Farewell n Senti!

Here I am sitting at the Bangalore International Airport between departure gate nos. 8 and 9 waiting for my flight Indigo 6E-115 to Kolkata scheduled at 11.50. Reading from my laptop there’s still 90 minutes to go. I will have to publish the post later on. Not because there isn’t a Wi-Fi network available but because the password is sent to your mobile and unfortunately my cell has decided not to receive any messages for the moment. By the way, BIA is by far the best airport I have seen (not that I have seen many but still..) Mr. Mallya sure has spent a lot of money on this. The airport premises including the ground area is huge, really huge. But I’ll come to the airport later on.
I was a little anxious as to how will I reach the airport from Arakere which is easily 50 km away. Shared car hiring services like Airlift charge Rs. 338 but I knew about the buses to the airport – the Vayu Vajra Volvo Bus Services or the BIAS (Bangalore International Airport Shuttle) Bus Service. I had read on the internet that the service is pretty decent. But then I didn’t want to miss my flight, and my experiences with Government services have not been that great in the past. So for the 11.50 flight I left at 7 in the morning. Anyone who has been to Bangalore knows how the Auto Rickshaws loot the passengers. For 42.50 on the meter, I had to pay Rs 70. Anyways, atleast he dropped me to one of the BIAS pick up points. BIAS-5 was waiting. I was impressed. For once, I had underestimated the Karnataka Govt. I approached the bus conductor to find out that the bus would depart at 8 and reach the airport at 9.30. Wow! That was quite early for me. I could have easily taken the 9 am bus which would have, taking into account the increased traffic, reached by 11 at max. That way I could've had another hour's sleep. But then, this post might not have come!
By the way, the BIAS service is quite regular. There’s a bus every 20 and 40 min alternatively. I wonder how many people travel to the airport daily! I was impressed when as soon as my bus left at 8 sharp, another BIAS-5 came and took its place waiting for the next set of passengers! Now you would think a Volvo Bus fully AC with such a regular service must be expensive. No way! 150 bucks for my ride! Way cheaper than any other transport available.
Coming back to the airport, the main airport building is quite beautifully built. Bangalore at 10 in the morning is never hot. It is a pleasant day. In fact, awesome breeze was blowing just outside the terminals. I wanted to sit there and enjoy but then it was pretty deserted ..dunno why..Reminds me of the famous lines by Davies: "....we have no time to stand and stare"
BIA doesn’t have a separate X-Ray Baggage Check. Its done at the Check in counter itself. I liked the concept. Saves time and harassment. Also the airport is fully commercialized with big branded stores. The maintenance is great and I have heard the Wi-Fi is really cool. (Mental note to myself: Dont buy or recommend Nokia 3110c ever!)
Its 10.45 now and all seats around me are vacant. Suddenly it dawns upon me that this might be the last of Bangalore for the rest of my life. Yes, my internship in over. IIM is a nice place to spend your PG years. I totally loved the 2 months of my stay in Bangalore. With the great company of the "Hum Pathar" Banglore intern junta (Bajo, Bhanu, Gautam, Julio, Kanchi, Manu, Neel, Nonedone, Onshui,Purr, Subji), the awesome climate of Bangalore, our amazing trips, about which I have already written in detail – this has been the best summer till date and it isn’t over yet. I am going home to family and old school friends. Thank you God!
Also thank You for stopping by here and commenting from time to time.
This is probably the last post on this blog.
Sayyonara! Au Revoir! Adieu! Tchao! Goodbye!!
Will miss you Bangalore!

P.S: I shall continue writing on my other blog Zeitschreift. See you there!

