Vegas baby!! (Joey Style)

Oh yeah! Vegas!! :D
Our drive to Nevada from Los Gatos was 7 tedious hours long! We passed the Mojave desert on the way. It is the first desert I have ever seen. The hills look like sand dunes but they never let you decide if they're sand or just brown solid rocks covered with hay. Even when they're ten feet away it's hard to decide. We passed endless vineyards and almond tree farms. The sky was clear blue, with a few white lines which were aeroplane trails. I found it hard to believe that the temperature was above 45 degrees. I could actually see mirage on the freeway, not only just above the ground but till the top of a truck! (It's like the streets of Mexico as shown in Prison Break. You can literally see the heat.) I fell in love with the bikers!! Their bikes are omg so HOT and they look amazing with thier black leather jackets and tattoos! No one ever uses gearless bikes here or ugly bikes. They can easily put Pulsar 220s or Avengers to shame. Even the trucks look so good! They're shiny and clean and are say, respected as much as the cars. I once saw a pink shiny truck. That was sorta goofy. The trains we saw were pretty boring goods trains. So anyway, my uncle drove at 80mph constantly and we reached Vegas earlier than expected.
As soon as we entered Nevada, casinos started appearing on either sides of the road. The very first one I saw was called Gold Strike. We reached Four Queens, the hotel and casino where we were to stay. I was so agitated and hyperactive that I was in Vegas! I was being all girly and tried on five or six tops before we went out. Hehe.
I saw some of the most happening places in the whole world! I saw casinos like Bellagio, Luxor, Mandalay Bay, Paris, NewYork NewYork, Caesar's Palace, Golden Nugget, Stratosphere and Circus Circus. (I don't know why they repeat these words twice. Maybe they're very excited about it.) Then there were replicas of Europe's most famous land marks. I saw numerous strip clubs, night clubs and wedding chaples at the end of every street. There were really hot cars zooming around and a stretched limosine was parked in the basement of our hotel! It looked absolutely gorgeous! We went up the clone of the Eiffel Tower. It is about one third of the original size I tihnk. As soon as we stepped out of the elevator we were swept off our feet by a breath taking view of Vegas! Instinctively I said "Whoa! Bling bling!!" The lighting is nothing less than spectacular! EVERYTHING is golden and silver or some other shiny colour. We had a great view of Bellagio's fountains. The lights in the fountain looked like tiny diamonds sparkling with all their might. The casino at Paris was gigantic! My aunt, uncle and mum gambled. I wasn't allowed to gamble!! Waaa!! I'm supposed to be 21! I walked around looking at everyone losing their money hopelessly, secretly laughing at them. Once outside, it was dark and we saw a dazzling display of fireworks and a lot of advertisement boards kept flashing at us. I saw "the second" good looking guy (first was the Walcott guy at the airport). He walked around the streets wearing a suit with a lot of other men in suits. All in all it was very nice seeing people from all over the world on a single street and the very fact that there were billions n trillions of dollars stashed up in one lane and that I was on the lane was overwhelming!
We went back to the hotel rather early, considering Vegas lives by Indian Standard Time.
So this is the funniest thing that has happened so far. Guess what we did after going to the room?? We ate uppit!! We ate uppit in Vegas!! :P All that time while I was eating I kept laughing about how funny it would sound when I wrote "We ate uppit in Vegas" in my blog. Hehe..

Santa Cruz and San Francisco

I have made good use of the past two days.
I went to Santa Cruz the day before yesterday. It's a small city with a population of about 55,000, situated along the West Coast of America. The ocean is friendly to surfers and Santa cruz is also the home of skate boarders apparently. We went to what seemed like a biotechnology research centre. There was a skeleton of a full grown blue whale that had once crashed into some rocks on the coast and died. It was remarkably huge! The ocean has rich marine life and was a little stinky. We saw sea otters, pelicans sitting on the Pelican Rock, sea gulls and a seal. We sat by the light house and had a delightful meal. I saw a great deal of people walking dogs. Petting dogs is probably a fad here since so many of them have it! The dogs are given manicure and pedicure and fancy hair cuts. I find that quite unnecessary.
We drove around Santa Cruz, past the multimillion dollar houses facing the mighty Pacific. They're all beautifully ventilated and they're the kind that would make you wanna live there. I love the Spanish names of the places around here. They first belonged to Mexico, I believe. That's that.

