Wordings lifted from Sri Jagannath Mandir Kuala Lumpur leaflet.

Damodara month is a very auspicious month for worshipers of Lord Krishna or Vishnu. It normally falls within the month of October and November.

During this month, devotees worship Lord Krishna in His childhood form called Damodara. This is very sweet and lovely form of the Lord.

Devotees offer ghee lamps daily and engage in hearing the sweet Lord's mischievous childhood pastimes, where He was bound by mother Yasoda for playing the role of a butter-theif. The significance of this pastime is that the Lord steals the hearts of His devotees and only His devotees can bind the Lord within their hearts.

So, in the month of Damodara, the devotees think about this beautiful play that the Supreme Lord does with His dear mother Yasoda. She is His most intimate associate as a mother and her love for Krishna is eternally glorified.

In this month, one who is engaged daily in worship of Lord Damodara and recites the prayer known as Damodarastakam, attracts Lord Damodara.


The Benefits Mentioned in Scripture:
When one offers a lamp during the month of Karttika (Aippasi month in the Tamil calendar) either at home or temple:

• His/Her sins in many thousands and millions of birth perish in half an eye-blink.
• Has already performed all yajnas and bathing in all holy river.
• Will obtain the greatest results.

Lord Damodara glorifies anyone who lights a lamp for someone else to offer. They who with love, hear the pastimes of Lord Damodara, attains the pious result of giving hundred cows in charity.

A person who during the month of Karttika eagerly hears the topics of Lord Damodara delivers a hundred generations of his family.


Damodarastakam Prayer:

As promised, here are the pictures for the second part. I'll start this one with where I left out in the previous post.

The last time I've been to Cameron Highlands was when I was still in primary school. Back then, my family went with two other of my father's best friends family. My my, what fun we had! Going back there again after so many years got me really exited. Despite all these years, I can still recognise the place we stayed, the place we ate and the place I played Counter Strike with my other friends. Good times.

Thanks to the annual Cameron Highlands Ratha Yathra, my family had a reason to go back there again. Ratha Yathra in a cold weather was a one-of-a-kind experience! Definitely beats getting wet in the rain... hehehe. Nevertheless, all that is a pleasure in itself. Anyways, since I'm all grown up now (well, half way grown up) my version of family vacation has changed a lot since I was a child. Instead of spontaneous decisions that we used to make, I planned my trip this time. I wanted to cover all the places that we missed out the last time, plus re-visit some places worth going twice. Below are some pics of the places I visited. More pictures are coming up in part 2!


The view on the way to Boh tea plantation factory. The whole area covers a total of 8000 acres! The largest in Malaysia.... so far. The journey here was awesome! Well, maybe not much if you're the driver. For me, I love driving on windy roads, so I enjoyed the ride. You gotta be really careful on most curves, you can't see the oncoming car. So I honked before taking each curve (irritating, but I had like 5 other souls in the car, so had to be extra cautious), just in case. Saved me a few times.


Dad and myself felt a little bored after touring the Boh tea factory. We decided to take a short walk to the back of the factory. Found these logs stacked right opposite the conveyor used to transport the tea leaves into the building.


View at the peak of Gunung Brinchang! Some people call this place Gunung Batu Brinchang. This is the 2nd highest mountain in Cameron Highlands, boasting a height of 2.031km above sea level. Height of Gunung Irau (the highest) on the other hand is 2.11km above sea level. This mountain is located at the Titiwangsa mountain range, almost at the border of Perak and Pahang. You can see how the mountains looks like they're overlapping each other from here.

They always say, "It's not about the destination, but the journey that matters". To get to this place, you can either drive or hike all the way up above. Unfortunately, due to certain circumstances, I could not go for the hike. Nevertheless, I really enjoyed the drive (But I'm quite sure the hike would have been better. Too bad.). The road was extremely narrow and windy. At some places, the road was quite uneven, got me worried if something bad would happen to my tyre. The view on the way to the peak made the drive worth it.


This was the view from the Mossy Forest. Mossy Forest is located few minutes drive before reaching the peak of Gunung Brinchang, so you can get to this place on the way to the peak of the mointain. The tower you see there is the peak of Gunung Brinchang. The picture above was taken from there.


The specialty of this place is the thick growth of moss on top of the tree branches. Entire scenery there looks like Avatar movie set. No, not the air bender Avatar; loved the cartoon, not the movie. There were few signposts here showing tourists that they were standing right at the border of Perak and Pahang.


You get to walk deep into the forest. Can you see a thick branch blocking the way right below, that's the end of this trail. Well, not really the end. We can still walk further (plus there is also another path going all the way down on the right if this picture), but it may not be a good idea going all the way down. A really big bee kept circling over my head, probably doing its job protecting its territory. To think about it, you have to jump across that big trunk, and then there might be chances of spotting the brothers and sisters of my annoying friend.Is it worth it? Nope, not when I have family beside me ;-)



Besides the moss, old trees and ferns, I was surprised to spot some flowers there! If I'm not mistaken, those are wild rose flowers. This plant definitely stood out from the rest of the plants there.


