Mumbai Meetups

@SK, good description & lovely pictures.

I think Naveena & Praks were looking out for a bird.

Ronak.

@SK Sir, thanks for those photographs and the description, fantastic!!

Me standing near the edge of the mountain photo has been duly shown to my hubby and as I had earlier mentioned to you, his immediate thoughts were the same ! Yes, I was taking the photos of 2 kites which were flying exactly above the peak! I haven't got a clear photo, though!

Correct Ronak, we were waiting for the 'Paradise flycatcher' to perch somewhere close, but it never did !

@Naveena: Hope you told your husband that it was me (the guy with evaporating memory) that reminded you to pick up your camera bag, when you were walking away from the group photo-op site?

I am surprised I remembered that till now!

PS: Remember the National Geographic article that I was talking about? ... the Guy whose Memory evaporates in milli-seconds?? ... just as we were starting the trek or was that the end of the trek?? ... Well, anyway, here is the link to that: http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/20...mory/foer-text
.
.

I have corrected the caption of the picture accordingly.

By the way, when I reached that spot, Praks was discussing the options of walking along the stream or taking an upper route.

Ofcourse, that was the 1st thing I did, to inform him! Thanks to you I am at home else I would still be trekking at Shilonda to retrieve it . Now I doubt whether it is you or me with fading memory...Surely I am getting old !

BTW, the story was narrated as we were still going towards the hillock and even after listening to that, I was talented enough to forget my camera bag at the photo-op site.

Thanks for the link, will take a look now! BTW, you did not answer mine & SK sir's query - who finally did the household chores?

Correct, that is because we could not photograph the bird, we did the next best thing..find out a way to get out of the jungle .

Neither of us did!

Fortunately, my wife was back home before Noon to open the door for the bai (maid).
.

Lovely photos as usual, SK. Nice to see that some wildflowers are still in bloom.

Good that you all had the "Much Beyond Silondha" Trail to yourselves.
In another thread, Maneeshgoal had this to say from his recent outing:
Naveena,
your camera is GPS enabled if Im not mistaken so could you please check the lat long of that highest point in your picture. Im curious.

PS: Are you volunteering for the Mahashivaratri team at SGNP?

I have really missed a lovely meetup.

Nice report Naveena and SK... well i myself was surprised with a recovering grade 2 hamstring injury i could do it with a few slips...

@Amar: You did pretty well actually despite the hamstring. Good you recorded some waypoints. Would love to see those on GE. Will they be with a time-stamp?

After the trek, I was wishing I had brought my Garmin-GPS. I had no clue it would be a regular trek. Maybe I should have guessed that, with Avid and Praks on board.

BTW: Praks was saying he has held many Youth camps in SGNP, training them for trekking, camping, rock-climbing etc.
.

KS, earlier we used to carry our Garmin GPS on every trip but one fine day my hubby discovered that his cell phone also has GPS. Apparently most mobile phones today do, so we have stopped carrying the Garmin to places where we know there is good cell coverage.

Also, one can always get fairly accurate readings post the event courtesy Google Earth. I wonder why Google maps does not have lat long and altitude.

Amarshah, do post.

What you say is true snonymous.

But .. I don't know if the smartphone-GPS will give an "active-log" by automatically capturing the points at preset intervals (Like how my Garmin does). For example while trekking I even set interval of 2 or 3 minutes. And on "Auto mode" it even senses turns and direction changes and captures those points at higher frequency!

That means I get not only a few spot waypoints, but an actual trek-line showing the trail-path. It can be used in 'trac-back' mode to retrace your way back; in case you are lost. And you can use it as a 'guide' later on the 2nd or 3rd trek over the same path.

Edit: I have recorded such GPS-tracks on many of my treks and you can see one example here: NDOS
.

You are a Pucca trekker KS!

Wow, I enjoyed going through that report.
Very well presented, apart from the excellent content.

Please also tell me how to create a google site [in simple 'computers for idiots' language], I note even Amarshah is using it. I tried to see but could not understand how to go about it. If I am able to understand and set it up to my satisfaction, I will discontinue Travelpod where the interface is not at all user friendly.

Thanks.

KS one can have active/regular tracking on the phone by setting a capture point at a predetermined interval. The problem is the battery. The A-GPS chip suck up a lot of battery power so not advisable and the Garmin score in that part.

On my treks i have just used it to capture the location and then shut the GPS. You can see that in my last Sunderdunga trek, i have not waited for more than a min ever to get hooked onto the satellites.

Snonymous, Google Sites is actually very simple and intuitive to learn and use. I like it too, because its Google and is easy to embed many of the Google Gadgets like Maps and YouTube etc. I will send you a small start-up instruction on PM, after I work it out (in a day or two).

Personally, though I think Blogger is even nicer. SK's blog is on that. But the most professional and the best (I think) for blogging is WordPress (WP). I wanted to learn and use that but was already deep into Google-Sites and didn't want the hassle of transferring to that.
.