Poem 2 - 100% Attitude

Mountain is hard, Crack it
Sea is wild, Sail it
Wind is high, Walk through it
Thunder and Lightning, Live it,
Do whatever it takes my friend, Just do it

Poems can be interpreted by a reader in its own way. That is the beauty of a poem.
As an author, I must say this poem has a deep meaning then its words.
Its about the attitude you carry in life.
You either blame it on x,y,z or be a warrior and fight it.

The Trip

Just back from a good trip.
Somnath-Gir-Rannriders resort-Little Rann of kutch
This is a perfect trip with mix of wild life, nature and lot of train travel
I had to research it, so sending this out so that its easy if anyone wants to do the trip.
Before I write about the trip planning few things to note -
- Best season to see lions is summer as they are on move in search of water as far as gir is concerned
- Summers are extremely hot in kutch :)
- Both the locations Gir and Kutch are bird watchers paradise. Amazing migratory birds too.
- Book your tickets and accomodation well in advance.
- You need atleast 12X+ optical zoom camera to capture everything well.
Reference URLs -
http://www.girnationalpark.com/
http://www.rannriders.com/
http://www.nivalink.com/GUJARAT/jungle.html

Photos -
http://picasaweb.google.com/himanshukhona/GirKutchRannriders

Here is how you plan your trip -
Mumbai - Somnath
Take a train to veraval from mumbai. There are trains from veraval to Sasangir around 2-3 times in the day,
so check the time of that train. There is one around 9:40, which is perfect if you have a train which arrives from
mumbai early morning.
Get down at veraval and visit Somanth temple which is 7km from the station
Take a rick or something. Come back to verval railway station.
Veraval - Sasan gir
Take a passenger steam train from veraval to sasangir. you can go by road but the road stretch of 60 km just sucks.
It was too painful, so the train works the best.
All the resorts are in few km range from the sasangir railway station and the resort owner will provide you
free pickup.
Tip - Please book yourself in advance in a good resort. Resorts are expensive, and the ones which are cheap
are not worth it.
Try and do early morning 6:30 safari which costs 1350 for 4 people. So try to visit in a group.
If you do not see a lion in the above safari, take a trip to devalia park which is around 12 km
and they have put around 7 lions in 12km area, so you can be sure to see a lion.
Sasangir - veraval
Take the same passenger train from sasangir to veraval.
Veraval - Viramgam
Take somnath express(there is one more train) to Viramgam.
Ask the rannriders resort owner to provide you with free pick up (http://www.rannriders.com)
Enjoy the resort and safari to Little Rann of kutch. There are very good birds too.

viramgam - Mumbai -
Take a train :)

Now something on the rann riders resort -
The resort is one of it kinds with a clear sunrise to be seen from backyard and sunset from the front yard.
There are around 18 Huts with excellent facility and interiors.
Each of them has a unique toilet which is open to sky and surrounded by trees.
The food was very good.

Outside Vs Inside

Be rich, Be a king outside.
Be satisfied, Be a Buddha Inside
Live life outside, remember death inside

Think with the mind, do with the heart
Be with the body, live with the soul

Open your eyes, see the world outside
Close your eyes, see the universe inside

Go to the temples outside, worship the god inside.
Help others outside, help yourself inside

Singh is King

Singh is King -
On the way to office, was listening to this song of singh is king.
It has a line which touched me. It is very true as well. It goes -
"Dil sacha ho to Rab kar de setting" :)
I have experienced the above almost everytime.
A prayer with clear heart always gets answered.
Faith and honesty togather can work wonders.

What does meditation do to you?

