tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-69003712024-03-08T06:19:58.122+05:30manu's blogtravel, tech, thoughtsManuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03723641427799336562noreply@blogger.comBlogger39125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6900371.post-58322749802270163232010-10-20T00:29:00.007+05:302012-11-30T15:23:41.690+05:30Pics from Leh and Pangong<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Click on the image for complete gallery and more :)</div>
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<a href="https://plus.google.com/photos/106265659371255351553/albums/5816539966365101793" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" title="Pangong Tso. Tso means Lake in Ladakhi."><img alt="Pangong Tso. Tso means Lake in Ladakhi." height="304" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWt0hHgewcaLgBtRp7fxD0h6GZSY_jR8yIMLGHtwoWzYHlMLV_5C649WwF6vpjlqg6t7wLVyp5gosqzSgyalbOAQowmjHZt9wHK9-xFXfeDHykCOuNmODgqIhJCKR6D7dYYMgo/s640/1038556512_y4KGo-L.jpg" title="Pangong Tso. Tso means Lake in Ladakhi." width="640" /></a></div>
</div>Manuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03723641427799336562noreply@blogger.com3Leh34.1525864 77.577053534.1000254 77.4980895 34.205147399999994 77.6560175tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6900371.post-73884231717826439742010-10-12T14:16:00.002+05:302024-01-03T06:32:42.429+05:30Leh'ed Again (contd)<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
After spending <a href="http://www.manugarg.com/2010/10/lehed-again.html">2 days acclimatizing in Leh</a> town, on the third day of our trip, we decided to go to Alchi, a thousand years old monastery in the north of Leh. It's about 2 hours drive away from Leh, with many other attractions on the way, including Hall of fame (a museum), Magnetic Hill and the confluence of Zanskar and Indus river - a beautiful site. Hall of fame came first. It's a nice museum with lot of exciting stuff like arms captured from the Pakistani army during <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kargil_War">Kargil war</a> and the picture of a soldier launching a shell to the other side of the border with "From Raveena Tandon to Nawaj Sharif, with Love" written on it :)<br />
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Next on the way was Magnetic Hill which we skipped for the later. We were going by <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indus_River">Indus river</a> all the time and soon we were at the confluence of two major rivers of the region - <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zanskar">Zanskar river</a> and Indus river. It's a beautiful site actually. Zanskar meets Indus almost perpendicularly. Difference in the color of two rivers is so obvious here. Zanskar water is greenish, while Indus is brownish. We basked in the beauty of this place for some time, took some photographs and moved on.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://plus.google.com/photos/106265659371255351553/albums/5816539966365101793/5816540115838049394" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghjs2qUicJ_B_ZpCd2W3umjS2FHXCZnLLxEVKbXmMp4MjJ9KgZ7M6HbygaS9y311sGiHzGdTTz0W-VGTH1MmO6322r6EZGiBxS8lhhrtyhFJLPL1xGvDzfLQu4-y7suNoWI0Gs/s800/1038554840_tVyP7-S.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Confluence of Zanskar and Indus rivers</td></tr>
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We reached <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alchi_Monastery">Alchi</a> about an hour drive later. It was all deserted there. No tourist except two of us (three more people - two Germans and one Indian - came later while we were there). We went around the monastery and discovered that Indus flows just in the backyard of the monastery. Huh, Interesting. We entered the first temple of the monastery and instantly felt the sacredness of this thousand years old place. It was dim inside, to protect the wall-paintings made so long ago. There were some wood structures to support the roof and pillars of the temple which seemed weary now after so many years of existence. There were large, 2-3 floors high statues of various incarnations of Buddha. There were 3 more temples like that. We spent relaxing time there in this peaceful monastery.<br />
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We had maggie for lunch on our way back. This time we also stopped at Magnetic Hill. Our driver stopped the car on a down slope and released the brakes, and bravo! the car started moving backward, by itself. Wikipedia says that it's some sort of optical illusion. Whatever it is, I could not make it out. We enjoyed the phenomenon :) We returned to Leh well in time but didn't do anything much for the rest of the day as Disha was pretty exhausted already by the car travel in the hilly region.<br />
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Next day, at around 9:45 a.m., we started our 2 days excursion to Pangong Tso(Lake) - one of the most beautiful places in the world. This time I realized that the road to Panong Tso is quite difficult or may be the recent flash flood had made it worse. The road passes around some jaw-droppingly deep gorges looking into which makes your heart come to your mouth. About half way, we were met by Chang La - world's third highest motorable pass. It had snowed there (actually it snows pretty much every night there) and it was milky white all around with bright sun up in the sky. Beautiful site. It was very chilly out there with temperatures around -4 C. Thankfully, good folks of army have set up a small shelter here where they have put up a heater and offer tea to frozen and chilled tourists :) We also made use of the facility and came back to our senses.<br />
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A pass is the point on the road where you cross over the mountain and get to the other side of it. Technically it's <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mountain_pass">more than that</a>, but to a traveller, a pass means the highest and the most difficult point on the road, after conquering which the travel becomes easier. The road on the other side of Chang La was in bad shape because of snow and ice, but it was still easier than going up to Chang La.<br />
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We reached Pangong Lake at around 2:15 pm. I always run out of words to describe the beauty of this lake. We're dumbfounded when we saw it. Shades of blue and green that we never imagined could exist. Mountains of various colors standing on either side of this lake as if they were Gods themselves who had converted themselves to mountains to be able to keep looking at this eternal beauty. The water so clean that you can see stones in the bottom of the lake for a long long distance. And then there is interplay of sun rays and clouds, or it's just the wish of the Gods because there were very few clouds, that the colors of the lake keep changing. There was no sound except of the water and the wind. This place is eternally peaceful in all ways. We cherished our time there. As the sun started to set down, it became very cold there. It was time to go back. We bade our farewell to Pangong. Until next time.<br />
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<a href="https://plus.google.com/photos/106265659371255351553/albums/5816539966365101793/5816540507893568690" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2IvnzNlEjO9_JzN_K-ehALH4R8B_wXR1n4SYXmUK3mA0wMqQtt2Vglc8iEMyK6h4Vj-k-st1VnfgsbSVQeDAVBOa24jjzAQiu37yugC1q_xSsjHCU6rnqy1E46AMqPvYoT_Mh/s800/1038574201_RVtv2-S.jpg" /></a></div>
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During our return, we stayed in the Tangse village for the night. It's about 35 kilometers from Pangong and the nearest human habitation. As luck will have it, we stayed in the same guest house that all the actors of "<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3_Idiots">3 Idiots</a>" stayed in for 5 days. Moreover, we were in the same room in which Amir Khan stayed. Disha was all smiles hearing this :) There was another group staying there - a study group from the Pune university who were doing geological research of the Ladakh region. Interesting job, I'd say :) Guest house lady cooked a lovely dinner for us. We had a good sleep. When we got up next day, we were well rested and ready to conquer Chang La again. <br />
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We reached Leh by the lunch time. It was our last day. We were flying back home next day early morning. In the evening, we settled our bills for the stay and the food. Phuntsok didn't let us pay for the numerous teas we had. Stubborn girl :) Dawa's father gave us the stoles that are offered to the Ladakhi couples as a blessing, and a beautiful gift from the whole family. Those gifts, and his reassuring and loving smile touched deep in our hearts. What a lovely end to our first Ladakh trip after our marriage. <br />
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Next day, early morning, we flew back.</div>Manuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03723641427799336562noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6900371.post-80682510664048042162010-10-08T00:36:00.012+05:302012-11-30T15:39:55.812+05:30Leh'ed Again<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">Finally I made it to Leh again. This time with Disha. It was my third time in last 4 years. I could not go last year because I was busy doing other things e.g. my engagement and marriage :) This year also I was almost about to miss it - first already quite a bit of holidaying - New York in May and home in July, and then cloud burst in Leh on Aug 6 which caused lot of devastation there. But then somehow I managed to get in touch with Dawa (a friend in Leh) and came to know that things were really fine in Leh. That was very relieving and encouraging. I decided to not let it go this time, and booked our air tickets for Leh for the last week of September, just before our marriage anniversary :)<br />
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<div style="text-align: right;"></div><a href="https://plus.google.com/photos/106265659371255351553/albums/5816539966365101793/5816539970792041522" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwXKHVwZvu2MVuiV31DMaxAh6JSLfC-2oc-5vRj1tEQCUtOtarWM6yvYWXTNsIizJDhlALAiQ9fr__s0TTv9hMLUj6DajyJCyfrnd7titDdmCPT99F7137octYO-cOOKHYshKa/s800/1038550804_xRsVC-S.jpg" width="150" /></a>Disha was super excited when she saw Himalayas from the top, in our Delhi to Leh flight. It's an amazing sight actually. Mountains feel so close, and then you realize some of these peaks are 7k+ meters high, which doesn't leave a lot of gap if your plane is flying at around 9-10k meters altitude. From the top, snow looks like as if someone has spilled milk over these mountains and the sun seems powerless as it cannot melt the snow even though there are no clouds, of water vapor or pollution, standing between its fury and the snow.<br />
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I have kind of gotten used to Leh's landscape. But if it's your first time and you're flying to Leh, the moment you reach there, it feels like you have landed on a different planet altogether. You see mountains of all different colors all around you - all made of different types of rock with some of them donning a white cap of snow. A huge plain at an altitude of 3500m, supporting these mountains. Lots of empty spaces. Dry winds. Disha was awe-inspired and even more excited :-)<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://plus.google.com/photos/106265659371255351553/albums/5816539966365101793/5816540422364283074" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUUWbr6i_zCe53e8vluGks_coNPNvn5PJdHX2LimCG4yzW4M_hiUUBUT5zmUmsvHLxGTchkgl1hVsqhP2GsABbXliRxN6u7jnfa5PUyvMTutoitmLPAuk6aBopebXgwZ4DKDbF/s800/1038569717_6gpkM-S.jpg" /></a></div><br />
We took a cab to Oriental Guest House in Changspa - a place run by Dawa and his family. Dawa and his family have become an essential part of my Ladakh trips now. They are amazing people. Very hard working, still always cheerful, warm, no pretense and always smiling. I love staying with this family. I feel at home. I can connect to anyone and have a hearty discussion about simple things in life. The guest house is also placed well - far enough from the main market to ensure peaceful stay, but still not very far - just 15-20 min walk. Also, it's located just below Shanti Stup, a place I cherish a lot.<br />
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A short drive of 15-20 min from the airport and I was in that familiar house once again. Always cheerful Phuntsok, Dawa's sister who pretty much manages everything in the guest house, was very happy to see us. She immediately offered us the tea. Dawa's father greeted us with his warm smile and asked about our wellness. We felt at home. We were taken to our room directly with no formalities (we did them later at our own convenience). Disha liked the room and was pleasantly surprised actually. She thought I was taking her to some old house with mud walls and old cots :) On the contrary the room was tastefully decorated and featured wooden flooring, warm bedding and amazing views.<br />
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We took first 2 days easy as is advised when you go 3500 m up directly, to avoid AMS. First day we went to the main market in the evening, an easy stroll. Next day evening we visited Shanti Stupa - 500 stairs up. Believe me 500 stairs at an altitude of 3.5k are much harder than 500 stairs at normal altitude. But Shanti Stupa is definitely worth those 500 stairs or even more. It embodies the spirit of Ladakh, peace, Buddhism, and brotherhood. It's hard to explain. You feel all alone there no matter how many people are there. All alone, but still close to everyone - close to humanity. It looks ethereal in the evening, when the sun is dim and the wind is flowing - just before the sunset. We had utterly gratifying time there. Only thing that I disliked this time was the railings that they have put around the platform there. I liked the earlier arrangement better, with no walls around.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://plus.google.com/photos/106265659371255351553/albums/5816539966365101793/5816540323653457730" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8BejqJnTCjOjmCT5Aa5unsFJmT_-iClcXm9sdPDpxghB9f0WsGx0lmBh2_uHFia5C7btaodnkrKSe2ZxlL4uQ8hmVu-5kiKlSieB9NfyMiUIkNDuTbEaHWRkIY3DB2sp31GzI/s800/1038562827_AdPhT-S.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Shanti Stupa</td></tr>
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Rest of the story and the pics to follow soon.<br />
