Tryst with destiny

Long years ago we made a tryst with destiny, and now the time comes when we shall redeem our pledge, not wholly or in full measure, but very substantially. At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom. A moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to the new, when an age ends, and when the soul of a nation, long suppressed, finds utterance. It is fitting that at this solemn moment we take the pledge of dedication to the service of India and her people and to the still larger cause of humanity.

At the dawn of history India started on her unending quest, and trackless centuries are filled with her striving and the grandeur of her success and her failures. Through good and ill fortune alike she has never lost sight of that quest or forgotten the ideals which gave her strength. We end today a period of ill fortune and India discovers herself again. The achievement we celebrate today is but a step, an opening of opportunity, to the greater triumphs and achievements that await us. Are we brave enough and wise enough to grasp this opportunity and accept the challenge of the future?

That future is not one of ease or resting but of incessant striving so that we may fulfill the pledges we have so often taken and the one we shall take today. The service of India means the service of the millions who suffer. It means the ending of poverty and ignorance and disease and inequality of opportunity. The ambition of the greatest man of our generation has been to wipe every tear from every eye. That may be beyond us, but as long as there are tears and suffering, so long our work will not be over.

And so we have to labour and to work, and work hard, to give reality to our dreams. Those dreams are for India, but they are also for the world, for all the nations and peoples are too closely knit together today for any one of them to imagine that it can live apart Peace has been said to be indivisible; so is freedom, so is prosperity now, and so also is disaster in this One World that can no longer be split into isolated fragments.

We have to build the noble mansion of free India where all her children may dwell. The appointed day has come-the day appointed by destiny-and India stands forth again, after long slumber and struggle, awake, vital, free and independent. The past clings on to us still in some measure and we have to do much before we redeem the pledges we have so often taken. Yet the turning-point is past, and history begins anew for us, the history which we shall live and act and others will write about.

It is a fateful moment for us in India, A new star rises, the star of freedom in the East, a new hope comes into being, a vision long cherished materializes. May the star never set and that hope never be betrayed! We rejoice in that freedom,

The future beckons to us. Whither do we go and what shall be our endeavour? To bring freedom and opportunity to the common man, to the peasants and workers of India; to fight and end poverty and ignorance and disease; to build up a prosperous, democratic and progressive nation, and to create social, economic and political institutions which will ensure justice and fullness of life to every man and woman.

We have hard work ahead. There is no resting for any one of us till we redeem our pledge in full, till we make all the people of India what destiny intended them to be. We are citizens of a great country on the verge of bold advance, and we have to live up to that high standard. All of us, to whatever religion we may belong, are equally the children of India with equal rights, privileges and obligations. We cannot encourage communalism or narrow-mindedness, for no nation can be great whose people are narrow in thought or in action.

To the nations and peoples of the world send greetings and pledge ourselves to cooperate with them in furthering peace, freedom and democracy. And to India, our much-loved motherland, the ancient, the eternal and the ever-new, we pay our reverent homage and we bind ourselves afresh to her service. Jai Hind

Jawaharlal Nehru, on the night of August 14th, 1947.
61 years later..still as relevant as it was then.

Night travelers..

Manjunath, Patthabhi and folks (our guests for the August 2nd weekend, Manjunath, Pattabhi, Vishwanath, Shailesh, Ravi, Vinay, Sunil and Avdooth ) started off from Bangalore on Friday night, they traveled overnight and were received by Arun at 5.30 AM in the morning.

We always ask our guests to give us a call the moment they start and we normally keep calling every few hours, this way we are able to make sure that folks don’t loose their way, and it also helps us prepare for them. For example, if they have missed lunch, then we make sure when they arrive at Gonikoppal or Kutta or where ever we receive them, they have something to eat..Snacks, Chips ..whatever, something to munch on or we just have lime juice or something like that to refresh folks — after all it is a 5 hour journey from Bangalore!! (btw we don’t do this for night travelers )

The guys then refreshed and helped themselves to a full breakfast and after that they went on the trek with Rakesh. Our trek with the estate is beautiful, but mild. It can be classified at most as a beginners trek, just enough for first timers to be stressed but not so much that they can’t complete it. We normally come to know about the appetite for adventure of the guests when they do this trek. These folks were the adventerous type … so our trek was pretty mild for them.

They went for the 3.30 PM rafting session, they had to wait because the 1 PM rafting team turned up late!! This is something we don’t approve off — making our guests wait for no fault of their own, it is our job as hosts to book the rafting slots upfront and make sure we arrive on time, and we take a lot of pains to make sure we do that, there is no reason why our guests should be penalized for being prompt. Rakesh made sure that the rafting folks knew of our displeasure

At night they settled down to a cozy campfire…and the next day they went back home the long way back to Bangalore, via Wayanad, Gundulpet..Bandipur forest with a stop over at the famous Iruppu falls

Photos that they took have been uploaded, the link to the album is here

Pattabhi has also give us a review in HolidayIQ, check it out here

Pattabhi, Thanks a lot for the review, It means a lot for us, and guys thanks for coming.

Here are some of their pics..

Everyone with Arun

At Bethel homestay

All dressed and ready to take the plunge

The calm before the storm

The rapids

Hitting the rapids

The cool dudes

Iruppu falls

Relative quiet …….

This week we had two teams, Manjunath/Pattabhi and their team (total 8 in number — Manju, Pattabhi, Vishwanath, Shailesh, Ravi, Vinay, Sunil and Avdooth) and Dheeraj, Anil, Vijendra, Shivraj (team of 4)

We were supposed to have Barath and his team of four, but they canceled at the very last minute and went towards Madikeri. Barath was very apologetic for the last minute change of plans — My take..Well it happens!! I just hope the next time they come to Bethel

We had Krishna and his team of ten who had come down for rafting and also Vijay and his wife

Did I say 8…

Well did I say Vineeth will have company of 8 people…you forgot the surprise element, the plan was that we would have a group of 8 guests.. instead we had 14 guests turning up..

