Thought for the day - Feb 11th

Personality and personal identity are in some ways like co-ordinates on a street map drawn by our intersecting relationships - Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts

Personality is something that defines what we are. It is the collection of qualities that defines us. This statement took me quite some time to grasp and a lot more time to understand it in completeness. After a lot of thinking, I am still not sure of what Personal Identity is, and how it differs from Personality.

As far as Personality is concerned, this is a partially true statement as what we are, is definitely shaped by the relationships we have at least in the beginning stages of our life. At a time when we are young, we learn the ways of the world through various relationships that we have with parents, teachers, friends and many more. As we grow up, as we mature, we develop the ability to think on our own, attain the ability to differentiate good from bad, act on our own, take decisions on our own and also achieve the capability to make a choice. Hence we develop individuality and personality is shaped also by our actions. Relationships though still play a major role as we learn from the world around, its no longer the only guiding influence they once were.

Personality varies over time. It changes as we keep learning new things and learning and change are the only things that are always there. The extent to which a relationship influences a person also varies from person to person. It depends on the receptivity of a person.

Roadies: Hyd - Horsley Hills - Talakona - Hyd

Like most of my trips here was yet another out of the blue Road trip! We decided on the place just 2 days before and as usual turned out just terrific! Horsley Hills was our first destination and it was about 540 kms from Hyderabad. We started off Friday late night at 3.30 in the night, with Jatin on the wheels and me the navigator.

Hyderabad - Kurnool - Anantapur - Gooty - Horsley Hills was the route we chose.

With the early morning sun hitting our faces, and cruising at 140 was a different feel altogether. We reached Kurnool by 7 and Ananthapur by 9.30. We started the short 10 km ascent to the Horsley hill by 1 in the afternoon. The view from the hill was breathtaking. The terrain was all rocks and boulders. With the orange sun setting into the mountains and the whole sky turning scarlett is one of the best views to enjoy.

Horsley Hills is probably one of the tiniest hill stations with a total population of not more than 50 and about 10 buildings in all. Head for this hill station only if lazing around is among your primary goals. For the more adventurous, there is always hope. Rock climbing and exploring along the forests can get very interesting. As far as the food goes, the APTDC Haritha restaurant serves decent food. There are also a couple of stalls as soon as you enter the place which have chips, chai-biscuit and Spicy hot mirchi bajjis.

To take the best pleasure of the hill, we slept the night out on a hill under the stars, in sleeping bags. The Sky was adorned with millions of stars, a site you can never imagine seeing from the city. We woke up to the sunrise and headed to climb the hill overlooking the mountain to catch the sunrise at the east side. This pristine hill station, owing to the still largely unexplored status is a great weekend spot.

We started for Talakona waterfalls and were largely disappointed because of the huge crowds of people coming in. We decided to do our return trip along a different route and chose the following path

Talakona - Tirupati - Nayudupeta - Nellore - Addanki - Hyderabad

Hyderabad - Horsley hills : 550 Kms
Horsley Hills - Talakona : 150 kms
Talakona - Hyderabad : 650 Kms
We covered a total of 1350 kms exactly 48 hours. We reached Hyderabad at 3.30 Sunday late night.

You can check out the trip in pics here