A Weekend Trip

This blog should have been my first blog. Souvik has been asking me to post this for quite some time. This script is the result of another silly thought that I had on the 24th June 2003. But at least as a respect to Souvik’s persistent pestering, I have to post this. So here we go, back to June 2003.

Day 1: 20th June 2003

A lightening must have struck Saurabh Agrawal two weeks back. Now, what would u expect me to think if someone who enjoys sleeping 40 of the 48 available hours in a weekend suddenly decides to sacrifice his sleep and says that he wants to go out on a trip? When he told the rest of the homosapiens at the house about this, they also felt as if they were struck by lightening. In a state of shock, we all agreed to it. Agrawal decided that all the 4 us who have been staying in the same house for 2 years now, should go out together.

The shock did not end with this. He also started planning the trip. He started enquiring about where we cud go. When he asked me I suggested that we go to Kudremukh or we travel to Udhagamandalam (Ooty) on our bikes.

We decided we would rent a vehicle and go to Kudremukh. Saurabh Agrawal (henceforth SA) checked out the cost of renting a vehicle. I wanted him to check with Hertz (a car rental agency) about self-driven cars. The cost was very similar to renting a chauffer driven Sumo or Qualis. Souvik and I were two people who knew something about driving a car. We tried convincing SA and Saurabh Chaturvedi (S.C) that a self-driven car would be a good idea. These guys did not want to risk their lives and rejected this idea.

Finally, we agreed to rent a Qualis. By the time we had decided on the place, there were only 2 days left for the trip. We tried to book Green Valley for our stay in Kudremukh. But they said, they cannot accommodate us (may be they still remember what happened when about 25 of us went to that place once).

I dunno how this struck my mind; I had a feeling that Deepa’s father was working with Kudremukh Iron and Ore Company Limited. Somehow we also came to know that they had a good guesthouse there in Kudremukh. I spoke to Deepa’s father and uncle was kind enough to call his friends and arrange for our accommodation.

We planned to leave Bangalore by 4:00 PM on Friday the 20th of June 2003. We started sharp at 5:30 PM.

As soon as we were out of the city, we played a cassette of Kishore Kumar. Suddenly the driver could hear 5 Kishore Kumar’s. And one of them who was not very good at Hindi and tried using whatever words he knew. Now, the original Kishore was lost somewhere and all one could hear was 4 voices screaming the song that Kishore was singing. The driver must have seen many such people; he remained unaffected. After a couple of hours the 4 Kishores lost the energy and we stopped at Kamat to have dinner. Later we reached Chickmagalur by midnight. We checked in into a small lodge there.

Day 2: Saturday 21st June 2003


This day again started with a big shock. SA gets up at 5:15 AM and wakes all of us up. I was beginning to worry. SA usually gets upset if he gets up before 8:30 AM. 8:30 is also ok only if someone wakes him up. And if it is a Saturday, there is no question of SA getting up before 12:00 AM. If he gets up at 5:15 AM and wakes up the rest of us, then there must be serious problem. I don’t show this out but I had to digest this, so I immediately SMS Asha about what happened. She also shares the same concern but suggests that I don’t express my concerns lest the usually quite SA reacts violently.

We start at about 6:30 and head towards Mulayangere. SA is very much interested in visiting the place where the villagers attacked a few of our friends, a few months back. But, instead of going to Mulayangere, we head towards another place called Dattatreyapeeta. As we drive up the hill, we entered the clouds and we started driving into the clouds. This was a fantastic experience. As we passed a particular place, the driver and I saw a lot of hills visible amidst the clouds. We pulled over. But by the time we got out the car, the clouds had covered the hills and all we could see was the dark clouds all around us. We start enjoying the scenery and a few seconds later the clouds decide to be kind to us and they moved away from the hills. It was a fantastic sight to see them move away slowly giving us a view of the wonderful green hills.

We visited Dattatreyapeeta (DP). There is a temple and a mosque in the same campus in this place. The moment I thought it was a gr8 thing, the driver told me that there is always some problem there during the festival season there. We went ahead from DP towards a small waterfall. There was just a strip of water coming from the top. The waterfall is supposedly holy. And as most other Holy places in India, this place was nasty and horrible all around. But the top of the hill had a fantastic view for us. Then we head back towards Chickmagalur.

As we reach Chickmagalur, we decide to have breakfast. Souvik and I had to answer the nature’s call. The hotel we went to have breakfast did not have a usable rest room. So we decided to check out if there was any other place to release the pressure. As we walk down we see another hotel, which looked promising enough to have a rest room. Souvik and I had a very serious discussion about how to get into that place and complete our mission. Souvik struck upon a brilliant idea as he watched some people having breakfast there. He went to the person sitting in the cash counter and asks him “Do you serve breakfast here?” The person looked bewildered and said, “Yes” after thinking for a while. Well, that was the first time this guy must have heard such a question. What else can you ask in a hotel? All that you could ask is if they serve breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Souvik had no time to care about the bewildered cashier he headed towards the toilet without another word. I grabbed the opportunity and quietly followed Souvik. We completed our mission successfully. Then we decided that it was not correct to leave this cashier in this state. So, we went and asked him if he had mineral water. The cashier was now prepared for any kind of question. He quietly took a bottle and gave it to us. We paid for it and walked out to join the rest of the guys in the other hotel.

