime back

"You shouldn't expect change other always.
You should bring the change required.

-By 23C bus conductor."

Though we always say and hear philosophical phrases
"changes are inevitable", "change is the only thing which never changes"
But how many of us are really accepting or ready to accept the change?

If you think, I am going to bring in some political or social issue topic. No you are wrong :)

An M.I.T. neuroscientist named Ann Graybiel and her colleagues conducted behavior study on their wired rats inside maze. They observed that rat's mental activity decreased when the rat learned to solve the maze. When they tried again and again rat was able to solve the maze faster with decreasing use of brain. Which means, it becomes as habit than a behavior. [Source: www.nytimes.com]

Similarly, we humans when refrain to change and follow a regular pattern/approach. Our brain is loosing its ability. So keep changing intentionally.  Believe me it will be refreshing.

Few practices like, next time when you time you travel in bus give up the window seat. Take a different route way back to home from office(plan the timings if you are trying the home - office route). Spend your weekend in a different location (it definitely need not be a hill station or a hangout spot). Change your make over.  Disclaimer: you should be aware of the consequences of what ever you do. ;) and so on....

This will prevent us from disappointments and keeping our brain in alert mode . Since this is LIFE and nothing happens as expected. Expectation is sole cause of disappointment, stress and frustration. If you follow a regular pattern, your mind takes granted that you have solution for all problems.

So guys Be ready to change 'the change'.

Any comments?

Remeber faces but not Names?

After a common comment from my colleagues, that i always write about hypothetical topics... paradox solutions.... Here is a finite article with no gyans :)

Every body of us has faced this situation.

When you meet an old friend or some person whom you met long back, you very well recognize him by his face, but his/her name struck in your throat?

This is because our human brain records things in patterns. Neural patterns. As part of human growth and metabolism lot of cells die in our body. Similarly in our brain too we loose lot of cells.

Cell = information. This is the main reason for memory loss. 

To keep them always in your brain you have to rewrite the whole info in new cells too... [same technology in a hard drive] but brain has a capability to recover the total data, if few of the neural chain is alive. This is the reason you take little time to remember / recall a mathematics formula ;)

Wana test? what is (a+b)^2 ? [a plus b squared]

Fine! With that very minimal idea, Back to our topic. How to remember names as you do the faces?

Try this exercise, call the person by his/her name looking directly into the person's face at least once a day. It really works.

Ambition

What is your Ambition?

This was the common question in my school. Starting of every academic year or when ever a new teacher takes over the class.

This question followed me since I did not know what is the meaning of Ambition, till I got to know what is an Ambition.

I do not remember what was my answer to those questions. But I believe they were changing year on year. Time to time. Sometimes Doctor, sometimes police, sometimes army man, sometimes engineer. And really for a while wanted to be an actor(should be on my adolescent age, to do romance with heroines :)). 

Later I found that, All of them was because of the craze. My external environment's impact on me.
It was easy for them to ask what was my Ambition, but they did not taught me, how to set one.


Not just me, it was a common feeling among my classmates. Few had their family run business so they used to stick to that when they answer (though today they are not into that business)


When we step back and think about it, apart from education there needs to be an outside thought to set an ambition. Usually, this is not an easy task. Parents have their vision and mission for their heirs. Which happened in my case too... Engineering was their decision, computers were my liking, hence I did Computer Science & Eng (thank god I completed it ;))


Setting an ambition could be of many type, fantasy oriented, passion oriented, adventure oriented, and very common money oriented. We all target this last type, since we learned that from our parents. We strongly trust that education and earning degrees is the only way reach there.[which do not teach me what is an ambition]

Very few consider the other types. How many of  you have thought of becoming a swimming champion? how many of you thought of becoming a table tennis champion? (most of us believe that cricket is the only game in the world) A professional photographer? An economist? A social activist?


You can ask me, we have lot of people in that field even now. But were they, their original ambitions? We all travel in the river of LIFE like a LOG of wood. No Control!


All of a sudden why this thought?


At least our next generations should know what is their ambition. Today's young parents, YOU - teach them what is it and how to set it. [even now if you do not have an ambition. Sorry I cant help ;)]


Let them set their own ambition, create small, reachable goals. Teach them to have a plan B always, towards the goal (confined to legal and ethics)