More on coins and notes collection

Since last time I posted, it has been a wonderful time for me.
I bought the largest coin album Venus had (192 Coins) since they didnt have any smaller ones in stock, and I was wondering how much of it will be filled once I start placing coins in that. To my surprise, I had 87 different coins with different pictures on it. As I started checking more coins for different mints, my collection increased very fast. For starters I found out that there are four mints in India, that is coins are made in Noida, Kolkata, Mumbai and Hyderabad, which has their specific mark. While scanning coins for these mints, I found few more mints which I could not recognise. Then I found that, in past years Indian government has got coins from some foreign countries and all the mints I could not recognise were foreign mints.

Ganesh Chaturdashi special trek to Ankai - Tankai

The Ganesh festival is one of the biggest festivals celebrated in India. There are crowds all over a city during the 10 days of the festival, which peaks in the last 2-3 days and all main roads in the city get closed for vehicles, to make some room for the crowd walking from one place to another to see the decorations made by various groups (Mandal). The highlight of the festival is the Ganpati Procession (Miravnuk) that takes place on the final day - Anant Chataurdashi.  So unless you want to see those decorations or want to see anything from traditional Dhol - Tasha Pathak in the procession to people dancing on the beats of rowdy hindi film songs, it is not the place for you.

Me and my friends have been going to see this procession since we were in school. We used to go on Laxmi Road at night around 8 - 9 pm, the main road from where all the groups take their Ganapati for immersion and witness the huge crowd gathered there just to be part of the whole festive atmosphere. Wherever you look around, be it the road, railings, footpath, balconies and any open space in the buildings on the road, there is crowd. We used to wait for the very well known and well respected Ganesh Mandal, Dagdusheth Halwai to arrive at the Laxmi road, which never missed its 6 am timing, and then only go back home.

Interesting Hobby - Coin Collection

Recently one of my friends, Pinakin showed me his Indian coins & notes collection, nicely put in an album. It was very interesting to see those coins with so many different pictures and variations. I have been collecting coins since I was in school, but used to use a small carry bag to put them all in it. After I saw Pinakin's collection, I just couldn't stop thinking about getting an Album and organizing my collection properly.

Three Cups of Tea

I have been trekking every year in Himalaya since 2005, and have seen many small villages situated way far from the cities or towns we generally know. We always meet people who come with us as porters or guides and who are always willing to help others boundlessly, inspite of the rough lives they are living as compared to people's lives in 'developed' cities. When we talk to them, asking about their family and what everyone in the family does, their eyes sparkle when they talk about their children or grandchildren learning in school in their village or somewhere else. When we talk to the kids in a village, they are always excited about talking about schools and what they would like to do when they grow up. It has always felt good to know that the children in such remote areas are getting education as well, although I still wonder if they get enough education to improve their lives or not. 

Point of writing all this is, recently I read a good book, Three Cups of Tea, about an American, Greg Mortenson, who went to climb K2 and found a noble thing to do for the rest of his life. The book tells a story about how he started and succeded building schools in the remote villages in Karakoram, Pakistan, in a hope to promote Peace Through Education and in the years of working there, met with the people that are willing to help him in every way they can, to give education to their generations to come...

Durg - Dhakoba

When we started planning for it, few of us had only one and a half day in hand where others had 2 full days, so we had to plan where we could visit one fort on first day and start back to Pune on the next morning, while others could continue to the second fort. That's why we decided to go to these forts since Durg is very small, actually a huge pile of big rocks rather than a fort. Dhakoba has quite a climb, as per few books and blogs it takes 2.5 hours to reach its top if climbed from the base village Amboli.