Music That Inspires

They say music is without any boundaries either geographically or culturally. If this is not fact then how could one explain the fact of Indians shaking their legs for western music in Discos, Westerners doing an aerobic session for a Bollywood item number, or Chinki's gyrating to a Rajnikanth song and so forth. As expected in all the above scenarios the chances of an individual of actually understanding the lyrics right away is pretty slim , but what catches everyone's imagination is the music score accompanying the song.

Being a lazy person who literally finds some or the other reason to skip a workout in a freezing December morning, music that inspires is really a lifesaver. There is nothing more inspiring  (except if u have a few extra Kilos accumulated since the Diwali season :P ) for a person to run/cycle in those finger numbing temperatures than a good set of truly inspiring numbers. It wont be surprising if ones performance is actually improved when listening to those kind of music, hence resulting in me and my music player being inseparable during those tough times called "workout". Even though I am not a music person (I cant name all the members of the Metallica band, or for the matter of fact, not even a single person :P ), have come across some great numbers which I have "painstakingly" collected over a considerable period of time.

So here I am trying to list down some truly inspiring songs I have come across (And Kolaveri Song is not among the list , although it gave a tough competition :P). I would also be interested if the readers would recommend numbers which inspires them, hence increasing my arsenal. With 4 kgs of extra flab I have accumulated since the Diwali season it is time to get down to business. Have chalked out a rigorous session in middle of the winter and any help will be highly appreciated. Do some social service people :).

1. Dream On Aerosmith
 + a version by Eminem which is also pretty good

2. Sadda Haq - Rockstar

3 .American Flyers - The entire album is a must have.. A movie which inspired our desi version which is Joh Jeeta Wohi Sikander (The title track of which is also inspirational)

4. Back in The Saddle-Aerosmith (Default first track when I get to cycling after a long time :P)

5. Driving With The Top Down - Ramin Djawadi (A track used in Iron Man)

6. Dum Title Song  THe only good thing abt the forgetable movie. Watch with the video :)

7. Final Countdown

8. Right Here - Right Now : Fatboy Slim with some interesting video  

9. I want it all/ We Will Rock You- Sucker Punch The perfect mash up of 2 great classics from Queen

10. In the End - Linkin Park . Became a fan of Linkin Park after this song, even though their other numbers are not as good as this except a few.

11. Iron Man- Black Sabbath

12. Just Like You Imagined - Nine Inch Nails (Full heavy metal track)

13. Danger Zone - Kenny Loggins (Figher Jets... Sexxxxyyyy)

14. Kill Bill Theme Song - Wu Tang Clan

15. 3 Doors Open - Kryptonite

16. Numb - Linkin Park

17. Lose Urself - Eminem - Some intense lyrics from Eminem :P

18. MI Theme

19. Not Afraid - Eminem

20. Ride Of The Valkyries --- Variety is the spice of life... Orceshtra for u :P

21. Rock Climbing Music - Lakshya - Some Pretty good Moves and awesome music for an Indian Movie

22. Rock You Like A Hurricane - Scorpions

23. Rocky Soundtrack

24. Separate Ways- Journey

25. Stronger - Kayne West

26. Survivor - Eye of the Tiger : Another great track from Rocky stables.

27. Till I Collapse - Eminem : Yet another track from Eminem. Looks like I get inspired the most when I hear expletives :P.

28. Die Another Day - Madonna

29. Vandemataram- Lata Mangeshkar  A Truly inspirational number from the queen of Indian singers.

30. Azaadiyan - Udaan

31. Smells Like Teen Spirit - Nirvana

Mission Impossible 4 : It Gets Better & Better

THIS POST DOESNT CONTAIN ANY SPOILERS : SPOILER CHECK PASSED :)

All the A-list action stars of Hollywood have atleast one major franchise from which they seem to be making endless movies. Arnold Had Terminator series until he got 'Governorated', Sylvester Stallone has Rocky and Rambo Series, Johnny Depp with his Pirates series, Bruce Willis has the Die Hard series, Jason Statham with the Transporter series (even though his A list status may be debated :P), Jackie Chan does his Rush Hour's with Chris Tucker, Harrison Ford with his Indiana Jone's, Downey Jr with his Iron Man, Christian Bale with the awesome Batman series, Hugh Jackman with X-men movies and last but not the least Tom Cruise with his Mission Impossible series. A kind of fallback safe money earners with minimum risks. Thats exactly what Tommy boy is doing over here , with him even producing the latest MI sequel.