We finished our breakfast and were ready to start. I slowly talked to the driver and convinced him to allow me to drive. The driver half-heartedly agreed. The moment I took the wheel, SA started praying to all gods he knew. He said “Venkat Zara Sambaalkey”. I started driving. The driver warned me that the breaks were too sensitive. As I drove, the driver kept asking me to honk whenever I overtook somebody. That annoyed me a bit. I tried convincing him that it was only in India that we honk everywhere and every other country in the world it was considered to be an insult. The driver said that I was driving in India and I have to keep honking. So I had no choice but to honk every now and then.

Now, Souvik was also tempted to drive. He kept pestering me. We entered the village of Mudigere and pulled over to buy some film rolls. I asked Souvik to take the wheel, but he decided that he did not want to endanger the life of villagers. He asked me to cross the populated area and stop the car. I did that. He took over. He put the vehicle on gear and the next moment we heard a screeching noise, then a big jolt and the car was moving ahead.

Souvik was quite calm and composed. He immediately yelled “Easy guys, easy”. By now the rest of us had our hearts in our mouths, especially, the driver. But we did not show it out lest our man gets scared and runs into some vehicle. He had some problem with the gear initially and the driver who was sitting beside him had to remind him to change gear every now and then. The traffic increased and Souvik did not like it. He started grumbling, “Why do all these fellows have to come when I start driving”. We had no answer. We did not think that it was a good time to tell him that it is only normal that other people also drove their vehicles on the road. We did not have the guts to say anything. We just kept praying and watching the road.

To make things worse, a buffalo started crossing the road. Souvik saw that well on time. It was in the middle of the road and taking its own time to cross the road. Souvik yelled immediately “Which side do I go now?” We were not really sure if the question was posed to us or if it was for the buffalo to answer. But then the chauffer decided that it might be too late if the buffalo had to answer the question and he asked Souvik to take the right side. Neither the buffalo, nor the car nor any of us was hurt. SC had a doubt if Souvik’s question was targeted at us or was it for the buffalo. Souvik, who was very seriously concentrating on driving, just laughed it off. The rest of us did not have any clue if we had to laugh or cry to be in a situation like this.

It was only a few minutes after the buffalo incident, the car suddenly started going all over the place. None of us had any clue what happened. All that we could see was both the chauffer and Souvik were trying desperately to control the car. The car came to a control in a couple of minutes and started heading straight. Till now, none of us have a clue as to what happened. Now, SC had had enough of it. But he did not feel like saying that straight. He slowly said “If we go at this pace, we might not reach Kudremukh on time”. Souvik seemed to have realized the point. He decided to let the chauffer take over and spare our lives. By now, I think the chauffer had also had enough. He started driving at a very high speed. I thought it was a way to vent out his anger more than the interest in reaching Kudremukh quickly.

We reached our destination at about 3:00 PM. After a small debate about whether to take a room with a television or without one, we decided to go for the ones with television. The canteen in the guesthouse was about to close. So we headed directly to the canteen and had our lunch.

We took rest for sometime. We wanted to visit the KIOCL and see the mining, but it was too late when we pushed ourselves and asked for the permission. The factory was closed and the next day was a Sunday.

It was already 5:00 PM and there was nothing much we could do for that day. The guesthouse also had a sports club in the complex. We were told that we could use the facilities in the club. While Souvik and SA went to play table tennis, SC and I decided to play the less strenuous game of carom.

Later, when we visited the TT hall we found Souvik playing TT with a gentleman. The gentleman had come with his daughter to play TT. Souvik plays TT very well. But seemed to have lost touch. The gentleman and Souvik played a few games of TT, which was very interesting to watch. After a two hour-long effort SA and Souvik were really tired. We packed our food and went back to our rooms.

After a couple of drinks, Souvik revealed that the Gentleman (who was playing TT with him) was very much impressed with him. He also said that the Gentleman’s daughter was a software engineer. While all of us were waiting to hear some more interesting story, Souvik said, “I am tired” and went to bed.

The day came to an end leaving the three of us disappointed.

Day 3: 22nd June 2003

It was raining heavily. The driving skills Souvik and myself must have made SA normal. He did not seem to have any effect of the lightening attack (remember the first line of this document??). He wanted to sleep the whole day, instead of going out and seeing a few places. We had a difficult time convincing him that we have spent a couple of thousands on this trip and it would not be fair to sleep. SA was initially convinced that the AC room and the very comfortable beds in the guesthouse were worth the couple of thousands. Finally, we managed to convince him to get up and go out with us.

The forest department was kind enough to let us visit 2 places. One was a hanging bridge and the other was the HanumanGundi waterfall. We headed towards the hanging bridge. From one point, the road (road???) was too narrow for the car to go and we decided to walk down to the bridge. We ask some locals how far it was to the bridge. They said it was about a kilometer. We started walking discussing about the possibility of attacks by leeches.

