Mysore trip with the Kottur gang

I’ve been to Mysore twice before. The first time was a really long time back with my parents when I was still in school. We had come to Bangalore and went on a one-day trip to Mysore. The second time was around three years back with the Alapuzhaa group. That was just after joining Aztec. Still, the trip last week with the Kottur gang was real fun, partly because we went to some places that I had never been to before.



Mysore Palace

On Friday, 17th July, I had a meeting early in the morning. I attended the call from home, packed my stuff for Mysore and went to office. After work, I went to IBM, Sampath’s office, where JK joined us. We had dinner in ITPL and went to JK’s room for the night. Our train was at 3’o clock from Whitefield. I was the first one to go to bed, knowing well how hard it is for me get up early. But I didn’t fall asleep immediately, listening for quite some time to JK, Sampath and Surya chatting. I had kept an alarm for 2:15 am, thinking that I will get up, get ready and then wake up Sampath and JK. But in the morning, we woke up in exactly the reverse order. JK got up first, woke up Sampath and by the time I woke up it was 2:45 already. Looks like the alarm had gone off at 2:15 and Sampath, thinking that I must have woken up, had turned it off. What did he know that I was most blissfully asleep totally unaware of any alarm going off :D So I woke up in shock, quickly changed into jeans and a t-shirt and all three of us rushed to the station. Luckily, the train came only after some 10 minutes. Shakthi and Sundar had been awake while the others were sleeping or half-asleep. Bangalore City was around 50 mins travel from Whitefield and I had not even fallen asleep when I heard a voice asking people to check their luggage. I woke up, checked my bag, woke up Karikalan and told him to check his luggage. By that time, the lady in the berth below me and the guy in the opposite berth realised that their luggage was missing. Looks like someone had stolen their bags sometime around when the train was near Bangalore. It was really sad. The lady was travelling alone with her kid and the guy was with his father and traveling from Assam to Mysore for his father’s treatment, I think.



Outside the Temple on Chamundi Hills

We reached Mysore in the morning, where the cab I had arranged had come to pick us up. All of us got in and started our search for a hotel. We quickly found a hotel that fit our requirements, got fresh, had breakfast and set out for Chamundi Hills. After the darshan in the temple, we took a round of the temple compound, clicked some pics and started on our way back. On the way down, we stopped at a point for an aerial view of Mysore. Next, we planned to go to Planet X for go-karting. We reached there before 11 only to find that the place only opens around 12’o clock. So we decided to go to Mysore Zoo. Previously, one of my friends who is from Mysore had recommended going to the zoo, but I hadn’t been interested thinking all the zoos in India are poorly maintained and hardly have anything to see. We got the entry tickets and waited for JK, Shakthi and Sampath, who were busy buying sunglasses. One of the highlights of our previous trip to Kodaikanal had been Suresh’s sunglasses which he had bought while waiting for the bus to Kodai. Throughout the trip, everyone had wanted to wear them. But since he had not come this time round, people had to get their own glasses. And don’t ask for how much they bought it ;) Once we got in, the first animal we saw was a pair of giraffes. Wow! I don’t think any of us had seen giraffes before. In fact, when we first saw them, some of us thought they were statues. Only when they started moving did they realise the animals were live. After that was the birds section which was filled with colorful, exotic looking birds. After this was the tiger section. But the tiger was nowhere to be seen. Just when we were about to walk away somebody pointed out the tiger in the surrounding moat. And surprisingly, it was a white tiger! After that we saw several tigers kept in cages, most of which were huge and looked scary. After this, we came across different animals like rhino, tapir, zebra, deer, indian and african elephants, alligators and crocodiles, gorillas, langurs and various other species. It was two hours well spent. The zoo had a large variety of animals and it was well maintained. We then had lunch and left for Balmuri.



Outside our hotel

Balmuri has a small checkdam on the Cauvery where you can spend some time playing in the water. We spent around 1 hour frolicking there. Especially enjoyable is when you sit under the small falls formed by the checkdam and let the water fall on you. Next on the list was KRS. We roamed around in the garden for some time, bought raw mango from a vendor for so cheap that he was forced to shift his shop :), clicked some pics and saw the musical fountain show. Before dinner, we decided to try our luck once again at Planet X but it got no better as this time the place was fully booked. We had a look around the place and decided to leave for dinner. In the afternoon, our driver had taken us to a real posh restaurant that was too expensive for our taste and we had asked him to take us to a cheaper hotel. So in the night he brought us to a somewhat downmarket locality with a lot of cheap hotels. But even after roaming in the area for 15-20 minutes, we could not find any decent place. So we again got into the car and set out searching for a better place to eat. By this time it was around 10 in the night and we were worried that hotels may be close to their closing time. Finally, we found a proper hotel and had dinner to our satisfaction. We returned to our rooms, changed and got ready to play cards. By this time, Suresh had also joined us. We formed 4 teams and played a game called Five Cards till late into the night. I don’t play cards and I’m not good at it. But the game was fun. More than the game, it was the constant teasing and leg-pulling that added to the fun.