We went to San Francisco yesterday. We bought subs from Subway for lunch. As usual I wanted extra capsicum in my sub. I said "Extra capsicums please" and the lady there seemed confused. They don't understand our Indian accent. D'oh! So I corrected myself and said "Extra bell peppers please" full on with an American accent and she obliged. I feel I sound like Russell Peters imitating Indians here. Trust me, it's not a very nice feeling.
San Francisco is around 50 miles from home. We reached in less than 45 minutes. I might have said this before and I'll say it again. It's a real pleasure driving here! Or watching my aunt drive. It's as smooth as going by plane! We went to a beach where the water was freezing! The wind blowing there was bitterly cold. Apparently it blows from Alaska across the Pacific ocean and reaches San Francisco. It was a bad idea to assume California would be hot and not bring a jacket.
There was this steep road where we ascended slowly and my aunt said "you're in for a surprise" and I was literally holding my breath to see what lay ahead! Slowly coming to form in front of me was a maginificent city with kazillion houses, all stuck to each other, and a hundred high-rise buildings! Never before in my life have I seen so many buildings! It was outrageous really! Looked like a whole lot of houses thrown in a godown or like they had been arranged there for Dussera. It is a very crowded city and all the houses are single storey buildings because the city is prone to earth quakes and what's more? Each house looks exactly like the one next to it so they're all painted in flamboyant colours. We went to the Twin Peaks, a view point and also one of the highest point in San Franscisco. From there we could see almost the entire city. The Golden Gate, the financial centre of San Francisco, the port of San Francisco and other elegant structures that stood out in the residential areas. From there we went for a drive on the Golden Gate itself. It had me singing the theme song of Full House (Everywhere you look everywhere you go, there's a heart there's a heart). It was such a pleasant feeling! We went to different places and saw the Golden Gate from different angles. At one point, the wind was so tempestuous, I almost lost balance and the camera wouldn't stay still to click a picture! It was a permanent colossal gust of wind! (I couldn't find a better way to put it.)
Also, I learnt that San Francisco has the higest gay population in America. They had their rainbow coloured flag faluntering high up in the air! We also saw about five or six couples.
On our way back we went through the market street of San Francisco, one of the most happening streets. The streets are always either rising or decending because the city is built on hills. I was so cheerful to see that Princess Diaries might have been shot on one of those streets! (The scene where she loses control of her car and crashes into the tram was stuck in my head!) I saw electric trams, the Golden Gate Park that stretched from one end of San Francisco to the other and other specialities.
I'll be visiting SF once every week to see all the places. Can't wait to go to Ghirardelli and gobble up a few ice creams!
Right then. Good day. Till tomorrow..

May gets me trippin!

May 18th, the longest day of my life! Literally! It was 36 and a half hours long.
We reached the airport on time. There was a light drizzle and cool breeze all the time. You know it has rained every single time I've gone to the new airport! Bangalore just doesn't want me to leave!
We checked in easily (although amma panicked a little when she thought she had left the air tickets at home) and filled up the immigration forms. The guy there read my name and immediately asked if I was a Mandyam Iyengar. After a nice little chat with us he retunred our passports and we entered Gate 20 and waited by our terminal. In there, they have constructed a miniature mall. It has every damn thing you would want! As soon as you enter, you'll find every bloody brand of booze! I was delighted looking at this one thing called Absolut Vodka. Looked very inviting. :P I went there to buy chewing gum. I hadn't bought any because my brainy sister told me they'll give it on the plane or that I could buy it at the airport! So I asked the guy there for a pack of gum. He showed me the way to the chocolate and gum section and gave me a choice of two. The chewing gum was 7 dollars!! I said "Thanks but I have no cash" and walked away. I bought Pepsi for 50 bucks and sat reading my book. I was reading Airport by Arthur Hailey sitting at the airport! :P By the time I read the first page the guy sitting next to me dropped my Pepsi. Grr! Curse him! I noticed a 12-13 year old wearing a Manu shirt and gave him a stare. He saw my Arsenal bag too and we kept giving each other stares till we reached San Francisco. Heh..

