Trip – Senti-trip

Or so it was called, since it was supposed to be the last trip that s7 ppl’d be going for….

As far as I was concerned, the start was boring. I have not been blessed with an ability to dance, and in light of that knowledge, I find it extremely embarassing when situations arise where one is expected to participate. Thankfully, no one bothered me much and I was able to while away the time in music land… while all around me, the world went mad with guys and girls jumping around to the beat as best they could.

It wasn’t a pretty sight.

I woke up while we were still on the way up to Wayanad. Some of the sights were truly breathtaking – light filtering through the clouds, expansive vista-s… sights, the sort of which you only see in Discovery Channel or the National Geographic.

After refreshments, we headed straight to Edakkal caves, which turned out to be an unexpectedly strenuous trek / climb / clamber / death-defying-feat-of-utter-stupidity. I backed out at about the middle of the climb right when the rains started. Visit Krish’s picasaweb album for views from the top and a bunch of photos of the people who actually did it.

Those who survived (not everyone did. Nimmi busted her head. ) headed on to Ooty. I spent four hours listening to music, sitting at the front of the bus, at the end of which an exasperated Rakhi waved me over to sit with her wondering (correctly) why I’d bother with the awful front seat when I could sit comfily next to her.  We reached Ooty late at night with the effects of the trek plainly visible, and after a spot of partying, everyone was dead asleep.

The morning was beautiful, to say the least – just the right temperature and the light was brilliant. I took a whole bunch of photos that I’m quite proud of!

We then headed to Lake Ooty, where, with the little time we had, we went boating! I’ve been to Ooty two or three times, and have been to this same place every time, but for whatever reason, I’d never gone out onto the lake. It was fun! I’d also gotten myself a cowboy hat - something I’ve always wanted to buy, and the inevitable photo session ensued.

After a quick stop-over at a tea factory, which I skipped because it was raining, we were on our way back to Trivandrum.

All things considered… an average trip… nothing particularly exciting or memorable, and nothing to complain about…

How forgettable is that.

All the pics can be found over at my picasaweb album. Clicky!

Trip – Eranakulam ‘08

We went to veega land during the onam holidays. Me, Sabir, and Petti, that is. At veega land, we jumped around like idiots in the wave pool for hours on end, and Sabir almost sicked up after being spun around for too long in a blender-like apparatus. The same one left me feeling very sleepy for some reason.

Oh, and they have a NEW roller-coaster over there! Looks quite tame and you don’t hear anyone scream while they’re on it, but when you get on, you realize that that’s because they’re too busy hanging on for dear life… well, girls anyway. Guys also have to make sure that some rather fragile components don’t get damaged in transit… to speak in geek-lingo. The ride is fun though.

We also walked around the Marine Drive (Bay Pride Mall, Pentamenaka, etc.) for a bit, before getting on the train back to TVM, and most of the photos I’ve put up at my picasaweb gallery are taken there. I bought the little one a rather cute arm-band thingy that read (appropriately) “the little one”. A little too many letters to fit her wrist properly, but as Sabir pointed out almost immediately, it should fit some other body parts quite well.

She won’t like that. <wicked grin>

I’m leaving for my class trip (Wayanad – 2-day) tomorrow noon / evening. So I’d thought I’d update this place before I left! See ya!

Update:

5 minutes after posting this, I get a call from Unni saying that the trip’s been cancelled. Apparantly, some girls are concerned that their parents won’t let them come when they see that the total number of girls is low. We only had about 25 people coming anyway, and the budget was tight as it was.

Useless bunch of (spineless) gits. And it’s not just those girls, it’s for all those who backed out after commiting to the trip.

Sigh.

i. v.

This is going to be a big one. So fetch that pack of Lays / Popcorn / Favorite munchies before reading any further. ^_^

B.t.w, I’m going to make use of the word fun a lot in the following format – fun! (italicized with an exclamation point) in this blog entry. It’s just that I’m classifying those things as being under my category of having fun. Capish?

The whole thing was… enjoyable, to say the very least. Quite possibly unique too, which is kinda sad (like Jaimy mentioned towards the end) since a lot of it was entirely new to me, and that doesn’t happen often enough. I’m gonna go through the whole thing in as orderly a manner as possible, but that’s going to be hard since a lot of the stuff that’s happened is mixed up in my head, not to mention the fact that the itinerary got modified a helluva lot of times. I’m gonna avoid mentioning the train journeys since they were slightly boring, at best.

Hyderabad didn’t really turn out the way I’d thought it would… actually nothing did, and that’s to be expected, I guess. The greatest surprise during the whole trip was, undoubtedly, Sharika. Not that I really understand her more than I did before, or anything, but it definitely is nice to know that she doesn’t think of me as a completely hopeless conversationalist anymore. In fact, my high point during the whole trip was an argument I had with her, Shreya and Rajani during a trip back to the hotel – I disagreed with their opinion that women don’t pay any attention to a guy’s looks when it comes to a relationship. I hope I made at least one of them think differently. I thought the best part of shopping at Hyd was the Imax mall. It reminded me of Dubai what with all the expensive shops and the arcade (that was fun!). I even had a go at the rock-climbing wall – I climbed about halfway until I reached the negative gradient section which proved too much. (once again, fun!)