Hogenakkal "Smoking Rocks"

Its been an addiction! One weekend gets over. Next day starts wid senti mails from our group and by the following day or two at most, we are all set and planned for the next weekend...save the finer details. This time it was Hogenakkal. In local language it means Smoking Rocks, named after the smoky appearance of rocks due to the waterfalls of Cauveri.
10 of us on a Tempo sandwiches and lunches along with other titbits packed we left at 7 in the morning. Singing along on our way we made it by 11. The awesome company I had...I didnt realize where did 4 hours fly..We got down..changed into bathing clothes (didnt want to repeat Pondi)
I looked funny but had no choice :P
Well after few "dry pics" from afar, we hired 2 coracle boats for a ride downstream upto the Karnataka border. The ride was too good. There was always this fear of the coracle upturning. The ride through the small waterfalls and water splashing on us along with the rotation of the boats were awesome. We got down at the banks and started wading into the river till it was waist deep (damn! it wudnt go any deeper) We swam, we splashed water on each other, we drowned each other. It was amazing. It was different to bathing in the sea. Calmer and riskless, more fun. Lunch at the beach was really rewarding. On our return ride our good spirited boatman-photographer-guide clicked our very "flimy" poses :P
Mafia and Dumb C on the return to bangalore with chips, biscuits and kit kat was rocking...
Smoking rocks rocked!

Puducherry

Our weekend lukkha started with McVeggie at McD and Angels and Demons at Rex theatre followed by dinner at Hyderabad Palace. Then commenced our road trip to Puducherry in a Qualis with my other 7 enthu friends at 10.30. We kept singing all sorts of songs till about 1 in d morn. Thn we all fell asleep...or to say tried to do so..
Anyways so we reached the Pondi rock beach in time to catch d sunrise although it was cloudy and we couldnt see it. But the waves were amazing and quite violent. Then we went to the sandy beach where we played volleyball and football for sometime and bathed in d beach without bothering to change into suitable clothes and finally ending up roaming around in the day in pyjamas and tshirt! :D
Went to Aurobindo ashram, a church and Matrimandir meditation centre and finally d boathouse.
The weather was pretty hot but the beach was fun. My first road trip!

More later..

Managing two square meals a day!

Food has always been a problem over my entire stay at Bangalore. The IIM mess is closed over the vacations, so during my stay in the campus we had to eat South Indian thali all days for lunch which included Sambar, rasam, a wierd mix veg, 3 types of rice and fried puris! It was hard for me to survive on this for a month. No offences meant..anyways, its a personal blog.
Then dinner was not available on campus except if u can live on fried rice. So we had to go food hunting everyday till we narrowed down ourselves onto 3 places. One was Adiga's..it offers a wide variety of dishes both North and South Indian and at affordable prices. Other was a restaurant just opposite IIM, named Potluck which gave discount to its fans on facebook and twitter! Aparently the fans were told a keyword every month which was a password to the discount. Evidently the password was Spiderman for May. I dont know what is the new pass for June. Superman,eh? Well apart form the discount, we used to go there because it was quite nearby and wasnt too bad. Our favorite was the Punjabi Dhaba with the tagline Taste the difference! It was a small place really but awesome food. Finger licking good! The paranthas with raita, the chana masala and the dal makhani..God! m salivating already. Our breaker and snacks was taken care of by our saviour Amul parlour in the campus without which we wouldn't have survived a day in Bangalore. It serves delicious sandwiches and toasts along with all Amul products.

We moved out of campus after May into a small 1 BHK flat shared by 3 of us and now we are on a fresh food hunt. We have found Charcoal but have not fully approved it as of now. Except that there's a small joint called Kerala Heritage which apparently also offers north indian chapatis and vegetables. For dinner Adiga's has become the monopoly. But evenings are that I actually look forward to nowadays because I found a puchka wallah which serves amazing puchkas. For those who don't know puchka, it is the Kolkata equivalent of Bombay's panipuri and Delhi's golgappe. I am glad Bangalore junta likes it the Kolkata way. I hate panipuris and though I havent had gol gappes ever, I know I cant like it better than puchkas :)

Thats it for now...Hoping that we would settle down for some proper eating places at out new residence...