Buy it.

This travelogue /trip report is about Greendale Homestay, a private coffee estate residence, unlike the many other commercial homestay ventures . As a traveller, the place where I stay is as important as the destination I visit. So I felt like sharing some information on this place to help fellow travellers.

Note: This is not a paid report nor am I associated with Greendale Homestay in any way.

Destination: Greendale Estate, Pandravalli, Chikmagalur District

Accommodation Type: Homestay /Private Residence

Location Type: Hill Station /Nature /Calm /Peaceful

Activities: Relaxation /Trekking /Off Roading (SUV) /Coffee Tours

The estate is owned & run by Mr. Arvind. One hell of an energetic young chap. If you love cars or are into rally/offroading, you will gel with him instantly. Not that you wont gel with him otherwise, but he respects your privacy and will not disturb you through your stay. But if you have some interesting stuff to talk about cars, you are in for a ride.

Talking about rides, he owns a Tata Safari, couple of Jeeps & a modified Gypsy which he uses for his off roading trips. If you are nice enough, he just might take you on an off roading drive along the Western Ghats.

Accommodation options are two huge rooms on the first floor of Arvind’s private residence, coupled with a large sit-out balcony with sweeping views of the vast valley below. Or you can chose between five cozy cottage rooms in the outhouse, a few minutes walk from his residence. There is a small kitchen & dining room that can seat about 40 folks. Food is simple homecooked fare, which is the same for guests as well as Arvind & his wife & staff.

Like I mentioned earlier, this is not a commercial homestay. So Arvind does not always entertain every guest. Before arriving, you need to call him, check availability of rooms & he will ask about how you heard about the place etc.

Rooms are cozy, with a double bed that can be split into two single beds. Warm blankets, pillows, towels, a bar of soap is provided. Clean bathrooms with Western toilet, a gas ‘geyser’ to ensure hot water whenever you want. Food is not served inside the rooms to prevent insects. You can munch on some starters outside in the portico though. For dinner, you need to walk to the dining hall. Standard tariff is Rs.1800 per head including accommodation, tea/coffee whenever you want, breakfast, lunch, evening snacks & dinner. You can ask for jeep ride to nearby destinations. And if you are nice, maybe you get to ride in the Gypsy.

I do not recommend places of accommodation easily. But when I do, it is places like these. A must visit destination for the freshest air you can breathe.

Do mention my name when you contact Arvind!

Some photos /videos of my various visits:

The house – Owner Arvind & his Wife stay on the ground floor. Select guests are accommodated on the 1st floor.

Portico infront of the two rooms on the first floor of the house. Notice road behind,winds down ahead down to the ground floor

The road from pic above winds down this way. Further take a U turn to drive along winding roads downhill, through the 100 acre estate.

The drive to the estate itself is a fantastic experience. Some asphalt roads..

And some gravel roads.

Once you reach, this is the view, as seen from the portico. Here, the fog has engulfed what would otherwise be a panoramic view of a forest valley that extends to the horizon.

The homestay, as seen from the road inside the estate downhill

Clouds play hide & seek throughout the day. A bit of sunshine, then fog. Continuous. Bottom left you can see roof of the dining hall, further, on the lawns is the bonfire pit. 5 guest room outhouse is past the lawn.

The turbo charged Gypsy of Arvind. You need to go on a drive with him to understand how amazing it is.

If you are lucky enough to be taken on a ride by Arvind, one of the many roads you will be driving through. 6500 ft above sea level.

Arvind does off roading. And how!

King of the hills!

It has a growl to match its demeanour.

Want to drive the Gypsy down hillocks & park it at the edge of a cliff? Easy!

Edge!

A sample video of the drive in the Gypsy. Watch with the audio ON. 

Video of Arvind demonstrating the fireblade turbo (apologies for video quality)

People cheat. There’s no escaping it. No matter how alert you are, only a matter of time you let your guard down and.. boom!

I am a car guy & like love driving. Whether it’s helping others buy cars or plan car trips, I take pride in helping people to avoid getting scammed /places that cheat people. One such concern is petrol bunks. There are many ways a petrol bunk operator can cheat you. There is one pet favourite of all cheating petrol bunks. And I fell prey to it yesterday.