A giraffe in Mysore Zoo

The plan for next day was to visit Mysore Palace in the morning, followed by Srirangapattana, Talakad and Shivanasamudra and return to Mysore for our 8:15 train. I was under the impression that all these places could be covered in a single day. But according to our driver, the road to Shivanasamudra was real bad and that the to and fro travel time would not be less than 5 hours. But Shakthi had been told that it was only 1 hour away from Mysore. I asked my friend and he also told the same. So we got suspicious that the driver maybe lying to avoid going so far and saving on his vehicle’s fuel consumption. After a lot of discussion we decided to go to Mysore Palace and then go to Shivanasamudra, covering Talakkad on the way. If we had time in the evening, we might go to Srirangapattana. Only a few of us had been to the palace before and I guess the first-timers must have liked it. I wanted to take a guided tour of the palace to get a better understanding of its history. Karikalan pointed out that audio guides were available for a fee of Rs. 100 but we didn’t have time for that. Especially after we had used up so much time in clicking pics from outside. Soon we started for Shivanasamudra. As it turned out, the roads were really very bad. And it took a long time to reach Talakkad. Talakkad has a temple but we did not go there to save some time and went straight to the spot where we could get into the water. But because of the recent rain the water current was really strong. And the water looked very muddy. So we did not even touch the water and packed up quickly from there. Except for Suresh and Prabhu, who came well after all of us had got into the cab and I came to know of the reason only 2-3 days after returning from Mysore ;) Around one hour of travelling later we reached Shivanasamudra. It was almost 4’o clock by that time. In total, it had taken us almost 3 hours to come to Shivanasamudra from Mysore. But we did not realise the time spent in the cab and the credit for that should go to Karikalan. We were having a discussion on whether drinking is bad and from there it went to yoga, hinduism, energy, man and society, love, marriage, friendship, suicide and what not. Everyone got involved and it got really heated up but finally ended amicably with everyone agreeing that love is a matter of personal opinion. As Sundar put it, “Love has as many definitions as the number of people on earth”. And talking about love and its definitions, I came to know about Murugan’s definitions of love. Really funny but can’t be mentioned here ;)



Shivanasamudra Falls

Coming back to Shivanasamudra, the sight of the waterfall was amazing. It had been raining in the week gone by and even when we were in the cab, there had been a light drizzle. Due to that, the falls were in full flow and looked majestic. On the flip side, because of the rain the water flow was too strong and people were not allowed to go anywhere near it. So we had to enjoy the sight from a distance, which we did and as usual most of the time was spent in taking pics. By 5’o clock, we started for Mysore and reached just in time for our train.
All in all, the trip was highly enjoyable. I got to see some new places and got to spend time with friends. Being with them brought back memories of the time spent together during MCA, doing group study hours before the internals, feasting on the five rupees cone ice cream, playing cricket in the hot Chennai sun and the time spent fooling around in their Kottur room. Miss those times. And miss you guys!
And thanks Yuvaraj for semi-sponsoring the trip :)

Rajni sir and his Hollywood counterpart

I was browsing through the internet and came across this incredibly funny site. It is about Chuck Norris, an actor and martial arts expert. He seems to be Hollywood's version of Rajnikanth. Just check this out (If you've never heard of Chuck Norris, just replace his name with Rajnikanth):

http://www.chucknorrisfacts.com

Just out of curiosity, I googled "Rajnikanth facts" and this is what I found:

Rajnikanth Facts
Rajnikanth Facts 2

My favourite:
If you spell Rajnikant wrong on Google it doesn’t say, “Did you mean Rajnikant?” It simply replies, “Run while you still have the chance.”

Some others:
When Rajinikanth does division, there are no remainders.

Rajnikanth can disable a thermonuclear bomb in 3 seconds while blindfolded and with both hands behind his back.

Or better still - A thermonuclear bomb disables itself when it sees Rajnikanth coming.

Rajnikanth doesn’t roll on the ground. Earth just rolls around him.

My Goa trip

Beautiful view of Butterfly island near Palolem


On the very first morning of our Goa trip, Rajesh broke his knee. And by the end of the trip, Amol had broken his toe and was reduced to hobbling on one leg. And if we still think this was a hugely enjoyable trip, you can well imagine the fun we had.

