We have traveled extensively initially on YEZDI throughout South India exploring remote and ancient heritage monuments covering nearly 1.5 L km over a period of time. We have also travelled by SUPER SELECT - FIAT 1964(more than 2 Lac km), then by Maruti 800 ( 1.5 lac km) & off late by M & M 4WD Jeeps( 80,000 km ). We have covered almost all the states except Eastern India. We hope to cover Bhutan & Eastern India shortly. Each of our past experience is varied, thrilling, challenging & deadly hence all that I can say is only those of my friends who experienced the situation / action can feel the pulse of it. Initially we just started clicking photographs at some point in our conventional film roll cameras and I advised my wife to put them in order in albums with info like date, distance & persons, which we never knew what for and today, if we recollect all those old great memories we feel it has given us full satisfaction of having led a true full life. We have scanned some of our photos and uploaded them. We have thousands of photographs which cover historical monuments(Belur, Halebeedu, Shravanbelagola, Somnathpura, Kannambadi – Gopalaswamy Temple, Tirumala -Tirupathi, Ellora Caves, Badami Caves) forts (Nandi, Devarayanadurga, Madhugiri Fort, Makalidurga, Gingee Fort), Goa - from Karwar end to Maharashtra end and also covering Supa, Ganeshgudi, Dandeli., and an endless stream of places some of them being covered couple of times. Our some of the memorable experiences : TRAVEL : 10,300 km - Longest distance covered is Bangalore - Maharashtra, Gujarat, Rajasthan, Punjab, Himachal Pradesh – Bangalore. March 2007 Best Experience : The journey through Dang forest area, which was so picturesque like a contemporary painting being viewed on a live screen !! Rains in the desert of Rajasthan. Visiting Wagah. Punjab - People are so good, unbelievable. Just after leaving a small town, our jeep pump had some problem. A three wheel auto towed us back about 15 km to the town and all he asked us was the fuel cost. Amazing !! Beyond Kulu, it not only rained heavily but started snowing suddenly. We considered ourselves the LUCKIEST. We were so thrilled that we did not realize instantly that we should stop our vehicle and enjoy for some time. It was after some 25 years that this region had seen this amount of snowing in March. At Rothang and further, there was upto 10’ of snowing. Highways were blocked and lorries had to just stop where ever they were for over 10 days. After all this journey and return to Bangalore, can you believe if I say that we did not have a single puncture. 7,500 km - Bangalore - J & K - Bangalore in May’2008 We travelled straight to Srinagar through NH 1. From there on we started our exhaustive exploration covering Ladhak. My ultimate dream was to drive at Kardung la. My 4WD Armada performed so superbly that all I can say is I had the drive of my lifetime reaching till the borders at Diskit. Leh - Got to see the Buddha Purnima celebrations. God Forsaken Roads : Our return was from Leh to Manali and then down wards. We started from Leh at about 9 p.m. As we moved on, fear gripped each of us, but none of us were ready to express. The roads were scary. I just did not know as to whether I was driving on a road, river or ice. It was a full moon day and glare from the snow covered peaks and shadows created by some tall trees gave us a chance to visualize how Lord SHIVA’s abode would look ike. We found only one hand post which was fully covered with snow. We had to get down from our vehicle, clear the snow and then see the direction. We were in the middle of nowhere. At some point of time we stopped our vehicle and froze till morning !! Dec’93 – Bangalore to Kannyakumari – 1330 km Our destination was Kannyakumari. Two of us just started off on our bike. The climate which was so good when we started just turned disastrously bad. Due to cyclone, there was heavy rain fall to an extent of destroying thousands of acres of standing paddy fields and many accidents / toppling of trucks on the NH. We feared for our lives, late in the night about 9 pm in our journey of about 24 km from Nagarkoil to Kannyakumari. We could not figure out whether there was a river, sea or flood waters by the road side and our safety did matter, had any lorry knocked us down, we would have not been recovered at all!!! WILDLIFE ENCOUNTERS ELEPHANTS May’95 – Muthodhi – core area trekking. Our team of 19 including two forest guards who held only air rifles in their hand with bullets in their pockets, trekked into the core area in the scorching sun and reached Sigekan – an old forest guest house with all standing instructions to maintain silence and myself to be in the lead. At about two in the noon while we were just standing and resting for a few minutes the climate turned very cool and looked like about to rain. By chance our team mates just over took me and spotted