Yesterday, I drove to HRBR Layout on some work and the car was running out of fuel. Noticed a HP Petrol bunk near Hennur Bus Depo & proceeded to get Rs.500 worth petrol for the car. Here is the sequence of events:

*I drive the car infront of the pump*

Attendant1 (at the pump on the passenger window side): “Saar how much?”

Me: “Rs.500″

Attendant2 (standing next to the driver window side): “How much saar?”

Me (seated in the driver seat,turn to the right to answer): “Rs.500″

A2 to A1: “Aye put 500″

*I turn left towards A1/petrol pump to check zero, while taking my credit card out from my wallet”

A1: “Saar see zero”

Me: “ok”

*A1 inserts nozzle inside the tank & at THAT VERY moment..”

A2: “Saar give saaar” (asking for cash/card)

*I turn right to A2 & hand over my card. Before I turn back to the pump..”

A2: “Saar you have payback card?”

Me: “No” and I turn towards the pump

*I notice A1 punching in Rs.100 in the pump with the nozzle in his hand”

A1: “Saar ok Rs.100 put”

Me: “I asked for Rs.500″

A1: “Oh 500aaa I thought 100″ punches Rs.400 and starts the nozzle.

Me: “I said 500 why are putting 400″

A1: “That time I put 100 now 400 so 500 ok saar”

Me: “I saw you punching 100. Don’t bullshit me.”

*By then I knew I was scammed. Had faced similar distracting moves earlier at other bunks but was alert”

A2: *comes with card swipe receipt for 500*

*Lot of argument ensues with the bouncer type attendants*

Me (to A2): “I know you assholes scammed me. Good for you” and drove away.

So, here is what you should do and should not do at a petrol bunk to avoid getting scammed this way:

What you SHOULD DO:

• After you stop infront of the pump, engage the car handbrake and get out of the car.
• Stand near the fuel tank & tell the attendant how much fuel you want.
• If the pump has keypad to enter amount of fuel in litres/value, ask attendant to punch in the value & not just pump directly.
• Keep your eyes on the gauge to make sure it is zero. If the attendant is in a hurry,ask him to wait for zero.
• Now keep your eyes on the nozzle, ask the attendant to remove his hands from the nozzle since the pump auto stops after punched in value has been pumped.
• Ensure the value is displayed on the gauge.
• Now take out your wallet & pay the cash/card.

What you should NOT DO:

• Do not sit inside the car if you can get out as mentioned above.
• If the fuel station is too crowded /or cannot get out of the car,roll up the driver side window and keep your eyes glued on the fuel pump.
• DO NOT take out your cash/card until the fuel has been pumped completely.
• No matter what, DO NOT TURN AWAY FROM THE PUMP.

Lesson learnt.

**UPDATE**

I had written to HP customer care regarding my experience at their outlet on 22 July 2012. Today i.e 24 July 2012, I received a call from Mr. Vasu AP, Manager of the aforementioned HP Fuel Station called me & apologized unconditionally and requested details of the car & card transaction number so that he can check who were the attendants who handled the service during my visit and assured to call me within a day with the details and to ensure I get a refund. I was pleasantly surprised by this. Will update on any further developments.

**SECOND UPDATE**

The manager of the Company Owned Company Operated pump station contacted me & informed that the two attendants have been suspended & invited me to his pump so they can refund the money. I was busy & could not take time to drive all the way to the pump. The owner was unyielding & continued to call me on my phone to get me to the pump. I told him it is fine & I am not looking for a refund. Then he said he has instructed the attendants to personally meet me, refund the money from their pocket & get a letter signed from me that I have forgiven them.

Now the attendants started calling me, requesting me to let them know where they can meet me so they can apologize & get their jobs back.

I met the attendant who manned the pump, who returned the money to me, I wrote a letter saying I have forgiven his cheating episode & have no problem if he is allowed to work at the pump. The cashier was nowhere to be seen/heard.