This was one relaxed group..they had come with a clear purpose.. relax and enjoy. The spent the entire time joking and pulling each others legs and relaxing..they were also a foodie group.. they thoroughly enjoyed our cooking and made the most of it too..

The rains that Coorg is so famous for, have finally arrived, last week Kutta was in the news for the inches and inches of rain it received, Bethel which is up in the hills got even more, you can now see springs coming from the ground right in the estate

Barapole river is now nearing the danger mark, rafting will be one thrilling affair, anyone reading this..head to Coorg and raft NOW. It is going to be an experience you will never forget.

Postponements and this weeks guests ..

We had a postponement this week, Sridhar and team were to be here on Friday, 25th July, , but now they will be here only on the 29th of August. So today we just have Vineeth and team at the home stay. They arrived in the evening and were received by Rakesh and Arun in Gonikoppal. Tomorrow they will have company of 8 others

It has been pouring in Coorg, the rafting water levels have surged dramatically, Arun told me both the rafts in todays morning session got stuck in the rapids.. Sounds like every one had a lot of fun, I hope they have some good pictures taken, I need to update my Rafting picture gallery, the last shots are from July 4th, and since then we had lots of folks going rafting… but haven’t gotten my hands on any of the photos taken.

We’ve been blogged!!

Chetan was part of the team that was in Bethel in July 4th, 08 weekend, he mentions Bethel homestay in his blog (http://chetankrishna.blogspot.com/)

Also Pavani, part of the same group gave us a review in Raahi.com, read it here

Hectic Rafting..

For a change we had a quiet weekend in Bethel, We had a team from Hyderabad, Vishnu and his friends(Vinay, Ram, Phalgun) joined us in Bethel this weekend. They were supposed to be there for three days, however they decided to leave immediately after Rafting!! They left behind a Cell phone and pair of pants

The relative quiet on the homestay side was balanced by the hectic Rafting schedules we had.

We had Naveen, who along with his friends were planning to do a trek and also complete White water rafting while they were in Coorg. Unfortunately by the time they finished their trek of Brahmagiri, they were too late to reach for their rafting session.

Nevermind guys, the rafting season goes upto August, hope you had nice time in Coorg.

Dr. Chengapa and his team was another guest who was supposed to come for rafting, but couldn’t make it

We had Anmol and team, who were also scheduled to go for rafting at 330 PM, but actually went rafting with Vishnu’s group at 9.00 AM in the morning

Then we had our gang.. Ravi, Sampath, Sanjay, Santhosh, Shivu, Dhanu, Rajesh, and Rakesh, who had come over to raft, they had lunch in Bethel and went for rafting.. This was first time for Rakesh this season, the first time ever for most of the rest. And it was certainly an eventful start for our folks, they got stuck at the Wicked Witch rapid and had to get off to try and get the raft into the water, instead of steadying things they almost lost their raft, it took some acrobatic diving and rescue from Rakesh and Mohammed (Our rafting guide) to finally get the raft back to the team

Through all this, Ravi, who was rafting for the first time, was at his whimsical best, quote.. “I know everyone dies..but will someone remind me why am I paying money for it” …After seeing Rakesh dive into the raft…”Forget Over Right, Over Left ..if I had to do the same thing..I would have ‘left right..to the next world’” (Over Right, Over Left are some of the commands your learn while rafting )..

Of course after all this..he has already booked the slot to do it all over again
Next time, I’ll be there too ..

As usual I’ll put up photos as and when I get my hands on them..

Rafting weekend….

Here are some of the pics from the July,4th team’s visit to Coorg

The full group at the end of the visit…

Rafting..

11000 volts staring at you..

Hitting the rapids..

By the stream….

Trekking through…

Tippu’s Summer palace, Srigangapatnam

Feeding elephants at Dubare, Elephant Camp

Golden monastry, Bylakuppe (night)

Another busy weekend

This was another busy weekend…

We had Nikil and his team there (4 in all), then we had Samir’s team (Samir, Sushma, Adarsh and Deepti) and Sanjay’s team (Sanjay, Omar, Ranga and Sudeep).

Incidently…Sanjay, Omar, Ranga were the first ever customers of Bethel…

Then of course we had the unexpected surprise element that we have come to expect , John (our first web customers) suddenly decided to come with his team(Chris, Micheal and Kumar)!!

Net net, we had 16 folks in Bethel this weekend, Rajesh (Nelgi) came over to help us

It was Sudeep’s birthday today.
Sudeep, Many happy returns of the day!!, I hope it was a day you will remember for long time.

Photos as I get them..I heard Nikhil got some great shots of rafting and he also had some good sightings of Elephants in Wayanad..

It was busy for me too, I added a rafting page to our website, giving details of rafting in Coorg, check it out here

With me in Coorg for the weekend, a lot of web inquries were unanswered, was not able to make the 48 hour response time SLA that we had set for ourselves.

So I need to send out a lot of apology letters for the delay and get back to the website, it needs some more work (link the blog to the website, update latest photos of Bethel, link to customer reviews in HoldiayIQ, add a generic picture gallery ? …).

Speaking of customer reviews, I hope our guests reading this blog would give us more reviews, it really really really means a lot to us. If you want quick link to where you can put a review, well here it is

Nikhil and team

Nikhil and his team of four are at Bethel today (July 10-12). Nikhil had booked Bethel last month for his team, Arun received them at Gonikoppal.

Hope they have a great time. More later..