The idea started with a mail from Rajesh suggesting we go on a Goa trip from 22nd – 26th January. It reminded me of his mail about a trip to Khajuraho and how it died a slow death on the drawing board itself. But luckily, this time people were more enthusiastic and five of us, namely, Rajesh, Amaresh, Vikash, Chaubesh and myself, confirmed our availability. After some days, Amol too joined in. Amaresh booked the onward journey tickets. Rajesh was responsible for the return tickets. But getting the return tickets was not that easy as all the trains and buses were fully booked, due to the extended weekend. I wanted to be on time for office on Tuesday, so I kept bugging him about ensuring he doesn’t miss out on the Tatkal tickets. Poor guy, he got so worried that when the booking opened for Tatkal, both he and Amol ended up booking the tickets. And now we had two return tickets per person.

Our train was to leave at 8:30 pm from Bangalore railway station and all of us assembled at around 8, had dinner packed and boarded the train. We quickly dumped our bags on the upper berth and started chatting, or rather, pulling each other’s legs. Once the train started moving, we decided to have our dinner and unpacked the food parcels. We had got some 6 chapatis parcelled to go with the 10 Amaresh and Chaubesh had got from home, which should have been enough for 6 guys, 2 of whom have already had their dinner. How wrong! The way we attacked the food would have put a pack of wild dogs to shame. Within five minutes everything was gone and still not one of us could claim to have a full stomach. After some time we decided to retire for the night, with Rajesh and me occupying the upper berths and Amaresh being pushed to the side upper berth. This was to be our last view of a fully fit Rajesh. By the time the rest of us woke up the next morning, he had managed to slip while getting down from his berth and hurt his knee. So when we got down at Londa at 7:40, we had a limping Rajesh for company. Londa is a pretty small village on the Karnataka-Goa border and I think the only people who go there are those on their way to Goa. We reached the local bus station, expecting to catch a bus or cab to Goa. But all the buses those stopped there started from either Belgaum or Hubli and were already filled with passengers. The other option was to hire a cab to either Panjim or Arambol beach, which we wanted to cover that day. The problem here was that all the cab drivers were part of one big gang and operated on a queue basis. So if the cab driver at the head of the queue was unable to find passengers (generally because of quoting unreasonable fare), those behind him couldn’t go either, even if they had passengers in their cab. And this is exactly what happened with us. The cab we hired was second in the queue but we couldn’t go until the first one left. After waiting for around 15 minutes, our cab driver hit upon an idea. He pretended that his cab was not starting and asked us to push it. The moment he was out of sight of the other cab drivers, he told all of us to jump in and sped away.


Our gang

After travelling for around 4 hours, we reached Panjim, the capital of Goa. From there, we hired three Honda Activas for going to Arambol. We would have loved to hire cruiser bikes or even Pulsars but we could hardly find any. But the advantage of Activa was that we could keep a lot of our stuff in the helmet compartment and in the front portion. We started after having lunch and a ride of an hour and a half brought us to Arambol beach. The welcome to Arambol was nice and green. Don’t ask why :)

We parked our bikes, threw our bags on the beach, quickly changed into shorts and jumped into the water. It was a nice feeling to get into the sea after such a long time. The only other beach I have been to is Marina beach in Chennai and the last time I went there was more than 2 years back, I guess. We stayed there on the beach, frolicking in the water till sunset. Foreigners dominated the beach and we could hardly see any Indians. And most of the foreigners were involved in some activity or the other, like juggling, yoga, playing guitar etc. After sunset, Chaubesh, Amaresh and me started searching for a place to stay. We went to almost all the beach hotels but couldn’t find any rooms. Finally, we found one boy who said he had one room available where all six of us could stay. We saw the room and it was pretty decent. So we hired that room at 600 for the night. After that, we went to a beach hotel for dinner by the sea. And that’s when the real fun started. There are many ways you can have fun. You can play, you can chat, you can dance, you can sing etc. Or you can just sit and watch Amaresh when he is drunk. Even when he is sober, he is more active than the five of us put together. Or make it four, Rajesh doesn’t really count. Getting drunk makes him hyperactive. He dances, he sings, he jumps around, takes his clothes off, talks with passers-by, jumps into the water and does a whole lot of other things. We must have spent more than 2 hours there, having dinner consisting of mouth-watering seafood and drinks and watching Amaresh’s antics. The candle-lit dinner by the seaside was one of the high points of the trip for me.

The next day we woke up early as we had planned to go trekking near the Arambol sweet water lake. After trekking for around one hour and enjoying the beautiful early morning sight of the beach, we got tired and returned to our room. Afer having a sumptuous Western style breakfast, we started for Anjuna beach.

