I was waiting since long to go on trip with friends for couple of days. Our group of old friends from L&T (Working for a project Called AceMap) was the right Choice, as we all are in different companies now and it will be a great re-union. But many attempts to at least meet in Bangalore itself had failed. So I had no hopes of making a 2-3 days trip outside Bangalore. But one fine day I got a call.. Which was conf call involving yadavi, Mahesh and Gundappi....everyone had suddenly planned to go on a 3 day trip and they asked for my confirmation....location was yet to be decided. In the back of my mind I was eveready but my involvement in interiors of my new home was the only hurdle....I delayed my decision to say YES. After the call... I was surprised to know that, all our Ex L&T buddies had agreed to come on the trip....more surprising was the fact that all girls in our well know AceMap group had agreed to come ...Yadavi, Sumana and Haritha.
As an Icing on the cake ...sagar and Kadambari's (Our first newly wed couple in the group.....one more couple in the making: added freshly :-) ) confirmation was great news. Karna canceled his important commitments and was joining us...thanks to him....we need him badly to keep the group laughing ;-). I too made some arrangement and decided to go. Reddy Sid and deepak were always in right from the beginning ...and so was Gundappi. The most surprising and the best thing was Manoj(Batista) joining for the trip. Finally everyone was ready. :-)))))
The day was not yet fixed...and the place as well, but everyone gave the confirmation on the availability on June 6th to 8th. Amazingly all were ready to apply leave on 6th ..Friday. Everything seemed to be perfect. Even we went to the extent of meeting at some place in the weekend to plan for the trip. By 30th of May, after some consultation and research we concluded to go to Wayanad (Kerala) ...Its a district of hill stations in kerala which comes first when we go via Mysore. It’s around 280 Kms from Bangalore. The next few days before the trip we did lot of research on finalizing the places to visit in the district and about accommodation.
The main issue that came up after consulting colleagues from kerala was the monsoon season which was about to begin in kerala. It was predicted to be entering kerala in first week on June. Sadly we got the news that monsoon has hit kerala exactly as predicted. This was when some of our group members started raising issue of...it not being the right time to visit kerala. But some of us did not loose hope. As the day approached some of us still had the doubts to make it. Also we had planned too much for the trip by then. We knew from experience that planned trips get cancelled. But some how we managed to arrive on the journey date and still no one had raised any issue.
We had decided to leave on thursday night by 9PM and reach our destination on friday morning. Spend friday Leisurely....Saturday was to visit some of the places and to return on sunday back to bangalore by night visiting some places on the way.
Thanks to Mahesh for his arrangement of a 3 BHK home stay at Meppadi a place in wayanad. It was told that it was in middle of the tea estate....so we got excited. The owner was doctor who agreed to 4000/- Rs per day than his usual 7000/- since it being a off-season. TT was booked by Mahesh as well.
All set, each one of us left office early on thrusday evening. We decided on some pickup points. Most of them started from sagar's home and rest were picked up near Mysore road. When the TT came near mysore road to pick us...I saw all of them but it took time to digest the fact that everyone were in the TT. I was really happy to find everyone in the TT. Started the journey with some snaps and whistles. The only new person in the group seemed kadambari ...but that feeling was gone by the time we crossed bangalore :-) ....she mingled with others so early and so well.
Some of us had already had dinner but few missed it ...as it was earlier planned to have dinner on the way. But since our starting time got delayed by 3 hours it was bound to happen. So we stopped at some dhaba on the way at 12 to have some light food....then moved on after tasting some ice-cream at a CCD in between.
It was around 1:30AM after we crossed mysore ...our TT had some problem and was making some noise. We stopped to check and the problem was detected. The driver consulted a friend on phone about the seriousness of the problem. Got a positive reply and we moved ahead. But by the time we reached Nanjanagud the noise increased. The driver checked again and found the problem had aggravated and disappointed us by saying that we can’t move further. We were shocked to hear this. It was 2:30 AM in the morning and here we were a bunch of 12 buddies in a broken-down TT. Cant do anything but wait till sunrise and get the vehicle repaired and move. But it was clear that the broken spare part wud be available only in mysore and not any earlier than 9:30.....6 hours from now. Fatefully we were in some small town at least. Slowly we cud not sit in the TT and our mosquito friends had come to sing songs. We no more were able to sit in the TT ...we got out. Then we realized that we had stopped in front of a bank attached with ATM. All were feeling sleepy and not being able to sleep in the TT we planned to go and sleep in front of the ATM itself.....there we slept on a jamkhana we had got. We had a torch for our help.