If you don't really want to read my entire review but just want to know how the movie was in 3 words then my reply would be "almost good as the original" (Apologies for stretching my word limit :P ). Hence in short this is one best movies of the series if not better than the part I. Part 2 was the worst of the lot, which felt like a group of stunts strung together to make a movie just for the namesake. So does that mean MI4 is void of any stunts ??!!!!... Well you got to be kidding... MI movies without any gravity defying stunts are as if a body without a soul. The stunts are bigger and better... Especially the death defying free scaling stunts shown to be performed "out" of the Burj Towers (World Tallest in Dubai) and you start to wonder what is the fascination for Hollywood to take their stunts to the worlds tallest buildings (remember Entrapment on Petronas Tower's).

Story wise you got the usual settings of Russians, nukes, save the world kinda scenario which is pretty much foolproof with respect to entertainment quotient, with generous dose of car chases, gun fights, explosions and so on. The director Brad Bird (The Incredible's, Ratatouille, The Iron Giant) does a great job to leave behind his great animation legacy for his first full blown live action movie , which I can easily term as one of the best action movies of 2011.  The movie takes place primarily in 3 countries Russia, Dubai and the climax which was supposedly here in India. Tom Cruise is at his best action avatar. Even though in the previous MI movies he seemed like a one man army,  in this movie is a part of closely knit group consisting of Simon Pegg (Hot Fuzz, Shaun of the Dead), Jeremy Renner (Hurt Locker, 28 Weeks Later) and the sexy Paula Patton. Simon Pegg's (The only major character continued from previous movies apart from Tom's) character provides some good comic relief at regular intervals of time and Paula Patton provides the oomph quotient. And if by any chance Mr. Tom Cruise is reading this blog, I would advice him not to go shirtless if he is pretty much out of shape. For those curious about Anil Kapoor's role in this movie... well he was absolutely wasted. He was supposed to play an rich Indian playboy , but seemed more like a sexual pervert, with his role not lasting more than 2 mins.

Now coming to FB chatter we had encountered a few months back about how they had created a Bangalore setup in Canada for the movie.. well after seeing this movie I was a bit disspointed. They have replaced Bangalore with Mumbai for the climax but surprisingly at many places you see Kannada signboards. I was like WTF!!!!! Kannada in Mumbai ???!!!... But the attention to detail given for the Indian setting was pretty good, but one word of advice to the moviemakers, if you want an Indian setting , come directly to India... It might turn out to be much cheaper.

Finally I would rate the movie 3.5/5 movie. A complete entertainer and full time pass movie. Go watch it in cinemas :).

The Adventures Of Tintin , Reviewed By Tintin

 Being a huge Tintin fan and having the same as an alias name (for obvious reasons) this movie was something which was not meant to be missed. Before I was caught on by the Harry Potter fever , was hooked big time to comics, with the jewel on the crown being Tintin and Asterix comics. Still remember the day in 6th grade when my friendly neighbourhood library started to stuff 2nd hand Tintin comics. Everyday I would be excited to pick up yet another book of the series paying 3 buck rental (against 1 buck for other books :P, demand & supply gap I presume :P) and when a "not so small" boy started to fantasize about some out of the world adventures (Destination Moon/Explorers on the Moon :) ). Still to this day I enjoy going through the entire collection I have in form of pdf documents, a return back straight to my childhood. Hence in short this movie was something more than any random movie that I was going to watch.

Now shifting focus to the actual movie. Frankly speaking I expected a lot more from this adaptation, and I presume it is the common consensus among Tintin fans. First and foremost the movie doesnt really captures the feel one gets while reading the comic strip. Even though the initial storyline was pretty faithful to the comic book, it was a tad too boring. Only from the 2nd quarter does the pace pick up. But on the other hand it has an awesome viewer experience with respect to motion capture technique adopted by Spielberg which brings life to the comic characters and an equally mesmerizing 3D content. So in short those who haven't read the comics before will enjoy the most as everything is completely new to them (my mom loved it :)), and it is not one of those movies like Harry Potter where you have to read the book before you see the movie to understand each and every angle. As expected Snowy (the dog) was at its comical best, to draw in more children/adult crowd alike.