The view of the sea from Anjuna beach is also very beautiful. We stayed there for some time and clicked some pics. Our next destination was Baga and Calangute beach where we planned to do some water rides. Baga beach was very crowded and the majority of the people were Indians. The rides available were banana boat ride, bumper boat ride, water scooter and parasailing. Banana boat ride involves riding a cylindrical, inflatable boat pulled by a motorboat. Once the boat goes a little deep into the sea, the boatman sitting at the back of the banana boat turns it upside down and everyone falls into the sea. After that everyone climbs back onto the boat and return to the shore. The idea of falling into the sea did not appeal too much to me and despite the best efforts of the boatman to convince me, I did not go. The next ride was bumper boat ride. It involved two people lying down a mattress shaped inflatable boat that is pulled at great speed by a motorboat. As the motorboat gathers speed and the waves get higher, the inflatable boat jumps high into the air. This is actually a test of strength as the only protection against being thrown several feet into the air is to hold on tightly to the handles provided. Its scary to think of what will happen if you let go. After this was water scooter, which was not half as exciting as it seems when you see it on television. The reason being that it is controlled by the handler sitting behind and you are given control for hardly 10 seconds. At Rs. 175 for a 30 second ride, it was a waste of money. Last on the list was parasailing. I am afraid of heights and from the shore it looked kind of scary. But having come all the way to Goa, I wanted to experience it and decided to go for it. We were taken to the middle of the sea, where the parasailing boat was. The boat had a parachute at its back, which was tied to it through a pulley. To ride the parachute, you had a harness put around your waist, which was clipped onto the parachute. Slowly, the parachute’s rope was loosened and it would start going in the air. After 10-15 seconds, you would be hanging by the parachute in mid-air with only the sea all around. And then the rope would be pulled back and you land safely back on the boat. Though it had looked scary from far, the actual experience wasn’t that frightening. You are in the air hardly for 30 seconds and just when a little fear starts setting in, the parachute is pulled down. Even though all the rides were on the expensive side considering the short durations involved, it is something that should not be missed.


Our sea facing beds in the Panjim lodge ;)

From Baga beach we started for Fort Aguada to see the sunset. But we got late, thanks to a Chinese restaurant that took more than an hour to serve Chicken Biryani, and by the time we reached near the Fort it was starting to get dark. Not wanting to miss the sunset, I started riding fast, not seeing whether the other two vehicles were following. After some time I came to aT-intersection, and seeing everyone take the right I followed them and reached a point thinking it was the fort. Chaubesh and me got down, parked the vehicle and went inside. There we enjoyed the beautiful sunset, took some snaps and came out to see where the other guys were. It was only then did we realise that we had actually come to some other place and not Fort Aguada. The other guys had gone there and the place having closed, were on their way back. For the night, we returned to Panjim. To look for a hotel, we split in two groups and went in different directions. But even after searching every nook and corner of Panjim, we couldn’t find a single vacant room. Due to the long weekend, all the rooms were occupied. Finally, having no other option, we had to go to a lodge where we were provided six beds in the sea-facing balcony at Rs.50 per bed. Next morning, we started for Palolem. Panjim to Madgaon was 45 minutes by bus. And from there to Palolem was another hour or so.

Of all the beaches we covered, Palolem was the most beautiful. The view from the shore was spellbinding and we were glad that we had planned to stay there for a day. We rented 2 beach huts, changed into shorts, had a quick lunch and went to the beach to play. We played football for some time, then volleyball and then with the flying disk for some time. After that we went for a boat ride to a nearby island called Honeymoon Island. The boat ride was really enjoyable because of the beautiful sights all around and we were lucky to even see some dolphins. The island was small but beautiful. There were lots of rocks around and we started posing for pictures, individual and group. During one such snap, all six of us climbed on to a rock and asked the boatman to click a picture. Amaresh and Amol were jumping from the rock, in an attempt to get a picture of them in mid-air. But in his excitement, Amol landed awkwardly on his heel and got hurt. Initially, we thought it wasn’t serious but after some time the heel had swollen and he had to spend the rest of the trip walking with the help of a stick. So now Rajesh had someone to give him company in the injured category.


Amol's fateful jump

After returning from the island, we spent some time lying on the rocks admiring the beauty of the place. While we were on the beach, we saw a very cute baby playing in the sand. Amaresh went to play with it and when I went to take a picture of the baby, Amaresh, true to his nature, told me, “Mummy ka bhi le lena”, thinking that the foreigner wouldn’t understand. But the lady quickly replied, “Mummy nahi, baby achcha” leaving Amaresh feeling a little sheepish.


The lady, the baby and Amaresh

In the evening, we went to the local market and did a little shopping. In the night, we again had candle-lit dinner by the seaside and relaxed for a couple of hours.

The next day was only about travelling. We vacated the beach huts, had breakfast and started from Palolem beach at around 11 in the morning. First we went to Chauri bus terminus from where we got a bus to Madgaon. From Madgaon we took a bus to Londa, from where we had to catch our return train to Bangalore.

The whole trip was highly enjoyable and fun filled. Goa is a beautiful place but what sets it apart is the culture of the place which makes you lose all inhibitions and have absolute fun.