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Update: <a href="http://www.manugarg.com/2010/10/lehed-again-contd.html">Next part</a>. </div>Manuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03723641427799336562noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6900371.post-70962852465113003252010-07-13T21:46:00.009+05:302012-11-30T15:50:15.864+05:30Comfort and Bliss, In the lap of HimalayasI've got to write about our honeymoon trip in October last year. This place was so amazing that not writing about is outright unfair. But, writing about the honeymoon trip can be very difficult, as you can imagine :) We went to this very beautiful resort, Kalmatia Sangam Himalaya Resort or just <a href="http://www.kalmatia-sangam.com/">Kalmatia</a>, perched on a mountain in Himalayas, at least 10 kms from any town or village and 100s of kms away from any metro. There were just about a dozen cottages there with no swimming pool, no tvs in the cottages and no multi-cuisine restaurants nearby - all the features to keep cities' clubbing noise loving crowd away.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://plus.google.com/photos/106265659371255351553/albums/5505502341306260161/5505503370571825874" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" width="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhL6Lz3YJKyyqc5LOBm7UwFee_Vm86agqH5CLr9P2yI_GLsU-crwvtjCdRuuu08E41KiBpVBefN2pf5hykriWZfzHSingUKdGAde44SkTMxGNS_HVFfbyAucuwu9-0cN7NLatK7qQ/s320/PA164603.JPG" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Mornings in Kalmatia</td></tr>
</tbody></table>Kalmatia resort and the estate surrounding it are owned and managed by a couple - Dieter Reeb (a german photographer) and Geeta Reeb - who live here for the love of the valley and the mountains. No rich Delhiite running a business remotely to milk the tourists. I guess that makes lot of difference. You can see and feel the passion and love that has gone into running this place in a beautiful, "organic" and environment friendly manner.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://plus.google.com/photos/106265659371255351553/albums/5505502341306260161/5505503381054312834" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" width="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_NQWEsHf_lRxm6NCCIL_RkT4-0lM5oZFUx57hTVn-gFrMKcUguh-3NRqZKcmIDtQHPhqvL1nOBO8sX4120fkSVZEYjSyJeV_H1LBXd17bdY137wLwV8EF2u10OyXhjK6c0mfLGQ/s320/IMG_1140.JPG"></a><br />
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">View from our breakfast table</td></tr><br />
</tbody></table>We could not have gone to a better place for the honeymoon, I guess. It had everything - comfort, nature, beautiful views of the mightiest peaks in the world from the huge 6 windows of our octagonal shaped cottage, bird chirping in the mornings and evenings just outside our door, and full privacy. In fact so much privacy that each cottage had its own access (no passers by ;). There was a porch outside our cottage overlooking the himalayan peaks where we used to have our morning and evening teas. It was just beautiful staying there. Food was awesome too. Carefully cooked food to go easy on your stomach and invigorate your taste buds at the same time. My wife Disha loved the food which was a great relief as she is little choosy about the food and you don't want your wife to not be happy on your honeymoon :)<br />
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We were there for 6 days. We made three day (or half-a-day) trips from there. First one was to the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jageshwar">Jageshwar</a> temple - one of the only 12 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jyotirlinga">jyotirlings</a>. We had hired a car from our hometown <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hasanpur">Hasanpur</a> for the whole trip. We took the same car to the Jageswar temple. It was a serene place (except for the annoying <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pandit">Pandas</a> who incessantly kept asking for money - to illuminate the ever alight lamp there). We had the food that we had got packed from Kalmatia - aloo n gobhi <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paratha">parathas</a> with pickle and curd, and some fruits, along with some hot <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masala_chai">chai</a>.<br />
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Next we went to Binsar. My old love. I had gone there before, in Dec 2006, with Pankaj. I absolutely loved that place and always wanted to go back. I loved that place for the great unobstructed himalayan views that you get there, and the lack of any kind of pollution including light pollution - yes, there was no power supply there so no lights for a long long distance.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://plus.google.com/photos/106265659371255351553/albums/5505502341306260161/5505503384025047234" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNPzVqwKrI0VuAlfcks_RyszjtmY_KcGk3WFctkj82h0t_k9iIAt-6Yc-_7wjS4vxqtVMsOL_mNdiCZA-zcIe85NIWQMKfVG-hMfDXuF7_jZhN3qe-lE5QPWr0ozRhDci8f6Mq-Q/s320/IMG_1353.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Binsar</td></tr>
</tbody></table>My wife and I decided to do a small hike, of about 5 kms, in <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binsar_Wildlife_Sanctuary">Binsar wildlife sanctuary</a>. It was the very first hike for Disha :) The plan was to do a circuit (or rather half circuit) - starting from KMVN resort to zero point (highest point there) and from zero point, by another trail, to the twin temples on the Kalmatia-Binsar road. We saw few people on the trail, till zero point. But after zero point it was just us and the forest. We didn't see any human or animal (thankfully so) except few birds. We sure heard some animal sounds though. Trail got ambiguous at places and we had to make guesses based on the direction we were supposed to go in. It was a little scary to be honest but it was fun too :) Luckily, we reached our destination just fine. Our driver was already waiting there. We had our lunch in the green meadow by the twin temples before leaving back for Kalmatia.<br />
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Our next day trip was to the one of the only two sun temples in India - <a href="http://hill-temples.blogspot.com/2009/10/katarmal-sun-temple.html">Katarmal sun temple</a> near Almora. This place was rather unique. It's as old as 12th century (or 9th, I am not sure any more. But it was at least as old as 12th century). It was being renovated and as a result not all of the temple is that old - some parts have been constructed recently. We saw some very very old statues there - none of them very intact of course. It was an awesome feeling to be at a historic site, almost hidden from the world. We had to track for about 4 kms to get there (and same to come back). Disha was not very keen to trek again (come on, who takes his wife for back to back trekking - first Binsar, now this - on their honeymoon). But it was not entirely my fault :) We were told that we'll have to trek only for 2 kms. But the road that goes till a little closer to the temple was in a bad shape and we had to start much earlier. Anyway, once we reached she was glad that she came there. That place had some power in it - effect of centuries of existence and reverence, I guess. We felt soothed after reaching there. All our weariness was gone. We had our food on the way back to Kalmatia.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://plus.google.com/photos/106265659371255351553/albums/5505502341306260161/5505503392406919314" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgG1HrO15NDIYhfOWVO_FwZ25veOpD7hqG6Spq-bv0ppX0E-tMS1X_Q9Vwrk0ZlF50QpjpSV-8-5iKLSFAlAT1IRHZh0udcgxhlPXP2ivUrXIEoGFx_wMAO7xfDdY1Vg4EqW2S7gw/s320/PA124385.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><br />
Our days at Kalmatia were really blessed. We enjoyed being there. May be we'll go there again.Manuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03723641427799336562noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6900371.post-6518751353905955832010-04-05T15:54:00.017+05:302010-04-05T23:02:22.748+05:30Trip to IrelandIt's been long, very long, since I last wrote. Not that I didn't have anything to write about. I was just being lazy. In fact there are quite a few things that I should write about - trip to Ireland, honeymoon trip to Himalayas, some other random topics. Well, I'll start with trip to Ireland. That's where I was when I wrote the last post.<br />
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I went to Dublin in Aug. Not particularly good or bad time to go, as weather in Dublin is not anyway something to write home about. It's either cloudy or raining. I think that's the reason most of the Dubliners hit the bar pretty much every evening :-) Being in Dublin, and being the comrade that I am :), I had to do the same.<br />
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There were lots of good moments shared with the colleagues including drinking wine till 4 in the morning and then going straight to the airport for flight back home. But, highlight of the trip was a weekend excursion to Glendalaugh, a historical town in Wicklow county in Ireland. I went alone. Yes, I can do things like these. Once I took a bus in San Francisco to its last stop, which thankfully was a beautiful beach away from the city, and came back after strolling on the beach and some light hiking. All alone.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjABehMhog0SKiFqVoDltGhWkRubE91QROa-fy26-7AB5FlaM7QEpg6WT6ICpqsAR_duJCqLimi-VZRZflhjWEweKta9XDlEG_8wWR4b6isZSut9r-PlzpFfZmh2JpMPO4_trthjA/s1600-h/IMG_0504.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjABehMhog0SKiFqVoDltGhWkRubE91QROa-fy26-7AB5FlaM7QEpg6WT6ICpqsAR_duJCqLimi-VZRZflhjWEweKta9XDlEG_8wWR4b6isZSut9r-PlzpFfZmh2JpMPO4_trthjA/s320/IMG_0504.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>The trail that I picked up for walking in the greens of Ireland is called <a href="http://www.wicklowway.com/index.php">the wicklow way</a>. I didn't do the whole circuit because that takes time and also because I was scared of getting bored. I walked from <a href="http://www.wicklowway.com/trail-description/roundwood-glendalough.php">Roundwood to Glendalaugh</a>. Fairly easy trail of 12 km, with an ascent of merely 350m (1200 ft). To reach Roundwood, I took the <a href="http://www.glendaloughbus.com/">Glendalaugh bus service</a> (aka St Kevin bus service) from Dublin. I had lunch in Roundwood. The scary part was that locals didn't even know about this trail. One guy confirmed that the correct path to the trail was what I was thinking it was, and so I started.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCrJf10Dp5J8ABrvRKwivCBl0cT0cxdOI6Na25O2ICUl6SY6P6QcUc8PnYqcVGJTb0WJtG-4qLeZzgB1_8zuIY1ElPPfd2HfRULiT9LYYqVGbLGrcEjeBNJHVTyHx7LVAemez9vQ/s1600-h/IMG_0514.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCrJf10Dp5J8ABrvRKwivCBl0cT0cxdOI6Na25O2ICUl6SY6P6QcUc8PnYqcVGJTb0WJtG-4qLeZzgB1_8zuIY1ElPPfd2HfRULiT9LYYqVGbLGrcEjeBNJHVTyHx7LVAemez9vQ/s320/IMG_0514.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>Man, I didn't see anyone else going on that trail, for a long long time. It was all deserted, with few farms on either side of the road. I wasn't even sure that I was on the correct trail. After walking for about 3 km, I saw a man going somewhere in his SUV. I asked him and he confirmed that I was on the right track. Sigh of relief for me. By the way, it was a lovely day. For a change it was not raining and the sun was shining. It was really beautiful all round -- beautiful green farms for long long distance, cattle grazing in the farms, green grass all around and clean air to top it all.<br />
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I reached Glendalaugh after a hike of 3.5 hrs. Had some coffee and snacks, and went straight for some sightseeing. Now, I had to take a decision to either stay, or go back by the bus in the evening. I decided to stay and checked into a hotel. First time I met a hotel guy who didn't know where in the world India is. See, I go to offbeat places.<br />
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I found Glendalaugh beautiful, mesmerizing in the beginning. It was little haunting too with all the quietness and a huge graveyard marking most of the town. Soon loneliness took over me and it seemed pretty depressing to me. Thankfully the waitress in the hotel was very charming. Had a little chat with her. She was a student from Malaysia, studying in Dublin and working in Glendalaugh on the weekends. Anyway that was it. I hit the sack rather early that day as I was quite tired after walking for 12 kms.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEin_2NWqBw55rHRIEAs1jpYHmpmen5Tgv0h9iFwy-tiYqY67-kU5dqEnNJIE5_U9IPUqL94b7QzGoQcXboArhf9Qi5Jk7aWhCj6A3h0XRXDXhs8mQntV1sMtGBLaTFMUKc5XNwtvg/s1600-h/IMG_0550.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEin_2NWqBw55rHRIEAs1jpYHmpmen5Tgv0h9iFwy-tiYqY67-kU5dqEnNJIE5_U9IPUqL94b7QzGoQcXboArhf9Qi5Jk7aWhCj6A3h0XRXDXhs8mQntV1sMtGBLaTFMUKc5XNwtvg/s320/IMG_0550.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>Next day morning was lovely. Weather gods were being gracious to me. I met a guy in his older years, by the canal. We chatted a bit in the sun. He had come back to live in the Wicklow county, after working in various parts of the world. It was a light, interesting chat. After having my breakfast and spending some more time there I took the bus back to Dublin. So ended my weekend trip to Wicklow.Manuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03723641427799336562noreply@blogger.com2Co. Wicklow, Ireland52.9596883 -6.402879452.546055300000006 -7.3367173999999995 53.3733213 -5.4690414tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6900371.post-75254860684416722522009-08-01T15:08:00.015+05:302011-10-02T15:52:03.856+05:30Liberating Feelings<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">When I felt that there was nothing else to do and life was complete. I can only remember 2 instance now (those also recent) when it really happened to me: 1 - when I was in <a href="http://www.manugarg.com/2008/12/valley-of-flowers-part-vi.html">Badrinath temple last year</a> and 2 - when I said 'I love you' to my girl :)<br />
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Why did I feel like that in Badrinath. I don't know. There was something special in that space, in that time. The whole atmosphere was full of energy and that energy filled me. I felt kind of dissolved into the surroundings. I felt that 'this is it'. This is what we come to live for. Humm. Amazing feeling it was. As you might be tempted to think so, let me make it clear that I am not a mindlessly religious person. I believe in certain ideas of Hinduism and Buddhism, but I don't follow anything mindlessly.<br />
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Now the second instance. Feeling liberated after saying probably the most abused sentence of the whole english language? Yeah. For me, it was accepting the fact that I loved someone. It had never happened to me before. I had, in fact, started to think that love will never happen to me. But it happened and happened so beautifully :) I felt very complete instantly. Felt so light.<br />
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These were the liberating moments of my life. What were yours? Comment if you'd like to share. <br />
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Wishing many more such liberating feelings to us! :)<br />
