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!
Monday, June 22, 2009
Monday, June 15, 2009
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..
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..
Tuesday, June 9, 2009
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...
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...
Sunday, June 7, 2009
and Mysore it is!
Around 3 pm this Saturday afternoon, I was wondering what was I doing staring at this palace turned museum. It was a flop show, atleast for me. Allow me to take you down my memory lane as to how I reached there and what exactly was I doing there!
11 of us (God, the number is rising day by day!) boarded the 11.55pm passenger to Mysore at Bangalore City Rly St on Friday in the hopes of a great Saturday. An old guy from the nearby compartment tried to make our journey hell by forcing us to sleep and not talk. Now, no one could actually make the 11 of us sleep when all of us were so excited except for the fact that he complained the rly police. :(
While 6 of us did fall asleep the rest 5 didnt. We kept our conversations hushed for what was left of our 4 hour train journey. We even played hushed word building for quite a long time and it was gr8 fun. Seems like we can have fun in the worst of circumstances! :D
A little something happened during the night. We heard beeps. The sound wasnt familiar and the beeps were abrupt and arbit. For some time we ignored it. But it continued and sounded close enough. All of us checked our cell phones. Negative! This wasnt good. The train halted at a station and the beeps stopped instantly. All went quiet and then after a minute it happened again. A single isolated beep! We could have yelled bomb anytime now!!
But then we realised it was actually the cell of one of our sleeping friends beeping because the write message application was open and the cursor was blinking and beeping...
So we reached Mysore at 3.40 am the next day. Man, was it cold! It felt like winter had suddenly arrived without the fair warning of an Autumn and I once again had no shield except coffee. Anyways, we decided to wait for the sun at the station itself and sat down on the platform and played cards for about an hour. And guess what! to prevent cards from getting blown away we kept cards in a book and passed along. Jugaad! thats what we are great at :P
We set out for Chamundu hills and reached there at 6 only to find that the temple opens at 7.30
Now with nowhere to sit (and play cards) we started roaming around on our own, took few pics of the beautiful landscape views. The dense fog played spoilsport. The wind was freezening our bones. We finally queued up for the temple at 7.30. The atmo inside was so comforting. Bhajans were playing on stereos at just the right volume and sweet fragrances filled our nostrils. It felt really good.
After breaker, we went to the Karanji lake. This time I decided NOT to go boating. The weather had mildened by then. Walked through an amazing aviary at that place. Even white peacocks exist btw.
Another incident happened there. Few of the tree leaves caught spark and even the electrical wires short circuited. It was quite a blast. Scared us! Thank god it didnt turn into a forest fire. Second accident averted in the day..LOL at that..
The next stop was the zoo. The animals were sprawled across a 3.5 km long walk. Was a nice experience. But a tiring one. Anyways after that we went to the Mysore palace. It was beautifullt built but due to lack of energy we couldn't enjoy it. After the 1st palace we decided to skip the second one and sat down to play cards only to be asked to quit by a security personnel.
Then we had lunch. This was good. The food was quite satisfying, though expensive. Now we desperately needed sleep. It was also raining. So we headed for Srirangapatnam hoping the long drive would give us some rest and the rain would stop as well. Well neither happened. The drive wasnt long enough. And so we were in front of the Tipu Sultan's Summer Palace-turned-museum. As I said earlier, it was a flop show.
After that we retreated to a water shed nearby. This was the best place to be although did not look very attractive at first. Dipping your feet under water after a tiring day and poor weather could be so refreshing! We climbed into the water and onto the rocks and sat there rejuvenating ourselves..
Our last stop for the day were the beautiful Brindavan Gardens. Well maintained trees, shrubs, water fountains, artificial water falls, lightening...it has them all. The musical fountain was also worth seeing. Awesome!!!
Mysore was fun except for Srirangapatnam and we took infinite pics this time...and I mean it when I say infinite...over 300 in a single day!
11 of us (God, the number is rising day by day!) boarded the 11.55pm passenger to Mysore at Bangalore City Rly St on Friday in the hopes of a great Saturday. An old guy from the nearby compartment tried to make our journey hell by forcing us to sleep and not talk. Now, no one could actually make the 11 of us sleep when all of us were so excited except for the fact that he complained the rly police. :(
While 6 of us did fall asleep the rest 5 didnt. We kept our conversations hushed for what was left of our 4 hour train journey. We even played hushed word building for quite a long time and it was gr8 fun. Seems like we can have fun in the worst of circumstances! :D
A little something happened during the night. We heard beeps. The sound wasnt familiar and the beeps were abrupt and arbit. For some time we ignored it. But it continued and sounded close enough. All of us checked our cell phones. Negative! This wasnt good. The train halted at a station and the beeps stopped instantly. All went quiet and then after a minute it happened again. A single isolated beep! We could have yelled bomb anytime now!!
But then we realised it was actually the cell of one of our sleeping friends beeping because the write message application was open and the cursor was blinking and beeping...
So we reached Mysore at 3.40 am the next day. Man, was it cold! It felt like winter had suddenly arrived without the fair warning of an Autumn and I once again had no shield except coffee. Anyways, we decided to wait for the sun at the station itself and sat down on the platform and played cards for about an hour. And guess what! to prevent cards from getting blown away we kept cards in a book and passed along. Jugaad! thats what we are great at :P
We set out for Chamundu hills and reached there at 6 only to find that the temple opens at 7.30
Now with nowhere to sit (and play cards) we started roaming around on our own, took few pics of the beautiful landscape views. The dense fog played spoilsport. The wind was freezening our bones. We finally queued up for the temple at 7.30. The atmo inside was so comforting. Bhajans were playing on stereos at just the right volume and sweet fragrances filled our nostrils. It felt really good.
After breaker, we went to the Karanji lake. This time I decided NOT to go boating. The weather had mildened by then. Walked through an amazing aviary at that place. Even white peacocks exist btw.
Another incident happened there. Few of the tree leaves caught spark and even the electrical wires short circuited. It was quite a blast. Scared us! Thank god it didnt turn into a forest fire. Second accident averted in the day..LOL at that..
The next stop was the zoo. The animals were sprawled across a 3.5 km long walk. Was a nice experience. But a tiring one. Anyways after that we went to the Mysore palace. It was beautifullt built but due to lack of energy we couldn't enjoy it. After the 1st palace we decided to skip the second one and sat down to play cards only to be asked to quit by a security personnel.
Then we had lunch. This was good. The food was quite satisfying, though expensive. Now we desperately needed sleep. It was also raining. So we headed for Srirangapatnam hoping the long drive would give us some rest and the rain would stop as well. Well neither happened. The drive wasnt long enough. And so we were in front of the Tipu Sultan's Summer Palace-turned-museum. As I said earlier, it was a flop show.
After that we retreated to a water shed nearby. This was the best place to be although did not look very attractive at first. Dipping your feet under water after a tiring day and poor weather could be so refreshing! We climbed into the water and onto the rocks and sat there rejuvenating ourselves..
Our last stop for the day were the beautiful Brindavan Gardens. Well maintained trees, shrubs, water fountains, artificial water falls, lightening...it has them all. The musical fountain was also worth seeing. Awesome!!!
Mysore was fun except for Srirangapatnam and we took infinite pics this time...and I mean it when I say infinite...over 300 in a single day!
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