If we continue to hang around here this year too, this will be our sixth summer in coastal Karnataka. Except for the summer of 2008 which we spent in Bidar, every other one was in Puttur, Udupi or Mangalore. This morning, me and Deepu woke up to a bright sunny morning and decided to make the best use of it through some photography. We're almost completing two years in Mangalore now and time to leave on a high note. Despite 2009 being such troublesome year, that was the year I actually got noticed. Events and incidents kept happening round the year and some how we kept cracking them one after the other. We managed to turn every incident or trouble into an achievement. That was also the year when we took up a lot of initiatives in whatever little time had. Some noteworthy ones were, developing the Crime Scene Investigation kit, taking community initiatives like Police-Youth clubs, starting of the District Police Website, Facebook page, getting all the officers IT savvy through IT training and issuance of laptops with data cards, Developing an IVRS based complaint management system, taking up welfare measures for the men in the form of scholarships for the children of policemen, construction of a multipurpose function hall for all etc.
In November 2009, I was nominated for a training in Udhampur J&K police academy for a week. Snow had just begun in the Srinagar valley and it was coinciding with Deepthi's birthday. There was no reason why we'd miss it. A much needed break, we packed ourselves and flew to Delhi then to Jammu and we were driven to Udampur academy from there. Stay at the academy Officers mess was fun. We celebrated Deepu's birthday there and spent the evenings going around the small town.
In between we had a short trip to a place called Patnitop. Once the week long training at Udhampur was over, we packed ourselves and left for Srinagar. Offcourse our trip to Srinagar was not without a goof up at Katra. On the way to Jammu to catch a flight to Srinagar, we planned to visit Matha Vaishno Devi and booked a helicopter ride to the peak well in advance. But my course valediction at the academy stretched so long into the afternoon that by the time we rushed to the base of vaishno Devi at katra, we could see before our eyes the last chopper for the day take off along with all our hopes of making it to the Shrine that evening. For a moment me and deepu thought of trekking to the Shrine. But then good sense prevailed and we decided it wasn't such a good idea to trek in that cold weather after it was dark and may be it wasn't "Maatha ka Bulaawa" as yet. so we just left for Jammu, stayed there for the night and took the morning flight to Srinagar.
At Srinagar we were picked up by a vehicle and driver arranged by my batchmate who was serving then as SP Kupwara. The accommodation was arranged at a nice Police Guest house in Srinagar. Day one being a sunday we spent our time in Shrinagar, exploring the market and then visiting the Mughal gardens followed by a boat ride on the Dal Lake.
The second day we left for Gulmarg. A top of the world experience it was to take the cable car to 14000 ft and look at the world from the roof. This was not without a few moments of dizziness I experienced during the assent. The most frightening part of this experience was the prospect of me loosing conscience mid way while in the cable car, and Deepu having no one to call for help. In fact I knew it was coming, because I had undergone a similar experience at Nathula Pass in Sikkim way back in 2003. I completely blacked out then. Here we could only see snow in all directions, the ground beneath us several thousand feet away covered in thick snow, miles away from our starting station and miles to go to reach the peak, the cable car did stop for sometime midway giving us the real jitters of such a prospect turning to reality. So I quietly lay down in Deepu's lap, raised my legs above and kept moving my toes and calves to pump as much blood into my brain as possible even within the confines of that small cable car. Once the car started to move again, I kept counting every moment till we reached the peak. Once we reached the final peak, I thanked my stars for having saved Deepu from her worst nightmare (of having to deal with an unconscious me in a cable car and no help what so ever), sat down for sometime, recovered completely and then it was all fun in the snow. Deepu also had a brief experience with the skis.
The next day we took off to Pehalgaam. The Bethaab valley, named after the famous Bollywood movie shot at this place was like being in Narnia. We spent some time till evening and returned to Srinagar. The next day we spent some time with my batchmate friend and his family. Deepu even got to do some Kashmir shopping for the day and we took the noon flight back to Bangalore.
Come 2010, the hard work of 2009 seemed to be paying off well. Barring a few communal incidents in february, things were quite. As we were trying to settle for the summer, in the month of March I received a message from my chief office that I had been nominated for my phase 3 training at my alma mater the S V P National Police Academy, Hyderabad from 5th of April. This training was for 8 weeks, 6 of which would be in Hyderabad and 2 in Australia. What more to ask for, than spend the hottest part of the summer in the chill weather of Canberra, Melbourne and Sydney. It was like the break that we were waiting for, and without a second thought, Deepu and me packed our baggage and left for Hyderabad on the 4th of April.