In January 2010, I needed a phone to make Skype calls to a near one who was travelling to Europe. My Sony Ericsson K550i was a minion who started to die on me within hours of resuscitation (charging). The choices in the market gave me a headache. After much consultations and discussions with people in the know, I still had the headache.

A friend owned a Nokia E63 which I used for a few minutes to chat on ‘fring’. Liked it. Thought its a good buy, given the fact that all I needed was Skype. But life’s no fun if all decisions are so simple now, is it? Just when I was about to buy the E63, Nokia announced free navigation on Nokia maps. Being a travel addict that I am, the feature was droolworthy.

So I decided to go for E72, which had a GPS. Skype for now, and free navigation for later, I thought. Purchased the black E72 at a Sangeetha outlet for about Rs.19,000 (this was 26 January 2010).

First Impressions:

• The phone ‘felt’ well built, but the battery cover was ‘fidgety’. Could notice an ever so light movement/tacky sound.
• It was unfamiliar territory for my palms to hold such a large device compared to the minnow K550i.
• Took time to get used to QWERTY, but it was pleasant to type with.
• Earphones that came with the package were horrendous. Wouldn’t snugly fit in my ears. Painful. Rubber tips/rings were useless.
• The USB cable was shorter than Tyrion Lannister’s^ wee wee. Ultra short. ^Game of Thrones reference
• A pouch was part of the box contents. Again, horrendous. Wouldn’t fit easily. Threw it in the attic.

Charged the phone, inserted the sim card, let the settings wizard take care of basic settings. Typing was fun. Having push email was fun. Gravity app for twitter was much fun. The UI sucked big time. Had to navigate through nooks & corners to find basic features & settings. But none of it mattered. I needed it for Skype calls.

Usability:

• When switched on, a Windows 98 PC would boot faster than the Nokia E72. Even Captain Slow would be ashamed.
• The Skype app would crash when I tried to login. Had to use Nimbuzz /Fring.
• Again, the UI was sluggish. Very frustrating to use.
• The Camera gives me nightmares. Takes an eternity for the camera UI to load. Super sluggish to use.
• With the camera on, if you switch off the flash & try to click a picture, the LED flash still lights up while auto focus happens.ARGH
• The fidgety back cover made tack tack sound while I held it in both palms & typed. One edge of it didn’t fit snugly.
• Nokia maps looked like it was meant for the Neolithic era. Google maps beat the latitudes out of Nokia maps. Totally.
• Battery backup was sweet for few months. Easily 2 days with push email ON. Within an year, it reduced to <8 hours.
• Setting up Wi-Fi only or no Wi-Fi even when available etc is a painful & most of the times a futile experience

Those are probably the important impressions worth sharing. In these two years of ownership, I have dropped the E72 many times, except for small scratches around the edge, it still looks brand new. One just cant beat Nokia when it comes to build quality. The phone got drenched in rain more than a couple of times. A sauna session in a bucket of uncooked rice & voilà! Its back to working normally.

What’s Good:

• Build quality
• Keyboard
• GPS accuracy
• Quality of pictures from the 5MP camera is decent
• LED flash can be used as a flashlight.

What’s Bad:

• The Symbian OS
• User Interface
• The Camera UI (OH HAVE MERCY! Its a torture!)
• Nokia Maps
• Whatever else that’s not on the aforementioned Good section

So there you have it. Nokia E72: Bungee jumper, swimmer, likes rain. But sucks as a phone. Don’t buy if someone tries to sell one to you.

Every time I heard about a fire accident somewhere, I would tweet saying I will upload a document on fire safety basics. But being a world champion procrastinator, it never materialized.

Recently, a friend on twitter, @VIOLETT  mentioned in an email about a kitchen fire accident at a friends place in US. I was not really busy with work then, so it encouraged me to prepare a document to share with you folks.

Please go through this 30 page PDF document that explains types of fires and what kind of fire extinguishers to be used. It also mentions briefly about Kitchen fires and evacuation during fires.

This is only a reference material. This is to encourage you to go out and walk in your office area, observe where the exits are, where the extinguishers are placed so you are mentally prepared to react during a fire.

