Jadugar Anand Magic Show in Town hall bangalore

Performance of magic is all about making impossible to possible. So magicians make the impossible seemingly possible. We went to Jadugar Anand’s Magic Show at Town hall, Bangalore last week end of April 2010.  I booked tickets thru http://www.limata.com/. Tickets are ranging from Rs 100 to Rs 300. Daily two shows at 4pm and 7pm.

The show started off with a narration on how Anand became a magician. He has 4 Guinness World Records on his name!. First show was about explaining about great magicians in the world using a big book. When they showed the book for the first time there is no magician photo from India. They turned pages again for the second time, this time Anand appeared himself and came out of the book.

He started with simple magic tricks like getting birds out of nothing, changing colors of flowers, etc. In many other tricks group of people or coming out of different objects in a surprise. We were trying to get into the bottom of the tricks and tried to watch closer for any visibility of a trapdoor or the sort, when suddenly, as if reading audience mind, Anand said with a “Ladies and Gentlemen, this is a Government building and we are not even allowed to hit a nail into the wall, so forget about cutting holes into the stage.

In between young girls are dancing between different sets of tricks and in that time Anand is changing his dress and coming back to the stage with next set of tricks. He called for a volunteer in the audience to assist him for a few other tricks. A girl went on to the stage to help. He mesmerized her and he played a magic trick of inserting a sword right through her neck. Then, he played another interesting trick of levitating her against the gravitational force in the free space. Both of these tricks were carried out awesomely, and as expected, the girl was safe and sound as before!  

There were some theme magic tricks, He took us to the olden days when pallaki/palanquins are used for travel. Around 15 persons came out of the empty palanquin in no time. He also played a drama on the corruption. In that they showcased a magic where, Baratha matha disappearing and appearing again based on the person opening a pyramid type object.

He also played some tricks of great American and Russian magicians giving credits to them. Cutting a man using electric saw is one among them. He also escaped from heavily locked box in fraction of seconds. He made a huge replica of the Statue of Liberty to disappear right in front of our eyes! All the above tricks were carried out awesomely.

When he came down from the stage to the audience once, all children went to have shake hand with him. After this, he demonstrated conjuring of a rabbit from an empty hat, and suddenly, conjured a huge elephant out of thin air! Pretty much impressive. Elephant just walked down from the stage, walked thru audience and out!

You know Bangalore software industry… May be he also kept that in mind. He said, to attract crowd he is creating different magic tricks thru out his magical life. This time he created a magic using the available latest technologies. He brought a big empty box and few videos are projected in the front side of the box. When the Videos are playing, he played magic tricks like few persons are coming out from the video to the stage. And Anand went inside the video from the stage etc. photos of few magic tricks are as below. 

The show was played for almost 9000 seconds (as advertized). On the whole, I was quite a lot impressed with the show.

Aero India Show 2011, Bangalore

Aero India 2011 is the Asia’s largest air show, Aero India is held at Yelahanka Air Force Station, Bangalore, India from 9-13 February 2011. We visited this on the last day 13 Feb 2011. Ticket price was Rs 500/- for Air Display Viewing Area (ADVA) during weekends. 

There was huge crowd and no chairs were available to sit and view even though we reached the place 2 hours before the scheduled show time.Most of the chairs were occupied by defense and army employees with their families.

 

The show was started @ 10.00 with some helicopters show. They showed helicopters carrying a Jeep, carrying Army men on ropes etc. It is advised to carry binoculars to view the show clearly. And it would be good if you have hats or umbrellas handy.

Surya Kiran show with Indian flag colors and Red Bulls show from German pilots team are important shows in Aero India.  Apart from there were many fighter planes on the show demonstrating their capabilities.

There was huge response from the crowd when Surya Kiran flights create Art of Indian flag on the big canvas, The sky. It was almost last for 30 mins with different kinds of drills with flights.

At the end of Surya Kiran show, they created a love Symbol on the sky to mark for Valentine ’s Day, the next day. Check videos in this blog.

Red bulls show was also good, and read in some web sites that the average age of these pilots is around 55 years. At that age doing this kind of shows rotating flights in different angles, like reverse etc might be very difficult.

After viewing these shows near the viewing area we came back to the tent area where huge digital display of this show with related explanation was going on. We could not listen to this from Viewing are as there was huge crowd and disturbance.

And at the end of the Indian flag hosting show was also good. Around 10-20 persons sky dived using parachutes in Indian flag colors. Seeing Indian flag colors across the sky was awesome.

Mathsya Mela - Fisheries Exhibition Bangalore

Yesterday we went to fisheries exhibition, Mathsya Mela in Tripura Vasini, Palace Grounds Bangalore. It was started on 18th Feb and open till 21st Feb 2011. The area was very crowded yesterday as there was a BJP Party meeting.

It was very good, big statues of fishes, Dolphin entrance welcome us to the mela. There were small artificial ponds created with crabs, fishes etc inside the mela. If you proceed further there are 100s of aquariums with different kinda fishes and aquatic plants. There were load of children and people watching these aquariums and taking some snaps of these fishes.

