To Madikeri

Before I start off, I would like to thank god, all my stars and who-so-ever does this job of managing (and changing) people’s destinies (mine in particular) and most importantly my mom for letting me go on this trip. I would not even have known what I would be missing otherwise. Oh ya! Even Moni Ok. Now that I m done with my acknowledgments let me get on with my looong account on my ‘trip to Madikeri’. Sorry guys, I know my posts are only getting longer but this one needs all that space. 4 days! It’s been a week now and I m still in a trance!

Anyway we were 13 of us. We were put up in Moni’s uncle’s house in a place  (nice place in that )called Kumbur, about 15 kms from Madikeri. Basically there s a home stay apart from his house and an estate and we were put up there.

DAY 1:

We left on Thursday morning with 6 of us (that’s pai, rady, kar, vinod, soumya n me) joining the rest (moni, radh, sup, kuku, vinyas, rama, suhas) on mysore road. The journey was exhilarating as photo sessions, antakshari’s and (of course) Karthik’s pjs accompanied us. In fact we were very surprised when the driver announced that we ve reached Kushalanagar.

the golden temple

The Golden Buddha Temple, Tibetan Monastery – that was our first place of visit. Those of you who ve been there would know that it’s one of the most beautiful and well maintained temples. Very serene. Though I must say we did our bit in spoiling the serenity We had more photo sessions – some of them memorable (like the dustbin pic, moni and Tibetan lady pic etc )

the 'dustbin pic'! all of us

Next we headed straight towards Monica’s uncle’s home. We spent some time there (with moni showing us around the 70 year old house built by her grand father and not to mention Karthik irritating me with the torch light) before we had our dinner. I cannot help but mention the ‘V’ joke over the dinner table but don’t ask me for more details!

view from our home stay

We then went to our home stay, played cards until the current left us and then Vinod started with his ghost stories. The best one being – a guy who went on a trip with his friends; there was no current so he took a torch to the loo and got scared on seeing his own reflection in the mirror! No points for guessing who the guy was The stories continued till almost 4 when we guys finally slept.

DAY 2:

Our day started a little late, thanks to the rains. We first went to Chiklihole reservoir. (How do you remember Chikli? Simple. Chikli = chikki + chakli! We are masterminds in our own rights!) It’s a very cute place. There s this thing – it’s a depression or whatever it is (see the pic and make a decision yourself); it’s a jaara bande look-alike basically and me and sup badly wanted to slide down through it!

at chiklihole reservoir

From there we went to Madikeri proper, had lunch in Rajdarshan. Reasonable, in taste I mean not in rates! (I m going to forgive them for that disaster called Tomato soup.) After lunch we went to Abbey Falls. The funniest part was sup running away from leeches! Though kuku did get attacked by one. And Abbey falls is sewage water! Fine. Whatever. Next, we went to Omkareshwara temple, Madikeri fort and the museum attached to it and Raja seat. And then back to our home.

Oh btw, did I tell you what rather who gave us company through the journey? Mr. Jaggesh! There was this cd which had some of Jaggu’s best (yea, you read it right – BEST!) scenes from various movies. If anybody ever asked you what’s the height of grossness then here’s my suggestion – give that person a copy of this cd! I swear! For instance, there s a scene where in he happens to come in contact with a woman, and he goes – Touching Touching Touching! . It took us a while to come out of it! Moni is still not out of this I know! Anyway, TTT kind of became the tagline of our trip. Every word uttered from then on had an ‘ing’ added to it and would get repeated three times!

In the night we played dumb charades. This, in my opinion was the highlight of the trip. It was the most fun filled DC I ve been a part of. It was fun to give movie names (I gave some mean ones! Or so they said!;) ), enact them, guess them and most importantly see others enacting them.

DAY 3:

Our day typically started with a phone call waking us up but each one lazy to pick it up! But almost all of us woke up with a start when we heard the time was 9! Again we started late (even the rains added to the delay). We first went to Harangi dam. Next up was lunch at a place called Top in Town hotel. (Seriously I don’t think it can get tackier than this!) Anyway, here s where we made our second mistake/blunder (I would like to exclude myself from the ‘we’ cos I was strictly against it) – we ordered Tomato soup again! This time, all of us! CAUTION: NEVER order for tomato soups anywhere close to Madikeri. Never. And to think tomato soup is the one of the two things with “tomato” attached to it that I eat! (drink whatever) Rest of the food was quite bearable though.

harangi

We then went to Kaveri Nisargadama. Couldn’t do much there cos it was continuously raining. But I must mention the uncle who was so impressed by kuku’s bravery why? Cos she climbed a tree! I think, I think he had a groom-in-the-making son! Hmmm! Who knows?! Right! I did tell kuku to take his number, it might have help any of us if not her; but sad, she didn’t. Lol!

Back in our home stay, radh taught vinyas how to dance. It was kind of cute. Then we all jigged for a while. (Except kar who declared that he was Pappu) Then kar took over and did some amazing imitation of lecturers and friends. Later we played DC again, this time – songs. It was fun but not as great as the previous day.

DAY 4:

The final day of our trip. It took us a while to come to terms with reality. We packed and left our home stay straight to moni’s dad’s estate. It’s a nice place. We had a good walk around the estate. We found a small cute lil tortoise over there. As usual we scared the hell out of the small thing! We even found a snake. It went right in front of us. That’s the closest I ve been to a real snake! After having lunch at a canteen (which was quite good ) we went to KRS dam. We went a little early as the lights were not on yet. Anyway we just had a walk around the fountains, ate jola or should I say, tested the strength of our teeth. (They are strong!) Oh, we (rather rama) even went to the aquarium looking for tiger shark. He was MAJORLY disappointed as the tiger shark was not the kind of tiger sharks he was looking for or something like that.

at KRS

From KRS it was back to our city Bengalooru. We stopped midway for dinner at Indradhanush. Tomato soup WAS good here! But we didn’t order it. You may have had rotis which are rubbery but ever knew that plastic is indeed used to make them? Well we had a first hand experience! Radh’s roti had a plastic piece in it! She took time to digest the very fact, forget the roti!

And then, it came to an end. 4 days of fun came to an end. We came back to our respective habitats. But those four days were amazing! As I said I m yet to come out of it! Well, this is the least I could write. I would love to go on and on but in the interest of humanity (that is assuming that people who read this are all humans ) I would like to sign off here