Soon we were called to board our flights. We went quickly to the door and entered a tube which connected us to the plane. I was very fascinated with everything because it was my first international flight. A couple of airhostesses invited us inside and directed us to our seats. We went by Lufthansa and everything was written in German. "Schwimmwester unter Ihrem Sitz" is the first thing I read and understood. I watched the small guidance movie they showed and listened to the audio in German. I didn't understand a single word! The take off was without much turbulance. The flight was like riding in a bus on a smooth road. I stayed up till 4:30 am, had dinner and drank some vodka that was from Finland. It was sleep inducing. I slept till 6am and we reached Frankfurt at around 7:30 where we had to board our connecting flight, which was at 10. I got a glimpse of Frankfurt from the airport. So now I can show off that I've been to Germany too. :P

After sitting in my seat, a huge guy who had a body like Lincoln Burrows (from Prison Break) sat down next to me. So we were pretty cramped in there. I was bored of checking out the German airhostesses. They all are so tall and rather sturdy I would say. I ate, listened to music, ate, watched Slumdog Millionaire and Marley and Me (cried hiding my face under the pillow when Markey died), read, ate more and drank a lot of juice. I didn't get a wink of sleep through out the day while my mum slept for 10 hours continuously and my aunt just got bored. We reached San Francisco without much turnulance while landing. The Immigration queue was a long one and luckily we walked quite fast and didn't have to wait much. All the officers there were Non-American. We were called upon by a lady (Maybe Asian) for the interview. She was pretty friendly. While talking to her this security guy came into the cube and my stomach literally did a flip! He looked so good! He was Black but looked just like Walcott! He is the best looking guy I have seen in America so far. We picked up our luggage (none of it got lost! Woohoo!) and saw my uncle and aunt waiting outside for us. This trip had been planned so many times and cancelled before that they both seemed real thrilled that it finally happened! We went to the parking lot, only to find that each and every car is an awesome car! I saw a Bentley and around four Audi's as soon as I entered the car park. You'll see the same number of BMWs here as the number of 800s in Bangalore. We drove a good 50 miles in half an hour on the freeway. The drive was great! Our minimum speed was 100kmph I think. People hardly use two wheelers here. I spotted only one. California is so green and full of nature. It's such a pleasure to drive and everything is so organised. I'm very impressed by all of it! We reached home in Los Gatos. The whole town is like a resort. Very pretty houses with nice big gardens. My uncle's house is very well kept and has an attractive swimmimg pool in the backyard. I picked up my cousins from their schools and took a good look at school life that I usually see only on tv. Kids with skate boards, sleazy vynils on cars they drive, etc etc. After I came home I was extremely sleepy and didn't do much. I took a shower, ate and enjoyed a deep slumber after that. Was a great long day! :) Cheers!

Delhi-6

First of all, Sr.Philomena, we all love you very much. RIP.