But all of a sudden we were shocked to see couple of police come to us suspecting us to be bank robbers. Actually we had not noticed a bank security personnel sleeping in front of the bank. He had woke up to our noises and suspecting us, may have had complained the police who had arrived on the spot. This was the most funniest and scary moment of the trip. The police only
left after seeing lady friends with us :). After they left some of us got back in front of the ATM to find a spot to sleep. It was still 3:30 AM and it seemed eternity till we started moving. Some of us went for a walk and then by 5AM a small Tea shop opened ..where we had Tea and waited for sunrise. At around 6AM people started coming out for morning walk. Then the driver started a new story that rather than waiting till the spare part to arrive ...we make a new arrangement for a vehicle. May be the driver was not sure that even if the spare part arrives he cant repair it.
Now we made a hasty decision of arranging for a new TT ....made some contacts and people there also helped us to find a new TT. By 7AM for our disbelief we made it and arranged a new TT and by 7:30 we were on the move ....yahoooo :). Within a short distance we realized that we have got a better TT than the previous one and most importantly the driver was cool.
We entered the jungle and journey was cool and finally we crossed karnataka border and entered kerala. The roads were smooth and on the way we spotted some Fox and Peacock in the jungle. Slowly I went to sleep and others were busy playing some memory games. It was around 12 Noon by the time we reached our accommodation. This 3 BHK house was cleanly maintained and was sufficient for 12 of us. It had a TV and other basic facilities. Settled in the place ..took bath and got fresh by 2. Now we realized that none of our mobiles caught signal....except 1 or 2. I was happy to be away from mobiles and looking at the watch to run on schedules was absent...I felt the freedom. Everyone were hungry and left for lunch. We were aware that food will be problem in kerala. But for our luck we found a hotel named "Prince" which served white rice rather than their usual boiled rice. Also veg food was available.
After lunch we decided to visit a waterfall called soochipura falls. It was 4 PM by the time we reached there....on the way we stopped at a tea estate to take some snaps. Here we could see a pointed peak which went up into the clouts and was looking amazing. On reaching the falls we got to know that we need to get down the valley for about 1km to reach the falls. Getting down was ok but climbing back was the issue with some. We have so far so we went ahead. The path to the falls was clean, beautiful but slippery. The falls is a really beautiful place to visit. By the time we reached back to our house we were tired and raring to have dinner. We got parcel from the same hotel Prince. After dinner some of them got down to play cards and some were watching TV. But I was feeling sleepy and went to bed.
Next day a guide was to join us to show some places. we decided to getup and leave early by 6AM. But as usual we were late by 1 hr. The guide came and told that the best place to visit now is Chembara Peak. As we moved towards it we were all shocked to see that Chembara peak was the same pointed peak that we saw the previous day from a tea estate. Some right away said that they are not going to climb it. But later agreed only after the guide said that the TT will cover 75% of the height. The way to the peak was beautiful and the climate also looked superb. After going uphill for some 4 kms the TT trip was over and from there we needed to walk. But still the peak of the mountain looked far away. Even at the height we stopped had gorgeous
Scenery we imagined the scenery from the peak....which motivated us to climb. Also guide boosted our motivation by showing some pics in his mobile.... there's a lake on top of the peak. Just after we climbing some height we were tired and moving ahead was becoming difficult. We might have climbed some 50% we stopped and decided not to go further. Others were still
motivated to see Deepak, sid, reddy, gundappi and yadavi made it to the top and they were lucky to see some excellent sceneries....which the others missed. Then after some hour or so they returned and we started descending. We had some things to eat and left back to hotel.
The most memorable thing of our trip happened on our way back from Chembara peak. We had taken with us a cricket bat and ball....on our way back we saw a football ground and within no time we created a cricket ground of it. Stumps were ready and teams chosen and here goes the toss. Sagar team had me, sid , gundappi, haritha and kadambari and Manoj had reddy, deepak, karna, yadavi and sumana. Manoj team batted first and scored 56 runs in 6 overs...with good contribution from reddy and deepak. Later Sagar's team could not reach the target set and fell short of 26 runs. It was a great exp to play cricket in such a beautiful place in midst of so much greenery. Tired we returned to the hotel and after the lunch we all left to a reservoir called Banasura Sagar Dam. It was raining heavily ...we could not even step out of the TT. Disappointed we moved from there and left to a place called Phokote lake....where we expected to do boating. The lake was a beautiful place but unfortunately the boating time was over. But the place was beautiful and we enjoyed the full walk around the lake. Here we had a kerala handicraft shop ...where some of us shopped. This was the last visit of the day. It was dark by the time we reached our house. Tired by the whole day’s activities we again ordered a dinner and started our night session of cards. Played till 12 PM ...and went back to sleep. The end of day two.
