Week full of meetings

This week was surprisingly packed with meetings and endless discussions and all of them at the Deputy comissioners office. Half the time my presence was just decorative, with items on the agenda being developmental projects, or about HIV cases being reported in Udupi, or about ration cards being issued in Karkala and similar stuff. All that I did was nod my head and say 'yeah it could be done that way' or sometimes 'why dont you do it this way' , and when the subject was health, the DHO would be surprised who this cop was, suggesting us how we should be controlling chikungunya or how national programs are to be implemented. Nevertheless most doctors in Udupi are now comfortabe when i suggest something, coz they're aware by now that their SP is also a doc.

This week we also had some guests at home, with two of our friends visiting us. So all that i've been doing between these meetings was to take them around places in Udupi. So you can imagine, i've hardly been to the office this week. From August 1st Deepu is planning to start working at the KMC Manipal. So next week on, home is going to be very depressing when I dont find Deepu around . But I guess lifes like that, and we got to get used to it. So we got two days left and we're trying to make the best of them. The other day we'd been to a forest rest house at Hebri, the foot hills of Agumbe. Its a beautiful place on the banks of river Sita , and in this part of the year, it runs full with lots of rapids., ideal for river rafting. But since we reached there late in the evening, the rafts were all out. better luck next time.

Kaup light house

Last evening we spent some time at the Kaup ( pronounced as Kaapu ) light house. About 10 kms from here, its a half-an-hours drive from home (Udupi). The location as you can see is splendid, built on a massive rock on a beautiful rocky shore. The light house itself was built in the year 1901, and you can see how it originally looked like and how itz today., some colour added and only the faces on the stairs have changed in 105 yrs. This is one place where you can spend hours together gazing at the vast expanse of water from a decent height. The silence would be broken once in a while with huge waves breaking against rocks below you. We stayed there till it got dark and and returned home. As we actually reached there a lil late, we could'nt make it to the top of the light house. Definitely this place deserves regular visits in future. Its isolated, quite and you are all by yourself.

Bangalore and back.

After a five months wait, finally we made it to Bangalore. This was perhaps the longest i've ever waited to get home. Actually i had two official engagements, one in the High Court and another in the Secretariat with a gap of one day in between. So we got 3 days to take off and the free day falling in between was the world population day which I celebrate for having come into this world and Mumbai would remember for having lost abt 200 of their bretheren in one of the worst terrorist attacks. Deepu made it a more memorable occasion to me , than what happened in Mumbai later in the evening.

Most of the time as usual was spent driving thro' the traffic and offcourse movies at PVR. Most memorable of all was offcourse the drive from and to Udupi itself. Driving across the western ghats in the full monsoon splendour is itself an experience, doesn't matter where ur heading after that. Where else would u shop next to a water fall (pic).

Discovery weekend

Despite the heavy downpour, we decided to drive to Karkala and then to Hanuman Gundi falls yesterday. Karkala is a small town falling under Udupi district about 45 mins drive from Udupi and is famous for a few medieval jain temples called Basadi's and a magnificent monolith of Bahubali on a rocky hillock among the western ghats. The Bahubali statue belongs to 1432 AD while the jain Basadi was constructed in the year 1586 AD. Both the places are so serene in location, the added attraction being... u'll not find a soul around to disturb u..... absolute silence. After spending some time here we drove through the Kudremukh National park to reach the Hanuman gundi falls. Subbu had a tough time driving in the ghats but i was enjoying going through the clouds and watching the lush green meadows was wonderful from such a height. But unfortunately the downpour was so heavy we could'nt make it to the bottom of the falls and decided to turn back home. Spent the rest of the evening at the 'coffee day' at Manipal.