I’m quite cheerful after watching the ‘First day, first show’ of Delhi-6. I hardly ever do that. Abhishek Bachchan has again performed very well. First Dostana, now this. This guy is on a roll! He looks incredibly handsome, especially when he is angry. He plays Roshan, a young NRI who comes to India with his pious grandmother, who happens to be suffering from a fatal disease. Sonam Kapoor plays Bittu Sharma, a boisterous Dilli ki chokri, who aspires to be the winner of Indian Idol. She is showcased as a rebel, who wants to be different from the typical Indian girls. She looks extremely beautiful in Indian clothes. There is another lady in the movie that looks remarkably good. She plays the role of Bittu’s bua.
The entire movie is shot in Old Delhi. India has the same, clichéd cow-in-the-middle-of-the-road and no-space-to-breathe sort of look. But it looks striking from the roof of the house where Sonam Kapoor dances with a lovely dove. If sources are to be believed, the director had to shell out rupess 13,000/- per day for the bird in hand.
The whole plot revolves around a certain “kala bandar”, which causes a nuisance and creates panic in the hearts of thousands of naïve Delhiites. It gains the attention of the media and makes a big issue of itself. The first half of the movie is light with a little humour here and there. The second half takes on a serious note. There is a little misunderstanding between the Hindus and Muslims, who had till then lived in harmony. That’s a rather delicate topic to handle but Rakesh Omprakash Mehra has carried it out very well. The story is partly depicted through the famous Ram Leela.
Roshan and Bittu eventually develop a thing for each other, making the spectators hope things will go their way. Like all other Bollywood movies, this one has a moral, put forward by Atul Kulkarni. The music is pretty different and fits the movie perfectly. I got mixed reviews from people in the theatre. In my opinion, it is over all, a run of the mill movie and definitely not Rakesh Mehra’s best. Rang De Basanti was ten times better than Delhi-6. I would say it’s worth watching the morning show in a multiplex when you’re assured of getting attendance in college. That’s that. Three on five.

A whole lot of Squish!