Well, First thing is why are you meditating? Mostly to get peace, harmony, soul searching.
If you are doing it correct, it will have tremendous result in your life. If there are no results, you are not doing the right thing.
There is so much agression all around us that we get angry very easily. The disturbance is already in the mind, a slight trigger results into eruption. First thing that happened to me is awareness of the moments spend in anger.
Next was reduction in number of anger episodes and also the level of anger. One of the important points here is to have saatvik food, it will by far tune your mind as well.
The next level is constant awareness of living in the present, just be and do nothing (not in literal sense). Once the triggers to you stop, you with awareness stop the triggers as well.
After this, everyone likes you and they have smiles on thier faces when they meet you.
The sour relations turn sweet, there is no detachment or scare in the relation.
Thus it has extremely good effect on your life if done correctly, done with right guidance (not books, experience guidance)

Lord Mahavira's Sankalp

Lord Mahavira's sankalp -

Lord Mahavir looked at her and noticed that one of his pre-decided conditions was still missing. So, without accepting food, he kept on going. [His conditions were, 1) The person who would be offering should be a princess, 2) she should be bald headed, 3) she should be in chains, 4) while offering uncooked lentils, her one foot should be inside the house and other one out side the house, 5) and she should be in tears.] So, you might have realized that she met all conditions except tears in her eyes, and therefore, Lord Mahavir went on. Chandana felt very sad and tears started running down her face. She started thinking that how unfortunate she was that even though she had a chance to offer food to the monk, he would not accept it. She, in her crying voice, once again, requested a monk to accept the food. Lord Mahavir turned back and saw tears in her eyes. Mahavir came back to accept the food knowing that all his conditions were met. She put the lentils in Lord Mahavir�s hand and felt satisfied.
Lord Mahavir was looking for pre-conditioned food, and meanwhile, he fasted for five months and twenty-five days.
This is what I call Sankalp. Immensely strong.

Lagaan was a classic -

Lagaan was a classic -
People may call me boring as I was seeing Lagaan last night. Yeah, I know its not the latest movie.
From a movie perspective, everything was good about it. Actors, the plot, sequence. Interest was kept every moment of the movie.
I watch the same movie for many things. So the thing which was fascinating in this movie was about the "Sankalp" of Bhuvan who wants to the village out of the problem. He saw a way where everyone saw danger. That is how "sankalp" should be. It should be so strong that that you don't move a mm back on your sankalp. You are bound not to fail. Even if you fail, the grace will still remain and that itself will be your victory.

Goals, Desires etc

We live direction less life currently. There is no direction to it.
Often, we say this is my goal in life. It will either be an end point or career related etc.
But we never think beyond it. What is beyond it?
Beyond it is a harsh reality called "death".
If we build our goals as an end point, we often invite bad times.
Take for example a CEO of a small company, he will desire to make his company big. For the same he works, overworks
and in the end screw his own life. He does not realize that the life is too short for him to grow his company. He forgets his identify, he becomes the company. That is where the error lies. Our choices are wrong, Our goals are wrong.

Amboli trip - Fog, Mist, waterfalls, snakes, frogs and greens

Amboli -(15th Aug 2008 - 17th Aug 2008)
We were 16 of us and 4 kids in all ready for the trip. All bookings were done far in advance considering the holiday

season.
Travel - Konkanya express (0111/0112) both ways - http://www.irctc.co.in
Stay - Whilsting Woods, Amboli - http://www.amboliww.com.

Day 1 -
We started off for 3 places -
Nagartas waterfall - This is huge waterfall(one can only see the waterfall) where water rushes down from around 50 feet into a deep valley and then becomes a narrow stream. Its a breath taking view of the water gushing down from such height in a narrow passage.

Kavelsad Point - Enter a complete fog area. You cannot see anything in the valley, but look closer. You will see the water drops coming upwards and they look light small white lights coming up due to wind blowing in opposite direction to the water flow. One of the best sites I have ever seen.

HiranyaKashi river - This is the starting point of hiranyakeshi river. It starts from under the cave and water from all sides flows into the river. There is a old temple of shiva for your prayers. On the way back from the point, we saw 2 small waterfall. As usual, I could not stop myself and went right in it. Few of us took the majja of the waterfall before heading back to the car.

Day 2 -
We started off for rest of the 3 points -
Amboli waterfall - Fortunately, the crowd was less on this day due to rakshabandhan. So we spend almost couple of hours in the fall. Rather under the fall. The force of the water was too much at some places. The water was also very cold, but it was too much fun. We came out and had vada pav etc which caused too much gas in the night that we had to use perfumes as air fresheners ;)
Mahadevghad - Lush green out fields and differently shaped mountains awaited us. The photography session was unending right from on the trees to stones.
Shirgaonkar point - This should actually be called leech point because we had our blood sucked by leeches. And worst part was there was nothing to see on the point.

