Escape to Brecon beacons

I couldn't agree more Michael McIntyre that the last week of the year is the most confused one. You don't know what day it is, you don't know what is expected from you, this week and if you are in UK you obviously don't know how the weather gonna be. Although all the above were true, we actually knew one thing for sure, an escape definitely on the cards. After some deliberation and debate over location we found our escape: Talybont-on-usk, a small village near the bank of River Usk in South Wales. A small quiet village with loads of walks did fit our bill. So we packed our bags and started our journey...

Travel to Talybont-on-Usk

Its ages since I wrote a  travelogue. Hence let me say things have changed. "Us" now means its me and my wife along with others! and now in this land I can drive hence, the choices of escape has improved. Its nearly 2.5-3 hrs. drive to South Wales from Caversham. It was on Boxing day and we set off bit late in the day and found relatively empty M4. We took the toll road, and went straight to Wales. A40 to Usk valley was quite scenic.

Talybont-on-usk

Malt house in Talybont-on-Usk

Loft room in this 1820 built house

We had booked a family run B&B accommodation, Malt house in Talybont. Its a nice place, and river Caerfanell flows almost through the property, we could hear noise from the flowing river sleeping on the cosy bed. Weather on this part of UK during winter is quite unpredictable and we had prepared ourselves to the fact that we might have to stay indoor for few days. However to our surprise it wasn't that bad when we arrived in Talybont-on-Usk in the afternoon.

Remains of 200 years old Tramroad

       Its a village with loads of activities: few pubs, one river, one old Canal and several bike and walking routes and with some rich history. One particularly interested me, the history of tramways and the train road around the the valley, none of them are there at present but their existences are wrapped around the village. Tramways ran before 1850s, as popularity of the train grew, the tram line came to an halt in the second half of the 19th century, the train line experienced the same fate in the second half of 20th century when running train services in that part of Wales became non profitable! The waterway canal is also very old and heard stories about breaches once in a while, still its a tourist attraction and probably that is still keeping it alive. 

The walk

Walking route (map here)

Valley from Binnore Tramroad

One of the popular tourist attraction near Talybont-on-usk is ~400 meter long reservoir on Caerfanell river. The walk to the reservoir from Talybont is through the scenic Usk valley. we decided to take the Taff trail starting behind the white hart inn. This trail actually followed the old Brinnore Tramroad , although there are no tracks, but stones laid for the track are still there, we took that trail to go to the reservoir. Weather on 29th December was beautiful, a day before the storm Frank hit Wales. The trail passes through the scenic valleys, farms which forms the landscape. After initial climb for 15 min, the trail was pretty flat and easy. Saturated ground was bit of a pain, still in winter, a quiet trail with fantastic weather was already a rarity. The reservoir took almost 45-60 min. In the middle the trail bisects; we could either decide to go along the Taff trail or go to the reservoir, we did something in between. Reservior was not a huge one but of decent size to produce clean energy for the area. It was full. Again scenic Brecon hills surrounds the area.

Valley from the reservoir

Talybont reservior

From the reservoir we decided to follow the MTB bike trail crossing the Aber village. This is a asphalt road through the farms and straight climb till we reached the end of the asphalt road.River Clydach flows along side the trail, rarely in India I had an opportunity to see a river from start to finish in couple of hours! well, Clydach gave us that opportunity, which we declined to take! After the road ended there are couple of farm house and multiple farm gates with direction for the bikers. Once we made to the soft ground, the over-saturated soft trail made

the walking bit challenging, but the trail was beautiful. We had to cross couple of small stream and Clydach. Eventually the trail lead us to another road inside the woods, we got to see a glimpse of Brecon's forest if not a full fledged forest walk. We wanted to complete the MTB trail, however it was already getting darker, even a sunny day couldn't be stretched beyond 16:00 . So we decided to the head back to Talybont through the farms. This stretch of the walk presented a different landscape. Fading sun brightening up before setting washed  the valley and painted it golden, rain soaked valley was soaking the sun, we too, it was blissful! Although farm animals didn't particularly enjoyed our alien chorus songs, we loved their presence. It was time to call the best walk of the year a day. We walked back to Talybont crossing the Canal and back to our hotel. The complete walk, with breaks took us around 4 hours and it was nearly 7.5 miles. 