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cheers,<br />
Manu<br />
<a href="http://www.manugarg.com/">Manu Garg</a> / www.manugarg.com / Journey is the Destination of Life.</div>Manuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03723641427799336562noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6900371.post-76499864169907059032009-01-04T19:35:00.022+05:302009-01-12T11:37:57.084+05:30valley of flowers: part VIII<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoMkxC3BCqsy2RvQfJ6Eoe2BICKhyphenhyphenvk7tDfdKgD0hIGjtUZJ8hkfs878u4nxiQeS33Cw2J3ajvu1yqLYa2ZqFOWuvxqh2Uq36lR1JGKBObgwrojiNvKF4cCzTQQRKSTXs2bMFgCQ/s800/P8291560.JPG"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 134px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoMkxC3BCqsy2RvQfJ6Eoe2BICKhyphenhyphenvk7tDfdKgD0hIGjtUZJ8hkfs878u4nxiQeS33Cw2J3ajvu1yqLYa2ZqFOWuvxqh2Uq36lR1JGKBObgwrojiNvKF4cCzTQQRKSTXs2bMFgCQ/s800/P8291560.JPG" border="0" alt="" /></a><span style="font-style:italic;">Day 7, Fri Aug 29, 2008:</span> The day had come to start our journey back to the noisy and polluted city life. We visited the temple again that morning. Morning experience was completely different from the evening experience. There were very few people. We could do <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darshan">darshan</a> easily -- without any push from anyone. It was all great, but we still relished our evening visits more. I think evenings provided kind of coziness and isolation from the rest of the world. <br /><br />After checking out from the hotel, we went to the bus station to catch a bus going 'down' (to low lands). The buses, or rather timings of the buses, on Badrinath-Joshimath route are controlled by a concept called gates. Authorities on both sides coordinate with each other and let buses go only at specific times. I heard from someone that it's to ensure that there is not much traffic on the single lane road between Joshimath and Badrinath at any point of time, but that hardly seems to be the case now. It has become a way for the gate controllers, self appointed committee sort of thing, to make money through illicit means. They extort money from bus drivers and in exchange let them go at whatever time they want to go. So, yeah, it's kinda corrupted there :)<br /><br />Anyway, we didn't get a ride because we were not ready to sit in the driver's cabin. Seats in driver's cabin are not comfortable and are not for passengers. Get it? They sell tickets for these seats too and money received in return is never accounted for. We waited for some time and finally left by a shared jeep for Joshimath. We thought we'll go as far as possible and take whatever means of transportation we find. Soon we were met by a live landslide. Yes, landslide was happening in front of our eyes. It was raining a bit and the rocks and stones started coming down as the mud on the mountains started loosening because of rainwater. The road was blocked, in fact we were at the front, with a long queue of vehicles behind us. Luckily rain stopped soon and slowly stones and rocks stopped coming down. But, the road was still blocked as a big rock and other smaller rocks were lying on the road. We all waited for the BRO (Border Road Organization, organization which maintains roads in region) people and machinery to come. Pankaj and I decided that we'll cross the landslide zone on foot if they don't come by 2:30 pm. But, they came. They came just before 2:30 pm. They cleared the road and gave us clearance to cross. It was a bad bad road :) It was a relief, having crossed that zone.<br /><br />Well, the whole landslide thing delayed everything. We reached Joshimath by 4-4:30 pm. There we found out that the road was blocked again in Pipalkothi (a town 31km away from Joshimath), so no vehicle was going down. We had no other option but to spend that night in Joshimath. We again checked into GMVN TRH. This time room was much better (though it was not bad last time too). We freshened up, took leisure walks in the town, ate <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jalebi">jalebi</a> :), watched some tv and called it a day.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqavOU1uqx2dWcl6VmRSOIUV46qTp2kewnfJLXn-YhP3rI3YNQBTS6xvp5DF5TpPtOqTY3IUFnI_dAqOKy4pTe2IDRE-D6GxwumA8rcjSKmgafFBpLfBlZJncRzzq14I0BzEtYMg/s800/P8301638.JPG"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 150px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqavOU1uqx2dWcl6VmRSOIUV46qTp2kewnfJLXn-YhP3rI3YNQBTS6xvp5DF5TpPtOqTY3IUFnI_dAqOKy4pTe2IDRE-D6GxwumA8rcjSKmgafFBpLfBlZJncRzzq14I0BzEtYMg/s800/P8301638.JPG" border="0" alt="" /></a><span style="font-style:italic;">Day 8, Sat Aug 30, 2008:</span> Next day we got up very early to catch the bus to Haridwar. We came down to the main road at 6:15 am, only to find that the bus had already gone. Later we'll found out that it was actually lucky for us. Keeping our motto of going as far as possible and by any means, we took a shared taxi to Chamoli, the district town about 55 km from Joshimath. And then, in Pipalkothi we met another landslide. This landslide was gigantic. It seemed as if whole mountain had come down on the road. As there were no chances of this thing clearing up soon, we got down there and paid the taxi driver. This time we made a quick decision. We decided to cross that mountain of rocks, which was lying on the road, on foot. It wasn't easy, but it was fun -- climbing on huge, still not very settled, pile of fallen rocks. There was a bus at the other side which was actually going to Badrinath, but looking at the situation and after waiting for a night there, decided to go back to Haridwar. All to our luck. We boarded this bus and resumed our journey to low lands. We were lucky to have missed the bus in the morning from Joshimath, because in that case either we would have been stuck at Pipalkothi or given away the fare from Joshimath to Haridwar.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGuTOHRw96yGaTtNa4hixYr_TR85M3-HgHAlH5w9x94UiShPCgEHJfOFbk22H0N_SwjwvMiYMf4sYexWHllvHHbJQMKhrd5SujyURBf8HbBx8slALLqa_GPS1QvjAu8kukLC0Jfw/s800/P8301673.JPG"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 150px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGuTOHRw96yGaTtNa4hixYr_TR85M3-HgHAlH5w9x94UiShPCgEHJfOFbk22H0N_SwjwvMiYMf4sYexWHllvHHbJQMKhrd5SujyURBf8HbBx8slALLqa_GPS1QvjAu8kukLC0Jfw/s800/P8301673.JPG" border="0" alt="" /></a>This bus took us till Rishikesh without any further issues. We checked into a hotel in Rishikesh (again GMVN but a bit expensive), freshened up and started our walk along river Ganga to watch Ganges aarti. We watched the aarti in Paramarth Niketan, an ashram on the opposite side, near Ram Jhula. It was a wonderful experience. The whole air was of relaxed attitude. I bought a book there (though Pankaj paid for it ;))- Siddartha by Hermann Hesse - and then we had our dinner at famous Chotiwala restaurant. The day had almost ended. <br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">Day 9, Sun Aug 31, 2008:</span> We woke up to a pleasant morning. Our hotel was on the Ganges bank and our room's blacony looked towards Ganges and mountains. The view was amazing. Ram jhula and Parmarth Niketan, though about 5 km away, were visible from our room. We had breakfast there, checked out and took a bus to Haridwar and from Haridwar another bus to Delhi. We were back in Delhi by 4 pm or so. <br /><br />This post marks the end of <a href="http://manugarg.blogspot.com/search/label/valley of flowers">valley of flowers series</a> (finally!). Hope you liked it and found it useful. Now I am relieved, I can write about something else :)<br /><br />Cheers,<br />Manu Garg / www.manugarg.com / Journey is the destination of lifeManuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03723641427799336562noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6900371.post-13739421206771426382009-01-03T11:53:00.025+05:302009-07-12T13:55:21.916+05:30valley of flowers: part VIII think, it's the time to finish the VoF series. In my <a href="http://manugarg.blogspot.com/2008/12/valley-of-flowers-part-vi.html">previous post</a>, we were sleeping in Badrinath, at the end of Day 5 of our journey. Badrinath was a 'Rivendell' for us, a place to relax and rejuvenate. The dawn of <span style="font-style:italic;">Day 6 (Thursday Aug 28, 2008)</span> brought us a pleasant morning. Though we got up early, we started the day at a slow pace. Only thing on agenda that day was a 3 km walk to Mana, a border village. In earlier days, when Tibet was not taken by China, Mana village was a much used gateway to Tibet. Now it is a closed border. <br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWMlZEcO2ooJY7J64dHnAgEl3WnU-2fZCvb0ANMoa28bdaMtXxTquXc-8pfFZwMoNn1I7cOXr9YSPZXkTHMQzfNKvVnmhihXDsnmk_1grVHCPMnBjpl1qdOfDJrPnfD28yDqcrOQ/s800/P8281428.JPG"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 150px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWMlZEcO2ooJY7J64dHnAgEl3WnU-2fZCvb0ANMoa28bdaMtXxTquXc-8pfFZwMoNn1I7cOXr9YSPZXkTHMQzfNKvVnmhihXDsnmk_1grVHCPMnBjpl1qdOfDJrPnfD28yDqcrOQ/s800/P8281428.JPG" border="0" alt="" /></a>Walk to Mana was pretty cool. A plane road along Alaknanda, the river that had been with us all along. In fact after doing trekking in last 4 days, it felt pretty much like how you feel when you read Harry Potter after reading Moby Dick. After a nice and easy walk of 35 min, we reached Mana. It was a small village - very few houses, populated mostly by people of Indo-Mongolian origin. We interacted with few kids there who were selling some medicinal herbs. Kids could speak Hindi easily. Not surprising considering that there was, quite surprisingly, a Saraswati Shishu Mandir (a chain of primary schools, mostly found in North India) there. A short walk into the village and we came to the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bheem">Bheem</a> Pul, a bridge over a mountain cleft, made of a huge single rock. The legend has it that it was made by Bheem when <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draupadi">Draupadi</a>, his wife, could not cross the opening. Near Bheem Pul is the birthplace of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saraswati_River">Saraswati river</a>, a river that is hidden for the rest of its course, and meets Ganges and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yamuna">Yamuna</a> in <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allahabad">Allahabad</a>. There was also a shelter, naturally made of rocks, which a youngish Baba (to an outsider, a Baba is a kind of hippy yogi) had converted into his abode. I remember him complaining to a local that somebody stole his pressure cooker last night :)<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIl3a2Ewr03vO3y-5flx-vEMqarQ9GZkRuXI-ucu-9I4Xggj-87imRR-HUGOjvAg7P3btdsnCc-F6k5OJc1sdaIwd0AEDtlG3RPtcZgR4ZBOVbC8s6QWzLgODaNztuw3-zvOIRTA/s800/P8281485.JPG"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 150px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIl3a2Ewr03vO3y-5flx-vEMqarQ9GZkRuXI-ucu-9I4Xggj-87imRR-HUGOjvAg7P3btdsnCc-F6k5OJc1sdaIwd0AEDtlG3RPtcZgR4ZBOVbC8s6QWzLgODaNztuw3-zvOIRTA/s800/P8281485.JPG" border="0" alt="" /></a><br />Later we went to the Vyas Gufa, the cave where <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vyas">Ved Vyas</a> is said to have written <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mah%C4%81bh%C4%81rata">Mahabharat</a>. As per an inscription there, that gufa is more than 5111 years old. Just beside Vyas Gufa, there is another attraction of Mana (probably the biggest attraction) - the last tea shop of India. It's very popular. You can find pictures of many people in front of this tea shop over internet. We had a good time there. There were only Pankaj, I, tea shop owner, and an old man who had seen the times when there was no border in Mana and people from each side were free to go to the other side. We spent quite some time there. Leisurely drinking the <a href="http://www.organicindia.com/tulsi-the-wonder-drug.php">Van Tulsi</a> tea of last tea shop of India and talking to that old man. He told us lot of stories including the story of how Badrinath came to be. Interesting stories.<br /><br />In the evening we came back to Badrinath and visited the temple again. We went to the same <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prasad">prasad</a> shop that we had gone to earlier, kept our shoes there, bought some prasad and went to the temple. As there was still time for the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aarti">aarti</a>, we decided to do the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/circumambulation">circumambulation</a> of the main temple in the middle. A man, of the sage kind, was singing bhajan 'Sri Man Narayan' in the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satsang">satsang</a> hall there. Others were singing with him in chorus. There was something in the air there. We just stopped in our tracks and started listening to it. We didn't go inside the hall, but we could not leave either. We just stood there, outside, without a word to each other, watching and listening to the group lost in some state of joy. It was amazing feeling.<br /><br />When satsang got over we realized that aarti had already started. One interesting incident happened when we were coming back. As the temple was closing, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pandit">Pandit</a>ji (priest in-charge of the temple) was asking people to leave and shouting 'subah char baje (morning 4 o'clock), subah char baje'. He obviously meant to say that the temple will open again in the morning at 4 o'clock. But, someone from the crowd, a youngish guy, very innocently asked him - "what will happen at 4 o'clock?". Obviously Panditji hadn't realized that somebody might ask that question. So, it was funny and all of us laughed. But that's not it. Our prasadwala guy, from whom we had taken the prasad, was also there and I was amazed to see how much joy he derived out of this incident. While coming down he was shouting and telling everyone - 'subah 4 baje, subah 4 baje' and then he even told his neighbor shopkeepers about the incident. It was good to see how much joy someone can derive out of small incidents.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbnpoHOklBGjFMm_hxGgD7rj6Au0C8xPpUVRF5E9nd3iQFcEcgub_1cZDm_kjfROoB9xp95WggY4hoBPZhaH-EEUbx1juACWz81iQ64tafvpodx2CX2_XddOsZ7BPzWroKfiehzA/s800/P8281543.JPG"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 150px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbnpoHOklBGjFMm_hxGgD7rj6Au0C8xPpUVRF5E9nd3iQFcEcgub_1cZDm_kjfROoB9xp95WggY4hoBPZhaH-EEUbx1juACWz81iQ64tafvpodx2CX2_XddOsZ7BPzWroKfiehzA/s800/P8281543.JPG" border="0" alt="" /></a>That day we again came back to the temple after it was closed. This time, to take photographs. We took few, not many of them came nicely though. After that we had our dinner, in the hotel I think, and hit the sack after a walk in the town. Next day we were to start our journey back to city life. A journey that will take 3 days to complete with overnight halts in Joshimath and Rishikesh.