The makers of the movie have tried to mash 3 books into one (Secrets of the Unicorn, Red Rackhams Treasure and Crab with the Golden claws), with a generous additions of their own to make the transitions seamless. This was done obviously since content of a single book (with just 62 pages of comic strip) was way below the content required to make a movie. So we can expect to get sequel movies for those comics which had continuity into another book (Destination Moon/Explorers on the Moon, Seven Crystal Balls/Prisoners of the Sun etc)

Overall I would rate the movie just above average at around 3.5/5, especially for its visual content than its storyline. But one undeniable fact is "Tintin literate" base is gonna swell and the comic sales is gonna soar because of this movie. A whole new generation is going to discover TINTIN :). 

Things To Do Before I Go Kaput !!!!!!!

What do I want from my life ???!!!!!.... A weekend spent wondering on these things resulted in a Bucket List consisting at present 60 items (present count) which I want/ed to do in my life. Also I included stuff which I wanted to do previously and was successful in doing so, in order to not be unfair on those pointers. Even though inspired from the movie of the same namesake, where a couple of terminally ill old dudes try to live the last few days of their life to the fullest, I would prefer a more balanced approach hence the timing :).

Click Here ----- > My Bucket List

P.S> I would encourage the reader of this blog to also come up with their own bucket list. Its always interesting to know what made into their list.

Mullayanagiri -> Bababudangiri : Traversing through Karnataka's Stratosphere

 This trek was pretty much an unexpected one. Had got a weekend off from college thanks to Deepavali and with continuous holidays we planned for at least a 2 day trek. A bit of googling and the destination was decided to be "Mullayangiri to Bababudangiri" trek on day 1 and trek to Kalhattigiri/Jenukal falls the next day. In short we were having 2 single day treks :). Total headcount was just 5 (Vineeth, Shashi, Jenny, Manju and Myself) and we had rented a sumo (since there is very sparse public transportation available near our trek region) with a psycho driver behind the wheels.

29th Oct 2011 (Sarpadhari-Mullayangiri-Bababudangiri 15kms)

Climb to Mullayangiri via Sarpadhari

Explorers of the Darkness

Everyone was picked from respective stops and we were on our way to Chikmagalur at around 11.30 pm. Night matured and people started to feel drowsy, so much so that all the occupants of the cab were sleeping including the driver :P. Initially we suspected that he was snoozing behind the wheels , but it was confirmed for sure when he banged the sumo to a divider, well at least sideways, waking up all of us with a bang , and with a jolt where I felt I was really done for :P. After this we ordered the driver to sleep if he is feeling too drowsy. And by then I had decided that this is the last time we will be hiring a taxi to travel during a overnight journey. Overall we had an uncomfortable sleep , thanks to the hopeless seats of the sumo and driver playing 5 -6 kannada haunted songs on infinite loop till the morning. Dont know whether that helped him in any way or not, but we surely had a "Halloween Sleep":P.

Some 60 m inside the cave

Reached Chikmagalur, had our breakfast and packed our lunch. It was time to go in search of the starting point of the trek to Mullayangiri , ie Sarpadhari. Started from the Sarpadhari arch at around 8 am in the morning and at this time of the day the entire path was filled with mist. So we were void of any views , but trekking in mist offers a different type of enjoyment. Within an hour an half we reached the famed caves of Mullayangiri, which is just 10 mins walk from the peak. There were basically 2 caves and we decided to explore one of them which seemed to run into great distance. But being a little claustrophobic, I was little hesitant in the beginning , but couldn't resist the opportunity of missing an adventure. So off we went inside the cave system , armed with flashlights and nothing else. With me crawling up first, my first job was to check the ground for any sort of reptiles which might have crawled into this for shelter and later the roof for any sign of bats, and to my utter amazement there were a lot of bats in this cave system. Initially we were scared of the bats that they might attack us, but later we came to know that these are really misunderstood creatures. We crawled for some 60-70 meters deep into the cave and still the end was not in sight. At one point we switched off our lights and there was absolute darkness, unlike anything I have experienced, not a single ray of light seeping in. Not sure how long this tunnel goes, but we decided to return back since we had a long trek ahead.

Mullayangiri peak, at 1930m

The Ridge Path ahead

Went up to the peak, where there is a temple and also a motorable road which comes directly till the peak. We were now at the highest point in Karnataka at 1930 m. Rested a bit at the peak and started to move towards Bababudangiri after taking route advice from the priest. Now the entire path till the Bababudangiri was walking along a mountain ridge, hence a lot of ups and downs along the ridge. Soon enough the mist/cloud cleared and we were getting some beautiful vistas. Greenery everywhere and drops on the either sides. The initial part of ridge walking was not that difficult at all and soon enough we reached a point where we had to cross a road and continue along the ridge. Now this part of the ridge was narrow, had nearly 300 foot drops on either sides and had some scare quotient. At some places the walk was a bit challenging and hence this was not exactly beginners cup of tea. Soon we reached the BSNL tower after enduring sun,rain, mist and some breathtaking views. Beside the tower was a cozy lake where we rested for some time. From here Bababudangiri was 2 kms and at around 3:45 pm we reached the place.

