Elvesbane

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!