<br /><br />I know I thought I'll finish this series with this post. But again this post has run longer than I expected and I don't want to make it even longer. Now the only part left is our journey back, which was made a bit interesting by the landslides that we met on the way.<br /><br />Last set of photographs: <a href="http://picasaweb.google.com/manugarg/VoFTripBadrinathAndReturn">http://picasaweb.google.com/manugarg/VoFTripBadrinathAndReturn</a><br /><br />Other sets of photographs:<br />Till Ghangaria: <a href="http://picasaweb.google.com/manugarg/VoFTripTillGhangaria">http://picasaweb.google.com/manugarg/VoFTripTillGhangaria</a><br />In the Valley: <a href="http://picasaweb.google.com/manugarg/VoFTripInTheValley">http://picasaweb.google.com/manugarg/VoFTripInTheValley</a><br />Hemkund Sahib: <a href="http://picasaweb.google.com/manugarg/VoFTripHemkundSahib">http://picasaweb.google.com/manugarg/VoFTripHemkundSahib</a><br /><br />Cheers,<br />Manu / www.manugarg.com / Journey is the destination of life.Manuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03723641427799336562noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6900371.post-43227874165681824272008-12-12T10:36:00.010+05:302012-11-30T15:54:11.295+05:30valley of flowers: part VI<span style="font-style:italic;">Day 5, Wed Aug 27 2008 (contd.)</span>: <a href="http://manugarg.blogspot.com/2008/11/valley-of-flowers-part-v.html">After checking into our hotel</a> in Badrinath and taking bath, we were all fresh by 6 pm or so. We were in a chill mood and wanted to take it easy, so we thought "lets just find out about the temple - where is it, what are the timings etc - today and do the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darshan">darshan</a> tomorrow". One specific thing we wanted to find out was where Adi Kedareshwaram temple was. Actually, it is said that one should go to Barinath only after visiting <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kedarnath">Kedarnath</a>, and if you are not able to do so, you should at least visit Adi Kedareshwaram temple, which is in Badrinath itself, before visiting Badrinath temple. We asked the caretaker, but he didn't seem to know where it was. <br /><br />When we came out of the hotel, we came to know that temple was pretty close from there. In fact it was visible from the other side of the road (our hotel was in the higher parts of the town). We decided to go till the temple at least, even if not inside. It was an enchanting walk till the temple. There were shops throughout on the way, playing religious audios and videos, and selling various religious things like pictures and idols of Lord Badrinath, diya and ghanti (lamps and bells) for prayer, necklaces with God's idols in it, etc. The temple was on the other side of Alaknanda, we had to a cross a bridge to reach there. We were still trying to figure out where Adi Kedareshwaram temple was. Finally, after strolling there for some time, we came to know from a video playing in a shop that it was near the main temple only.<br /><br />As there was still time for the temple to close, we decided to visit the temple that day only. We kept our shoes in one prasadwala's shop (shop which we'll keep coming to), bought some prasad, and after washing our hands and feet in Tapta Kund (hot water springs), we moved forward by the stairs which approached the temple from right side. Few stairs up, there was a guy rubbing sandalwood. He put some sandalwood paste on our forehead. Few more stairs up, there was Adi Kedareshwaram temple. It's a small, but peaceful and powerful temple on the right side of the stairs. After paying our reverence to the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lingam">Shivling</a> there, we moved forward. Few more stairs up, and we were in the Badrinath temple. We entered the temple from the right side. <br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://plus.google.com/photos/106265659371255351553/albums/5253968503208350529/5253969732923665922"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 133px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIasw414Zn4Lx8j296eupj7pGbHqKRrsrC_2f4aeNJZJejNsORBJ93CdSUCOf5lUICDos2yHtlJJD3QnhKf-07YGgBZcCUcl_SiVHEetIYsj7SIb3JpXpUp5wWWn8VrIiGVdUCFg/s400/P8291580.JPG" border="0" alt="" /></a>Inside this temple, there was a smaller temple in the middle where Lord Badrinath was seated, and in the corridor around it, there were temples of Goddess Lakshmi, Hanuman, Nar-Narayan and Lokpal. Lord Badrinath temple, the one in the middle, had 2 doors, one on the front and the other on the left side. When we reached there, the Bhog was going on and people were waiting in queues outside both the doors. Luckily we somehow got into the left door queue. Lucky, because left door opened first. So, we were among the privileged crowd that entered the temple first. Front door opened afterwards and the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aarti">aarti</a> started. <br /><br />This was one of the most mystifying experiences of my life. There were sounds of drums and chants in sanskrit. It felt as if these sounds were calling for gods from the skies above. Just imagine a temple on a lofty <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Himalayas">himalayan</a> peak, in a small town populated only by religious people, with most of the unsettling noises of cities far far away, and the peace of the night all around except for the drums in the temple. It was amazing. I let myself slip into believing that a tremendous flow of energy was descending down into the temple on the call of those drums and chants. I felt a certain kind of joy. Certain kind of relief. Relaxation. As if there was nothing else to do in the world. I was smitten.<br /><br />Once the aarti was over, we offered our prasad and got some in exchange. We walked back in a mesmerized state of mind, with a promise to ourselves to come there again. We had our dinner near the guest house and after a bit of walking and then watching tv in the room, we turned to bed.Manuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03723641427799336562noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6900371.post-67533994502258085082008-11-18T10:46:00.005+05:302009-01-02T12:35:33.587+05:30valley of flowers: part V<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnrp0LhmzMchxpLUVRU05cYKhKRXcwEuee0GAswm6tgYcBA1X34L075A5Ob1lhSfgoilI9NLC28XnMDwaoLtqY5lhQ8y79Ko7ow4QVJ-Fou2MAOM_UTr-6EEAQrO13EkVBIeUvIw/s800/P8271360.JPG"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 150px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnrp0LhmzMchxpLUVRU05cYKhKRXcwEuee0GAswm6tgYcBA1X34L075A5Ob1lhSfgoilI9NLC28XnMDwaoLtqY5lhQ8y79Ko7ow4QVJ-Fou2MAOM_UTr-6EEAQrO13EkVBIeUvIw/s400/P8271360.JPG" border="0" alt="" /></a><span style="font-style:italic;">Day 5, Wed Aug 27 2008:</span> So we had already finished the difficult parts of the trek by now. Today we had to descend back to Govindghat. Our knees were still paining from <a href="http://manugarg.blogspot.com/2008/11/valley-of-flowers-part-iv.html">yesterday's</a> roller coaster descent. After our daily routine of things, we finally departed from Ghangharia, our trekking base for last 3 days. As we kept on walking, our knees also got better slowly. Actually, it's true, when you decide to do some thing, things usually fall in place. We reached Govindghat in 3.5 hours if I recall correctly. We had our lunch there. I tried calling home but phones were not working in Govindghat that day :) So beware, these kinda things, which may sound strange to you, happen quite often in places like these. <br /><br />Retracing our steps from 3 days back, we came to the main road from where we were "likely" to get a vehicle for pious town of Badrinath. Here we heard the not so encouraging news that road to Badrinath was blocked due to landslide. We were still hopefull though and continued to wait there. After about an hour or so, we were relieved to see 2 buses coming from Badrinath side. I asked the conductor if the road was clear now; he replied in affirmative. Ok, so the road was open now, but we still had to get some vehicle. We waited and waited. I kept running to each vehicle that stopped there to ask if it was going to Badrinath. After waiting for about 2.5 hours there we got a shared jeep at 2:30 pm or so. We launched ourselves into it. As there was hardly any space (there were 5 people on the back seat - 4 on the seat and 1 in the lap of another), we kept our luggage on the roof of the vehicle, which later caused it to get wet.<br /><br />There were two interesting people in the jeep. They were mule herders, going to Badrinath to buy new mules. They were talking about religion, nature etc. I remember one of them saying that mountains streams are actually tears of mountains :) The other guy seemed more intelligent. He said "It can't be so. If these steams were not there, there won't be enough water on planes". Very interesting their conversation was. <br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMqNig-t2_o9wyUtdxQclYxO7pN2yJ3NEHWxBDzXoSoblA8rJJDTGYfdbSd_-PPopm7xoHr54tYE6p0BVGoCMAQSivRiird437PVcfFCzuaONeqqS4_jfa89k1R8j71_SWoz0xSw/s800/image150.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 150px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMqNig-t2_o9wyUtdxQclYxO7pN2yJ3NEHWxBDzXoSoblA8rJJDTGYfdbSd_-PPopm7xoHr54tYE6p0BVGoCMAQSivRiird437PVcfFCzuaONeqqS4_jfa89k1R8j71_SWoz0xSw/s400/image150.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a>Soon, we reached the landslide zone. It was a mess there; it seemed as if rocks will start falling again on the road at any moment. Our fear was further exacerbated when our driver asked his helper to look outside the window and keep an eye on falling rocks. We just kept our fingers crossed till that stretch was over. Road was in bad shape at lot of other places too. We crossed many streams which had washed the road away and were flowing there unabated. Anyway, we reached Badrinath at around 4:30 pm. <br /><br />So, we had got at least one good thing from Ghangharia TRH - information regarding TRH in Badrinath. The guard there told us that Badrinath TRH was very nice, unlike Ghangharia TRH, and gave us the address too (actually he was posted at Badrinath TRH earlier). We found the TRH (Hotel Devlok) pretty easily and checked in. The rent was 600 per day and room was very good. For a change there was no need to order for bucket of hot water as there was a working electric geyser in the bathroom and guess what, there was electricity in the town. I remember myself asking the caretaker from what time to what time electricity is available there. No wonder, he was little surprised by that question :)<br /><br />Now, the first impression of Badrinath. It was an amazing feeling. I am not sure what exactly it was, but I think it was the feeling of spaciousness that we felt there. The town, located on a huge flat top, was very very clean, and had a very fresh feeling. Almost all the buildings were single floor ones, which added to the feeling of spaciousness. And, we were already impressed by the room in TRH and low rates.<br /><br />After taking bath in hot water all the weariness of the trek was gone. And, then it dawned upon us that our trekking days were finally over and time to relax had come. Some trekking it was. We had trekked for more than 50 kilometers in last 4 day. <br /><br />Since, this post has already run so long, I'll write the rest about Badrinath in next post, which is coming very soon.Manuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03723641427799336562noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6900371.post-28377456859341063842008-11-07T13:45:00.015+05:302009-02-13T10:58:10.598+05:30valley of flowers: part IV<span style="font-style:italic;">Day 4, Tue Aug 26. </span>After a wonderful, pleasureful and captivating <a href="http://manugarg.blogspot.com/2008/10/valley-of-flowers-part-iii.html">trek in Valley of Flowers</a>, time was now to take on the challenging ascent of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hemkund">Hemkund</a>. The trek goes from an altitude of 3048 m to 4320 m over a distance of 6 km. This trek is dubbed as challenging by even most avid trekkers. I think it's more the lack of oxygen and other high altitude conditions that make this trek challenging. <br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEie3uIP0vU9hxcMBMm8nSdtkJ9RiF_k4UdDg0Z00ZZd5fJEnMVR_gycr_qVGVS6ENA845Pt8kBNjWYIudNUMOMY5zOLMRnznKZmrivFeLu6E578iZ4HhJ4qReSPCMYfgykLQwUNbg/s800/P8261257.JPG"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEie3uIP0vU9hxcMBMm8nSdtkJ9RiF_k4UdDg0Z00ZZd5fJEnMVR_gycr_qVGVS6ENA845Pt8kBNjWYIudNUMOMY5zOLMRnznKZmrivFeLu6E578iZ4HhJ4qReSPCMYfgykLQwUNbg/s800/P8261257.JPG" border="0" alt="" /></a>We got up at about 6 am again. Lit up a candle for bathroom as it was little dark (no electricity, remember?), dealt with a centipede in our basin, freshened up, ordered for hot water bucket, had bath and were ready to rock by 7:30 or so. I don't remember what we had for breakfast that day - must be aloo paratha considering the limited options :) Weather wasn't looking very good. The day was overcast. There was mist everywhere and soon it started drizzling too, which was not a good thing as we were not carrying any rain gear with us. Pankaj's jacket was water resistant (not waterproof) so he was a bit covered. We rented a rain jacket for myself and a head cover for Pankaj for 60 rupees and moved on. We were still little concerned though - "what if it will start pouring, will the trek be doable then; we'll definitely get wet, we are not really well covered; etc". Anyway, we carried on in a true backpackers' spirit :)<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSKAsmIDARGUTVd5w1nysOhUG8yBoYJdcGMCP51c7yMGeaxqTWXHUmSJ0kTm1zd631HYNLCrpgXbByUoYh7QDQa-4P_yPOjLHIwFI-K2dWi_XGI1Czg5h49Ksr3_szCrW0O8CsOA/s800/image103.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSKAsmIDARGUTVd5w1nysOhUG8yBoYJdcGMCP51c7yMGeaxqTWXHUmSJ0kTm1zd631HYNLCrpgXbByUoYh7QDQa-4P_yPOjLHIwFI-K2dWi_XGI1Czg5h49Ksr3_szCrW0O8CsOA/s800/image103.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a>Actually this weather proved to be good. The fact that sun wasn't there made the trek more enjoyable. We were moving in rhythmic small steps without stopping much. When we reached higher, after climbing for 3 km or so, mist defined our experience. That pleasureful coolness in the air, freshness and cleanness of everyhing in sight, and feeling of having clouds by your side in your path, it was some experience. On top of that, there were flowers all around like <a href="http://manugarg.blogspot.com/2008/10/valley-of-flowers-part-iii.html">previous day trek</a>, but this time mist made them look even more beautiful.