Visited Vijetha’s village along with Anand (her brother) and my mom yesterday (“yesterday”, considering that its its just 2 minutes past 12). Mainly just posting photos here with a short summary here, more detailed writeup… hmm… don’t know when…
But one thing is incredibly enough I was most unexpectedly able to fulfill a long time ambition, I wanted my mom to experience atleast a bit of my adventurous lifestlye… and finally she was able to share join me on some sort of mini-trek up a hillock (Vijetha took her back from there, while we men continued further from there to explore a bit of the wilderness).
Had quite a good time. One interesting thing was the ultimate fitness test: to climb a tree! (unfortunately my camera ran out of batteries and the pictures dont cover this part. The uploaded pictures are the ones taken with my cellphone camera, something I forgot to use here).
It was quite a tough tree to climb – it was a magnificient banyan tree around 6 feet in girth with all its thick convoluted roots. Quite high up – maybe 20 feet or so, was a machan where one could sit to watch elephants (though of course none were present during the afternoon when we were there). Vijetha almost effortlessly went all the way to the machan and taunted me that I’d never do it. Though I’d done these kind of things long ago, I had to find out how totally hopelessly unfit I had unknowingly ended up in becoming while climbing up this one. It was quite scary, a vertical climb, but pretty good fun as well, discovering each hand-hold and leg-hold one step at a time. Anand (her brother) took my safety upon himself to make sure he gave me step by step instructions all the way 
as it didn’t look like I was going to manage at all… but finally I somehow managed 🙂
The one seen in the photo was a jackfruit tree, and it had a ladder and though it was a bit tricky, wasn’t that tough esp after having climbed the banyan tree 😉
Overall it was a pretty cool trip – long time since I’d been to any village (being born and brought up in the city, I’ve anyway been to villages only on few occasions so far). The natural beauty around the place, as well as the simplicity and warmth of the people there, were simply amazing and very refreshing!
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