an elephant grazing just a few mtrs away from us and started screaming elephant!! The huge wonderful Tusker charged in to us. We were so stunned that all of us stood still like statues, one girl just slipped, fell and rolled over just missing being stampeded. He stood in fury with tail up and flapping ears, saw us for a minute, and god bless, he just disappeared in to dense vegetation. Some of them ran helter skelter and for our bad luck there were elephants all over the place. Had the elephant attacked, he would have shot us all like billiard balls. The Forest Guard then warned us that he was the infamous rouge elephant who had killed many people including a ranger, clearing labourer and was known for chasing even gypsies for kilometers and attacking. Everyone was so nervous that they could not even turn back and watch out to check whether he was trailing us. We were just lucky we just got away. . Oct-2000 – Masinagudi – Bokkapuram – Sholingur path climb. Just 6 of us set out to climb the Sholingur path – cobbled path probably done during the British period. This path is a tough climb. It was a gloomy day and all our way up we had strong pungent smell trailing which we guessed to be a leopard who was following us. After climbing two peaks, we reached a small village, got struck in rains, and started the return journey at about 3 p.m. In between the two peaks on a small pleatue we just stopped to drink some water. We could not believe our eyes, in the serenity a Python, about 6 months old was just lying with his head behind a small boulder just at about 10 feet from us. I just checked him and set him free. We started our downward journey. At one down hill curve we took a short cut and Poornima just slipped, probably those were the few seconds which saved us. I murmured to her to be careful and again started moving in the path leading to the left, then a trumpet and lovely huge tusker came charging at us in lightening speed with his trunk JUST missing us. Me and Poornima were saved in a fraction of ABOUT 5 secs. The 4 others were at a much higher level. We dashed into the vegetation to our left just to escape from him. We returned to see if he had gone away, he walked a few mtrs, by when our friends had joined us. Suddenly he turned around and came charging at such speed that all I uttered was RUN and crashed into the forest down hill without looking back. This was the closet ELEPHANT charge of our life time. We have quite a number of such close elephant encounters. It needs a person to experience the close encounters, trumpets, and feel the heart beat stopping, mouth running dry, speechless & legs not responding to RUN!! BEARS : At Pollachi, I had gone for animal census. Two tribals / guards and myself headed to the core area, fortunately we happened to spot a huge male bear under a tree feeding on the fallen fruits. I am not so conversant in Tamil. I just made them understand that they had to keep quite and sit behind the bushes at a distance of about 20’. As we watched, we saw a cub and a female bear too. At the end of half an hour, the tribal man stood up making noise and waving his hands just to chase the bears away so that we could move on. The male charged at us and chased us quite a distance. Each one of us ran in different directions and in the RUN for our lives, the tribal had a fractured foot the next day. It was AWESOME watching the bears. NAGARAHOLE : After a whole days census, we were on the return path which was a little clear. Out of the blue, at a distance of about 10’ we saw something moving and assumed it was a Wild Boar. But it was a bear charging directly at us, we (5) stood together and shouted hoarse till we could chase him. We have had a couple of more bear charges. SAVANDURGA TERK Six of us in three bikes set out to trek the forest area cutting across to reach the Savanadurga Peak and parked our 3 bikes at a distance of about 10 km from the base. By 6 p.m. we were just in the middle of nowhere. We sat through the whole night without food, water, campfire, and getting drenched a little bit. We could see the lights and hear the vehicles move but nothing could be done till dawn. We started again at 6 a.m. crawling in the caves, bear paths and thorny bushes. After reaching the peak, we climbed down hungry, thirsty, weathered, badly injured hands by tiger thorns and some torn clothes, took an auto and reached our bikes. At this point it couldn’t get any more worse as some notorious villagers had smashed the meters, deflated the tyres, removed petrol and damaged the vehicles. There was panic in all our houses, no sleep, endless phone calls, etc., etc., and some of our friends had already reached Savandurga by car and were searching for us which was a blessing to us as they managed to get us help and get us moving. We could not even accelerate the bikes due to terribly scratched palms and change gear properly.