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIyu1LHDNZ7YL47Vdjl0CVokHobc-nTKF3WVtF6RjmdYN2ezax5TdKZxxqG5jJX-xuehwFKCshezLL054tSxFkckbPbWn8hswu66sXslS6HkPNM_E9IbNkLT2ll9VbUKPsdelDOg/s800/P8261296.JPG"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIyu1LHDNZ7YL47Vdjl0CVokHobc-nTKF3WVtF6RjmdYN2ezax5TdKZxxqG5jJX-xuehwFKCshezLL054tSxFkckbPbWn8hswu66sXslS6HkPNM_E9IbNkLT2ll9VbUKPsdelDOg/s800/P8261296.JPG" border="0" alt="" /></a>Shortly we met a glacier on the trek. I put my gear down and took some photographs here (My camera was stowed in my backpack for most of the time to save it from rain and also to make the climb easy). On taking my rain jacket off, I realized that my t-shirt was completely wet - not with water, but with sweat. Though it was cold outside, I was still sweating, mainly because of climbing, my non-breathing rain jacket which we had rented, and my backpack. Later in the trek, when we were about 2 kms from Hemkund, we saw Brahma Kamals. Brahma Kamal is a rare flowering plant. It's found only on high altitude and as conditions are not usually vegetation friendly as such altitudes, it's not easily found even on high altitudes. We found Brahma Kamal flowers in plenty in Hemkund.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJLCyLXb7ZXiS7LmSftNJFfrzedr6Cst4lTT89SJ2MVV1RcNd-KyvzqMEUTT6-Un8MOrvEAPtDGqvEKLVfBxugn8iG5T4zIYjVziSPx0UY_IsRIGB_lb7qWDksnkYND0M-Ug1NrQ/s800/P8261306.JPG"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJLCyLXb7ZXiS7LmSftNJFfrzedr6Cst4lTT89SJ2MVV1RcNd-KyvzqMEUTT6-Un8MOrvEAPtDGqvEKLVfBxugn8iG5T4zIYjVziSPx0UY_IsRIGB_lb7qWDksnkYND0M-Ug1NrQ/s800/P8261306.JPG" border="0" alt="" /></a>We were not really finding this trek too hard actually; in fact we were enjoying it a lot. I think there were 3 reasons for that - one, we were already acclimatized; two, we had learned the trick to walk on mountains - small steps, no hurry; three, we rock :) We reached the summit at 11:45 am. And you know when we started? 8:15 am. YES, we did the whole trek in 3.5 hours. Most avid trekker do it in 4 hours, while other not so used to folks do it in 5 hours. We did it in 3.5 hours and on top of that we didn't find it too difficult, in fact we enjoyed this trek the most. Here we got a sense of achievement, just exactly what we had done this trek for :) Moreover, it was just lovely out there. There was a beautiful, serene glacial lake with a gurudwara, a temple (laxman temple) and green hills all around it.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTIYLcwK33jrtV1guBnVttqc05iSa3wYM3hcKoGq4vbX5Czs7W_Dq5Up14N8IHXkF5NNwBTynNbbxwXLb4s1ktJOkcZkIMqTOdOgUgJCzIe7G0Ev-2nfYu19QocpkyKfNKZess1Q/s800/P8261340.JPG"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTIYLcwK33jrtV1guBnVttqc05iSa3wYM3hcKoGq4vbX5Czs7W_Dq5Up14N8IHXkF5NNwBTynNbbxwXLb4s1ktJOkcZkIMqTOdOgUgJCzIe7G0Ev-2nfYu19QocpkyKfNKZess1Q/s800/P8261340.JPG" border="0" alt="" /></a>We had maggie (noodles) in a stall there. Here I changed my t-shirt also as it was completely wet with sweat. After spending about an hour at Hemkund, we started back. While returning we took the stairs. Now, these stairs are definitely a short-cut, but I think we did the right thing by not taking them for coming up. Your legs, knees and lungs don't like it when you take high steps. These stairs brought us at about 4 km mark (from <a href="http://manugarg.blogspot.com/2008/10/valley-of-flowers-part-ii.html">Ghangharia</a>) in less than 30 min. <br /><br />Rest of our descent was a roller-coaster ride, all thanks to Pankaj. He was almost running and I was trying to catch up. When you are coming down on something this steep, either of the two things happen - if you come too fast, your head starts paining because of the shake and if you control your speed your knees start hurting. Anyway, by the time we came down, both, head and knees, were paining. Head was fine in some time, but knees were not looking too good. That was worrisome considering that we had to go down to Govindghat next day. Rest of the day was usual - lunch, afternoon-nap, snacks, dinner and sleep.<br /><br />Link to photographs: <a href="http://picasaweb.google.com/manugarg/VoFTripHemkundSahib#">http://picasaweb.google.com/manugarg/VoFTripHemkundSahib#</a><br /><br />Still to come: Badrinath and Mana village. <br /><br />Have fun. <br />Cheers, Manu<br />Manu Garg/www.manugarg.com/Journey is the destination of life.Manuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03723641427799336562noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6900371.post-48078298434440157722008-10-15T14:31:00.014+05:302008-11-07T18:12:51.862+05:30valley of flowers: part IIIAgainst all your expectations, part 3 comes much sooner. So, where were we? Yeah, we were sleeping in the TRH in Ghangharia. <br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">Day 3, Mon Aug 25</span>. We got up early again at about 6-6:30. Had tea, ordered for the hot water bucket, took bath and phew, we were ready to trek again. Now, when it comes to having breakfast in Ghangharia, there are not many options. In fact the only options are aloo paratha, if you are lucky and there is bread in town then butter toast, and if you don't mind eating eggs which could be 2-3 months old then bread omelet. On that day we had butter toast. Bread slices were the smallest I had ever seen and to make us feel even worse about it, each butter toast cost 35 bucks. <br /><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJhkjCGygTO4rm99vxA9YEpBbwOUiO_FiACvvpQr7FEdbA40suuShZK8x3Dqd6UaJKm7TPHGr6N0X4V6kWOFcF29T2HUp4fsE9eKnJ62AYzpLyZPr32pOtq-dG9CUaauYoP8ZQ5w/s1600-h/P8251007.JPG"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJhkjCGygTO4rm99vxA9YEpBbwOUiO_FiACvvpQr7FEdbA40suuShZK8x3Dqd6UaJKm7TPHGr6N0X4V6kWOFcF29T2HUp4fsE9eKnJ62AYzpLyZPr32pOtq-dG9CUaauYoP8ZQ5w/s200/P8251007.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5257446605167507106" /></a>Anyway, we started our trek at around 8:40 am or so. After climbing on a decently steep trek for about 10-15 min we reached the point where the route for valley of flowers separates from that going to Hemkund. This is also where you have to pay the valley of flowers national park entry fee. Yes, it's a national park, didn't I tell you? Fee sounded a little hefty to me by Indian standards - 50 bucks per person and 100 bucks per camera. So, we paid 200 rupees there. What treated us next was a beautiful trail that goes inside a forest. You know the best part about this place is that no mules are allowed inside and there are no shops here. This make it a really clean place, with only nature all around. So, back to the trail, we started seeing beautiful flowers from here only. Mind you, valley was still about 3 kms. After some walking inside the forest, we came into an opening. There we encountered a rather interesting bridge, on a stream of Pushpavati, river that flows inside Valley of Flowers. It was a small bridge, made of an iron sheet, but very useful nonetheless, as crossing that stream without it would have been pretty difficult if not impossible.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://lh6.ggpht.com/manugarg/SOMPvlLQKhI/AAAAAAAAF4s/yhHCDNhDZiY/s800/P8251032.JPG"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px;" src="http://lh6.ggpht.com/manugarg/SOMPvlLQKhI/AAAAAAAAF4s/yhHCDNhDZiY/s800/P8251032.JPG" border="0" alt="" /></a>After crossing the bridge, the trail very soon entered the forest again. At one place it rapidly came down, and after crossing another bridge on now much fuller Pushpavati, it started rising again. This time it was quite steep. But, we didn't realize it. The trick we learned on Ghangharia trek, taking small steps while climbing, came in handy. It was nice trekking here as we were in the shadow and we were going through a forest with nature crammed in all around us. After about 40-50 min of trekking in this jungle, the trail came into an opening again. Now we had a mountain on our left side and Pushpavati river was flowing in the valley on the right. Trail had become easier now, not very steep slopes. It was wonderfully pleasant. Mountain slopes, on the left and right side of the trail were laden with flowers and other vegetation. As a reminder of much colder days, the river sported a "not yet completely melted" snow bridge.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://lh4.ggpht.com/manugarg/SOMP_moKsnI/AAAAAAAAF7M/Ccobgd4cUHM/s800/P8251064.JPG"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px;" src="http://lh4.ggpht.com/manugarg/SOMP_moKsnI/AAAAAAAAF7M/Ccobgd4cUHM/s800/P8251064.JPG" border="0" alt="" /></a>It's not been even half an hour on that trail and we were treated by awesomeness. I was busy exclaiming and emphasizing what a beautiful place it was and taking photographs, when Pankaj, who was already 6-7 steps ahead of me, called me - "what you're gonna see next will probably blow you away". And right he was. On our right side, we saw a wide open huge lush green valley crowned by beautiful snowcapped mountain peaks, with vapor rising from their surface in effect of sun. We were ELATED. The valley was valley of flowers, but it was still very far - entrance was about a km from here. To make this place even more memorable, though not in the same way, I was here bitten by some poisonous plant which caused me skin rashes on affected body parts days later. <br /><br />We entered the valley at around 10:45 am. It was stupendously beautiful. Just imagine, you are in a wide valley, with mountains on both sides, not a human soul to see, flowers of different colors all around, mountain streams flowing here and there, greenness in abundance, not a piece of polythene or any other litter in long long distance, snowcapped mountain peaks in front of you (though distant) and a bright clear blue sky to cap it all. And there we were, walking on a trail amidst all that. We were basking in awesomeness.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://lh3.ggpht.com/manugarg/SOMQfzqs7OI/AAAAAAAAGAA/tl8sSowAs9E/s800/P8251149.JPG"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px;" src="http://lh3.ggpht.com/manugarg/SOMQfzqs7OI/AAAAAAAAGAA/tl8sSowAs9E/s800/P8251149.JPG" border="0" alt="" /></a><br />As time went past 11:30, Pankaj helped us realize, by asking for something to eat, that we very carelessly and stupidly had forgotten to bring the lunch pack from Ghangharia. Thankfully there was half a packet of Britannia biscuits in our bag to save the day. But we were not really hungry at that time and kept those biscuits for later. Now, this valley is pretty big and you can keep walking for hours and not see all parts of it. So, to make visiting valley of flowers a tangible thing, you need to set a tangible target. Most people return from just after entering the valley. Some people don't even reach valley. Some go till Joan Margaret's grave and some probably go even beyond that. We decided that we'll go till Joan Margaret's grave and return. Joan Margaret was a German botanist who fell in Pushpavati while collecting some samples in year 1939. We reached there by 12 noon. We saw a guy and a girl there (girl was looking kinda cute in a cowboy hat), probably botany students looking for some interesting plant; kinda finishing Joan's job :) We sat there for some time sipping in nature's beauty and then started back.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://lh5.ggpht.com/manugarg/SOMQpu1zBtI/AAAAAAAAGBk/0lbBDHiv_tg/s800/P8251171.JPG"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px;" src="http://lh5.ggpht.com/manugarg/SOMQpu1zBtI/AAAAAAAAGBk/0lbBDHiv_tg/s800/P8251171.JPG" border="0" alt="" /></a><br />As the day was passing, those mountain peaks, which had elated us earlier, almost disappeared behind the clouds. I think we were very lucky to have seen them at all. We came back pretty leisurely, taking enough breaks to sink in the beauty all around. We reached Ghangharia by 3:30 pm, had some food, and took an afternoon nap after that. In the evening, we were little unsure of doing Hemkund the next day. Basically a thought came to our mind or rather Pankaj's mind, that why not do Kedarnath also on this trip. It was a matter of motivation too. Which one is more worthwhile and worth the effort - Kedarnath or Hemkund. By the way, going to Kedarnath also requires a trek of 14 km. Anyway, Hemkund won in the end. We decided to do it for the sake of challenge if not anything else. And of course, it was right there and Kedarnath was quite far.<br /><br />After that we had our dinner. I was able to call my home this day. I told my parents not to expect any call from me for some days.<br /><br /><a href="http://picasaweb.google.com/manugarg/VoFTripInTheValley#slideshow">Photographs of valley of flowers: http://picasaweb.google.com/manugarg/VoFTripInTheValley#slideshow</a><br /><br />Savor the photographs for now. There is more to come yet - Hemkund, Badrinath and Return. <br /><br />Yours truly, <br />Manu Garg / http://www.manugarg.comManuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03723641427799336562noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6900371.post-42624212335568967332008-10-12T16:37:00.029+05:302008-11-07T18:13:38.940+05:30valley of flowers: part II<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://lh6.ggpht.com/manugarg/SNqCe3WQoWI/AAAAAAAAFog/dKy-Vq1npDA/s800/P8240805.JPG"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px;" src="http://lh6.ggpht.com/manugarg/SNqCe3WQoWI/AAAAAAAAFog/dKy-Vq1npDA/s800/P8240805.JPG" border="0" alt="" /></a><span style="font-style:italic;">Day 2, Sun Aug 24</span>: After spending a good night in Joshimath, time was now to further <a href="http://manugarg.blogspot.com/2008/09/valley-of-flowers-part-i.html">our journey</a>. Our day started early. We got up at 6 and had checked out of the TRH by 7:30 am. Plan was to take some mode of transportation till Govindghat. From there we were to start our first trek, to Ghangharia. We got a jeep for Govindghat from Badrinath taxi stand in Joshimath. After a drive of less than an hour, the jeep dropped us just at the border of Govindghat. From the road itself, we could see Laxman Ganga, river that flows from glaciers beyond Hemkund, falling into Alaknanda. After walking for about 10-15 min, we reached our trek start point. By the way, our cellphones had stopped working as soon as we left Joshimath, so luckily we were unreachable now and we remained so till the end of our trip.<br /><br />We hired a porter for our luggage here (for Rs. 405). Though there are lockers available in Govindghat for luggage, we didn't want to leave anything behind as we were going to be in Ghangharia for at least 3 days. It was 9:45 am now. Much to our surprise, it was quite nice and sunny; from whatever we had researched earlier, we were pretty sure that it was gonna be cloudy and rainy. Well, it was good for us because being as heedless as we sometimes are, we didn't carry any rain gear. Trek beginning was pretty easy as we were excited. But, long and quick steps that we were taking (at least I was) made us little breathless. After about 4 kms of trek, waterfall near Pulna village started to appear. We took a short break here. Next 5 km were comparatively easy. Trek leveled out at lot of places. We kept meeting Laxman Ganga on and off on the way.