Remember, proactive measures matter more than reactive measures.

Please download the PDF from here: Fire Safety Basics.

Also, do watch these two videos on fire safety

Why Seconds Count in a Fire:

Kitchen Oil Fire:

One name that triggers shivers through the spines of F1 drivers and fans alike!

Regarded as the greatest Formula One driver of all times, Ayrton Senna was a drivers driver. For me he is synonymous with pure racing. Just drive to be the fastest, to be Number 1. Nothing else. No other driver would actively involve in technical discussions with the team and plan every minute detail about the car, like Senna did. This zest to be the best & technical prowess only added to his unbeatable talent on the tracks. Even the drivers from other teams acknowledge that Senna had an uncanny ability to know which part of the track had the best grip. He was a fierce competitor. To quote the man himself

“By being a racing driver you are under risk all the time. By being a racing driver means you are racing with other people. And if you no longer go for a gap that exists, you are no longer a racing driver because we are competing, competing to win. And the main motivation to all of us is to compete for victory, it’s not to come 3rd, 4th, 5th or 6th. I race to win”

Every race he was a part of, is a delight to watch. Thrilling moments guaranteed! From his mind numbing manoeuvres that won him record number of  pole position, to his ruthless overtaking to win the podium: Breathtaking! It is tough to pick out a particular race as the most thrilling, because there are so many! Be it the Monaco Grand Prix of 1984 where he started at 13 and won the 2nd place, or the 1989 Japanese Grand Prix where he went on to win even after a crash, or the practice lap at Spa in 1992 where he risked his own life to jump out of his car and save Erik Comas who had crashed. Every race of his has its own story. But what can be called as a race that defines Senna and is incredibly thrilling, is the 1991 Brazilian Grand Prix.

Having won two world championships and many more accolades, Senna had never won an F1 race in his home country. That was to change on 21 March 1991, co incidentally, his Birthday.

What would have been a routine race with its share of memorable moments, took a dramatic twist 60 laps into the 67 lap race. The omnipresent clouds started to pour rain onto the tracks, making it greasy. But that did not stop Senna, in fact he thrived on the wet track. But then, his McLaren’s gearbox got jammed in 6th gear. A  car powered by 1250 horses, stuck in 6th gear is essentially undriveable, leave alone on a wet track through the curves. But Senna was determined to win this for his countrymen and pushed beyond his physical limits, chewing away every corner and leading through the entire race, while stuck in 6th gear. After the race, his body was so physically spent that his hands were numb and stuck on the steering wheels. After being ‘extracted’ out of the car, he could not move properly or be touched. Later on the podium, he struggles to lift the Brazilian flag and the trophy, but still manages to hoist it up for a few seconds, dedicating the victory to his Country.

Senna later summarized it , saying “God gave me this race”.

This, for me is one of the most thrilling races I have ever watched. This is what F1 is all about, pushing boundaries to an extent where you have extracted everything there is to get. Years of research and resources are poured into cars to achieve half a second more. Every single part is refined over and over again to achieve greatness. F1 is not just about speed & stamina. For me, it is about determination, to achieve excellence of the highest order. Ayrton once said “On a given day, a given circumstance, you think you have a limit. And you then go for this limit and you touch this limit, and you think, ‘Okay, this is the limit.’ As soon as you touch this limit, something happens and you suddenly can go a little bit further. With your mind power, your determination, your instinct, and the experience as well, you can fly very high.”

Senna, you are missed.

(watch the highlights of the race in this 03m 22s video)

Me: Doc, what is the purpose of life?

Doc: To eventually die <she thought I was trolling with that question>

Me: So why do we have to get attached with things to only get detached, why do we have to struggle, go through happiness and sadness, why do we have to win and lose, why do we feel like pleasing others and expect others to please us, why do we have to do all that we do?

Doc: Coz if not, we would be God!

Me: You mean God sits and does nothing and we are here to go through this cycle of momentary sadness and happiness ?

Doc: Yes, to sit quiet and not do anything, you got to be up there!