Food 

Although few, pubs in Talybont are quite well known. On the first evening we had food in the All star inn,  appeared to be quite a popular place among the locals. Food was almost home cooked, fresh and tasty with very friendly staff. We had supper in white hart inn the next day. Food was as good as the all star. We dont know it was especially for that specific day, we were told the kitchen would close at 19:30. Price in both places were similar and we felt pretty reasonable.

Description of wonderful food wouldn't be complete if I dont mention the awesome breakfast that we had in the Malthouse. Heavy English breakfast with fresh juices, eggs and Honey from the farm, you cant ask for more. Thanks Mike for that.

Way back

Storm Frank had hit the shore in the night and the only option for us was to head back to Caversham. Although I thought drive through treacherous roads wont be nice but wasn't that bad. Because they were mostly empty untill we hit M4. 

we ended the year filled with tranquillity, it was a trip worth making and would love to come back to one of the breathing space of Britain

  

  

Time changes here!

Last two months have been eventful, but before i stepped into this country of opportunity(!!) I had a much more eventful time, unfortunately i cant pen them down as that may cause some trouble for me. So i was so overwhelmed by those events, when i lost my expensive camera in Detroit, i considered it as extension of those events, but now since i am about to leave from lets write about few interesting events, lets write about the most recent one.

Its fall here, the colour of the leaves turn yellow, red and blue, one can notice them changing. Wind starts blowing from the north, the attire of the people changes (from almost nothing to fully clad!) and the time changes!!yes the standard time. The day light saving time starts from the first sunday of Nov and stays through the winter to April first sunday. So on last sunday, early moring i came out from my friends house in Broomfield to catch the Zipfree shuttle! it was 8:30 a.m in my watch, and as i calculated i shoud be at Boulder by 9:30 a.m. It was a cold windy morning, but there was no bus, since there was a chance that i could miss the bus to Boulder i started walking after 30 min and was cursing the people for the service delay, again after a 3-4 km walk i reached the stop on time and again there was no Bus, i was irritated, annoyed and frustrated too. The chill was penetrating the skin, after a while the Bus came from Denver and I angrily asked the pilot for the cause of delay, he simply apologized and gave a look to me, but i didn't care, my sunday was already spoilt, so i manage to reach home at 11 am, just i was about to tell my misfortune to Woki, my roomie, he blurted out in broken english "Do you know the time is 1 hr. late today?", i looked at him for a while and everything was explained, indeed i remembered the clock was running 1 hr. late. I just gave a smile to him and told "No! i just now experienced it..."

So Here I am

It was night, quite late, Chicago O Hare Airport was deserted. It was Sunday so it was understandable. I was trying to make a cal, to let my family know that I have reached here safely. Whenever someone comes to US people back home gets worried for obvious reasons. So I wanted to let them know. I was trying hard to call home but didn’t know how to reach there using the AT&T coin telephone, already I had spent few quarters and was desperately looking for help, I saw an American gentleman in a big hurry went past me, seeing him in a hurry I didn’t stop him, but he stopped, he realized I need help so he came and asked me whether he can be of any help, so this man tried his best to make the call, unfortunately he too couldn’t make, so he picked up and called AT&T and asked why there is no instructions, and finally he made another call to get me the detail instructions, I was touched by this gesture, he apologitic and told me since he cant make the international calls from his cell so he couldn’t help me, I was really amazed didn’t expect the help, so I could finally make the calls. Before leaving he told me he knew about India and since he had to catch a flight in 15 min he couldn’t stay with me till I finished the cal….Welcome to America 1.

