JBU Kodai trip -- tour diary part 1

Wow, its almost a month now and the memories are still fresh. (My wife will be really upset if she happens to read this because she often complains that i donot remember anything that she says!!)

Now, to begin with, the hectic preparation for the trip started with arranging transport for the team to go to Kodai.. it was less more stressful that i had imagined with people dropping (and again getting included) off the roster list every few minutes.

Finally, when the train started of the Egmore station, it was to my wonderful team to check how many finally made it and have the count done. Its not easy job in a train full of fun-crazy maniacs (not in offensive or derogatery sense) trying to do all they can to forget all the worldly sorrows and be in a virtual world full of joy.

After a few hours and it was almost midnight, I thought the levels would be normal back again, but noone seemed to care that they had a 3AM start next day morning. The decibel levels might have made environment ministry issue notices, but heck, who cared...

In my share of having fun, i even forgot that i had the last meal around 9AM in the morning !!!!My tummy started to ask difficult questions and i was sitting quite to see if i could grab any food that may come in the stations on the way. But no luck there!! Finally, i thought, i will ask someone whether they had a vision to buy some extra packs of food, and guess what, my friend, praveen had a stock one left... i grabbed it immediately and finished it without he could change his mind!!! :)

Then, around 1 AM, i thought most of us wanted to go asleep.. but the next block neighbours didnt want to.. they were on a high spirit (pun intended!) and didnt want to lose the momentum. I fell asleep as the noise levels rose greater.. it felt like i had just started to sleep, i heard Maharajan with a big Whistle asking us to get ready to get down from the train... guess what, the next door neighbours were still on high spirit !!! :D

p.s.: i would like to know what you think of drinking in the trains. personally i feel its very bad especially when you have others who may not like this. would like to know the comments here.

(will continue...)

A Tribute to HCL, Organisers and the great JBU enthusiasts...

What a wonderful trip and what a wonderful place with what a wonderful company!

Its my third or probably the fourth time visit to Kodai. But still I could smell the freshness of the places. Kodai never bored me and it never failed my expectations.

It all started with a train journey when myself and Ratheesh boarded the last but one compartment. I quickly identified that the compartment is full of girls. Not even one brave boy(except us). I asked ratheesh to backup, but ratheesh wouldn't budge, he said, it may not be like that and urged me to find two seats. While I was in a hurry to get down, he was actually pushing me forward. I somehow managed to get down with a thinking nudging back of my mind - What the hell, smells like a school camp. We both safely got two seats in boy flooded compartment only to find there is a good mix awaiting us. The Grind started 30 past 8. First it was Balaji if I remember well. The dance movements kick started a train within train, the antakshari, cards, whistles, dances again and what not!

The first site itself was refreshing silvery water fall. The highlight was the wonderful sweet and sour and spicy mango cut in a very peculiar fashion that Anupam San and Chinna San captured them in thier Digi SLRs. Wit my ISO 100 loaded film SLR I had to reserve every shot for those best shots I like most. So didn't have the sophistication to click all those that looked nice!

This one deserved a shot. Set the aperture as much as I could to get a wide macro shot and lengthened the exposure to get the spongy look of the silvery water.

The next shot I composed long lingered in my mind. When I asked my teammates to guess what does it tell them, someone came-up with Adam and Eve, while others made satirical comments, one person was close enough to what I percieved. A young well built man, trying to cover his love girl with his robe from the heavy storm that whirls around them in a no man's land. There is nobody or nowhere they are looking at. Thier intimacy and the need for each other to be together to face the storm told me stories that men and women have travelled together setting pace against dinosoures and judgement days. And here we are, like this statue together seeking help from each other to win the race of Survival of the Fittest.

I used to start my clicks with Ganesha, if there is one in my way and there was. In the drawing room of the first floor, there was this Mr Nice guy carved out of wood.

Instead of settling with a flash, which used to spoil the natural colors and over expose white light, I tried not to shake as much as possible as I had to take this snap indoor with low light. I think I took it with 10 millisecond exposure. As it was a portrait I settled with low aperture in my canon, though there was nothing to blurr in the background.

