“I am feeling sleepy”
“I am bored to death”
“I want to do some interesting shit”
The above statements are just a sample of how I respond to anyone who asks me “What are you doing?” or “Are you busy?” This trend has started since I joined my new team.
Today I decided to change this and do something that I have been wanting to do for quite some time now; blogging. So here is my first blog which captures the events that happened on the drive between Hyderabad and Mudumalai. It was fun recollecting the events that happened on those two days and I hope the rest of the group experiences the same.
After a lot of planning and re-planning, we (Nithya & I) started our Mudumalai trip on Thursday (31/01/2008) at 6:15 PM from my place at Gachibowli. The plan was to go to Nithya’s parents place in my Black Beauty (read car), pick up some stuff from there and head to Phani’s place to pick him up at around 8:00 PM. We reached Nithya’s parents place at around 7:45 pm, had a quick dosa for dinner and started towards Phani’s place. But as usual things got a little late and we finally reached Phani’s place at around 8:30 pm. We picked up Phani and Asha from there and after sharing pleasantries, I stepped on the accelerator to hit the Bangalore highway. Meanwhile, BK started from his place, picked up Ria, Satya and Prassi and did the required shopping for the trip. BK and folks also managed to catch up with some dinner and started towards Bangalore highway. The plan was to meet up at A1 plaza near Shadnagar and get going from there. We reached A1 plaza first and caught up with some tea and snacks before BK and co got there. Once everyone came in, we got introduced to Prassi and started towards Bangalore at around 10:30 PM.
The drive from A1 plaza was quite uneventful, until my car wheels made some noise. When I checked, I found a flat wheel. I quickly got down to fix it and in the meanwhile the other car also caught up. I fixed it in just about 20 minutes and we were on our way to Bangalore. While I was listening to some good music along with it came the snores of the people in the back seat. Luckily it all ended with Phani rubbing off his enthusiasm on to others in the car. It started with Phani singing a patriotic song with his Phuntastic voice (or more appropriately noise J) which woke up the sleeping folks in my car. Then the Phani –Nithya’s combined enthu made everyone in the car sing; including ME (That too in Hindi) and I enjoyed it thoroughly!
At around 3 in the morning we reached the A1 plaza near Gutti. We stopped our car to freshen up. The place was closed and didn’t have any tea on offer. After cleaning up the car glasses, Phani suggested that we play Frisbee for some time while waiting for BK to catch up. We started playing and BK pulled in after sometime. The guys in BK’s car also joined in and after playing for about 30 minutes, we resumed our drive towards Bangalore.
With Phani and I around there is always enthu and adventure. When the day broke, we decided to do a small trek / climb on a hillock to watch the sunrise. At around 6:30 am we found a few hillocks alongside a very beautiful lake. That’s it! We parked the car on the side and decided to climb the small hill from the other side of the road so as to be able to watch the sun rising. We woke up the sleeping women in the car and dragged them towards the hill. The hill looked small, but it proved to be a challenge to reach the summit. We missed the sunrise in the process of climbing the hill but getting to the top of the hill and the view of the lake below was a sight that will stay for times to come. Meanwhile, BK caught up with our car and told me that he is not interested in coming up through the mobile phone. But I don’t know what went through him after that, he along with the rest started climbing the hill. After they reached the hill top, we did some photo shoots and started climbing downhill. Once we reached the road, I suggested we get close to a lake and throw stones into it. The challenge was to make the stones bounce off the water the maximum number of times and I won that pretty comfortable. The next challenge was to throw the stone as far as possible and BK took the honors here. After some stone throwing and photo shoots we got back to the car and drove towards Bangalore.
The Beautiful Lake
Conquered the Summit
I stopped my car near Chikkabalapur because I was feeling a little sleepy. BK also caught up and told that he is also very tired. So Prassi took over the wheels from BK while I continued to drive my car. Prassi was not very comfortable driving BK’s car, so he was a little slow. I had to wait after every 30 mins drive for him to catch up. Finally we reached Nithyanand’s house at Bangalore at around 10:30 AM. By the time we reached his place, everyone in the car were very hungry. Nithyanand had some Maggi packets at his house and we cleaned it up. Maggi tasted just fantastic. I tried to catch up with a nap after having my share of Maggi while the others were trying to freshen up. Ria woke me up after everyone were ready. I got up, got ready and we all headed for lunch. We tried to get to Adayar Ananda Bhavan for lunch and almost everyone wanted to have Dosas there. Our bad luck Dosas get serverd only after 4. So we went to this other place in BTM layout called Udupi Garden and had our lunch. Then we went to Shoppers stop from there and waited for Chirag to join us from IIMB. Once he reached, Satya came to my car and we started our drive towards Mudumalai at around 5:00 PM.
The drive to Mysore was pretty good because of the good roads. The heavy traffic seemed immaterial because of the 4 lane road which kind of shields you from the onward traffic and their beaming lights. We just ripped through for most distance and I stopped my car in the outskirts of Mysore to catch up with some tea and buy some batteries for my Maglite torches while we wait for BK. BK caught up in a short while and after enquiring for the road to Bandipur, we continued our drive. The roads were good in patches but were really bad as we reached closer to Bandipur as there were some tree felling and bridge repair works going on. It got quite late because of the bad roads and when we reached Bandipur it was almost 11 in the night. One of the forest guards stopped us and was not willing to accept the people in the car as friends and family. He settled down and let me go only after taking Rs.50 from me. Then on we entered Mudumalai, the Tamil Nadu part of the forest range. From here on we paid only for the entry tickets and used my friend’s father in laws name (Sundarakumar) to get past all the check posts. The roads through the forest were very narrow and we decided to pass through them really slow. We came across a pack of spotted deer’s near the road and it excited the people in the car to no ends. We waited there for some time taking in the beauty of these animals and we started again. We spotted more deer’s on our way and people were all geared up and excited for things to come in the next 4 days. By the time we reached Masinigudi where we had booked a resort (Bear Mountain) it was almost midnight.
We checked into Bear Mountain resort where they had provided us four tents on tree tops. The official married couples took over the 2 tents on one tree, while the rest of the gang picked the other tree top. We dropped our luggage and headed for supper. The dinner was awesome and everyone really enjoyed the food there. We hogged to our hearts content and then headed to the tents to catch up with the sleep for the night. I really needed this after the long and strenuous drive from Hyderabad, but I heard some people playing cards in the other tree and decided to join them for some time. After a couple of games, I decided that it is time to sleep and along with Nithya headed to our tent.
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