<br /><br />The next village we encountered on the trek was Bhyundar village. Ghangharia was still 3kms from here. These were the most difficult 3 kms of this trek. It gets pretty steep from here, and unpaved trek, with uneven rocks on the path, makes it even more difficult. By this time we were in a sort of trance. We were just walking. We had learned the trick to walk on the mountains. Small steps, no hurry, and no long stops to make up for the slow pace. Believe me, it works. <br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://lh6.ggpht.com/manugarg/SNqEHRImBTI/AAAAAAAAFvM/py0FbzAPr_4/s800/P8250971.JPG"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px;" src="http://lh6.ggpht.com/manugarg/SNqEHRImBTI/AAAAAAAAFvM/py0FbzAPr_4/s800/P8250971.JPG" border="0" alt="" /></a>Anyway, we reached Ghangharia by 3pm. We were mighty hungry by this time. But, we wanted to find a place to stay first. We chose to stay in GMVN TRH again, but not without checking other options. It was pretty expensive (Rs 950 per day and Rs 35 for a bucket of hot water) compared to other options, but somehow it felt more spacious. I think the nice courtyard in TRH made the difference. After putting our luggage inside and having lunch in the restaurant in front of our TRH, we fell asleep.<br /><br />Now, Ghanghria is a makeshift village. After October 5, when Hemkund Sahib is closed and snow is all around, everybody starts moving to lower areas. They come back only in the beginning of June, when snow starts melting and Hemkund is reopened. That's the reason you can find only basic minimum things here and since there is no road connecting it to the rest of the world (only way to reach here is either by mules or by foot or helicopter) everything is quite expensive here. So be prepared for the prices like Rs 30 for a water bottle and Rs 35 for a butter toast (with miniature breads). Electricity is available here only between 7 pm and 10 pm. That's when telephone exchange works and even when it works, chances of your call getting through are pretty slim. You have to try for at least for 15 min to make a call. No wonder the telephone guy charges you 15 bucks per minute :) So as you can see, we were pretty discouraged to make any calls, which is good. After having a rather not so good dinner in TRH restaurant we called it a day and hit the sack.<br /><br /><a href="http://picasaweb.google.com/manugarg/VoFTripTillGhangaria">Pics of the story so far</a>.<br /><br />I know, I know it took very long to publish second part. The delay was mainly due to short trip to Leh and other things that I have to do for living :) Hope to post other parts sooner.<br /><br />Cheers,<br />Manu<br />-----<br />Manu Garg / http://www.manugarg.comManuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03723641427799336562noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6900371.post-83717305889359290282008-09-19T13:53:00.018+05:302009-09-21T23:01:52.341+05:30valley of flowers: part ILast year, after <a href="http://manugarg.blogspot.com/2007/08/ladakh-land-of-peace-and-quiet-part-i.html">our Ladakh trip</a> itself we had decided that our next trip would be to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valley_of_flowers">Valley of Flowers</a> - a national park, nestled high in the lap of western Himalayas. It's in the north-east corner of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garhwal_Division">Garhwal</a> region of Uttarakhand state, near the holy town of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Badrinath">Badrinath</a>. As reaching the valley requires a trek of more than 17 km, and then there is a trek of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hemkund_Sahib">Hemkund Sahib</a> nearby that you wouldn't want to miss, it was essentially going to be a <a href="http://www.gmvnl.com/newgmvn/sports/treks/trek6frame.html">trekking trip</a>.<br />
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Though we wanted to do this trip since last year, ideal time was the constraint. Ideal time to visit the valley is mid-July to August as that's the time when flowers are in full bloom. We decided to do the trip in the last week of August (Aug 23 - Aug 31). There was not much to be planned for this trip as itinerary in these parts of Himalayas is pretty much decided by the moods of the mountains. This region is particularly infamous for landslides. So, we only thought about the going part. Now, since scope of luxuries on this trip was already less, if not zero, we decided to do it completely backpackers style -- no hired cabs, no advance hotel bookings, less luggage etc etc.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2M4a4n7BPsEWD3m3_YJAvS_WU0dSFKDy_AEJOJkI2PRFy-kwAuJg9pbFWms309M9uY0O_a57ZdiZV8UQH4MBkxjGkklstPs3gExrVYOvV5BWm7MWskxQ8xI5S5lPVBDNUMr51Bg/s1600-h/P8230632.JPG" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5247728685852242882" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2M4a4n7BPsEWD3m3_YJAvS_WU0dSFKDy_AEJOJkI2PRFy-kwAuJg9pbFWms309M9uY0O_a57ZdiZV8UQH4MBkxjGkklstPs3gExrVYOvV5BWm7MWskxQ8xI5S5lPVBDNUMr51Bg/s200/P8230632.JPG" style="cursor: pointer; float: right; margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px;" /></a><br />
We boarded the train for Haridwar at about 11:55 pm on Friday. This was probably to be the most luxurious part of our travel :) However I could hardly sleep in the train, owing to thundering snores of a guy in our compartment. We reached Haridwar at 4:20 am in the morning. Without wasting much time, we rushed to Badrinath bus stand where we were to get a bus to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joshimath">Joshimath</a>. Tip: Buses for Joshimath leave Haridwar only between 5 am and 7 am. Our bus started at 5:20 a.m. It was an ordinary bus - no reclining seats, no AC, not much leg room. But as we had not slept much last night, it didn't take us long to fall into a slumber. One good thing that we did was to not have anything including tea in the morning. It helped in sleeping and better equipped us to handle mountain roads. The road from Rishikesh to Joshimath goes inside a valley and follows <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaknanda_River">Alaknanda river</a>, which originates from glaciers near Badrinath, very closely. We had our breakfast in Deopryag and lunch at a dhaba near Rudrapryag.<br />
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We reached Joshimath at 4:20 pm in the afternoon. That was somewhat earlier than we expected, much due to our bus driver's expertise on mountain roads. He showed very little respect for those hot curves of hills. With the help of local people and sign boards, we found GMVN Tourist Rest House (TRH) and checked in. The way to the rest house was little uphill and reminded us of the coming days which were to be full of such uphill walking. By the way, wherever we go, we usually try to get GMVN TRH first; I think it just gives us a feeling of familiarity. After quickly freshening up, remember we hadn't freshened up in the morning, and having tea, we went for a walk.<br />
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Joshimath is a nice little town. It's mostly a transit town. People going to Badrinath, Valley of flowers, Hemkund Sahib, Auli, Nanda Devi national park and few other treks do a night stay here. But, I think, it's mostly Badrinath pilgrims who help run economy of this place. Obviously, it's a very religious town too. We could find only one very small, that also sort of hidden, liquor shop. Of course, we didn't want to drink. We were just curious.<br />
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From local people we came to know that Shankaracharya temple is a place to see in Joshimath. We went in search of that. Following signs on the road we found that it was very close to the place where we were staying. Now, this place had some amazing vibes. I especially liked the way Panditji chanted some mantras while giving <a href="http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20070527061342AAlWbWE">Charnamrit</a> to us in Durga temple. The cave where <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shankaracharya">Shankaracharya</a> himself set up Sphatik Shivling was nice too. We spent some quality time there at the terrace. We came back when it was getting dark. After having dinner in TRH, which was really good - especially chapatis, and having tea at an aunty's dhaba, we called it a day.<br />
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.. to be continued.<br />
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Pics and other parts of the story coming soon. Stay tuned.<br />
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Cheers :)<br />
-ManuManuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03723641427799336562noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6900371.post-74509760864866981522008-04-30T12:29:00.013+05:302008-04-30T23:43:02.390+05:30pactester for WindowsLately, I have been getting some queries for "test pac files on windows", "pactester for windows" etc in website access logs and emails. Compiling <a href="http://code.google.com/p/pactester">pactester</a> on Windows, though possible, is quite a complicated process. So much so that it's almost impractical to ask users to do so. Since it's a perl script, packaging it for Windows is even more difficult. To avoid packaging difficulties of perl code and now that <a href="http://code.google.com/p/pacparser">pacparser</a> is there, I think it makes sense to implement pactester using pacparser. That's exactly what I did in last couple of days, implemented <a href="http://code.google.com/p/pacparser/source/browse/trunk/pactester.c">pactester in C</a> using pacparser library. <br /><br />I have compiled it for Windows and uploaded zipped binaries on pactester downloads page:<br /><a href="http://code.google.com/p/pactester/downloads/list">http://code.google.com/p/pactester/downloads/list</a><br /><br />Also, to simplify things and as an added bonus to pacparser users, I have decided to distribute this version of pactester (implemented in C using pacparser API) along with pacparser from next release. Thanks to open source that I can do that :)<br /><br />Cheers,<br />ManuManuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03723641427799336562noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6900371.post-72333732846466403352007-12-18T22:02:00.004+05:302008-04-30T23:42:02.708+05:30pacparser - a library to parse PAC filesAs I mentioned <a href="http://manugarg.blogspot.com/2007/01/google-code-introducing-pactester.html">earlier</a> also,<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proxy_auto-config"> proxy auto-config (PAC)</a> files are becoming more and more important for web proxy usage because of automation and ease of administration provided by them. Almost all popular browsers today support them. But, there is still a dearth of tools available for processing PAC files e.g. popular web software like curl, wget and python-urllib still don't take PAC file for proxy configuration.<br /><br />That was the problem I wanted to solve when I started to work on pacparser. Now it's ready in full glory - <a href="http://code.google.com/p/pacparser">http://code.google.com/p/pacparser</a>. From the release announcement:<br /><br /><blockquote>I am very pleased to announce the release of "pacparser" - a C library to parse proxy auto-config (PAC) scripts. Needless to say, PAC files are now a widely accepted method for proxy configuration management and almost all popular browsers support them. The idea behind pacparser is to make it easy to add this PAC file parsing capability to other programs. It comes as a shared C library with a clear API. You can use it to make any C or python (using ctypes) program PAC scripts intelligent. Some very useful targets could be popular web software like wget, curl and python-urllib.<br /><br />For documentation and available packages, please visit project home page at:<br /><a href="http://code.google.com/p/pacparser">http://code.google.com/p/pacparser</a><br /><br />For the ones who like to start with source code, here is the link to direct download for source code:<br /><a href="http://pacparser.googlecode.com/files/pacparser-1.0.1.tar.gz">http://pacparser.googlecode.com/files/pacparser-1.0.1.tar.gz.<br /></a></blockquote><br />I hope you will find some use for it. Anyway, let me know how your find it :-)<br /><br />Cheers :-),<br />Manu<br /><br />Update: For easy installation on Ubuntu boxes, I have created debs for Ubuntu gutsy for i386 and amd64 platforms. These debs can be downloaded from here:<br /><a href="http://code.google.com/p/pacparser/downloads/list">http://code.google.com/p/pacparser/downloads/list</a><br />---<br />Manu Garg/http://www.manugarg.com/"Journey is the destination of life"Manuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03723641427799336562noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6900371.post-60068599377894769162007-09-16T13:55:00.002+05:302019-02-25T00:39:41.446+05:30ladakh, land of peace and quiet - part IITime to continue the Ladakh story started in the <a href="http://manugarg.blogspot.com/2007/08/ladakh-land-of-peace-and-quiet-part-i.html">last post</a>. So we reached our guest house in Leh on Monday night at around 10 PM. Pankaj was bowled over by the beautiful smile of the receptionist and manager of the guest house, a simple country girl. Actually, she was cute :) She was daughter of the guest house owner. The whole guest house was run by family people only - gardening, managing, cooking, cleaning everything. The people there were really nice. They cooked food just for us even though the regular dinner time was already over.<br />
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<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinCuYDDJ2KsItRgQivlV1YO55F8c8kW5twWOwYOSy7WA8zZ5y8tVu_OGPyxUv5dhGyrxg4dCdqXiQjL0zyj3XjWETAfQdjSR6vSHJ14u2eU2Yru06Sijf0NynfabsHpG47sZDNEA/s1600-h/00316.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinCuYDDJ2KsItRgQivlV1YO55F8c8kW5twWOwYOSy7WA8zZ5y8tVu_OGPyxUv5dhGyrxg4dCdqXiQjL0zyj3XjWETAfQdjSR6vSHJ14u2eU2Yru06Sijf0NynfabsHpG47sZDNEA/s200/00316.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5111594700938611330" border="0" /></a><br />
We had a good sleep that night. Next morning, after having Ladakhi breakfast (ladakhi bread, honey jam and butter), we went out to see Leh. Main market was about 20 min away from the guest house and the whole route was filled with the handicraft shops and scenic views on both the sides. We had lunch there in the market itself and came back. Then we again slept off in the afternoon. The 2-days travel was showing up on us finally. In the evening, we decided to see <a href="http://picasaweb.google.com/manugarg/InLadakh/photo#5098170114974098194">Shanti Stupa</a> as it was very close to our guest house. This is one amazing place. It's where you feel the power of the space the most. We climbed about 500 steep stairs to reach there. Feeling of being at the top, strong breeze in the hair, and powerful space around you; it works on you immediately. There is also a temple there called <a href="http://picasaweb.google.com/manugarg/InLadakh/photo#5098181457982729042">Shanti Stupa temple</a>. It's a "peace" temple. You just have to be there to calm yourself, nothing else is required. Since it was getting dark we came down after spending about an hour there. But, we almost resolved in our hearts to come back there again.<br />
