Monday, January 5, 2009

Welcoming 2009 with an Unforgettable Trip

2009 was fast approaching... There wasn’t even two weeks left for the count down. Once again, Chillaxguys were planning to celebrate the New Year in style. But then, how to make it memorable? Yes, a trip to DANDELI. This trip stands apart as an undisputed champion among all the trips I have been to, till date.


    The trip started with a train journey from Bangalore to Alnavar Jn. A cruiser, waiting outside the station, took us swiftly through the deciduous forests to the farm house, which was 10kms from Dandeli. The Stanley’s farm house, surrounded by a sunflower garden and a dense forest, is a real treat to watch. Rappelling atop the list was the first activity to exhaust our energy, which we gained from our breakfast. It was really exciting to stand parallel to the earth and trek down the cliff with the help of ropes. Coracle ride took us to the rocks in between the river where we had the Jacuzzi Bath. Nothing can buy us the fun we had during the Jacuzzi bath. Energy bars and lunch invigorated us to move ahead for rafting. Rafting was definitely, once in a life time experience. It taught us the art of teamwork and gave us an unlimited fun and indelible memories to store. In order to relax ourselves, we played cards while having snacks. Night Trekking, rather say walking, in the eerie jungle with a torch in our hand in quest of an animal was indeed adventurous. Even though we ended up finding only a wild cat, a wild frog and a wild ant, it was altogether a novel experience for many of us. We had our dinner and put latcha at Campfire with a wide variety of topics. The discussion did not last long as the sleep made us crawl into the tents nearby.


















We gave the river crossing activity a skip in Dandeli and made our way to Karvar. We visited Karvar beach but were asked to wait for five hours to visit Devbagh island. We changed our plans and visited Gokarna, which boasts of a famous temple and a beautiful beach. After visiting OM beach, we took a boat ride to reach Paradise beach. We went into the sea to around 100 meters and played with the waves. We trekked through a densely vegetated hill around an hour and reached Half-moon beach. A motorboat fetched us back to OM beach. The picturesque beaches and visitors around still weave my eyesight. We had our lunch at 3pm at a beach resort and returned to Alnavar Jn. Again the drowsiness that aroused out of latcha made me sneak into a berth in the train. The train raced to Bangalore keeping the pace with time but our memories of the trip are still afresh.

















Thanks to Devi and Swetha for visiting Dandeli earlier and providing us the info needed. Three cheers to Puppy for proposing, getting information and organizing the trip successfully. Not to forget the efforts of each and everyone in the group, for taking the reigns, wherever necessary, in organizing the trip.

Vinod, Chow, Sisa, Rana, Gora, Chinna, Jet and Puppy…

Hip Hip… HURRAH!!!


Please check the following link to see the pics:

http://picasaweb.google.co.in/jet706/DandeliGokarnaTrip#