Snow World was also fun! Making a snow ball is difficult! But I pride myself in the knowledge that I was probably the only one who figured out how to make a proper snow ball. Towards the end of the one hour, my snow balls could travel as far as I could throw them (which isn’t all that far) without disintegrating. ^_^ My aim isn’t all that good though and that, coupled with being a pacifist, meant that I didn’t really hurt anyone with my super-duper snow balls. I got hit plenty of times though. It stings, lemme tell ya. Unfortunately I couldn’t take any pics here since I didn’t want a wet SLR on my hands.

Ramoji Film City was, as far as I’m concerned, a day wasted. At least everybody had the good sense (perhaps beat upon them by the unyielding sun) to leave early. Ramoji is more of a plain park than anything else. It’s got its fair share of interesting buildings, sights and curios, but the sad fact is that there is nothing more. Its all just something to see, and all that seeing gets pretty boring when you’re walking under a sun hot enough to make lead liquify.

On to Bangalore! The first day was entirely devoted to shopping. We (Me, Sabir, Sreekanth, Sreejith, Divya, Deepti, Roshini) went around the local shopping places looking for stuff. Actually I wasn’t exactly looking for anything but I ended up buying a USB cable for the iPod (which turned out to be useless), and another air-gun (I just can’t resist those ^_^), and a funky t-shirt.

Wonder-la turned out to be a photocopy of Veega Land. All that talk about it being 4 times the size and 10 times the fun is a load of hog-wash. It’s, at best, just as much fun as Veega Land. I tried out all but the most adventurous rides, and had fun (fun!) making a fool of myself in the Wave Pool. That’s about it for that Wonder-la, really. It was just your everyday water-park in a nice clean (heavily chlorinated) package. ^_^

The third day was a joke. We went to some temple in the morning – It seemed to me to be more of a commercial center than a place of worship so I bailed out early. I heard that the food stalls inside were very good though. The I.V. (that oh-so important ingredient) was an even bigger joke. We walked around the Infy campus and were finally lead to an impressive conference room, only to be shown a worthless promo vid, followed by an even more worthless question-answer session which proved that our guide didn’t know what to do with us and didn’t really care whether we left the campus impressed or not. Sigh…

Tour organization began to break down that evening. We got informed by the organizers that the train tickets to Goa hadn’t really been booked yet so we were going to have to look for an alternative means of transport. That really sent a lot of the guys into hysterics. Guys, mind you, not girls. All the girls remained calm (I thought that was mightily impressive) but a lot of arguments broke out among the guys with a few complaining about the lack of organization and what-not. Here’s an excerpt from a mail I sent Asif around that time:

“… It turned out that the tickets to our train to Goa hadn’t been ‘booked’ as had been assumed. This was two hours before the train was supposed to leave, approx 2 hrs before ‘now’.

All the expectable results followed – meaning a whole fuck-load of hue and cry. Sreekanth shined by being prominent among those who whined. That’s a whole story in itself so I’m not gonna get into it. …“

to which Asif replied:

“... Ah, something always happens. What’s a tour that goes strictly as planned? A strict tour, maybe.

Sreekanth shined by being prominent among those who whined. shine – whine – shine – whine – shine – whine – shine… …“

Truer words than he realized, I think. I actually had to physically drag Sabir away from Sreekanth at one point when their argument got a little too loud. Sabir later confessed that might have actually hit Sreekanth (or tried to) had I not pulled him away then. That would have been a sight. lol.

Anyway we reached Goa at 6 PM (much delayed, on a sleeper-coach bus), the next day and a few of the guys (including me) had a dip in the pool at the resort. We celebrated Nidhin’s and George’s birthday that night and I later went out with Sabir and Sreekanth to Dominoes and had some really nice pizza. Me and Sabir spent the night improving our aim with the air-gun. The can of deo that we used for target practice was left looking like the moon, its surface scarred by lots and lots of little craters.

The second day at Goa was spent shuttling back and forth between beaches. We went to the resting place of St. Francis Xavier towards the end of the day. The church exterior seemed to be in need of a lot of renovation, but the interiors were magnificent. Once inside, Sharika pointed out that a few of the girls (in our batch) who were actually crying as they prayed in the church. That seemed a little odd to me since I couldn’t spot anything that would make anyone cry. Religious fervor seems quite far-fetched so I assume it has to do with something I know nothing about.

Further breakdown of tour-organization meant that everyone was now fretting over whether we’d have tickets on the train back home that night. A lot of opinions were flying around and I tried my best to stay of the way. Eventually, after a lot of sorting through the chaff, it was finally decided to make do with what seats we had on the train. It actually turned out okay, and I still have no idea how they managed it, since we fit 58 people onto some 40 seats, and technically that’s illegal.

The ride back home was sombre at best. I spent a lot of the time sleeping and kathi-adikkifying since my iPod had lost its charge and I didn’t have any books to read. We reached Thiruvananthapuram at about 10 o’clock at night, and I got back home within 15 minutes. I slept from 2 o’clock that night to 2 the next afternoon. God, was I tired.

I’ve uploaded all the good photos I took during the trip to my PicasaWeb Album. Clicky!

Catcha’ll later!