Vainu Bappu Observatory

Long ago, I had read a book How I killed Pluto And Why It Had It Coming. This book explains how the author uses a telescope to discover exoplanets and how he used programming to achieve it. This book inspired me to learn skills in other field other than computer science. Taking up skills from multiple areas can help in brining unique ideas.

Later, I have read couple of physics books from Stephen Hawking and Richard Fenyman and as a curious person I am I wanted to learn more. I discovered this telescope close to Bangalore. Vainu Bappu Observatory. Did some research and found that the observatory has multiple big telescopes and a small 8 inch telescope. The 8 inch telescope is available for public on Saturday evenings.

So I visited the observatory this Saturday evening. The drive from Bangalore was calm and we had good roads almost till the observatory. The night sky is very amazing here because of the very less light pollution here.

The first time I enjoyed the night sky is when I was so young and we had gone to the nearby village for a family function. Once the function was done, we were supposed to walk to our village with our whole extended family. The elders waited for the night to grow on us so that we get more moon light to make our path so visible. We walked back to our village in night with no mobiles and very few torches. That was the first time I realized how bright the moonlight is. The next time also it was almost a similar incident. Coming back from a wedding night in a load auto. I had this feeling how beautiful the sky is. This time I did have a mobile phone with a camera. I tried clicking a photo of the night sky and realized not all things beautiful can be captured on a camera.

The next time was when I was in Rameshwaram. We had stayed in a small property which was shared by us and a couple from US. They had showed us the Sky Map mobile app and helped us identify objects on the sky. We clicked couple of awesome pics of the night sky with help from them.

After this it was a long time since I had enjoyed night sky. The next time was while camping in Gandikota and the next was this night at the observatory. Even though the place was bit crowded and the telescope was very small, we had some good time there.

En route to the observatory

Gingee fort

This trip was one of the CouchSurfing community event. You can find the details of the event here.

Gingee fort was on my bucket list from the time I heard about it in 2010. It has taken eight years to remove it from my todo list.

When I found the event on couch surfing, I wanted to try it for sure. It was a nice chance to meet new people and know a lot about their travels. But I was also bit hesitant to drive with a couple of strangers. But anyway the travel turned up real good.

So the plan was to leave Bengaluru as early as possible and reach Gingee fort by 9 when they open the gates. It gets really hotter in this area, so the earlier we go its better.

I started from my home at around 2 in the morning and picked up two folks on the way to our meeting point at Ecity. It was a bit strange to get a stranger into the car late in night. But Ravi filled me with his travel stories and within few minutes we got accustomed to each other.

We had to wait for few more folks to join us in the meeting spot. Once everyone arrived, we started from Bangalore in 3 cars.

Once we hit the smaller bad road towards Tiruvanamali, we were surrounded by fog all around. Visibility had come down to less than a metre. Driving in this weather was a group activity with all the persons in the car looking out for turns in the road, potholes and vehicles coming in the opposite direction.

This road was an embarassment for me as one of the friend in the trip was just saying about how good Tamil Nadu roads were and I had to take her in this road.

Each person in the trip had their own favorite stories to tell. One interesting story was by a guy who had backpacked around Kanyakumari. It was interesting to see places you are so familiar with through a different set of eyes.

A small pit stop near a lake

We made an unplanned stop at Tiruvanamalai temple. The temple town was waking up for the day. We had breakfast in Tiruvanamalai and started to Gingee fort.

The sun had already risen and the temperature was reaching its day time peak when we started the climb. Gingee is a group of hill locks typical of the deccan plateau.