Ha, can you imagine a few days without posts from me! Yes, miracles do occur, as the Clean and Green cleanup on Saturday and a trip to Chennai took care of several days…I must say that though I couldn’t access the internet in Chennai, there was so much to do….a Tambram/Punjabi wedding, and visiting friends who had either had either a baby or a bypass…(no, please do NOT picure a scenario where a friend walks into the hospital and the surgeon says, “Pick one of the two”)…..the time just flew.

However, mail just PILES up and I have slowly been getting on top of it…I dread to think of how it’s going to be when we go off to Arunachal and Assam for 2 weeks in December!

Also, the overnight train journey really ruins the next day for me, as I can’t sleep on the train and feel drowsy and headachy throughout the next day….I think this is one of the signs of not being twenty-three any more!

The Clean and Green cleanup was one of the longest I have ever attended…this time we did it with Wipro, and Geetha (whom I met through NTP) took a lot of trouble over the arrangements. The caterer apparently gave her quite a time with the food, so we had to wait until the packed breakfast and lunch was delivered, and the bus left from Wipro Koramangala only at about 7.15am!

On top of that, roadworks at Kanakapura, halfway on the trip, meant that the large bus had to negotiate some bad and narrow roads…we reached Muthathi at about 11.30, which is a record of sorts!

However, the cleanup went well, and the volunteers really enjoyed the lovely winding walk from Muthathi to Bheemeshwari (since it was cloudy and not hot at all)…most of them did the 4km walk without having to be picked up by the bus en route!

The group was great fun (with Santosh telling us about his life with ISKCON, and “back-walking” most of the distance to Bheemeshwari!) and none of us minded that it took us the entire day instead of the half-day usually scheduled. When we were diverted on the way back, too, our cheerful bus driver stopped at a nice bakery in Harohalli, where we had chai,or coffee and yakked our way home!

Photographs are coming up….for some reason, the photographs I posted to the C’n’G photobucket site on Saturday night never got uploaded at all, and I am doing them over again.

and I got some great bird sightings, too...the RUBY-THROATED FLYCATCHER, the LESSER FLAMEBACK WOODPECKER, the RUFOUS TREE-PIE, the WHITE-RUMPED SHAMA, several COUCALS, and the BLACK-HOODED ORIOLE added to our sense of completion in doing the nature trail from Muthathi to Bheemeshwari! Meanwhile, here's the beauty of the sky over that beautiful road, where one walks along with the Kaveri rushing along on one's left... Will be catching up with my friends' list, too, now, I am sure all of you have recorded momentous events, witty observations, deep philosophies, as you seem to do when I am absent for a couple of days!