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Next two days we didn't go for any long trip. What did we do? We got up by 7 am, had breakfast on time, played table tennis, went out to see nearby places, had lunch outside, came back in the evening, spent time in guest house library, talked to the guest house people, had dinner in the guest house, watched stars in the night sky and just relaxed. It was a retreat for us. Time was going so very smoothly. We saw Spituk and Shankar gompas (monasteries) in these two days. <a href="http://picasaweb.google.com/manugarg/InLadakh/photo#5098170398441939842">Spituk gompa</a> is little far from Leh and you have to take a bus for that, while <a href="http://picasaweb.google.com/manugarg/InLadakh/photo#5098173125746172898">Shankar gompa</a> was only 30 min walk away from our guest house.<br />
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<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVMDqN4oM_5UeokwTHgR01ISYz2_P4HwrMsyXKdMg_nk4iJBkfpGq_9mGCo19jq-9GJeMCXdT_-qHf8MKV-k3h6KCH0elxYYk8VeVTIIVH2GratpTgU4VF3xaJtB8KWMHfy9JFWg/s1600-h/00107.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVMDqN4oM_5UeokwTHgR01ISYz2_P4HwrMsyXKdMg_nk4iJBkfpGq_9mGCo19jq-9GJeMCXdT_-qHf8MKV-k3h6KCH0elxYYk8VeVTIIVH2GratpTgU4VF3xaJtB8KWMHfy9JFWg/s200/00107.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5111550926631930450" border="0" /></a><br />
On Friday, we started for <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pangong_Tso">Pangong Lake (Tso)</a> in the morning after having our breakfast. It's about 5 hrs drive away from Leh. We passed mighty <a href="http://picasaweb.google.com/manugarg/InLadakh/photo#5098173821530875090">Chang La</a> on the way. It's the third highest road of the world. We reached Pangong Tso by 3 PM. And what a place it is. Try to think of a huge sea like lake, surrounded by the mountains, at the height of 4250 meters, and with only 5 people for a long long distance. Yes, it's as magical as it sounds. The ultra clear water, ever-changing colors, shadow of the mountains, and sound of nothing but the soft breeze. You feel like being there always. I can't say it enough in words. You have to be there to feel it. We started back from there at about 6 PM.<br />
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<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1qgITI3MFVH0RU2RxdIfqXzRZDcZJhwIyrAx_TEQQWQSNEpEqYZa-CrtyRAcv3lK4ovc90SO_2wRj8nivsEJ_6QP_037bT9exPDZoar-NVbAk6m8RTCn4fAiqMdmROomlV-kEXQ/s1600-h/00144.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1qgITI3MFVH0RU2RxdIfqXzRZDcZJhwIyrAx_TEQQWQSNEpEqYZa-CrtyRAcv3lK4ovc90SO_2wRj8nivsEJ_6QP_037bT9exPDZoar-NVbAk6m8RTCn4fAiqMdmROomlV-kEXQ/s200/00144.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5111549569422264898" border="0" /></a><br />
On the way back, we decided to stay in <a href="http://picasaweb.google.com/manugarg/InLadakh/photo#5098179001261434946">Tangse</a> village. It's a very small village, with not more than 50 houses I'd say. We found a place to stay there just for Rs 300/- a night. There was no tourist there except us. The morning there was really really pleasant. The weather was so good. Sky was absolutely clear and very blue :) After breakfast, we took a walk in the village, and met school going kids. At about 10 AM, we started back for Leh. We reached Leh by 1 PM.<br />
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That day we visited Shanti Stupa again :) This time we went little early to enjoy it for longer. We sat there and just sat there for a long time. We could see a thunderstorm coming from the mountains at the far end. It made breeze even stronger. I can remember myself lying there and singing "Trying to find, trying to find, where I've been" of Kashmir of Led Zeppelin. The feeling was absolutely great.<br />
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Now only Sunday was left. Monday morning we had to fly back to Delhi. On Sunday we went out to see Leh Palace. It was in the interiors of the city. We walked for long to reach there and to come back we walked for even longer. While coming back we found a very good and genuine handicrafts shop. It wasn't in the main market so prices were pretty OK. That's where we did our shopping. In the evening, we settled our guest house bills and asked the lady to book a cab for us for next morning. Next day we took the cab, reached airport and boarded our flight to Delhi. From inside the flight, we got some amazing views of the mountain tops.<br />
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That's how our journey ended and somewhere in our minds a new journey started.<br />
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Links to Leh albums: <a href="http://picasaweb.google.com/manugarg/ReachingLeh">Reaching Leh</a> <a href="http://picasaweb.google.com/manugarg/InLadakh">In Ladakh</a>Manuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03723641427799336562noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6900371.post-82006222689928922392007-08-26T22:57:00.009+05:302019-02-25T00:36:25.116+05:30ladakh, land of peace and quiet - part IHave you ever felt the power of space? When you feel that the space, just space around you, affects you strongly. Almost all of us have experienced it for short duration in some way or other, for example when we go to a temple. I felt it for a much longer duration. It happened to us when we visited Ladakh last month. By we, I mean Pankaj and I. For those who don't know, Pankaj and I are best buddies.<br />
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So, we went to this land of peace and quiet. There are some obvious things that make Ladakh different from all other hill stations. Altitude so high that AMS (Acute Mountain Sickness) comes to you easily, different kind of people, and proximity to both Pakistan and China borders. But, there are some things which are not easy to imagine. Things like how can it calm you beyond your imagination. <br />
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We were very excited about this trip. We decided to go by Manali-Leh road and come back by air. Our route was something like: Hyderabad -> Delhi -> Chandigarh -> Manali -> Leh -> Delhi -> Hyderabad. We had started <a href="http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=ajdqttpdzz9g_9c475nh">preparing for it</a> well in advance. Booking flight tickets from Leh to Delhi, hotels in Manali and Keylong, train tickets for Delhi to Chandigarh, guest house in Leh etc. And what date did we chose to travel - July 13th, Friday. Yes, Friday the 13th. It was accidental. We didn't notice it until the last day :)<br />
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<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRBguceWjsVrQxHTuhc4dv2u4iwJwydrXCWTED1y9qk_OqXyk6HryOjFAV7bpInpE17I_sROZ0AItgZWFYn7ctEm9h0_eQlcR-Cy4PJiBGBEuykbfHoYV0Tji4Oqle-M8rD85dqQ/s1600-h/00078.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRBguceWjsVrQxHTuhc4dv2u4iwJwydrXCWTED1y9qk_OqXyk6HryOjFAV7bpInpE17I_sROZ0AItgZWFYn7ctEm9h0_eQlcR-Cy4PJiBGBEuykbfHoYV0Tji4Oqle-M8rD85dqQ/s200/00078.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5110544864902580770" /></a><br />
My flight from Hyderabad to Delhi was little delayed, but I managed to reach Delhi just in time. Pankaj had come to airport to pick me up by a cab. From there we went together to Delhi Railway station by the same cab. We reached on time but no time was left for dinner. So, that's how we started our journey. Everything went as planned. We reached Manali by next day evening. After cleaning ourselves up and having snacks, we visited Hidimba temple. It's really a nice temple and in the late evening, it was a quiet place and had a calming effect in it. Next day morning we started for Leh. Our next destination was Keylong which is about 8 hours away from Manali. We passed <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rohtang_Pass">Rohtang La</a> on our way. We reached <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keylong">Keylong</a> by evening 4 pm. This whole <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lahaul">region</a> is very beautiful. Air is fresh, land is green all around, mountains are capped with snow, space is free of any kind of pollution. We absolutely loved that place. Walking around in the town, watching sky full of stars in the night. Next day we started early, at about 6 am. And then we realized, Mountains look even more beautiful in morning :)<br />
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<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOHH6UTJAh5VUNw2QI8bSNZYqa0ha9c5Umq3_tvI6XJrow4c1VpJckIktUGQA9BdGio7rpDFCcD0RqRI-oY_yQeKJ23-2YkEZB2l9YfyNdvFLbCSfkOLN7VtQCaJyi6x58nFCq0A/s1600-h/00200.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOHH6UTJAh5VUNw2QI8bSNZYqa0ha9c5Umq3_tvI6XJrow4c1VpJckIktUGQA9BdGio7rpDFCcD0RqRI-oY_yQeKJ23-2YkEZB2l9YfyNdvFLbCSfkOLN7VtQCaJyi6x58nFCq0A/s200/00200.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5110704306973510194" /></a><br />
Next we encounterd a broken bridge which was being repaired. We took this as an opportunity to feel our surroundings. We hiked down to the shore of the river and sat there to appreciate the lovely morning. It was about 9:30 am in the morning. It wasn't windy, sun was shining and temperature was little bit on the colder side, but not too cold. I touched the water, it was chilling. In the mean time, our driver decided to cross the river through water and called us back. It was a bad move. We got stuck in the middle of the river. And then, we got a little adventurous. We removed our shoes and got into the water to push the car. But water was unthinkably cold. Our feet became red and nails started becoming yellow. Even after all the effort, we managed to move the car only a bit. After trying all the things, we finally gave up. Driver went out to fetch some help to tow the car. Luckily he found a tractor that was working at a road repair site not too far off. That's how we finally came out of river :)<br />
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Out next stop was at Sarchu. We had our lunch there in a mini-restaurant. It was in a tent and was run by 2 people exactly - a man and a woman, a couple probably. We had dal-roti, paratha and tea there. After that we started for Leh again. It was still a long drive from here. We passed mighty <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanglang_La">Tanglang La</a> on our way. We reached Leh in the night at about 9:30 PM. Market was almost closed and it was completely dark there. After asking a couple of people there, we found our guest house and got in :)<br />
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(..to be continued. Photographs of the trip so far - <a href="http://picasaweb.google.com/manugarg/ReachingLeh#slideshow">http://picasaweb.google.com/manugarg/ReachingLeh</a>)Manuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03723641427799336562noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6900371.post-2198765852036486802007-08-26T01:08:00.002+05:302009-01-14T23:54:13.461+05:30Hacking squidIn this post, I would like to talk about the recent fun I had with <a href="http://www.squid-cache.org/">squid</a>. It involved some troubleshooting and some hacking.<br /><span style="font-style:italic;">Problem: Squid will stop responding after running for some random period of time, say 10 to 40 min and cpu usage will shoot up to 95-100%.</span><br /><br />I started with <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strace">strace</a>, but everything looked fine there. Then I tried <a href="http://linux.die.net/man/1/ltrace">ltrace</a> and there I got the first clue. squid was comparing 2 strings in an infinite loop:<br /><pre>strcmp("thumbnail.videoegg.com", "i12.ebaystatic.com") = -1<br />strcmp("thumbnail.videoegg.com", "i12.ebaystatic.com") = -1<br />strcmp("thumbnail.videoegg.com", "i12.ebaystatic.com") = -1<br /></pre><br />Looks like some bad 'for' loop. But, what part of code and why? It needed little more debugging to answer these questions. The squid binary that I was running was installed from a debian package and thus was stripped off debugging symbols. To fix that problem, I rebuilt the squid package with debugging information. On debian, you do that by supplying "<code>DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS = nostrip</code>" as an environment variable or in debian/rules file, while building the package. I ran this newly compiled squid within <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gdb">gdb</a>. And, when it was hung up again, I took the backtrace:<br /><pre>gdb) bt<br />#0 0x00002ae1d60c6914 in strcmp () from /lib/libc.so.6<br />#1 0x000000000049f269 in hash_lookup (hid=0x79aae0, k=0x299f3e0) at hash.c:192<br />#2 0x000000000042c9bd in idnsCachedLookup (key=0xa733a8 "i12.ebaystatic.com", <br />callback=0x44ffe0 <ipcacheHandleReply>, data=0x7ad400) at dns_internal.c:1016<br />#3 0x000000000042d380 in idnsALookup (name=0x299f3e0 "thumbnail.videoegg.com",<br />callback=0xa733a8, data=0x7ad400) at dns_internal.c:1042<br />#4 0x00000000004506be in ipcache_gethostbyname (name=0x32bc628 "thumbnail.videoegg.com",<br />flags=1) at ipcache.c:521<br />#5 0x000000000040a3b4 in aclMatchAclList (list=0x78fe90, checklist=0xa730a8) at acl.c:1800<br />#6 0x000000000040ac50 in aclCheck (checklist=0xa730a8) at acl.c:2160<br />#7 0x00000000004200ae in clientReadRequest (fd=542, data=<value optimized out>) at<br />client_side.c:4058<br />#8 0x00000000004288f8 in comm_select (msec=<value optimized out>) at comm_generic.c:264<br />#9 0x0000000000452baa in main (argc=3, argv=<value optimized out>) at main.c:858<br /></pre><br />On the first look it seems to be the problem with hash_lookup function as it's calling strcmp repetitively. hash_lookup seems to be pretty generic function however and it's unlikely that it will do something that stupid. Looking at the rest of the stack, it seems pretty clear that the problem is either in the internal dns part of the code (<code>dns_internal.c</code>) or hash routines. After this it was all dirty work. Going through various parts of the squid code, mainly internal dns and hash routines, and trying different things. Interestingly, I nailed down the cause of the problem while sitting at a bus stop, waiting for the bus to Pune :) Luckily I had my laptop with me at that time and I could verify it immediately. For the results of my findings, I'll quote myself from the <a href="http://www.squid-cache.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=1968">bug report</a>:<br /><blockquote>The problem seems to be in the way squid's internal DNS system (<code>dns_internal.c</code>) keeps record of looked up but not yet answered DNS queries. This bug is hit specifically when multiple search paths are used in <code>/etc/resolv.conf</code>. <br /><br />Squid caches all dns queries before sending them to avoid duplicate queries for the same name. (look at: <code>idnsCacheQuery(q)</code> and <code>hash_table *idns_lookup_hash</code>, in <code>dns_internal.c</code>). This mechanism works well unless multiple search paths are defined in <code>/etc/resolv.conf</code>. When multiple dns search paths are defined, same query object is modified and next search path is concatenated to it's name. This query is cached again and resent.