Bad Times!!!

am held up tight from posting anything as its all blocked in the company :( need to wait till i get the broadband in room. :(:(:(:(

Pongal Rangolis....

I wanted to give a good write up for this one and hence had it as a draft for more than an year, but now i dont think i can justify by giving one after so long...so am just posting the pics taken during the pongal at my home...the last one was indigenously my product!

The above one you see was my product!

Beautiful Village Named 'Ammapalayam'

Jan 17th,
This trip had most of our close relatives. Ammapalayam (AP), is around 30kms from vellore, a village very near to Kannamangalam. its my mom's native. she had told me a few abt this place, her school, her life snippets ....there.

my uncles are maintaining their traditional old family house for long. 100% typical village house. They scheduled it in their calendar to come there every year with most of the relatives, enjoy for a day or two and return.Dont you agree that its so beautiful thing to do?
hence my uncle asked me too to take off for 2 days, but i thought i would come back to office on friday. :D
you can smell the beauty as soon as u take the left turn from main road which takes you to AP after kannamangalam bus stop. thanks to rains again and again, the lake wasnt dry and the river which flows in amirdhi continues here too.
as soon as i reached the house, started to mount my personal interest in them to take me to a Well to have a great bath and swimming experience after a long time. the water in the river actually is not deep/good enough for swimming
My uncle promised to take me after lunch. So we played cricket without rules, near the garden in back of the house.
we went to the temples of Kali, Mariamman and a Siva's. All small temples but with their own beauties and stories.
My eldest aunty told me that the kali there came floating of the rock in the river and placed herself near it Years before, where they have started worshipping her. A beautiful and gigantic banyan tree something similar to ones shown in the village oriented films was present there too.


Ofcourse, I did swing in it as it reminded me the banyan tree in senganatham, where I used to swing with friends during my school and college days. that one is much smaller when compared to this



The above is a must in any temple festival, especially in villages.
Aunty explaining her grand daughter abt the rock which came floating with the Goddess Kali.

Pongals!!!!

Siva temple

i would also say that the people there are actually living in a different world though a very little distance away from me. Wait, this am not sure though, just the look at them and their worshpping customs....etc gave me that feeling, atleast their practices and customs are really different.
after lunch, i reminded my uncle again, he dint have another choice,
we went on a walk crossing the river to the otherside, into the beautiful coconut trees and the ground nut field to the very special swimming pool of the village.
the Big Well was totally algaed!!! though the water wasnt bad, we could no way think to swim. A failure of the Project "Swimming" had to be accepted. we returned with nothing more than beautiful pics. we chose the different return path. yes, this time not into the trees, just came walking over the river.

Front entrance of my grand pa's House, who is no more.

Back of the House, garden side where we played cricket.

Thats the well we were supposed to swim. it was really big but use less for us :(

Return over the river.

An auction of flower garlands used in a temple. it started around Rs. 2 and ended around Rs.12

My Fav - Muthu Maariamman temple

i do become a sinner if i dont blog abt this fav temple.

its a temple more connected to our family on the whole

Located at the foot of a mountain, creek besides, one of the most peace giving places for me on earth. abt 500 mts from my home. i would describe it as a scenic beauty at vellore.

I get my personal battery recharged here many a times.

Exploring Amirdhi!

12th Jan, A very special day for me....:)

To speak about this Amirdhi, Its a place every Vellorian must have visited atleast once for the sake of outsiders atleast, who would ask about it for sure at some point. and yes i was asked by my friend once and i promised him that i wil take him soon.

(are u there dinesh? :D)

So it was my personal interest too as i dint visit it in the 20 long years(my vellore life) which is just abt 30 kms from my home. have been told it has a few animals. nothing more i remember. also the other thing i had was the ride for 30kms and that was actually enough for me even if this amirdhi wouldnt show me anything.
so we all started almost on time as surprisingly our peter too was ready on time, a pleasant shock indeed.

it wasnt much work for the sun. the climate took care of us. after some 10 kms, it was the single road which took us for long. i actually calculated a lesser duration with just the count of kms but the road made me wrong. Peter and sara had some clue already about the route, we managed to get help from strangers to reach the place amidst the beauty all the way to the left and right of the single road.

almost when we were near amirdhi, the road was split by a small river and we had to walk our 2 wheelers with us. that actually gave us a clue which none of us picked!!! :)

ofcourse i started capturing images long back.

into almost a dense forest, we bought snacks but no tea shop :(, the gate was there.
we paid for the tickets and were instructed to return by 4.30. it was already 3.30 after the one hr interesting ride.
getting inside we again could get some view of the same river but nothing else disturbed my eyes and saravanan inquired me abt the falls there. i had no idea on that. Peter took us inside a gate where we cud find a small zoo, no way we could feel any maintenance. peter dint stop. asked us too to walk fast as it would take long to reach the falls. oh! there is a falls and even direction board was there which i recognized only now.
after a ten minutes of walk with the dense forest to your left and right, a valley view too, hearing the chill sound of the falls in the way, we did reach the falls.
Wow!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

i dint imagine such a shocking surprise waiting for me. none of us had a second thought in getting into to the water though we dint have any gadgets, not even a towel.
water wasnt threatening and not even deep enough for a perfect swim but it was all fun fun and fun after that for an hr. we started from there finishing with a final jump from the rocks by me and Lak.
hey pls note i can swim :)

Back to the zoo, we checked all the animals,birds.... like porcupine, wolf, crocodile, pea cock, vulture, eagle, python, monkeys, deer, wild cat, rabbit, ofcourse parrot ;) .... there. we were suddenly rounded of by a gang of monkeys for the snacks in our hands. peter/lak did save us with a cane.believe me they are anytime treacherous when seen as a gang with same eatable in your hand
when we throwed the eatlable to a peacock there, was stunned to see a monkey taking it from soil and 'wiping'it perfectlybetter than any human would do before eating :)
its all over at amirdhi. and then i saw the board mentioned abt the plan of the"Amirdhi Mini Zoo" now i know its actually a mini zoo with a falls.

ask me now, am ready to take anyone there :)

Note: Zoo pics below Courtesy : Saravanan