The evening was fun-filled with playing cards, dumb charade followed by story telling by everyone. All of us were met by nice surprises about others and it got pretty interesting. Ended the day(pretty much start of the next day) at 1:45am and decided that we all will get up late.

Day 3 - Late start 10:-11:0am for breakfast. By the time we ended breakfast, it was almost noon. We had to checkout 4 rooms because resort owner had bookings. Now it was time for relaxed walk and a big photo session. We covered almost all poses from standing to sitting to sleeping. The photos came out too good.
It was time to go back, nobody wanted to go back but we had to.
It was interesting to see resort owners life with his house in the backyard of the resort and a nice healthy dog.
Decided to check out early and have late lunch (that was really late 5:00pm) at sawantwadi. We reached sawantwadi in time and had to wait nearly 30min for the train to come.

Somethings to watch out -
a) If you are taking konkan kanya, board from the first station CST.
b) Order your food 1.5 hours before you intend to eat it. We took more then 2 hours at a time for all meals. Best is to order in advance and get it to the resort.
c) Buy and carry leech guard so that you can visit the jungle.
d) The main waterfall has many drunkards on holidays, so schedule your trip to waterfall on a odd day.

Lush green out fields, wet roads and bike ride it's a unique experience.

Lush green, Wet outfields and bike ride is a unique experience.
This was my 2nd ride on the bike. Location unknown but had read on the internet
that it was awesome.
After all the dropouts, 5 of us were ready to roll.
Unlike the first ride, this time rain was going to hit us hard.
The route was virar-ambada-wada-suryamal-khodala
The stretch upto Ambada was pain, the road to virar was broken with pot holes all
the way.
The stretch from wada to suryamal is something unseen (best possible wet roads with lot of fog on the way), unheard (you can only hear the flow of water).
The ride itself was eventful. We were 5 of us - Amit, Jigar, myself (netmagic),
Amog, Niket (bombaybikers).
On road from virar to vrajeshwari, Amog skid on his bike. It hurt him a bit, bike was fine.
On stretch from ambada to wada - Jigar fell down. His bike in one pot hole, himself
in another. But as he says, he is experienced by now to fall from the bike ;).
Guess who was next? None other then myself.
There was water flow on the road which had lot of "Leel". 3 of them went through with thier bikes shaking but not falling down. I did not see it. I went through and there I went skidding. Fortunately bike slipped away from me and nothing happened to me. Bike's leg guard was twisted. Footpeg bent. Amit was quick to pull the bike
up. So very eventful trip ;)
The waterfalls were just amazing and so many of them on the way. We bathed in 2 of them.
The photo sessions were unending as there was so much to capture. The roads were empty whereby we parked our bikes on the road to click photos (and from all angles too).
With some hot tea in the cold weather (yeah all of us were shaking), we were ready to return.
There was only 1 sad thing in the end. The road from virar to borivali was 40km of pot holes with some roads in between. It was literally "pain in the butt".
The photos captured have come awesome and will upload it to picasa soon and post the link here.

Bike Ride to Vikramgadh

First bike Ride to Vikramgadh
Datta, Rishi, Amit, Shailesh and Myself.
We decided to meet at 6:00am opposite national park. By the time datta and Rishi came it was already 6:20.
So started towards manor and informed amit to meet us at 6:45 at Nallasopara.
We almost missed him and then we slowed down. He had seen us, so start to follow and met us 500m ahead.
We kept riding till Vithal Kamat's at around 70kph. Finished breakfast and we reached Manor by 8:30, right on to

Manor Wada road towards vikramgadh. Although it did not rain heavily, there were drizzles on the way.
The ride was fantastic, we reached vikramgadh and asked for khand dam.
The road to the dam was full of stones but we made it with ease and then there was stone throwing competition.
The winner ofcourse was Datta.
Then, asked for "dhabadhaba" and were told there is a palucha dabhdabha almost 5-6km towards jawahar.
We missed it twice, went back and forth, but finally found it. There is a rough road going upwards towards left near