“Rise and shine!” That’s the first thing I read in the morning. It was 5am and Addy had given me orders to wake him alone up, assuring me that he would manage to wake everyone else up. I did as he said. I was sandwiched between Preethi and the side of the tent. With great difficulty, I found my phone, which was beeping loudly and held it high up in the air so Addy would hear it and wake up. When no one stirred, I yelled out “5 O CLOCK!!” To this, Addy responded saying “5 minutes”. He didn’t even open his eyes. I shrugged and went back to sleep. Every five minutes my alarm rang and I announced the time each time but there was no point anyway. (It seems like only Suraj didn’t hear my calls. He was completely unaware of the announcements when asked about it later in the evening.) Eventually, all of us got up at 10am. There! We blew up our plans of trekking early in the morning to KP. Mr.Prepontaneous was up before any one of us. We went to Battey maney and brushed, washed our faces and answered nature’s call. Preethi made bread cheese breakfast for us. It was very tasty. Addy and Suraj licked the box clean and threw it aside. We went back to our tent and realised how amazing the shape was! “Wah!” :P It wasn’t even a triangle! Sheesh! We sat near it for a while. It was a “plan meeting”. We planned to stay back that day at Bhatta’s house and leave to KP in the evening. In order to kill time, we started exploring the places around Battey mane. We saw a small stream where I saw a guy wearing an Arsenal jersey. As always, I got damn excited. His gang (mainly comprised of old men and a few boring nerdy guys) was sitting by the stream. We walked up along the stream looking for snakes and in Cosmo’s case, crabs. We found a small pond covered with leaves and maggots. Addy wanted to clear it up and make it a Jacuzzi. Haha! Yeah right! We went back towards the gang of old men and sat somewhere close to them. We sat idly for what seemed like an hour. We were relaxing, you see. Addy came up with a game, which required us to put on our thinking caps. He challenged us to create something with all the junk lying around. (Remember TV, Microwave oven??) It was when the boys were having some stupid competition with their Kings; Prepontaneous came up with the word squish. Hehe. Finally after enough rest, we went back near our tent to put our plans to action.
Then again (it’s almost predictable now!), the super girls foiled the plans. It was around 35-40 degrees and we had absolutely no interest, curiosity or anything to do with KP whatsoever. We called Addy’s mum and explained that it was too hot to trek. Addy spoke to her for about ten minutes. This conversation included heated arguments, convincing his mum about how hot it was, general discussions to do with the number of tents and all that. Finally we heard Addy say “What? (Oh shit!) Happy Birthday ma!” Hehe. We all started laughing. He reminded her of some gift that he had given her and spoke nicely for a while and hung up. It was decided that we would go to Madikeri after trekking down so that we could “chill” at Abbey Falls. :P We packed our tent, went to Bhatta’s house, took our entire luggage which now included the bus people’s tents too! $&%^**! It was around 12 noon when we started to trek. The boys dipped their tshirts in water before we could start. Lucky bums! Anyway, we were full of energy. Suraj led us and I followed. Cosmo was behind me, closely followed by Dimps and Addy. We started a small game where Su would sing a word and I would add another word and we would go on until we had a nice one-line song. Hehe. The only sensible sentence we made was “The drums sound so weird”. So creative! :P We had gained superb momentum and it was hard to stop. As we were singing, God blessed us with network and Cosmo got a whole lot of text messages. We heard him say “Holy Cow! A guy from my hostel died!” We were all shocked for a second and did not know what to say. Cosmo broke the tension by running down the hill, full speed and then falling, skidding and yelling at the same time for five seconds. Lmao! None of us could control laughing. I asked who died and he said “Bhaskar! Oh no! Now I have to go to Udupi!” Hahahahaha! Prepontaneous enquired Cosmo about the idea of running down the hill. He said Cosmo thought he could go and save Bhaskar if he ran. Or maybe he planned to run to Udupi. God knows what made him run! That incident was so damn funny! He got a message that said “Bhaskar died” and he just ran! Hahahahaha!! Only people who were there will understand. Hehe. The whole process of climbing downhill was funny. We all seemed dazed and confused and wasted. We laughed at absolutely anything! Cosmo promised to give us all anything we asked for if we reached down in two hours. We took up the challenge and trekked down swiftly. Addy was suffering from ankle pain and was finding it hard to walk. We found the “2500 mts” part and sat down there for fifteen minutes. We sang the Chun Chun song and we realised that Dimps had a very weird way of saying “Om”. She would say “Aaaum” in a so-called “deep” voice. Hehe. Laughing about it, we all ended the break, this time with lesser enthusiasm than the beginning. Slowly, the break frequency and duration started increasing. Cosmo and I saw a gigantic snake. It was brownish with black stripes. We made Suraj so jealous. We met some mental guy on the way who said we had 6 more kms to descend. The bloody thing seemed endless! We went on and on and on and on and on. Finally when we could trek no more, we broke down. With no fuel to energize us, we lay there, rummaging our bags looking for signs of food. We were starving like mad. We ate a packet of raisons and ellu-bella hungrily. Our last resort was cheese. Sigh! We opened a box of cheese and ate it. Addy said “oota kodi” to passers by. Such was the misery that fell upon us! That was the longest break ever. We wasted a whole hour sitting there. We put peanuts in cheese and ate it. We put cheese in ellu-bella and I was dared to eat it. Big deal I thought and ate it! I actually enjoyed it and ate more! Hehe. By now, the Brahmin – Gowda – Golla – Browda argument had long begun. Each of us argued about our status in the society. Hehe. God pitied our pitiable state and gave us power to walk again. We got our asses off the hard rocks and trekked down with determination ready to face a long, irritating path. To our pleasant surprise, we reached the bottom just after two bloody minutes! We wasted an hour for two minutes’ trek! Shit! We laughed for two days at this thought. Hehe. We quenched our thirst with Citron from a small shop. There were around four black cats lingering around. The white shirt flirt came down the path and said “Hi yaar. I expected something from you guys. Why didn’t you go up?” We told him we went to some other peak. We asked him how the view from KP was. He said “the view was….” And he made an action like he was trying to wriggle out a cockroach from his shirt. Lol! Addy completed his sentence with ‘beautiful”. Hehe. Laughing at that bugger, we entered Kukke. We had a nice snack at Neo Mysore Café or something like that. (Wow was it called Mysore café?) We got rid of our bags and headed towards the temple. Addy was adamant about the whole idea of going to temples until he got to know that the ladies in the temple were topless! (LOL!) He was suddenly Subramanya’s No.1 devotee. He was damn excited when we entered. He threw his eyes around for hot chicks. :P We told him he’d find them inside the room where the idol was kept. We went in search of the water body, which is usually there at temples so that Cosmo could throw the thread that he was wearing. We went through a market place where bhajans served as a background for our crappy talk. We sat by the peepal tree and spoke about how Ganesha got an elephant’s face. We laughed a lot generally and prayed to God and went to the market. Addy went absolutely crazy on seeing the fake tattoo moulds. He got five tattoos, which included an eagle, a tiger that read TIGER :P, a hanuman, a ganesha and a politician. Suraj got a KSRTC symbol, a hanuman, an eagle and a snake with a heart shaped head. Cosmo got a flower and an eagle. Preethi got an Om. I got some random design. Omg! How could I forget?!? Addy got one that said “Life Wife” in a tacky heart shape. That was the best tattoo! We laughed our asses off while getting tattoos. When the tattoo lady said 55rs Addy and Su were like “parvagilla” and started walking away. Haha! Slowly we walked towards the astrologer. Cosmo was going to get his palm read. We waited outside for fifteen minutes while Suraj read Cosmo’s palm and said quite a bit that made sense. At least he made more sense than the astrologer. The astrologer claimed that Cosmo would become an artist! He also said that Cosmo would become a man at 40 years of age and that he had “monk buddhi”. LOL! After the chap read his palm, he sat waiting for cash. As usual, all of us ran out. Cosmo gave the astrologer 10 bucks and came out looking embarrassed. We went back to the temple and met Vishwanath. With completely straight faces, we told him that the purohit in the temple tattooed everyone who went in there. I can’t believe he bought that. Giggling, we all ran out of the temple. After one shot of Lime soda each, we sat near the car playing Dumb Charades. Khoon Mein Taley Samose, Monochromatic Destiny, Mother of Incandescence, The Gallous Bladder, all of which are made up movies were acted out with sheer brilliance! We then set off for dinner to Neo Mysore Café again. We had a proper South Indian Meal, which pretty much sucked. Suraj kept giving Strum arbitrary sentences like “there is not one in the Jacuzzi” and “You are a clown” and “You suck at acting” to act out. Hehe. I gave him “Dude where’s my car” and something happened and Cosmo called Dimps a citag and things went a little out of hand. We saw Suraj and Cosmo having a heated argument standing outside. Dimps and I actually got scared to interfere. Later Suraj came and told us that his justification was that Cosmo was a close friend so he could pick on him. He didn’t even apologise! Haha! After dinner, Vishwanath came and gave us some cash for the tents and left.

