Trips and their side effects

Had given myself a break from the blog world as well as the real one. Dandeli trip was great. Did a whole bunch of things like white water rafting, kayaking, trekking, mountain biking yada yada. But like Aesop's fables, it had a moral in the end. FITNESS pays. I was promptly down with a bad back on the last day of the trip while biking. Something snapped. And it felt like a thousand ants taken control of my nerves and muscles, holding them back tightly, teasing and threatening severe shock whenever i tried to bend or sit or change my posture. Physiotherapy was promptly prescribed and is likely to continue for a long time to come. But the place was a haven of 'winged' birds. The best thing was that one could sit in the verandah at daybreak and identify nearly 50 different species of birds right from Hornbills to thrushes and sunbirds. Also learnt a thing or two about photography from the husband and figured I may have a finer way with it. More on that later. :)

Books gave me whole lot of company over my unwell days. (Oh well! I was completely thrown off gear for more than a week after the trip) And two books which stood out were Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini and Mistress of Spices by Chitra Bannerji Divakaruni. With no intention of reviewing them, I love the simplicity with which both these authors write. I bought Queen of Dreams by Divakaruni last year but never got around to reading it until recently and I instantly fell in love with her flowery, mystic way of writing. Wonder why I was putting away the book for so long. Was not disappointed by Mistress of Spices either. And I am looking forward for the next trip to Landmark to buy the others too. I believe a motion picture is being made of the book and Aishwarya Rai (!!!) is playing the role of Tilo. I would have imagined a Konkona Sensharma or a Nandita Das befitting the role, but Aishwarya Rai???

Among other things, has it ever happened that you go to withdraw money from an ATM center and your mind drew a blank? It happened to me yesterday, I fed in my ATM card and hands were circling around the display on the ATM machine and I just could not remember my PIN. Fed in 3 wrong passwords and got my ATM card promptly locked. Damn. Now I need to call the bank and get it reset again. And whats more, I remembered the PIN in my sleep at night. Looks like Alzheimers is setting in rather early in life.

Meanwhile some excerpts from my trip. And some not-so-anonymous glimpses too.

This is a spectacular sunset viewed from a sunset trek of about an hour into the jungle. Thats Kali river in the background.

This was our attempt at Kayaking. Was quite tough keeping afloat against the tide of the river. But we managed it for 2 hours without doing a 180 degree flip. :-)



This is a migratory bird from Africa called Black Stork which was identified in southern India for the first time.

A fig tree. Typical habitat for the Hornbills. Unfortunately none on this tree.



And these are just a bunch of flowers from the window of our apartment. Makes for a nice picture post card.