Me: But if sadness and happiness are momentary, what is there to look forward to in life? Where is the motivation when the end result is death?

Doc: When you are sad, look forward to the happiness and when you are happy, enjoy while it lasts, coz sorrow is lurking somewhere around

Me: We always want happiness, not sorrow. Happiness is like rare things: gold, diamond, platinum..All the struggle and sorrow we go through is to experience momentary happiness. This makes life materialistic,to seek happiness.Sucks.

I guess Doc got busy after that and there was no reply. I continued with my work, going through a cycle of happiness & sorrow. Living.

Why so much hatred towards upma, you may ask. I will explain. But not before introducing upma to you.

Ah Upma! Take some roasted Rava (Semolina), then boil some vegetables in water, dump the roasted rava in the water, add masala thingamajig, stir till it forms a gooey lump and woohoo you have breakfast. (that’s my rough recipe for you). Tastes fine with the green chillies, carrots, beans, salt and all that. Problem begins when you turn the roasted rava INTO A LUMP OF CONCRETE 

Now, do you know what else can be prepared using rava?

1. Rava Dosa!

Thin & crisp rava dosa, to be dipped in chutney & saagu/gravy.

2. Rava Vada!

Crisp hot vada’s, to be nibbled with chai, watching the rain outside

3. Rava Vegetable Cutlet

Crunchy crispy cutlets with a soft spicy veggie filling

4. Rava Fish Fry

Kane rave fry,crispy batter, soft protein filled seafood goodness inside.

Then for desserts you can have Rava Laddo, Rava Halwa, Rava Payasam, Rava Burfi… get the drift?

So, tell me dear Moms, Wives, Sisters & men of the world who cook; when there are so many other tasty dishes you can prepare using rava, why do you have to go and cook a lump of rava concrete? You know? After eating this concrete, the tummy feels nice and full. But hours later, it stays plastered to the walls of my stomach making me feel all pukey.

Please, lets stop teaching upma recipe’s to our daughters and sons, so atleast in their generation, this shoddy excuse of a dish ceases to exist and they shall live a happier life.

Thank You. #Upmahatersunite

(all images have been simply lifted off a google search, à la The Times of India. If you own the copyright of any image, please rage a bit, post a link to this blog on twitter accusing me of stealing your stuff. Then I might issue an apology saying I thought all the images on the internet are belongs to us. Problem?)

This domain+hosting was purchased two years ago. Renewed them last year (yet to pay @hnprashanth for the hosting). Apart from learning some wordpress & cPanel basics from @Sathyabhat , have not really put the blog to use. Like any amateur bugger, first thing I did was setup adsense lol! Minting money. NOT.

With plenty of changes in life & unlimited roller coaster rides, it got me thinking. I really had to push myself ahead and move on, restart. Have been procrastinating a LOT in the recent past and it really bugged me. So have made some small action item list which I am determined to implement and let some fresh air in. Part of the list:

1. Make some space on my PC and move files to my HDD – Done!
2. Change the theme of the blog, post regularly on my ideas, plans, observations, just anything – Failing at this!
3. Save money -  HAHAHHAHAHAHAHAH…ha…h
4. Join a gym or guitar class. Or both – Yet to be done
5. Go on a vacation in June, to just anywhere. Ask friends for company. But just go *essential* – Done! Had one of the best trips ever in July. 2,500 Kms. Just drove, throwing plans and maps out of the window. And found a travel buddy who is as enthu about travel as I am and does not get tired. #WIN
6. Buy new laptop – Kiran Lingappa ki daya se hojayega
7. Get myself new pair of cool spectacles – Done (dont know of the coolness quotient though)
8. Trip to Goa in November with a friend & friends’ cousins – Planned (Oh,LOTS of trips are planned)
9. Take parents , grandparents to Shirdi – Should plan – Yet to be done
10. Complete every item above by this year end and have a cheerful new years eve!

Feels good. Should write more and get back the grove of being able to express my opinions in a succinct manner, instead of punching out textbook length speeches :-\

Thanks for reading, and your comments & motivations will help.

Cheers!