And then there are around 100 stalls with display of various fisheries-related products, ornamental fish, latest production technology, research and development and developmental institutions. There were many people buying different types of aquariums, fishes etc in this area.

Next attraction here is food court with lots of seafood dishes. You can have your lunch here, as we went around 4pm there we just had Chilly Prawns there. And there are shops to buy fresh fishes for your cooking.

Great Bombay Circus on Jan1st 2011

This Jan1st we visited Great Bombay Circus in Bangalore. This is back in Bangalore after 38 years at the Palace Grounds opposite the TV Tower in J.C. Nagar. They have 3 shows daily @1 pm, 4 pm and 7 pm and available till 22nd Jan 2011. Ticket costs range from 40/- to 250/-

We booked 250/- tickets in advance and went to the place by 4pm. As it was New Year and week end, there was too much crowd around 2000 to 3000 people...

The show started around 4.15 with Russian Rope Balance performance. After that all artists and performing animals come on stage. That was awesome. We saw elephants, camels, horses etc. Then the performances Chinese roller act, cube pyramid juggling, Russian Palotna acrobatics, American limping board, Russian spider ring act, vertical swinging acrobatics, Russian devil clown act, high-wheel cycle skipping act and pocket cycle, Russian clown skipping act and elephant cricket etc are started one after other. In between the Magicians and jokers acts and plays were giving good humor and laughs

 

Cycle acts by male and female performers including group performances on single wheel, performance in pocket cycle and performance in High wheel cycle are good. Elephant cricket was awesome… there were some boundaries and catches too in this cricket. Dog show, Parrot show and camel show was too good. Some parrots were cycling, group of dogs were rolling a pipe kind of thing etc. Fire artists have given their good performances. And acrobatics were too good. There was a performance too throw ball in a net on top of the long rod thru steps attached to the rod using legs. This was very well done, when she missed the throw once when she was almost on the way, there was a huge response from the entire crowd. And there were some motor bike performances too.

Check some snaps of the performances.

Siddara Betta - Trekking and Cave Exploration

Our Project team was planning to go out from long time.. finally the day has come... we checked with many options like Wonderla etc.... I suggested trekking... then we googled for some good place ... after reviewing some blogs we finally decided Siddara Betta as it has trekking, temple and most importantly Caves.

The Place...

Siddara Batta is a rocky hill 3660 feet above sea level. It is Sacred Place where many sadhus/Holy spiritual men made meditation and worship of Lord Shiva. We can still see some sadhus meditating here and some more are in samadhi state. Here is a famous temple situated at the Top of the Hill. Though the major crowd which visits here are pilgrims, this place is also interests for trekkers and other nature lovers. The main attractive spot here is the Lakshmi Cave, which is more than a kilometer deep and a visit to this cave is an adventure in itself.

The Plan...

Our Team members - Ramesh, Kharibam, Mahesh, Preetam, Swapnil, Kowsalya, Vinod, Kavya, Sachin and me planned to meet in office near Mekhri circle on Friday, 10th Dec 2010 @ 7.15 AM. Other team mate Rimple missed this as he was on vacation. We all met at the office by 7.45AM. Mahesh arranged a Tempo Traveler for this purpose. We all get into this and started our journey.

The Route…
Siddara Betta is around 12 Km from Koratagere in Tumkur district and is around 85 km away from the Bangalore (Mekhri circle).

We had our breakfast in Kamath hotel in Tumkur road on the way to Siddara betta. Nice Idly Vada and Dosas available there. We enquired for rice to parcel for lunch at hill top; we knew that there are no hotels available around Siddara betta. But it was not available at that time. So we started our journey back hoping to get lunch parcel in some daba on the way. We reached the flyover before Tumkur in a short time and started enquiring this place.

Important confusing fact is that there are two Siddara bettas .. One near dobhaspet and one near koratagere. Our destination is Siddara betta near koratagere. We need to take service road at this flyover (this place name is Dobhaspet) and take right turn to reach koratagere and then Siddara betta. We reached Siddara betta around 11 AM. We did not get food on the way. We checked for the food at the base and ordered at a small hotel to have it after coming back from trekking.

The Trek…

There are steps till the temple. We started going in that route to the hill top, meanwhile we met a localite/guide he said there is another way to trek which pass thru many other places of hill. Then we hired his service (for `400/-) for our trek and started trekking with him. The trekking was thru steep hill rocks, there is no path and it is lil slippery. On the way we saw some small cave and spent some time over there. Then we started our trekking again and in middle the guide forgot the route, after searching for 5-10mins we were in the right way and joined the steps path to the temple after almost 1 hour trek.

I’m already exhausted even though we took frequent intervals, as it was taking time for me, so I asked other team members to go ahead with the trek. I took almost 15 mins rest and started trekking again. Meanwhile other team members reached temple had bath and completed puja (it’s good to carry another pair of dress). By the time I reached the temple they were in Cave exploration. I had Quick darshan and hired other guide service (for `50/-) to join the team members inside the cave. There are many guides available near the cave. It took just 5-10 mins to meet other team members in the cave. Then we all started the Cave exploration.