We walked about 200 meters and saw the hanging bridge. Dunno why the locals thought it was about a kilometer. The next debate was if the bridge required a load testing. After some inspection, we decided that the bridge might be able to take a fairly good load. And I started walking on the bridge. The bridge successfully completed the load testing. We decided to intimate the local panchayat that the bridge was strong enough to handle heavy loads.

We walked back to the car enjoying the scenery around. It was a very nice sight. As we reached the car, I got in and sat next to the chauffer. He immediately noticed that I had brought back some worms along with me. By now Souvik had also noticed a couple of such worms in SA’s sandals. Well, these worms were none other than our friends, the leeches.

This is the first experience for SA and myself with the leeches. SA was lucky that none of the leeches got stuck to him. But there was one in my leg. I panicked. I jumped around all over the place trying to get rid of this bloodsucker. The other three had a difficult time controlling their laughter. SC and Souvik tried to calm me. I tried my best. SC took a small stick and tried to remove the bloodsucker. By now, the bloodsucker had become as fat as I. By the time SC took one end of the leech out of my leg and tried to remove the other end, the first part would go and start sucking blood again. I added more trouble to SC by doing a tap dance when he removed one end of the sucker. It was just a desperate attempt to get the sucker off my leg, but SC was not amused. He was getting furious with me. He screamed at me. SA and Souvik were enjoying all this but did not have the guts to laugh at me for the fear that I would kill them. After struggling for about a few minutes against the leech and my tap dance SC was successful in getting that sucker off my leg.

We resumed our journey. We headed back in the same way as we had come towards HanumanGundi waterfall. We came somewhere close to the guesthouse and asked someone the way to HanumanGundi. He told us to go back the same way. He said it was about 10 kms away from where we were. We told him we had gone to the hanging bridge. We asked him if we had to go further from the hanging bridge. He replied that the place we had gone to was not the hanging bridge and the hanging bridge 5 kms away on the opposite direction. Well, all that testing of bridge and attacks of leeches for nothing.

We took a ‘U’ turn and started towards HanumanGundi waterfalls. On the way we spent some time near the Kadambi falls. Since it has been raining for sometime now, there was lot of water pouring down from the hills. It was a fantastic site and we were awestruck.

After a half-an-hour drive we reached HanumanGundi. The place had changed since I visited last time. It was a very slippery trek to the waterfall when I had come to the waterfall last time. Now concrete steps have been constructed to go down and close to the waterfall. It was easy to go down. But by now we were fear stricken by the attack of the leeches. Souvik refused to go down to the waterfall. He was unlucky that he could not find any company to stay back with him. So we started walking down. The waterfall was fierce and was fantastic to see. We did not get anywhere close to the wet muddy side or the rocks fearing leeches. The fear was so bad that we started walking back in less than five minutes. Half way up I saw SA sitting and checking his sandals desperately. No marks for guessing that right. He managed to remove the sucker from his leg quickly. And the next thing I knew was SA had vanished. Thanks to the bloodsuckers, he did not feel the tiredness of climbing 380 steep steps. I had a tough time climbing up. But I managed to reach up. As SC and I reached the top, we saw Souvik jumping desperately. A sucker had stuck to his knee. He managed to get it off after a brief struggle.

The next thing that I saw was Souvik holding his hands around SA’s legs and wiping them clean. I understood that he was just making sure that there were no leeches. I just wondered what if there was one and that got struck to his hand. Luckily there were none. After making sure that we are not carrying any leech with us, we got into the car. The next discussion was whether we had to go to the “actual” hanging bridge. By now the leeches had instilled enough of fear, SA and Souvik were against the idea of visiting the hanging bridge.

So we headed back to the guesthouse. It was interesting to see SA and Souvik, who generally loathe the idea of bathing everyday, run into the bathrooms and take bath immediately. They came after taking bath and said “Haa! Its refreshing” with a sigh of relief. It must be really be a big relief and a refreshing feeling when you know for sure that there are no leeches sticking to your body.

SC, Souvik and I thought a couple of drinks would be a nice idea. And SA, as usual, was just a spectator. The lack of sleep on a Sunday had given him a high anyway. As the first peg went down, Souvik declared that he is not scared of leeches but it was just that they were so disgusting creatures that he hated them. SA seconded that and I decided that it was not a bad idea to agree to the statement. SC had somehow managed to become friends with the leeches. They did not care to disturb him. I dunno if he had a chat with them about their perspective to life and his perspective towards life.

Then the conversation turned towards the differences in the thought process of men and women. The conversation went on till a gentleman from the guesthouse canteen came and informed us that the canteen would be closed in a short while. We had our lunch and started on our journey back from Kudremukh.

None of us had the energy to attempt driving or do discuss routes with buffaloes on our way back. The best we could do was to play antakshari. It was good fun trying to recollect all the old hindi songs and scream on top of our voices. This lasted for a couple hours and we were drained after that. It was quite and peaceful return journey after that.