This little one was spotted at Lata Iskandar Waterfall, on the way to Cameron Highlands. You can spot various insect (and arachnid! One spider was almost the size of my palm) species here. This one was spotted easily thanks to its distinctive color on the rock. The species name of this moth is Dysphania Subrepleta. This was what I found after some Googling. I'm still a little confused whether or not it can be Dysphania Militaris. If I'm not mistaken, the latter is bigger. This one is quite tiny. This particular species is a day-flying moth, and they like moisture. This explains why it was hanging around the waterfall area. One website stated that the blue hue on its forewing is poisonous. Not sure how true is that.

There are more pictures and crazy stories of this waterfall. I'll post it in the second part.

One fine day, my manager brought a bunch of kiwi's to the office. Normal people in my office sliced the fruit to half and ate it with a spoon. Not me. I got a little over exited and did this. Don't ask why, it just happened...

Forest Research Institute Malaysia (FRIM) is definitely a place to go for nature lovers. It's located at Selangor, just on the outskirts of Kepong and Selayang. There are various facilities provided there, such as; badminton court, tennis court, football field, jungle tracking (with canopy walk), primary school, auditorium, museum, waterfall and the list just goes on. Just head on to their website for more details. They update it quite often.

For me, I love going for a 'walk' along the forest. You can observe various nature wonders there! I've covered a bit about their famous camphor trees in a previous post. In this post, I would like to share some images I took few months back. All these images were already shared in my Instagram account.


There are about three main ponds in FRIM, and this one is my favorite. This pond is located just at the back of the Arapaima pond. Yeah, they have few Arapaima's in FRIM.



These are FRIM famous camphor trees. Notice how the leaves of different trees never touch each other? It's a special trait of this tree called crown-shyness.


Those fibrous roots grew really wide across that area! Now, try to imagine if those were long slimy tentacles... Kinda reminds me of Davy Jones. Nope not the real one, I'm talking about the one from the movie.


Apparently, this particular species of butterfly is quite rare. If that's the case, I'm quite lucky to get this shot! Via quick Googling, I found out that this butterfly is called Fluffy-Tit (Zeltus Etolus). Cute name.


Nature is simply amazing and beautiful. Had anyone ever wondered how come water is ALWAYS flowing from the top of the hill all the way to the bottom, 24/7? The behind-the-scenes works of nature is not easy to comprehend sometimes.


Not sure if it's that, but I think this mushroom is called Pigskin Poison Puffball. That's quite a mouthful to pronounce. If I got the name right, this one is quite poisonous! Just sayin', if the name is not obvious enough.

Visiting Suria KLCC during the day is fine, but you would really enjoy the view at night, trust me. Of course, you have to get out of the mall for the view.

These fountains are located at the back of Suria KLCC, just in front of the back entrance. The water show at Sinfoni Lake goes on almost the whole day, but it is best you visit them at night. The LED lights at night would make the fountains look cooler. On top of that, you can see various water patterns. The picture you see above is my favorite pattern! I call it the 'Butterfly' pattern. You'll know why when you see them in person.

On a side note, the fountains are located at one corner of the KLCC Park. If you walk around the park, there is also a small waterpark and a huge playground for the kids. My parents used to bring  my siblings and myself here almost every weekend when I was a kid. I've also seen many people going for a jog along the park.

For the benefit of those of you who got to Petronas Twin Towers, but don't know how to get to this park; all you need to do is walk into the Suria KLCC mall, get to the center court and the back entrance should be visible to you. For those who are at Traders Hotel, you can just get on the caddy for a ride to the back entrance of Suria KLCC, for free of charge of course. You will pass the Kuala Lumpur Convention Centre (on your left) on the way there.

My whole family traveled to Kuching, Sarawak about few weeks back. Though it was just over the weekend, we had lots of fun travelling around. The main reason for our Kuching trip is to join the Ratha Yatra there, organised by ISKCON Kuching. Before attending the festival at 4pm, my dad's friend lent us his car, so we took the opportunity to drive around the area.

We drove to various places around the town, and managed to get a little lost. Thanks to Waze, we somehow managed to get back on track. One of our main destination was Kuching Waterfront.


Pictured above is the river view of Kuching Waterfront. The weather was nice that day, and by nice, I meant not raining. You can see the beautiful cloud formations.


I couldn't get the official name of this building, some says "Square Town", some says "Square Tower". Personally, 'Square Building' makes more sense to me. This colonial building (during the Brooke's era) used to be a jail. You can see "1879" on top of the entrance of this building. That was how long back this building goes. The scenery along this area is really beautiful! There's not much activity you can do here, besides enjoying the scenery and taking a boat ride across the river to Astana palace and a village.


Not sure if you can see, it says 'Dewan Undangan Negeri Sarawak'. This is Kuching's state legislative building. Too bombastic? It's their parliament building. As you can see, this building is quite new. It was officially opened in 2009. This is located just opposite the river.


To cross the river, you need to pay this nice uncle RM0.50. He will take you for a short boat ride. As I mentioned before, after crossing the river, you get to see the Astana Palace and a small village.


The modern art above can be found at the back of Kuching old courthouse. It's located just opposite Kuching Waterfront, the famous clock tower and Charles Brooke Monument. This old courthouse was constructed in the year 1874. All three places mentioned just now are just walking distance of each other. One portion of this old courthouse has been made into a museum and a restaurant.


On the way back to KL from Kuching International Airport. I took the early morning flight, unfortunately, not early enough to see the sunrise from up above. Nevertheless, the scenery just before takeoff was awesome!