The Cave ...

The cave is starts from the temple (near the Shiva linga) and ends outside the temple. The cave was long and the cave exploration was thrilling. There are some Samadhis of sadhus inside the caves who meditated here some time back.

We started to move inside caves. The passage was very small at some places; the rocks were quite slippery and sharp. At some places we need to cross big rocks... there were some real low rise rocks where we had to literally crawl to pass thru ...It was awesome !!

We also reached a few open areas with vegetation. One of these areas housed large roots which are good enough to be a nice swing. We had some group photos over there... and finally we manage to reach end of that cave after passing thru some bees :-(. It is good to carry Torchlight with you that helped us a lot in these caves.

There are many monkeys around this hill like in many other places which take away if you carry any plastic bags (i think it’s a nice way to reduce the usage of plastics :-) ).

From here we can trek to the hill top where we can see another temple and some meditation points and good 360 view of surrounding places.

But we could not go there as it was already 3pm to start the journey back to Bangalore. This time we used the steps to come back to the base unlike the trek path we used while going to the top. On the way we went to a place called Pyramid where two sadhus are still meditating. We did not disturb them and came down to the base and started our journey back to Bangalore. On the way we passed thru the Elevated expressway in Tumkur road that was newly opened on that day, which saved almost one hour of our journey.

Other places to see nearby - Devarayana Durga and there is a hill nearby with a fort at the top

Accommodation – no accommodation available, you need to carry tents if you want to stay night

Food – Kamath Hotel and some Dabas available on the way in Tumkur road. But no food is available at Siddara Betta. Good to carry from Bangalore.

Transportation - Self

Nandi hills and surrounding places

It was a long pending trip with entire family. As my youngest brother coming from Hyderabad to Bangalore for holiday we asked our parents also to come here so that we go somewhere around Bangalore

We initially thought to go to Nandi hills but later thought about other places too, after thinking of many places and searching in internet and blogs we decided 3 places – Nandhi hills, Bannergatta National Park and Sivasamudhra. Ha.. finally freezed to the initial place Nandhi Hills as it is nearby from my place, Sahakara Nagar. We decided to go early morning to see sun rise @ Nandhi hills and then visit to Bogha Nandheeswara Temple, Mudhena halli and Devanahalli fort.

We started around 4.30 am from home and reached Nandi hills by 5.30 am. It was butiful and my parents could not come out of the vehicle as it was too cold and totally covered with fog. We waited in the vehicle for some time as the ticket counter was not yet opened to go to the top of the hill. It was 6 am by the time we reach th top of the hill after getting the ticket.

Just after coming out of the vehicle, we went to the back side of KSTDC's Hotel Mayura Pine Top for proper view of Sun rise... But as we are not sure of the sun rise view point we came back to the initial enquired for the Sun rise view point after having hot tea. They said it would be 7.00/7.30 Am by the sun rises. So we had an hour or so to roam around before the sun rise. We left our parents at a hotel as they were feeling too cold in that environment and went across the temples and parks. We could not see others/places clearly as there was too much fog.

It was almost 7.30 am, but still no sun rise... so we had our breakfast and then waiting for sun rise... Around 8.00 am we could see only partial sun rise. It was Okay. We waited for Sun rise at Tippu drop till 10.30 am, but still no luck. Then we decided to go back... We went to Yoga Nandhiswara temple and Tippu Summer Palace while coming back to the base. Check some more snaps below.

Bhoga Nandhiswara temple is in Nandi village which is around 8Km from the base of Nandi hills. This is historical temple with high architecture values. This temple constructed in ninth century in Dravidian style and upgraded by 5 kings in different periods of time. The courtyard surrounding the temple is huge and the temple itself has several separate areas with small temples. During our visit, surroundings were too oily may be because of Karthika Pournami festival. The main complex of the temple houses a statue of Shiva and Parvati in the same stone with a intricately carved Kalyana Mantapa in front and lots of pillars; the Kalyana Mantapa in front of middle temple looks similar to the Belur/Halebidu built by the Hoysalas with micro carvings. A separate area has a dance platform and a place for the king to sit and watch the performance. The large peaceful tank/Kalyani is in the next area. There is good garden maintained outside the temple. You can spend at least half a day here visiting temple and enjoying the nature outside the temple.

Our next destination was Mudhena halli which is around 5Km from Nandi village. It is the birthplace of Sir. M. Vishveswarayya. His ancestral home, where he was born, has been preserved for public viewing. There is a small museum with the items he used. We can see his Bhata Rathna medal in this museum. And there are many photos of him with historical leaders and kings of that time. And Vishveswarayya's samadhi is also nearby.

Initially we thought to go to some small waterfalls near Nandi village while coming back as pointed by my younger brother. But as we are not sure of the route for this waterfalls plan and started journey back to Devanahalli.

Devanahalli fort is a small fort with only huge walls covering small village. We can just go to the top of these fort walls and spend some time over there. Then while coming back to Bangalore we visited Tippu's birth place near by the Devanahalli fort.