Sunday was the last day of the trip so we had to vacate the home ...our first TT which broke down and delayed our reaching the destination came to our advantage...coz we could only check out from the home stay on Sunday at 9:30 AM which made totally 2 days....had the TT not broken down we would have reached the home stay at 6AM on Friday morning ...so by sunday
9:30AM wud have made it 3rd day .....so we saved 4000/- :-). Moving ahead we had planned to visit Edakkal Caves. Inspired the the kannada movie on the same name "Edakkal Guddada Mele" we were curious to see it. It was 11 AM when we reached there ....but for our shock we have to climb once again to visit the caves :( . All our outing in kerala till now had been trekking only ...we were tired. But we have started it and we have to end it.
We decided to go ahead. We ordered lunch for 12 ppl and started climbing. But very soon we got to know that a Jeep carries ppl for some distance towards the cave....all girls and two of us got into it and started ....others came by walk. The jeep journey was adventurous. After the jeep there was lot to climb. After lot of effort we reached the caves. Inside the caves there is a huge rock stuck in between other two humungous rocks ...that’s why it’s called Edakkal. There are ancient scripts written all over the caves inner wall ...a guide explained us the script. We could go further up the hill to reach a hill top, from where we it was said that we can see the borders of all the 3 states ...Karnataka, Kerala and TN. But it was too much a risky climb and above all we were tired. So we started our descend and reached bottom by 2PM. Lunch was ready ....it was the best food we had in kerala till then ...or were we too hungry ?? anyway that was the last destination of the trip. Then we left towards bangalore.
All the way we were playing dumb cherads till we reached bangalore. There we entered the bangalore traffic and the nightmares begin and refreshed from the trip we all went back to our homes and had a deep sleep. But the hectic work that we had left behind was already lurking behind our minds.
To end with ...I would definitely like to go on a long trip like this one guys .....but on a different landscape altogether. May a beach ....what say ? ...how about Goa ???
As an Icing on the cake ...sagar and Kadambari's (Our first newly wed couple in the group.....one more couple in the making: added freshly :-) ) confirmation was great news. Karna canceled his important commitments and was joining us...thanks to him....we need him badly to keep the group laughing ;-). I too made some arrangement and decided to go. Reddy Sid and deepak were always in right from the beginning ...and so was Gundappi. The most surprising and the best thing was Manoj(Batista) joining for the trip. Finally everyone was ready. :-)))))
The day was not yet fixed...and the place as well, but everyone gave the confirmation on the availability on June 6th to 8th. Amazingly all were ready to apply leave on 6th ..Friday. Everything seemed to be perfect. Even we went to the extent of meeting at some place in the weekend to plan for the trip. By 30th of May, after some consultation and research we concluded to go to Wayanad (Kerala) ...Its a district of hill stations in kerala which comes first when we go via Mysore. It’s around 280 Kms from Bangalore. The next few days before the trip we did lot of research on finalizing the places to visit in the district and about accommodation.
The main issue that came up after consulting colleagues from kerala was the monsoon season which was about to begin in kerala. It was predicted to be entering kerala in first week on June. Sadly we got the news that monsoon has hit kerala exactly as predicted. This was when some of our group members started raising issue of...it not being the right time to visit kerala. But some of us did not loose hope. As the day approached some of us still had the doubts to make it. Also we had planned too much for the trip by then. We knew from experience that planned trips get cancelled. But some how we managed to arrive on the journey date and still no one had raised any issue.
We had decided to leave on thursday night by 9PM and reach our destination on friday morning. Spend friday Leisurely....Saturday was to visit some of the places and to return on sunday back to bangalore by night visiting some places on the way.
