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!

Bangalore Bhrahman!

After infi planning and discussions, we had finally decided our plans for this Saturday. Cubbon Park at 10 am. As usual, by the time all of us gathered it was 11.
At the Cubbon Park, we saw the Aquarium. Saw many varieties of fishes with myriad colours, shapes and sizes. Then we went to the Vishweshwara Industrial Museum. The fun with ccience section and the engine section was interesting.
After grabbing a bite at Subway, we headed for the Ulsoor Lake, did boating again (this was twice in a week) and then sat down on grass and played Mafia. For those who know Mafia, you would know it ought to be fun and for those who don't know, sorry rahega...cant explain d rules to u now :P
After that we returned back to IIM and had an amazing dinner (chana masala and dal makhani) at a nearby Punjabi Dhaba. A fitting end to a tiring day!

Nilgiris...!

Another weekend at Bangalore and we, the lukkha interns, set out for Ooty!

We reached Ooty Saturday morning at 7 after an awful 8 hour bus ride. Without any woolens and draped in only a half sleeve T-shirt and jeans, I was shivering amidst the cool morning air. We booked the cheapest lodge around and dumped ourselves on d bed wid memories of d bus journey almost luring us to sleep. But the prospect of sight-seeing was more enticing! After freshening up and a light breaker we set out for the Rose Garden on foot.

It was a long walk and not helping at all in reducing my exhaustion..But as I entered the garden the smell and sight of a million roses captivated me. Welcoming us in, there were a chariot and a peacock decorated with roses. It was beautiful. The whole garden had roses planted on either sides of the passageway with weird labels to each of them. Some of them were quite ironical, others humorous and while the rest seemed logic-less! We took a few pics here and there before we set out for the Botanical Garden, again on foot.

Once we reached the famous Botanical Gardens there was a long queue, discouraging us from getting inside. We ditched the plan to see the Garden and retreated, only to move towards Dodabetta peak, the highest peak of the Nilgiris.

After a couple of kilometers of walk and futile attempts at hitch-hiking, we realized that there was no transport to Dodabetta from our present location and we had to go back to the town bus stand for conveyance, which was quite far. Thus, we postponed our plans of Dodabetta to the next day and this time, wisely enuff, booked a Sumo for the 7 of us for the next day which would take us to Pykara as well.

Having nothing better to do we set out for the Ooty lake and boat house expecting to finally find a place to sit on the lakeside. Hence, we started out..again on foot for a 3-4 kilometer walk..Having walked for atleast 10 kilometers from the moment we reached Ooty, we found a place near d lake to sit and relax. We played cards..and it was awesome. The fitting end to a not-so-good beginning. The next 3 hours flew by and were total fun. The weather didnt dissappoint us either. After the amazing evening, we returned to our lodge and I slept like a horse.

Sunday morning we set out for Pykara at 9 on the Sumo we had booked for the day. We saw the Golf course in the passing, and later stopped at Kamraj Sagar Lake. It was a nice lake bordered by pine forest and was below road-level meaning that we had to descend quite a steep slope to reach there. We clicked a few pics and returned to the Sumo.

The next stop was the 9th Mile Wenlock Downs. It was basically an undulating hill covered with grass and very good scenery providing excellent scope for more pics :P

Then we went to the Pykara falls and the Boat house where we did boating. Our return journey took a lot of time coz of heavy traffic. We passed our times singing songs: old songs,new songs, love songs,sad songs, happy songs,arbit songs, bad songs, more songs :D

By the time we reached back Ooty, it was past 5 and we had to skip Dodabetta (was it jinxed!?)
We settled for in a CCD outlet and occupied the corner couches. I had Irish coffee and Choc Fantasy with ice-cream and choc sauce. We stayed put at CCD till 9.30 gossiping and watching the DC innings of the IPL final.

On our way to the bus stand we suddenly realised we had to buy the famous Ooty flavoured tea and home made chocolates. In desparation, and due to shortage of time we grabbed watever was nearest at hand and boarded our bus. How was the journey back? Don't even get me started on that!

Overall it was an awwessuuumm trip!!!

P.S:Thanx to Bajo, Fengshui, Mayhool, Manu, Nandu n Subject (in alphabetical order)!!
P.P.S: i ll post links for the pics in the comments soon..

Garuda Mall

Last Sunday we went to Garuda Mall on MG Rd, supposedly the busiest road in B'lore. Met wid my batchies who also happened to be doing an internship in B'lore. After a quick lunch at the food court on the 3rd floor and a few photos (all in d same pose!), we headed to the multiplex on d 4th floor. We spent 200 bucks for the tickets and got inside INOX. The hall was nice. The movie was called Something Just Happened. The name sounded promising and even the cast was decent. But the movie was a disaster and we couldn't stand it any longer than Intermission. It was the first time for me to ditch a movie after having paid for the ticket! But as they say, there's always a first time.

Well after the movie having nothing definite to do, we just wandered in the mall, stopping meanwhile to have dessert. I had blackforest slice. More pics followed! As we planned to leave, it started raining and thus we were forced inside the mall for another hour which led to another trip to the food court. (I had Subway's sandwich this time)

This was the longest I ever stayed in a mall...6 hours..and I had an exam the other day! But inspite of all this, it was fun.

Day 2!

It was d perfect Sunday I could have hoped for...My cousin picked me up at the Main Gate and we headed straight to the Forum mall on his bike. Even at 11:30 in d morning the mall wasnt empty. Nice architect. And the PVR over there has 8 screens! Well with no interest in shopping (real or window), we zoomed out of the mall in 15 minutes and were on the bike again. Man! the roads are quite well maintained I thought when my cousin told me its coz of the elections. Anyways..I was enjoying it. Saw the huge offices of Dell and Intel on my way and the ISRO campus as well.

We stopped at The Leela Palace Kempinski. This 5 star hotel is open for visitors. The basements have various shops. There was one cool men's jacket on display at one shop and out of curiosity I checked d price tag. Ouch! It was too expensive - a 5 figure price at the 5 star! There in the middle was a piano and several seats. I was informed that in the evenings people listen to a lady playing beautiful music over here. As we were about to go up, a lady did come and start playing. The whole place smelled of rose. It was amazing. On the ground floor there was an open lounge facing a well maintained lawn. The lawn had artificial fountains and waterfalls and the overall effect along with the soft cool breeze blowing was amazing!

Our next stop was a Shiv Temple. The temple covered a huge area. Inside there was a huge 50 feel high statue of Lord Shiva. The temple also had an exhibit area where models of famous Shiv Temples across India were displayed.

After the temple the heat became unbearable (who says Bangalore doesnt have hot summers!) so we had momos and lichi shake and then retired to the confines of my cousin's home. After lunch we again set out for the ISKCON(International Society for Krishna Consciousness) Temple.

As soon as the temple opened for the evening, devotees sprang in and there was a long queue out of nowhere in less than 5 minutes! Luckily we were among the first in the queue and got in without waiting for long. The main mandir was beautifully built. The interiors made my eyes go wide with amazement. After offering our prayers we returned. We were made to exit through all kinds of shops that I wouldnot usually look at. Commercialization of temples as well, I observed.

Anyways, after another 25 min bike ride we reached back home just in time to see the KKR gaining momentum against Kings'men at IPL T20. But KKR lost and we were sad(both me and my cousin were supporting KKR). This was followed by the MI vs RCB match. I was unsure of whom to support having some roots from both d places. Anywayz it was an exciting watch and Bangalore did it finally with 2 overs and 9 wickets to spare. Slept over at cuz's place and just returned back here.

Long post!
Cya!