<br /><br />Problem is that the query is not unlinked before being cached and thus linked again. Only the key of hash object (that's actually name) changes this time; object itself remains same. This corrupts the hash table of looked up queries.</blockquote><br />Once you know the problem and what's causing it, it becomes pretty easy to fix that. That's true at least in the world of computers, especially open source world, if not generally in life :) So, I wrote a patch to fix it and it worked. <a href="http://www.squid-cache.org/bugs/attachment.cgi?id=1386&action=view">This patch</a> made into both the branches of squid - <a href="http://www.squid-cache.org/Versions/v2/2.6/changesets/11492.patch">2.6</a> and <a href="http://www.squid-cache.org/Versions/v3/3.0/changesets/10865.patch">3.0</a>. Also, it got me my name listed on the <a href="http://www.squid-cache.org/Versions/v3/3.0/changesets/index.html">changesets</a> page as a contributor :)<br /><br />It was really exciting as it was my first contribution (in the form of code) to an existing open source project. I have <a href="http://freshmeat.net/~manugarg/">started a couple</a> of small time open source projects, but contributing to an existing and mature project was another type of fun :-)Manuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03723641427799336562noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6900371.post-78086735795066733792007-04-23T23:35:00.000+05:302007-09-22T18:45:14.851+05:30Real Tail'ing in Pythonor, finding last few lines in a file.<br /><br />Ok. So, last solution was not perfect. It just returned last line from a file. What about returning say 10 or may be more lines? Here is the modified Tail function to do that:<br /><pre>def Tail(filepath, nol=10, read_size=1024):<br /> """<br /> This function returns the last line of a file.<br /> Args:<br /> filepath: path to file<br /> nol: number of lines to print<br /> read_size: data is read in chunks of this size (optional, default=1024)<br /> Raises:<br /> IOError if file cannot be processed.<br /> """<br /> f = open(filepath, 'rU') # U is to open it with Universal newline support<br /> offset = read_size<br /> f.seek(0, 2)<br /> file_size = f.tell()<br /> while 1:<br /> if file_size < offset:<br /> offset = file_size<br /> f.seek(-1*offset, 2)<br /> read_str = f.read(offset)<br /> # Remove newline at the end<br /> if read_str[offset - 1] == '\n':<br /> read_str = read_str[:-1]<br /> lines = read_str.split('\n')<br /> if len(lines) >= nol: # Got nol lines<br /> return "\n".join(lines[-nol:])<br /> if offset == file_size: # Reached the beginning<br /> return read_str<br /> offset += read_size<br /> f.close()<br /></pre><br />You can call it in your program like this:<br /><pre>Tail('/var/log/syslog') or,<br />Tail('/etc/httpd/logs/access.log', 100)</pre>Useful, Isn't it?<br /><br />Cheers,<br />-ManuManuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03723641427799336562noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6900371.post-54885519996520159212007-04-02T14:35:00.000+05:302007-09-22T18:41:53.131+05:30Tail'ing in Pythonor, finding last line of a huge file..<br /><br />How do you find the last line of a 2 GB log file from within your program? You don't want to go through the whole file, right? Right. What you want to do is, you want to start reading from end until you find a newline character. Here is how I did it in Python:<br /><br /><code></code><pre><br />def Tail(filepath, read_size=1024):<br /> """<br /> This function returns the last line of a file.<br /> Args:<br /> filepath: path to file<br /> read_size: data is read in chunks of this size (optional, default=1024)<br /> Raises:<br /> IOError if file cannot be processed.<br /> """<br /> f = open(filepath, 'rU') # U is to open it with Universal newline support<br /> offset = read_size<br /> f.seek(0, 2)<br /> file_size = f.tell()<br /> while 1:<br /> if file_size < offset:<br /> offset = file_size<br /> f.seek(-1*offset, 2)<br /> read_str = f.read(offset)<br /> # Remove newline at the end<br /> if read_str[offset - 1] == '\n':<br /> read_str = read_str[0:-1]<br /> lines = read_str.split('\n')<br /> if len(lines) > 1: # Got a line<br /> return lines[len(lines) - 1]<br /> if offset == file_size: # Reached the beginning<br /> return read_str<br /> offset += read_size<br /> f.close()<br /></pre><br /><br />(There will hardly be any reason to change read_size. I used it mainly for testing.)<br /><br />It works quite similar to the way Unix 'tail -1' works. It can be easily be modified to return last 10 or 'n' lines, I believe. But, I haven't got the time and reason to try that yet :)<br /><br />Remember, it's supposed to be called from within the python programs, not from command line (because Unix tail does that better ;-)).<br /><br />I have done quite a bit of testing, so it must be safe to use.<br /><br />cheers,<br />ManuManuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03723641427799336562noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6900371.post-58748358419035864832007-01-25T23:26:00.004+05:302008-05-10T22:24:04.717+05:30pactester - a tool to test proxy auto-config (PAC) filesHackers and Sysadmins :-)<br /><br />Google has recently released "<a href="http://code.google.com/p/pactester">pactester</a>", a tool to test <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proxy_auto-config">proxy auto-configuration (PAC)</a> files. Use of PAC files is becoming more and more common because of automation and ease of administration provided by them. Before pactester there was no "real" way to test the PAC files. We could tell whether this site will be accessible using this PAC file or not. But, we could not tell which proxy server will be used for a specific URL unless we examine the traffic using some network sniffer or check the access logs at the proxy server. Both of these ways were not very accessible and were time consuming. Of course, another way to test would be the manual inspection of PAC files, but again it's error prone and quite impractical for large and complex PAC files.<br /><br />Pactester resolves all these issues by simulating the browser behavior. It evaluates the PAC file in a JavaScript context and returns the proxy server for a specific URL using the PAC file's logic. It's written in perl and uses the same JavaScript code to evaluate the PAC file functions as is used by Mozilla browsers. Documentation, in the form of README and INSTALL files, is included in the source code tarball. Some relevant URLs:<br /><br />Project home page: <a href="http://code.google.com/p/pactester">http://code.google.com/p/pactester</a><br />Project download: <a href="http://code.google.com/p/pactester/downloads/list">http://http://code.google.com/p/pactester/downloads/list</a><br />Quick Documentation: <a href="http://pactester.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/README">http://pactester.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/README</a><br />Mailing list and discussion group: <a href="http://groups.google.com/group/pactester">http://groups.google.com/group/pactester</a><br /><br />Tested to works on: Linux, Mac OS X, Windows-Cygwin<br /><br />Cheers to open source!! :-)<br />-M<br />---<br />Manu Garg/<a href="http://www.manugarg.com">http://www.manugarg.com</a>/"Journey is the destination of life"<br /><br />Update: Now there is an implementation of pactester in C using <a href="http://code.google.com/p/pacparser">pacparser</a> library. Compiled binary of pactester for Windows can be downloaded from <a href="http://code.google.com/p/pactester/downloads/list">pactester</a> download page.Manuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03723641427799336562noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6900371.post-19795057416672127272006-11-06T19:20:00.000+05:302007-09-24T00:27:53.586+05:30BackTrack 2.0 beta on USB stickI have been playing with backtrack installation on USB since last 3 days. Just thought of sharing my experiences with you. I have a 2 GB USB stick. I wanted to create 2 partitions on it and install backtrack in one of them. Don't ask my why - I just wanted to play with different boot options on a USB stick. Here is what I learned from last 3 days of head breaking:<br /><br />1. Using a filesystem other than FAT/FAT32 on USB stick is a bad idea. I tried ext2 and ext3. Sometimes they work and sometimes (and on some systems) they fail for no reason.<br /><br />2. Bootloader 'grub' is a bad choice for USB boot. 'grub' tries to know too much about the system and when things change it just raises the hands and aborts. I could get it run my USB stick, but it was very unreliable.<br /><br />3. Bootloader 'lilo' also didn't work always. I worked on my laptop, while it got stuck in between on my desktop. I don't know whether it was 'lilo' or filesystem ext2. I didn't test with FAT32. Not to mention that it's 20 times slower than any other bootloader in loading the kernel image.<br /><br />4. Bootloader 'extlinux' is also unreliable. On the same system, sometimes it works and sometimes not.<br /><br />5. Bootloader 'syslinux' with FAT32 seems to be the most stable thing till now. I think, I'll stop experimenting with other bootloaders and filesystems on my USB stick until somebody convinces me to do otherwise :)<br /><br />To install backtrack on USB stick (I've been looking for these instructions for quite some time. No, I didn't want to use MySlax Creator.):<br /><ul><li>Create partitions on your USB stick using fdisk and format them using mkfs.vfat.<br /><pre>fdisk /dev/sda<br />mkfs.vfat /dev/sda1<br />mkfs.vfat /dev/sda2<br /></pre><br />Make sure that the partition that you want to use for backtrack is marked as active in partition table.<br /></li><br /><li>Mount 'the' partition on /mnt and copy all the files from one of the following locations:<br /><ul><li>If you are installing from a running live cd distribution, your source is <code>/boot</code>.</li><li>On any other system, just copy everything from BT iso image/CDROM or USB stick.</li></ul></li><br /><li>Install <a href="http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/boot/syslinux/">syslinux</a> bootloader to the backtrack partition and copy the <code>mbr.bin</code> that comes with syslinux to MBR of the USB stick:<br /><pre>syslinux /dev/sda1<br />cat mbr.bin > /dev/sda<br /></pre></li><br /><li>Copy isolinux.cfg inside <code>/mnt</code> to <code>syslinux.cfg</code> and change the paths <code>/boot/vmlinuz</code> and <code>/boot/initrd.gz</code> to <code>vmlinuz</code> and <code>initrd.gz</code> respectively. One way to do it:<br /><pre>cd /mnt<br />sed 's/boot\///g' isolinux.cfg > syslinux.cfg<br /></pre></li><br /><li>Your USB stick is ready to roll now :)<br /></li></ul>This procedure can be followed for hard drive installation also. You would probably have another bootloader already installed on the hard drive. In that case you can just add an entry for BT.<br /><br />Hope this will help backtrackers.<br />MManuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03723641427799336562noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6900371.post-12164714354810517452006-11-03T20:22:00.000+05:302006-11-13T20:00:17.372+05:30Some Modules For Backtrack 2.0 BetaI have compiled some modules during my testing/use of BT 2.0 beta. Here are some modules that you could find useful:<br /><br />NTFS read/write support using ntfs-3g: <a href="http://manugarg.googlepages.com/ntfs-3g-0.20061031-BETA.mo">http://manugarg.googlepages.com/ntfs-3g-0.20061031-BETA.mo</a><br />More information on ntfs-3g can be found in my previous post: <a href="http://manugarg.blogspot.com/2006/07/release-of-ntfs-3g-beta-read-write.html">"Release of ntfs-3g beta, read write driver for ntfs" </a><br /><br />LVM2 support. Device-mapper userspace tools and lvm2 tools are required to make lvm2 work in BT:<br /><a href="http://manugarg.googlepages.com/device-mapper.1.02.12-i386.mo">http://manugarg.googlepages.com/device-mapper.1.02.12-i386.mo</a><br /><a href="http://manugarg.googlepages.com/LVM2-2.02.13-i386.mo">http://manugarg.googlepages.com/LVM2-2.02.13-i386.mo</a><br />Note: muts has already been informed and he has pushed these binaries in the cvs. So next release won't require these modules.<br /><br />I'll update the modules for this release in this thread only to make it easier to find them.<br /><br />Happy Backtracking ;)<br />M<br /><br />Update: Nov 12, 2006<br />--------------------<br />Here comes the new modules: <a href="http://www.truecrypt.org/">truecrypt</a>. A very useful encryption utility.<br /><a href="http://manugarg.googlepages.com/truecrypt-4.2a.mo">http://manugarg.googlepages.com/truecrypt-4.2a.mo</a><br /><br /><a href="javascript:location.href='http://digg.com/submit?phase=2&url=http://manugarg.blogspot.com/2006/11/some-modules-for-backtrack-20-beta.html'">Digg this</a>; <a href="javascript:location.href='http://del.icio.us/post?v=2&url=http://manugarg.blogspot.com/2006/11/some-modules-for-backtrack-20-beta.html&title=Some Modules For BackTrack 2.0 Beta'">Post to del.icio.us</a>Manuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03723641427799336562noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6900371.post-670982130557878292006-10-31T14:16:00.000+05:302006-10-31T14:59:27.815+05:30Release of Backtrack 2.0 BetaSome news and some experiences:<br /><a href="http://secmaniac.blogspot.com/">mutts</a> and <a href="mailto:mmo@remote-exploit.org">max</a> released Backtrack 2.0 Beta about 2 weeks back. I have not got much time to test it extensively so far. Some inputs from the initial runs:<br /><br />-It looks even more sexier (very important :)).<br />-It has latest madwifi drivers. Phew, looks like I am finally relieved of compiling madwifi-ng with every release of backtrack. Very welcome change :)<br />-Kernel sources with the distribution. Here goes 1 more external module away.<br />-Replacement of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UnionFS">UnionFS</a> by <a href="http://aufs.sourceforge.net/">aufs</a> with zlib for modules. This allows for more stuff to be packed in less space. But, it also leaves older modules incompatible (who needs them anyways ;)).<br /><br />I tried to run it on my thinkpad z60t. My wireless card (Thinkpad a/b/g mini-pci, based on Atheros chipset) came up just fine with madwifi drivers. Monitor mode also seems to work fine. For monitor mode, I had to use wifi0 as source in Kismet configuration, while rest of the networking stuff works fine with ath0.<br /><br />For graphics, do run 'xorgsetup' while you're in black and white land. It will setup your xorg.conf and doing a 'startx' will take you to the KDE.<br /><br />So far it looks really cool. Thanks to muts and max. They are doing some neat stuff. Backtrack is already my favorite distribution for any kind of troubleshooting or security stuff. I'll be posting more of my experiences as I get the time to test it more.<br /><br />Happy Backtracking till then.<br />-MManuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03723641427799336562noreply@blogger.com0