Thanks to Mahesh for his arrangement of a 3 BHK home stay at Meppadi a place in wayanad. It was told that it was in middle of the tea estate....so we got excited. The owner was doctor who agreed to 4000/- Rs per day than his usual 7000/- since it being a off-season. TT was booked by Mahesh as well.
All set, each one of us left office early on thrusday evening. We decided on some pickup points. Most of them started from sagar's home and rest were picked up near Mysore road. When the TT came near mysore road to pick us...I saw all of them but it took time to digest the fact that everyone were in the TT. I was really happy to find everyone in the TT. Started the journey with some snaps and whistles. The only new person in the group seemed kadambari ...but that feeling was gone by the time we crossed bangalore :-) ....she mingled with others so early and so well.
Some of us had already had dinner but few missed it ...as it was earlier planned to have dinner on the way. But since our starting time got delayed by 3 hours it was bound to happen. So we stopped at some dhaba on the way at 12 to have some light food....then moved on after tasting some ice-cream at a CCD in between.
It was around 1:30AM after we crossed mysore ...our TT had some problem and was making some noise. We stopped to check and the problem was detected. The driver consulted a friend on phone about the seriousness of the problem. Got a positive reply and we moved ahead. But by the time we reached Nanjanagud the noise increased. The driver checked again and found the problem had aggravated and disappointed us by saying that we can’t move further. We were shocked to hear this. It was 2:30 AM in the morning and here we were a bunch of 12 buddies in a broken-down TT. Cant do anything but wait till sunrise and get the vehicle repaired and move. But it was clear that the broken spare part wud be available only in mysore and not any earlier than 9:30.....6 hours from now. Fatefully we were in some small town at least. Slowly we cud not sit in the TT and our mosquito friends had come to sing songs. We no more were able to sit in the TT ...we got out. Then we realized that we had stopped in front of a bank attached with ATM. All were feeling sleepy and not being able to sleep in the TT we planned to go and sleep in front of the ATM itself.....there we slept on a jamkhana we had got. We had a torch for our help.
But all of a sudden we were shocked to see couple of police come to us suspecting us to be bank robbers. Actually we had not noticed a bank security personnel sleeping in front of the bank. He had woke up to our noises and suspecting us, may have had complained the police who had arrived on the spot. This was the most funniest and scary moment of the trip. The police only
left after seeing lady friends with us :). After they left some of us got back in front of the ATM to find a spot to sleep. It was still 3:30 AM and it seemed eternity till we started moving. Some of us went for a walk and then by 5AM a small Tea shop opened ..where we had Tea and waited for sunrise. At around 6AM people started coming out for morning walk. Then the driver started a new story that rather than waiting till the spare part to arrive ...we make a new arrangement for a vehicle. May be the driver was not sure that even if the spare part arrives he cant repair it.
Now we made a hasty decision of arranging for a new TT ....made some contacts and people there also helped us to find a new TT. By 7AM for our disbelief we made it and arranged a new TT and by 7:30 we were on the move ....yahoooo :). Within a short distance we realized that we have got a better TT than the previous one and most importantly the driver was cool.
We entered the jungle and journey was cool and finally we crossed karnataka border and entered kerala. The roads were smooth and on the way we spotted some Fox and Peacock in the jungle. Slowly I went to sleep and others were busy playing some memory games. It was around 12 Noon by the time we reached our accommodation. This 3 BHK house was cleanly maintained and was sufficient for 12 of us. It had a TV and other basic facilities. Settled in the place ..took bath and got fresh by 2. Now we realized that none of our mobiles caught signal....except 1 or 2. I was happy to be away from mobiles and looking at the watch to run on schedules was absent...I felt the freedom. Everyone were hungry and left for lunch. We were aware that food will be problem in kerala. But for our luck we found a hotel named "Prince" which served white rice rather than their usual boiled rice. Also veg food was available.
After lunch we decided to visit a waterfall called soochipura falls. It was 4 PM by the time we reached there....on the way we stopped at a tea estate to take some snaps. Here we could see a pointed peak which went up into the clouts and was looking amazing. On reaching the falls we got to know that we need to get down the valley for about 1km to reach the falls. Getting down was ok but climbing back was the issue with some. We have so far so we went ahead. The path to the falls was clean, beautiful but slippery. The falls is a really beautiful place to visit. By the time we reached back to our house we were tired and raring to have dinner. We got parcel from the same hotel Prince. After dinner some of them got down to play cards and some were watching TV. But I was feeling sleepy and went to bed.
