Ooty and Coonoor trip Dec 2011

My family and our neighbour's family went for a 4 day trip to Ooty and Kurumba village (close to Coonoor) from 24 Dec to 27 Dec 2011. I had done some pre-bookings for 1 day in Ooty and 3 days and 2 nights in Kurumba village. In Ooty we booked the Monarch (Mithun da's hotel) based on feedback received from Suman.

We left early on 24th morning @ 5 am. Bonita was all ready with plastic covers in case Aabha got motion sickness. Aadi and Harsh were thoroughly excited. We took the Bangalore city route via city market to reach Mysore road - I learnt of this route from Kalyan and Ajay when we drove together to Coorg a few weeks back for an offsite. This route makes sense if one is leaving Bangalore very early since it took around 40 minutes to hit Mysore road - from Nice road it would have taken close to 1 hour.

Our first stop was... yes you guessed it... Kamat Lokaruchi which comes a few minutes after Ramanagaram. We had wonderful breakfast here - wadas, chow chow bhath and dosas. The stong coffee was quite good too. We then restarted our journey and in a few minutes Aabha wanted to visit the loo - hence we stopped @ Adigas. Out of nowhere my old friend Shoe (Seshadri from IIMC) meets me there! He lives in London and was here for holidays and I meet him there! It was great to meet Shoe - but we could not talk for too much time since the rest of the folks were waiting and we resumed our journey.

We took a chai stop before Bandipur. Post this we entered the Bandipur jungles - we saw some deers on the way. Then we hit Mudumalai - essentially entered Tamilnadu. Aabha got a severe bout of motion sickness and puked quite a few times... poor girl looked very tired.

We crossed Mudumalai and then hit the road towards Ooty when the hair pin bends started - 35 of them! Initially my car was not doing well for the first couple of bends - but then I got the hang of it and things started becoming easier.

After driving for about 7 hours, we reached Ooty @ about 12:30 - 1:00 pm and landed at the Monarch.

Monarch - while the location is good and the hotel is grand (large), the upkeep is not great. There was a big school contingent probably from Mumbai. We checked into the rooms and then decided to have lunch @ Tiffany's restaurant that we saw on the way and which looked quite cute.

Tiffany's restaurant is in Willow Hill hotel and is a good place to eat. This is a part of the Alankar group (possibly from Coimbatore). We had good lunch - the fried rice was particularly tasty! The non-veg food seemed good too (not first hand opinion since I am veggie!). Willow Hill has a good garden with children's play area where I took Aabha and Yashu to play... they had a good time.

Post a good lunch, we decided to hire an Innova to do some sight seeing around Ooty. Here is where my fluent (pun intended) Tamil started to come of use since I used it extensively with the driver. We first went to Doddabetta peak which is supposed to be the 2nd highest peak in south India @ 8650 feet and is the highest in the Nilgiri hills. It was a good drive up to the peak - but the peak itself was quite disappointing - crowded and very standard Indian touristic place (we need to learn how to mark up and market our assets!). Aabha was asleep and I sat on the side with her while the rest of the gang walked around to see the valley from the top. We bought gloves for the kiddos and proceeded on our journey.

We decided to give the botanical gardens a miss and went straight for the lake. There was a queue to buy tickets to enter the lake! We lost 10-15 minutes to buy tickets... how ridiculous. Once inside, we decided to do boating and guess what... once again we had to stand in a queue to buy tickets... this time the queue was a bit faster and in 5-10 min we had tickets for 2 paddle boats - 4 seaters.

Each family took a paddle boat and started paddling. It is a nice lake and luckily was not too crowded. Aabha sat in the front and assumed the leadership role of the captain who was constantly giving directions. Aadi and I took the paddling positions and we started paddling hard - yes it is hard work! We tried to collide with Harsh's boat - but they steered clear. Finally another boat collided gently with us... Aadi was excited. We did this for about 30 minutes and then parked the boat back.

Post this, there were a lot of random activities performed - stuff purchased from magic shop, popcorn, Ooty chocolates round one etc. Then Aadi and Harsh went to horror place while Aabha and Yashu went to toy train. Then came a key milestone of the trip - Aabha's first horse ride.... she rode with me and was quite cool. 100 Rs for a 10 min horse ride! (unionism @ work).

Then we went shopping in the main street - the ladies got busy shopping for oil and chocolates. The amazing point here was how the locals park cars - they steer for every inch!