We left to Madikeri that night. The driver played kickass Kannada music. Loulou loulou crazy loulou nangay Lou illa. (Lmao!) After that, all of us fell asleep. We reached Madikeri at 1:30am. Since it was a weekend plus Republic Day, all rooms in all lodges were occupied. Even Hotel Lodge! Hehe. We were all dreamy and confused. The driver had parked the car outside a petrol bunk. Our plight was so hopeless that we decided to pitch our tent in the Petrol Bunk and sleep. I am NOT kidding! We were all ready for it when Addy rejected the idea. Then we considered a school ground but didn’t want to seem like aliens in a weird space ship to the kids. Hehe. So we kept driving around when Addy and Suraj found a flight of stairs to the right, leading to some clandestine area. They came running down the stairs. They had found the perfect spot. The rest of us climbed up the stairs hesitantly. It was damn cold. On the right was a silhouette of a water tank and some buildings that looked abandoned. On the right was a burnt down forest. It looked eerie and gave me the creeps. The top looked like a local sight seeing spot. It had sitting area with a roof. We pitched our tent there and I lay down in the tent until I got scared. Everyone else was sitting outside and enjoying a terrific view of the city in the dark, with nice slow music perfect for the night. Addy and Dimps gave the Rang De Basanti pose. No one spoke much. Suraj seemed to be in a bad mood for some reason. He didn’t utter a word! After enjoying the beauty of the night, I went into the tent. Suraj followed. Both of us slept off. I have no idea what happened after that. Maybe Addy or Cosmo could complete the night.