Jabm, 1 km after a board of wild life of koyna.
A trek of 1.5km took us to the waterfall and we soon realized that won't be able to go under the waterfall.
Still we trekked down and went into the water, it started to rain in sometime.
Perfect timing, all so satisfied that did not want to go anywhere else.
Pictures speak more then words, so here is the link to the photos.
http://picasaweb.google.com/himanshukhona/Vikramgadh

Love Thyself

Loving yourself is an art. We all love ourselves but from a wrong perspective.
From the perspective of the people around you.
On the other hand, The biggest mistake we make is trying to love others around us before we love ourselves.
I still make this mistake at times. Its a wrong perception that loving everyone is good.
Without loving ourself, loving others usually means a selfish love, external love and not ethernal love.
This is the most common pitfall causing disharmony among our loved ones.
Consider a mother who loves his son more then herself Or wife who love her husband more then herself or vice-versa.
Eventually, it ends up in huge expectation from the other person.
This in turn causes disharmony, fights, rights and wrongs.
Instead in all the above cases, if one would love himself first and more, the expectation will become zero.
And the love will be eternal. The action of anyone other then you will not effect and that is the reality, it should not effect. Why? Because you have no control over other's action. You have only control over your actions.
So its a logical conclusion.

My Ride My Bullet

I bought a bullet electra 5s. Its an amazing ride. Comfort, stability and power.
I hope to be on longer roads soon to enjoy the ride.

Awareness makes a difference

Awareness makes a difference -
Recently I have been through a shibir whose sole purpose was "awareness".
Awareness is the first step to success in anything be it personal peace, work etc.
What changes when you are aware?
Its not that you will stop making mistakes once you are aware. But you will learn from incidences, small incidences big lessons. For e.g. you get angry due to some incidence, if you are unaware, you will mostly miss the reason you became angry(I am not saying this will stop your anger next time as well). But if you are aware, it will be clear to you that the anger was a waste of time, emotion and happened for a reason which is not within your control. Then you suddenly realize that then its not worth getting angry. And we already know the effect of realization at all levels. But this realization will have an immediate impact.

The recent experience

I attended a diksha Shibir for 2 days. It was a truly amazing experience. It was about awareness. The experience cannot be described in words because words will always short fall of the indiviual experience. Some take aways for me were:
If not applied, its a waste.
Consistency is the key to progress.
Be aware.
Love life, Live life, do not complain.
Although mind still wanders but now in the right direction. The effect of the whole thing is self-observance. The realization is that I have been taking everything seriously, my work, my family, my games everything except myself, the inner self. It was rightly asked in the shibir, what do we do differently then other biengs even when we know we have a superior mind. I did not have an answer, atleast from my indiviual perspective, myself. We do the same routine thing as other creatures. We may have some sophostication in everything but nothing different, nothing deep. One thing is sure that you have to go through the shibir to get the experience because everyone's experience is different. Now the only that matters is consistency, awareness and a clean life (be it food, emotions, work).

Fun with the family

It was the long weekend due to good friday and holi, the destination was harshgiri lake resort 15Km from shahapur, totally around 95 km from my home.
A lot of fun with over 70% time spend inside water, be it rain dance or swimming pool.
A bunch 18 from the same family with everyone so nice, nothing better. One of the most relaxing and enjoyable trip. I consider myself lucky to have a wonderful family which is so much fun because nobody is too serious, we can laugh at almost everything and believe me there is a laughter at every 2nd sentence being spoken by anyone. And yes you better be careful of things you speak because everyone will pull your leg for a lifetime on anything you say wrong ofcourse all in good spirit.
All in all - I enjoyed the trip and once again kudos to my wonderful family

The spiritual me

I always wondered about the life. Can something be so temporary? We are born, we live and then die. So the time we lived is just the time we existed? If so life can be futile because you will anyways cease to exist. This makes me believe that there is something beyond this external world.
Always wondered where have I come from and where will I go? If it were only this life span then, I should probably leave my job and enjoy as much as I can. Only return when I have no money left ;) I wish it could be this simple.
To explore I have decided to have a simple life, clean, disciplined life.
I attend these shibirs arranged by NIRA, it has been really good how it helps to actually use meditation instead of just talking about it.
Here is the link to NIRA: http://www.niramultiversity.org