Kalyan was one of the early employees of Yahoo's Software Development Center in Bangalore, India. When Rasmus and I were there a bit over a year ago, he was an excellent host--taking us out to interesting places for dinner each night as well as introducing us to the rest of the Yahoos there and the Linux/Bangalore Conference.
He seemed to know everyone and everyone liked him.
A few months back, he left Yahoo and hadn't decided what to do. But a few weeks ago I was surprised to read that he was heading to the Jungle for work.
So starting Jan 1st 2005, I'm of to work there for anywhere between 2 weeks to 2 months. This place does not have power (a generator is turned out for an hour every evening) and no internet access (I'll have to drive to the nearest town to pick up GPRS signal), which means after after many years, I'll be totally offline. I never imagined (even a month ago) that I'd be doing something as random as this in my life. I, for one always wanted to do this since I was a kid. I grew up looking at Jane goodall and likes on NGC and said to myself "Hey, I want to do that when I grow up" and this is like my childhood dream come true. (I also wanted to be an astronaut, but thats a diff story).
And then, more recently, he wrote about Internet access in the jungle via GPRS:
Since the resort is on a hill, overlooking at the plains below, I can manage a weak airtel signal. So currently I have my phone tied up on a tree (to get better signal of course) and the laptop is able to connect to the phone via bluetooth even though the phone is more then 10m away.
What can I say about this place ? I'm currently sleeping on a hammock with the laptop on my tummy. There are some 20 monkey's around playing and few of them are curious about my laptop and want to have a peak. There are two camp elephants and they are day dreaming on my left and on the right the its all dense forests. Yesterday right after I landed here, a tiger walked into the camp. We heard lot of alarm calls from all the animals around and by the time I got to the place, the tiger had disappeared. Few of the guests managed to see it though.
Except for the fact that I feel a bit lonely here, this is the best thing I've done in my life.
It sounds like quite a life he's living now! He even spotted and got a picture of a wild tiger a few days ago.
Kalyan, keep up the blogging when you can. It's great to read about jungle life and what you're up to.
Posted by jzawodn at January 16, 2005 11:35 PM
Yep, Kallu is living his dreams.
I don't know him all that well (even though we're from the same college and he left Yahoo just about a few months as I came in) but he's a great guy.
I am sort of living my fantasy through him. Who knows, maybe, I might get inspired from him in future ;)
Kalyan has an unbelievable eye for photo-ops. His site has some of the most beautiful pictures I have seen. Check out http://kalyanvarma.net, in the photography section. I keep increasing the number of virtual desktops on KDE to accommodate more of his pics as wallpapers :)
