Waking up at 3.30 in the morning, I found out that our room had neither water or food to be had. Back I laid on the sofa(-cum-bed for me!) ,and got to thinking about the terrific day we had yesterday.
We had started off at 6.30 in the morning(as usual,I was late). After picking Vinu from Patturaikal, we gave a sigh of happiness.. We ,five of us, (Bristow,Devidas, Ramakrishnan,Vinu and myself)were off to Mysore.. Now optimising time and distance was the first thing in our minds, so we decided to take the Perinthalmanna-Nilambur-Gudallur route to Mysore.It was a pretty cool journey, in the blue Indica we had taken for rent, with Bristow driving like a never dying soldier, never tired nor bored with it. I had my go at it too, now somebody has to
give a person who has driven 200kays some rest ,right?
That was it, we had had our lunch at a highway hotel,before we had entered the Mud
umala forests via Gudallur. After touching a small strip of Tamil Nadu, we had entered the state of Karnataka. Well, I was the driver then,
and was asked to report at the check-post.
And only to find out that I had to bribe him... 50bucks. Ahmm... no mention. Had continued our way through the Bandipur jungles and somehow managed to reach Gundalpet town. Last we'd reached Mysore just before dusk and had a sigh of relief when Devidas informed us that we'd managed a couple of Akashavani Quarters for our overnight stay. And hell good the rooms were..
Later, we'd gone to Gokulam chat house and Mukund Chats for filling our tummies. Tired we were, and sleep hadn't
waited long to conquer us.
Yawn..!
Gosh.. long day y'day I thought. Had to get ready soon and check what we had in store for the day. Departed at around 5.30 from Mysore. Slight drizzle and less daylight had made it difficult for us to anticipate a hump which was there on the 4 lane State Highway and the speed at which we were travelling made us jump out of our skins by the jerk. And unfortunately enough, that had caused a slight damage to our vehicle( though we noticed it much later). Somehow we managed to reach Bangalore and reach IISc campus by 10.15 to attend the seminar for which we had started off in the first place... :)
The much awaited moment had arrived.
The tea-break at 11.30.
Our first real meal for the day since getting up at 3.30.
Man it was so excruciating to spend just 8 hours without food...! God bless those millions who die of hunger.
Attended some good nice lectures by Khasim Syed Mohammed and some others who had arranged the program.
Aahh.. where did I mention it? It was a symposium conducted by Texas Instruments(TI) on embedded systems and embedded linux , featuring their latest product Beagleboard, which is a low cost high end chip capable of laptop like performance. And it is
free to the community as well.
After the seminar, Vinu, Raman and myself enjoyed the scenic calm and cool IISc campus( of course when you get to these kinda places, you start to compare their's with ours , and thats what we did.. ) , while Bristow and Devidas went to fix the problem in our vehicle.
The damage in our car was repaired soon and we started off to Mysore, and managed to reach back before midnight.
Our final day began late. We had some of the tastiest Idli-vada-dosa-sambhars from a nearby hotel and started our return journey by 10.15AM. This time we chose to drive
more calmly and hence took the Gundalpet-SulthanBatheri-Calicut route back to Trichur. Stopped at different places to enjoy the scenic beauty and landscape of Wayanad.
Saw a herd of deers on our way and a peacock as well. We really enjoyed the way back. I took to the steering-wheel from the top of
Thamarasheri hill till we stopped for our food at 4PM at a hotel near the NH-17 bypass at Calicut.
Got back to Trichur by 7PM(with some cool
happenings on the way, Im not boring you all anymore....!) and thus ended our 3day voyage...