Steep 300ft drops

Had some junk food at the local shops, got some firewood from this place to cook our dinner and by 5 pm we were moving towards Galikere, our camping spot (4 kms motorable road from Bababudangiri). When we left Bababudangiri it was a  bright day with very few clouds and at the end of our 4km ride to Galikere the entire sky was covered with rainclouds and it had started to rain. Freaky Nature !!!!!! . By the time we collected all our belongings and walked the last 100 m towards the lake we were literally in middle of a thunderstorm. Wind blowing at nearly 50-60 kmph and having no other option we took shelter inside a concrete structure, built quiet near to the lake. Seeing the intensity of the rain we decided to pitch the tents inside the shelter which can accommodate only one tent and hence we ended up with 5 people inside a 3 man tent.

Carpet of Flowers

Lake near the BSNL tower

Anyway with such a wind gust we still decided to start a bonfire to cook our food, thanks to some amount of petrol we had. But I did a really dumb thing, pouring petrol directly on a open flame and within no time the flames were burning on the mouth of the petrol can , just seconds away from becoming a full blown petrol bomb. I don't know what possessed me, but instead of throwing it away as far as possible I started to blow at the flame trying to extinguish it !!!!!!!!!!!! :P. Thankfully that worked :D. After that have lot of respect for petrol :P. After several attempts to start the fire we gave up and resorted to eating cold bread and jam. Spent some time playing dumb-charades inside the tent when the storm was lashing outside. Visibility was less than couple of meters with no one venturing outside that.  Within no time our tent was wet and water was seeping through. We could have only imagined what would have happened to us if there was no shelter :).

Reflection Photography

Bababudangiri

30th Oct 2011( Kalhattigiri/Jenukal Falls)

In Search of the falls

Kalhattigiri/Jenukal Falls

By morning the rain had subsized a bit. But still the entire place was engulfed in mist and it was freezing like hell. We packed our stuff and waited for our taxi who by the way had decided to bunk for the night in Bababudangiri. He arrived and after some scary hair raising moments managed to reverse the taxi. We went directly to Kalhatti falls , with a tea break in Bababudangiri and breakfast at Kalhatti falls.

The destination for today was kalhattigiri/jenukal falls which is around 5 kms walk from the similiarly named kalhatti falls. Took some tips from a local on the route but resisted hiring a guide, to increase our adventure quotient. Initial path of the trek goes through the coffee plantations and gradient gradually rises. There were a lot of crossroads and we literally took a pick among those randomly. We climbed and we climbed. After climbing for some 2 hrs we came to a point where we were in an adjacent hill to the falls, but we were unable to switch between the hills since the path was near impossible. With the path towards the falls having 1/2 foot of bog and it was a tough task climbing on this slippery substance. Now we knew for sure that we were lost and there was no option than returning back. Returned back to a crossroad and took the proper turn and now were in direct view of falls, but minus an hours climb. Anyway we gave up the idea of going further upstream, but still the view of this literally unknown falls from this spot was majestic. Had a half an hour dip in the mini waterfalls downstream of the main falls and returned back to the parking lot at around 3 pm, alighted with our taxi and started the return journey back to Bangalore. Reached Blore at around 9:15pm and reached home at around 10.45pm.

Our Jacuzzi Point

Overall in my opinion this was a very unique trek , with caving, ridge walking,water falls exploring etc thrown into a gravy named trekking. A change which I require at regular intervals, like regular adrenaline shots into my blood stream :).

Trek Details --->

Total Trek Distance(for both the treks) --> 15+8 kms
Difficulty Level ---> Between Easy and Intermediate (Some sections of ridge walking requires experience).
Total Cost Per Head --> 1800 bucks
Mobile Signal Info---> BSNL, Vodafone at many places

Rough Path of the Trail (Follow the Ridge)

Trail Marked in Red, Blue is the motorable route

Snaps Link ---->

https://picasaweb.google.com/117615192470834757069/MullayangiriBababudangiriTrek
https://picasaweb.google.com/104803450757964777769/Mulyenagiri?authkey=Gv1sRgCNqWsPy86vS9ggE