The next thing that captured my eyes was a beautiful well groomed garden. I took as much as possible, but only from my mobile camera. The pictures were decent, but what one would always miss in the point and shoots is the freedom to select your shot - composition & exposure! And what I hated with the is the fraction of seconds they take before capturing the moment. When I press it I want that moment frozen, not a millisecond before or after! I think this is something that is not possible with any of the point and shoot DigiCams, the DigiSLR has it anyway.

When I had to select the shots between fragile magnanimity of nature and strong reality of humans, I always included innocents, like these. Innocent minds like these, captures peaks. In other words the peaks are there to be captured by these innocents! Its a long wait for the peaks. Peaks are fragile. They dont grow in leaps like these innocents. I always wanted to capture them un-aware, like a professional would. But I never had the patience that those professionals had to choose shoot the only best shots. Niether me, nor the vans that took us all to places around could get our sweet time to stand still and relish these moments of joy the innocents shared with each other when they played with thier only bicycle.

The rest of the journey for the day, I clicked more of fellow men and women than of composing the shots I liked. I think I got carried away by the crowd around. I was never alone after this shot. It was mostly people people people, running around singing, clapping, whistling and enjoying the togetherness.

I wanted to jog around the lake Sunday early morning. With the muscle crumps and the exchaustive camp-fire we had on Saturday night, I decided to settle with a cycling and horse riding, it was then I composed these three shots.

This guy was aware that there is a camera shooting him beside. He was tight, he was not free and he was unable to control his emotions overcoming his otherwise let loose posture. But when I see the picture now, its not that bad as I thought it would be when I compose it.

Hope you would have understood the composition. I kept the hot chocolate in the steps desending down to the lake from the Kodai Boat Club Canteen and lay flat to get the above picture. In the morning the wind was less and I was lucky enough to get this shot. Thanks to suresh who accompanied early morning. It would have been better if I reached this scene an hour earlier, where I could have expected a near to still water with minimum distortion in the reflection of the tower. There is one more I saw amidst mist when we trekked on Sunday. I cannot explain it in words now, neither I could click it as I never had a chance to get the tripod Chinna San had. It was like an antenna stretching out from am english castle rock amidst the strong mist that engulfed it when I was watching it spell bound. I wanted to fly to it as close as possible without disturbing the mist in a chopper and shoot it horizontally with a Nat Geo quality camcorder!!! Phew, I would die for a minute of that shot! To be exact, it was the point where the PWD was constructing the path. The path was thin that the jeep could not pass-by and stopped before that.

The Red jerkin the fisherman wore was so colorful and complemented the whole scene. I took permission from the fishermen and composed the picture. Onething that disturbs my shots is the need to take permission from the subject. This is one reason why I hate to shoot humans. When I had to take permission, the need to capture them un-aware, I mean the need to capture that moment, is far gone from my reach. Afterall I am not working with models, to re-create emotions with snap of my finger. It gives me great pleasure when I can freeze a moment of joy, anger, denial, blush, in-difference...

Following are couple of shots I liked so very much. I dont know why. But I liked them both.

The story is endless. The time is too short. Signing off for today. Vaazhka Vallamudan!!!

(I am not sure, but I'll try to add more, when time permits!)

The planning before the trip...

Well, finally after long years of waiting, the news of a trip together with the entire team has been finalised. The senior management (at last) has approved the budget for a trip to Kodaikanal. Kanchan and Maharajan were happily managing the show and there were several volunteers to help them with the arrangements.

The arrangements is a big list of "to-dos" and the task seemed enormous to begin. But with volunteers rooting for various commitees and Maharajan coordinating them, things slowly started to fall in place.

There were several hurdles.. the first one being, how many of the team will be available for the journey. The initial survey gave the number as 93 and then suddenly went upto 190. Now with this information in hand, frentic activity on ticket booking and resorts were arranged with lots of people continously changing their minds.

The travel group was planned to travel by two trains and pickup arrangement were being done at two different location at two different time. All of us were worried how this plan will work on the actual day.

Just before the day of journey, the number suddenly dropped to 160 and as a result several changes had to be done. But one good thing as a result was that all of us will be able to fit in one train... so managing this will be easier and the fun will be much much more.

As expected, at the last minute, several additions and deletions happened and the final number who made the trip was 144 !!! Finally, all are now set to board the journey of fun and excitement....

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO (in case you missed what that meant, that was our group shouting with excitement at the top of their voice)