Post this, we returned to the hotel. Time for drinks and dinner. There was a local band for Christmas eve... but not great - so we ordered for food in the room.

We decided to take it easy the next day morning and had a relaxed breakfast... the breakfast food was not great... would not recommend this hotel. Post that Aadi, Harsh and I did some sports - first badminton and then for a 10 goal game of football. During this time, Aabha visited the garden and did some merry go round.

Post this we checked out and headed out to Kurumba village. We took the Coimbatore-Mettupalayam road. This was a nice drive - we passed some nice small towns including Wellington and Coonoor. We stopped for chai in Coonoor and bought some green tea. We saw the beautiful single gauge train that goes from Coonoor to Ooty. We then took the road to Kurumba village. We had to cross around 8 hair pin bends starting from 13/13 to 5/13. But when we reached 7/13, there was a big traffic jam due to an accident. We had to wait for about 30-45 minutes. By this time, Aadi fell a little sick and was resting in the back seat. We then saw a small board that said "Kurumba village" and we stopped to take the small right - but Nimish drove right past and there was NO cell phone signal here. We decided to hit the resort and assumed that Nimish will head back in sometime.

The road down to the resort was a steep one and we finally reached the resort - a beautiful place!

The Kurumba resort is around 8 years old but maintained wonderfully well. It was a spice plantation before. The resort has a spring and waterfall within the resort! There are around 15-20 cottages/ suites - all intricately designed. The last cottage is a good 5 min walk from the reception and we got the last one! Luckily they upgraded one of our rooms to a suite adjoining the cottage and we settled into our homes for the next 2 days. Our rooms face the stream... and the sound was fantastic!

Finally Nimish landed and by this time we were all very hungry. We attacked the food and the lunch spread was excellent. I had my fill of Keera Kootu (palak preparation) and rasam with papadams! The curd rice was good too.... actually all the dishes were good with a mix of authentic South Indian and other varieties.

Over the next 2 days all of us enjoyed the wonderful food, scenic views from our rooms and some chilled time reading books. We also visited the stream a couple of times with the children and all of us were very excited putting our leg and doing a bit of trekking in the cold stream water.

On day one evening, there was a Karagattam (Tamilnadu native dance) that was performed by a renowned artist. Aabha was very excited to meet him - all dressed in traditional attire and we clicked some snaps with him. The dance performance was very nice.

On day two evening, there was a magic show and shadow show. Aadi and Harsh enjoyed the magic show and tried to guess how it was being performed!

On day two morning, Harsh, Aadi and I set out for some trekking. But, Aadi was quite unwell and his stomach started aching badly. Hence, we had to revert back half way with Aadi trying hard to walk. Our guide actually carried Aadi for a few minutes on his back - some fitness!

A highlight of our trip was a monkey attack - a group of monkeys - around 6-10 of them entered our room on day 2. The attacked all the food kept out - sugar sachets, some cold tea and a packet of bun. I have never faced a money attack - so was not sure what to do initially. Then I decided to shoo them off by literally running towards them from the floor above and that is what I did... they gradually retreated and I locked the balcony door. The resort folks also arrived by this time and drove them off!

Overall the stay @ Kurumba village resort was wonderful - one of the best places I have visited. The food was great, great scenery with terrific mountain and stream views and extremely helpful staff - I would definitely recommend this place - the money is well worth it!

Finally on 27th morning, it was time to say good bye to Kurumba and after breakfast we started our drive back to Bangalore.

We decided to take the route via the Pykara dam. Though this route was a much longer one as compared to the Ooty hair pin bends, the route was extremely scenic and I enjoyed the drive. Aadi continued to be sick and threw up a couple of times - luckily Aabha was fairly ok. After driving for 2-3 hours @ 30 km per hour through some great forests, we reached the Mudumalai forests and took our standard route back - Mudumalai-Bandipur-Gundelpet-Mysore-Bangalore. We stopped for lunch after Bandipur - pretty average place and average lunch of rotis with daal.

This was possibly one of my longest drives - we possibly drove for about 400km and reached home @ 8:15 pm having started at about 10:00 am.

Hence, ended a wonderful trip to Ooty, Coonoor and Kurumba village!

The state of India in ODI

Thanks to the last 1 or 2 years of ODI performance of the Indian cricket team, I am not a hard core addict to cricket anymore... but continue to be a keen enthusiast. But, that is not the point of this article... the point is about what the hell is going wrong?

