Mayur Channagere: Gods must be crazy

A movie that is strongly recommend every one to watch is “The Bucket List” – Jack Nicolson & Morgan Freeman. You might be wondering that is the relation between the title of this post and the movie… well the planning for this trip started after watching the movie…
All of us have been so tied up with our day to day work that we don’t sit back for a moment and think about our future… next steps or some where in space while we are fighting hard to meet our deadlines we forgot what it is to be free and what it feel like to dream… J

So we Rags, Nags & myself decided to take off some where for a weekend … a place where only thing you can hear is your thought, no cell phones, no laptops, no TV , just plain nature & wilderness. When we started to scout for a place, Madumalai was just right for this Adventure of self discovery.
The distance from Bangalore to Madumalai is approximately 6 hours by road, so we leave Bangalore on a Friday, Nags & Rags leave in the morning, and I was suppose to join them the same night. Mid way nags decides to return back to Bangalore and join me for a meeting in the evening. We finish our meeting & leave Bangalore at 9:30 pm that’s right at night thanks to sweet long hours at work, in Nags faithful Alto.
We had coved a good distance on the new Mysore road which is truly amazing

and lady luck decides to have some fun with us at 12:00 in the night, that’s right we have a flat… well we change the tires and we hit the road… now just as we across Mysore and take the diversion to Madumali via bandipur be warned the road is not exactly what you call motorable and nags being nags did not want to venture into this part of the Bandipur with out a spare. He was being very considerate to the animals, he did not want to scare them with his scraffle look J .

Luckily we found a place to get our tire fixed & we hit the road after an hour… After many turns & back tracking our way we finally reach Madumalai forest check post. Nags had arranged our stay at the forest guest house, but what I did not expect is the local SI (sub inspector of police) waiting for us … no before you think other wise, we were Sarkari Guest for the weekend… a very nice gentle man Mr. Ramesh , welcomes us and shows us the way to the guest house.
It was around 3:30 by the time we reached it was pitch dark around the guest house to actually realize where we were. We hit the bed and get in a slumber sleep… unaware as to what was happening around us…
It was decided that we will not get up till late in the morning … the first sight when

we saw when we stepped out of our guest house can only be described in one word “Heaven” we were surrounded by greenery trees tall trees on one side and as far as you can see you see the beautiful Nilgiris range and the only sound you could hear were that of the birds… It was wonderful to just sit in isolated corners.

After lunch we decided to just drive around find a nice water fall and talk and retrospect… well we found the right place… calm peaceful…

well it was just too peaceful that we found a nice grassy place to lie down

… and Zzzz Sleep…

I don’t know how long we slept… we hear some sound of leaves we looked up only to see some wild buffalos grazing near by and jumping

into the cool water to cool them off… no u silly this is not the one,

the one below…

and we went back to snooze but we all jumped out off our skin the minute we heard a sharp elephant shriek… well it sounded as if it not to far from the place we were… no questions asked we jumped grabbed our bags and ran.. Ran like there is no tomorrow… later we realized that we had ventured into the elephant territory. On our way back we passed by the elephant camp where the mahouts were taking the elephants

out for their evening wash / dip in the stream near by. We got back to the guest house and chilled rest of the day enjoying the beautiful sunset…

Next day we decided that we will go for a nice long trek with all arrangements made we met up with our guide at 7:30 Am to start our trek.

The trek lasted for a total of 4 hours, 4 kms one way to approximately 1800 FASL (feet above sea level)

that is when we spoke out our bucket list… things that we want to do before we die… as we progressed inch by inch the conversation got interesting and I realized that one thing that bonds all three of us is the drive to achieve, innovate and be some one.
The trek was tough, having been desk bums for so long we were seriously out off shape… trust me we had given up many time and decided to give up in between and return but one thing that kept us going is what rags had said earlier ,

‘If I reach the top the adrenaline rush I will get of having conquered this will keep me going for quite some time with the faith that if I make up my mind I can achieve any thing…” so we kept pushing our selves to reach the top…

with fresh air and greenery around us we reached the top.

Once we reached the top the view from there was worth every thing that we endured to reach there… after having spent time there our guide suggested that we take another 15 min trek to a water fall near by to cool off before we trek back… we decided to take the offer … after 15 min trek we reached this beautiful fall totally isolated and hidden between the trees…

no one had to say any thing… we stripped and jumped … very wrong move the water was so icy cold that we had to run out else we would have frozen our B**** there… After our body got used to the temperature we took a nice dip and we head back… as we came down the trail we were all refreshed.
We decided to stay back that evening the head back to Bangalore the next day morning, so we pitched our tent , no not in the forest but on top of the watch tower in our guest house not very adventures you might say but trust me you have wild elephants, bores and other animals hovering around, at 4:30 in the early morning our ever sensitive rags heard some sound near by decided that it is a Wild cat on prowl … well that was the second time during this trip that we ran … luckily this time it was indoor…
We left the guest house the next day morning and reached Bangalore late afternoon… all charged up and ready to take on the world…
One of the things on our Buck list is to make a difference in peoples lives & leave a stamp on this earth, when we are gone people are should say

“ I walked the same earth as Mayur, Rags & Nags”