Next day a guide was to join us to show some places. we decided to getup and leave early by 6AM. But as usual we were late by 1 hr. The guide came and told that the best place to visit now is Chembara Peak. As we moved towards it we were all shocked to see that Chembara peak was the same pointed peak that we saw the previous day from a tea estate. Some right away said that they are not going to climb it. But later agreed only after the guide said that the TT will cover 75% of the height. The way to the peak was beautiful and the climate also looked superb. After going uphill for some 4 kms the TT trip was over and from there we needed to walk. But still the peak of the mountain looked far away. Even at the height we stopped had gorgeous
Scenery we imagined the scenery from the peak....which motivated us to climb. Also guide boosted our motivation by showing some pics in his mobile.... there's a lake on top of the peak. Just after we climbing some height we were tired and moving ahead was becoming difficult. We might have climbed some 50% we stopped and decided not to go further. Others were still
motivated to see Deepak, sid, reddy, gundappi and yadavi made it to the top and they were lucky to see some excellent sceneries....which the others missed. Then after some hour or so they returned and we started descending. We had some things to eat and left back to hotel.
The most memorable thing of our trip happened on our way back from Chembara peak. We had taken with us a cricket bat and ball....on our way back we saw a football ground and within no time we created a cricket ground of it. Stumps were ready and teams chosen and here goes the toss. Sagar team had me, sid , gundappi, haritha and kadambari and Manoj had reddy, deepak, karna, yadavi and sumana. Manoj team batted first and scored 56 runs in 6 overs...with good contribution from reddy and deepak. Later Sagar's team could not reach the target set and fell short of 26 runs. It was a great exp to play cricket in such a beautiful place in midst of so much greenery. Tired we returned to the hotel and after the lunch we all left to a reservoir called Banasura Sagar Dam. It was raining heavily ...we could not even step out of the TT. Disappointed we moved from there and left to a place called Phokote lake....where we expected to do boating. The lake was a beautiful place but unfortunately the boating time was over. But the place was beautiful and we enjoyed the full walk around the lake. Here we had a kerala handicraft shop ...where some of us shopped. This was the last visit of the day. It was dark by the time we reached our house. Tired by the whole day’s activities we again ordered a dinner and started our night session of cards. Played till 12 PM ...and went back to sleep. The end of day two.
Sunday was the last day of the trip so we had to vacate the home ...our first TT which broke down and delayed our reaching the destination came to our advantage...coz we could only check out from the home stay on Sunday at 9:30 AM which made totally 2 days....had the TT not broken down we would have reached the home stay at 6AM on Friday morning ...so by sunday
9:30AM wud have made it 3rd day .....so we saved 4000/- :-). Moving ahead we had planned to visit Edakkal Caves. Inspired the the kannada movie on the same name "Edakkal Guddada Mele" we were curious to see it. It was 11 AM when we reached there ....but for our shock we have to climb once again to visit the caves :( . All our outing in kerala till now had been trekking only ...we were tired. But we have started it and we have to end it.
We decided to go ahead. We ordered lunch for 12 ppl and started climbing. But very soon we got to know that a Jeep carries ppl for some distance towards the cave....all girls and two of us got into it and started ....others came by walk. The jeep journey was adventurous. After the jeep there was lot to climb. After lot of effort we reached the caves. Inside the caves there is a huge rock stuck in between other two humungous rocks ...that’s why it’s called Edakkal. There are ancient scripts written all over the caves inner wall ...a guide explained us the script. We could go further up the hill to reach a hill top, from where we it was said that we can see the borders of all the 3 states ...Karnataka, Kerala and TN. But it was too much a risky climb and above all we were tired. So we started our descend and reached bottom by 2PM. Lunch was ready ....it was the best food we had in kerala till then ...or were we too hungry ?? anyway that was the last destination of the trip. Then we left towards bangalore.
All the way we were playing dumb cherads till we reached bangalore. There we entered the bangalore traffic and the nightmares begin and refreshed from the trip we all went back to our homes and had a deep sleep. But the hectic work that we had left behind was already lurking behind our minds.
To end with ...I would definitely like to go on a long trip like this one guys .....but on a different landscape altogether. May a beach ....what say ? ...how about Goa ???
1 comment:
Kerala is good at all seasons though you all have enjoyed being here do visit again to have experience of the beach which are at Kerala.
Hotels in fort Cochin
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