In my mind the following are the reasons / root causes:

Point 1 - We dont have "any" all rounders in the current side. Even in the past one year, other than possibly Irfan for a brief stint we did not have a quality all rounder. Nassir Hussain as a commentator in the current India-England series has been very critical of this and correctly so. There are ppl who will say Yuvraj / Sachin / Saurav are allrounders... pls compare to Flintoff, Jacob Oram (NZ).... are our folks still all rounders?

Point 2 - Fielding... we say our standards have improved tremendously - but you just need to look at the current England team to see what improvement in standards mean. Australia, NZ and South Africa are far ahead ... now England seems to getting to their league. India is way behind (possibly the worst currently) - while we have a few good fielders like Yuvraj, our wicketkeepers are quite poor (Dhoni OR Kartik), Sachin/ Saurav/ Dravid are too old - average at max in the new standards, Powar/ Munaaf are pathetic and most others are average.

Point 3 - Killer instinct (related to aggression/ team spirit) - again I think we are in the league of West Indies in this matter ... and possibly Pakistan (who some years back during Waqar/ Wasims time had a lot of this). But most other quality teams including Sri Lanka is better in this in my view. Again, a lot of our folks play for individual records OR do not have the aggression in them to WIN every time/ every minute / every ball.. Saurav is possibly the best in this respect and all others are average or pathetic here. Is there a case to make Saurav the capt once again (Dravid to me is a gentleman and the game is no longer a gentleman's game... its rough, its fast, its rowdy!).

Point 4 - No sustained Excellence - Other than Dravid and possibly Sachin, I cannot name 1 player in the team in this parameter... all our bowlers and all our so called youth batsmen have fallen short on sustained excellence. Look at Australia - Simonds, Clarke (youth have have taken the game by its neck), McGrath, Pointing, Hayden, Gilchrist (oldies continue to raise the bar), Look at near to home Srilanka... look at NZ.... look at SA.... all these top teams have the oldies improving / sustaining and youth taking charge successfully!

What really is dissappointing is that in the corporate world India is really starting to successfully challenge and take on the world... but in sports we continue to deteriorate, continue to find excuses!

What is possibly the reason? My thought (atleast for cricket where there is no shortage of money) is completely political and incompetent management (ready BCCI).... I dont know enough ... but there would be players at grassroot who can be identified/ coached etc ...if not they need to be created and all of this is a BCCI responsibility?? Hence, though there are conflicting views on ICL .... I am all for it... a key reason for India's corporate competitiveness is the breaking of monopoly/ licence raj - same matra should work for cricket!

Kya mein Marathon bhagoonga? (Will/ can I run a marathon?)

Last week I decided that I will run the next Marathon that happens in Bangalore... there is a Wipro Run on 6 Oct. Why a marathon? For a while I have been flirting with getting back to shape... for the last 1 year I have played badminton and squash, done a bit of running, done a bit of yoga, done a bit of meditation... but nothing consistently. Hence, this time around I thought let me start with a goal - I went about looking for one and got an email last week on a "Run on 6 October"! Further motivation for running has come from the following people - Anil Ambani, couple of my client folks who regularly run the London Marathon (they plan 3 months in advance) and my friend Vivek Shukla's father who regularly runs at the age of possibly 60!

Next question I have - can I run a marathon, what should be my target distance? The considerations / background - my body is possibly not suited to long distance running. I am good at short spurts because all the games I have seriously played in my life such as basketball, tennis, badminton... all of them require running quick spurts and then resting for a few seconds before the next spurt. Hence possibly 7 km should be my target? I said 7 km I should be able to do fairly comfortably with some work... hence not good enough - I have decided to try 21 km!! (in corporate lingo this is called stretch goal!)

Making the decision to run and the target distance is the easy part - the hard part is the prep! I have started practising for the past 1 week. Initially day 1 I could run 2 KMs with great difficulty - but within 1 week I am able to run 4 KMs at a stretch and with walking breaks in between 5 KMs is very much possible (good start I would guess).... but still a long long way from trying out 21 KMs. I have around 5 weeks to go... will I be able to run 21 KMs?

I possibly need to do a lot of other stuff - cut down on smoking (more difficult than waking up at 6 am!), watch out for calories (need to lose weight so that my legs can carry on for more time!), eat more healthy stuff (reduce fats, carbs and increase proteins, vitamins?). Actually I have started on all of these... but 21 KMs is still far away!

Wishing myself luck for the next 5 weeks!

Me with Aadi - my 2 year old son