A day out to Muthati

Last october when Kotts was leaving for Germany, we had decided to go for a trek while he is here in March, the plan was almost spoiled but somehow we pulled out a trek to Mutthatti. We found this place through Karanataka forest dept. trekking web page. This is one of the trek places which are being explored after the death of Sandel wood smuggler Veerappan. Though it was a two day trek, we wanted to cut it short by one day. In order to save the time we went by bike. Four musketeers: Kiran, Me, Kotts and Jackie (santanu) were there for the trek, Galavalli was the only one missing (he is enjoying in US) from the group went to Narasimha Parvata last April. We sorted out our plans the previous day; reaching Muthatti was not much of a concern, only concern was biking back to Bangalore and hence we had decided to come back before Dusk that left us a trekking time of 6 hr.

We started our journey from Metallurgy dept. at IISc at around 5:30 a.m. Me and Jackie in one bike while Kiran was Kotts behind him. We went via Jayanagar and left the city via the Kanakpura road. The roads became better once we left the city! Bangalore to Kanakpura is 55 km by road and that was our first destination. We reached Kanakpura at 7: 00 a.m. and had our breakfast in a small restaurant. Kanakpura is quite big place. Our second destination was Sathnur, which is around 16 km. away from Kanakpura, and the satisfying fact was that road was really good in this stretch too. We reached there at around 8:15 a.m. Sathnur has three diversions at a circle, if you take the straight one you will reach Muthati, Left will take you to Bhimeswari and the right will take you to Cauvery fishing camp. We took the straight road. Muthati is 18 km away from Sathnur. The road was newly polished and you start experiencing bits of hills from here. It is onset of the summer and the traces of leaves on the foreground of clear blue sky appeared really beautiful. Our bikes gave a good service including one skid on the road side, except that our journey to Muthati was quite smooth. Muthati is a picnic spot like, Bhimeswari on the banks of cauvery, and like other picnic spot it was noisy, dirty with bottles and papers and chips packets. We avoided going to the river in Muthati. Instead we went to the forest office and fixed our trek route. The entry fees per head to the hills was Rs. 100/- and guide fee was Rs. 50/- per head. Mystery trails has all these details. Our guide was Mutthuraj, a young chap with cool nature. He trekked all along with us in bare feet. We started our trek at 9:30 a.m. The trails began with a thorny uphill climb. Our first trek destination was Devanamundi hills. The day was quite hot, though not unbearable. It wasn’t a very steep climbing up too. This place has quite a few specimens of wild animals we saw some signs of bear and Elephant while climbing up, but alas we couldn’t see them physically! We had to put few breaks before we reached the top of the hills. It is a typical ghats hill top: rocky and bare, no signs of shade. We took almost 2 hr to reach there. The Cauvary river valley was visible from the hill top. The river flowing by tearing apart the hills was a spectacular landscape to cherish. The complete valley was visible from there. If you have a strong eye you can identify the Chnichi water falls at extremely far away, the falls is like a white streak on the green background. I am sure sunset from that point will be a treat to watch. The peak was almost 4 km from Muthati. Our next destination was Bhimeswary, which is a place on the banks of Cauvary, hence we started descending. Almost complete trail was covered by leaf less trees! We stopped in the middle near a pond which appeared to be the main source of water for the animals; we saw a wild hare too. It was the first water body we had seen in the whole stretch. We traveled almost 3 km and there came a watch tower. We could see the basin and Bhimeswari from there. It was another 3 km before we reached the river. We found a bunch of spotted deer on the way. Mutthuraj took us to a place which was really beautiful, on the riverside. It was already 1:30 p.m. and we had to take our lunch. Kotts and Kiran prepared nice Cucumber, Pickle, Jam Sandwiches, with fruit juice, lunch became quite heavy, and so we decided to trek back to Muthati through the banks of Cauvery. I liked this stretch the most. We traveled almost 2.5 km through this trail. Both sides of the river had hills or forest and the landscape was very nice. We reached the picnic spots soon and our fun also disappeared, it was again a noisy, boozing people who were spoiling the environment. The last 3-4 km. we had to walk on asphalt road which was quite painstaking and took all our energy out by the time we reached Muthati forest office. We bade good bye to Mutthuraj and started our journey back to Bangalore. It was almost 3:30 p.m. Thanks to Kiran and Jackie we had a trouble free journey back to Bangalore. It was a nice one day trek, and a desirable break from droning campus life.


Trek route: Muthati –Devanamundi-Bhimeswary-Muthati
Distance: 15 km, approximate time: 6hr.
From Bangalore –Kanakpura (55 km)-Sathnur (16 km)-Muthati(18 km)
Approximate expenditure: per head Rs.500-600/-
Orgnized by: Kanakpura forest office ( Ph No.080-7522537)

"Rail India"

Last couple of weeks I had roamed around a large part of India. I enjoyed Guru’s marriage in Trichy, presented a poster at MRSI-AGM in Lucknow. It was nice to go around few places within such short span of time. I was tempted to write about many things but thought about writing the strong impression I was carrying in mind for quite some time: Indian railways. Ram Guha in one of his famous talk series at CCS in IISc talked about how India as a country is in surviving, her binding and disintegrating forces working inside. One such binding force he mentioned is Indian Rail. The 150 yrs. old transport system has tremendous impact on the Indian society as a whole. One of the longest rail networks in the world is having maximum no. of stations too on her way. I would rather discuss about rail as a mode of conveyance than its commercial impacts. I frequently wonder, in practice what is similar in a life of a guy from Mangalore and one from Manipur. If he is not so cricket lover, which is not uncommon, he or she must identify themselves with railways systems. It is quite amazing how railways maintain similar system working in all corners of the country. The same bell rings with same frequency both in Guntur in AP and Tamna in West Bengal.
Indian rail began its journey in the year 1853 from Mumbai to Thane and within 10 yr. north, South east and West zone had rail tracks in different lengths. Today the total length of the railway track reaches upto 1.1 lakh km. Amazing isn’t it. We have broad gauge, meter gauge and narrow gauge tracks cumulatively making this length. Our rail runs from 20 meter under ground level to nearly 2500 m above mean sea level, which is the highest track after Quinghai- Tibet rail. Locomotives from electric to Disel and Steam can be seen running through track, though the steam locomotives are seen mostly out side the rail station now. Indian rail carries around 13 million people a day. Literally it is an unimaginable task; in order to ensure smooth functioning of this rail road system, Indian railways has become one of the largest recruiter in India. The employment is generated on national basis and people from all over the India travel from one corner to another.
Railway cities all over India have a very different culture as well as people. They are cosmopolitan in nature and the extent of cultural mix is quite significant. Whichever language you speak or whatever you eat, railway station is the safest place in the city (not always in terms of security). My trip from Chennai to Lucknow was quite an experience. Here I met one young couple who went for Honeymoon in Kanyakumar! That too from Lucknow, I asked him why Kanyakumari?, he said “..Because there is a direct train which takes us from Lucknow to Kanyakumari” Now here is a guy who probably would not have seen the tip of our country if there wasn’t this train. Like westerners we also develop some wrong notion about people of some places in our own country, just because we don’t know them haven’t seen them and didn’t know their culture, railways brought these cultures together more often than anybody. I came from Lucknow to Bhopal and from Bhopal I took Smapark kranti express to reach Bangalore. Here my fellow travelers were businessmen from Bangalore. One guy was from AP and another from Mangalore, they have business running from Delhi and both were mentioning how business prospects were different in north India compared to south India and they were pretty happy because of the prospects that were unfolded because of improvement in railway communication.
I was tempted to write more about it and one may find the write up pretty uninteresting since it doesn’t contain information. Well that because I found this group called Indian Railways Fan Club Association (IRFCA) who has already done a splendid job and their home page is really very informative, you can go and look at it, it is much interesting than this blog.
Cricket is almost a religion in India which brings all Indians on same platform, and we call our Indian cricket team as “team India”, probably for similar reason we can call Indian railways as “rail India”.

Few links

IRFCA

Indian Railways