Day of the tedious trek!

The first thing that happened that morning was (as far as I can remember) that I found a cute little puppy. It looked just like my dog. While Addy and Suraj went around looking for a room, I played with the puppy. They came back with news that there were no rooms anywhere. So we were to freshen up in the temple premises. Cosmo and I went first. We brushed and washed our faces quickly. Addy, Preethi and Suraj went next. They freshened up and returned and soon we were on the road handing over sleeping bags and tents to Vishwanath and others. We got rid of some luggage and went for breakfast. It was the most cramped up and crowded restaurant I had seen! We found a table and ordered for 3 masala doseys and two idlis. I think it was then that we were discussing what we could have for dinner when we were to camp at KP and Cosmo made the funniest statement we had heard by far – “We can boil water using leaves”. Can you believe it? Leaves!! He intended to boil water in leaves and make Maggie or something. Hahahaha! I still laugh my head off thinking of that. After tea and coffee we met the people from the bus and left for the trek. We first went through a tiny gully and reached some open space with trees all around. That’s where we found the celebrated “electric” fencing. Hehe. Suraj got a nice long electric shock and was kind enough to get struck again and again by the shock just for the videos. It was LEGEN-wait for it-DARY! :P (You can access the videos from Addy’s Fb profile.) Meanwhile, Cosmo went hunting for crabs in a small stream by the coconut grove.

We started the upward trek by around 9:30, all of us with our backpacks. We took turns carrying the tent we had. Surprisingly, Dimps and Suraj were really fast. Everything was all right until I started feeling ill. It was the thought that I hadn’t got a wink of sleep that troubled me the most. My head started spinning. After climbing up like 500mts I felt extremely sick and threw up! Addy came to the rescue and gave me Pudinhara but I threw up even more. :P (All puking incidents are so funny. I vomited even while going to Kudremukh. Damn! I got out of the bus saying “Wow! I feel good!” and Blearghh!! Haha! Everyone laughed instead of giving me water or something. Bloody!!) Anyway, I still didn’t feel so good. We trekked a little more, and Cosmo carried my bag all the way. The trip was all about crab fishing and snail hunting and carrying other’s luggage for him. Hehe. The boys and Preethi found a nice big tree with branches hanging out like that of a Banyan tree and I found a nice big rock and fell asleep immediately. Addy, Preethi and Suraj climbed up the tree and did some kothi kelsa (Addy, that means monkey’s work) for half an hour. I don’t remember much of that. It was like a dream. By the time I got up, the three of them had climbed down and I was feeling much better. We took breaks every ten minutes. The breaks were the best part of the trip! Our breaks were for fifteen minutes each. While the boys polluted the fresh air, the girls enjoyed the beauty of nature. Hehe. We had trekked for about two hours and we were damn proud that we had climbed almost five kms when we saw a rock that said “Bhattara maney 2500 mts -->”. We were so disappointed and we decided to rest for some more time, simply out of self-pity more than anything else. From then on, instead of speeding up the trek, we extended our break time. Soon the shady forest area vanished and we found ourselves treading on barren land. It was scorching hot! What weather! We perspired so much; we didn’t have to pee for two days. :P We were so eager to reach some Godforsaken Bhatta’s house that Addy and Suraj confidently took a shortcut and led the five of us (the white-shirt-nice-smile-flirt and his friend included). They trekked swiftly and reached the top of the hill we were climbing, only to realise that we were headed in the wrong direction. The morons didn’t even tell us. They just walked away and left us wondering where they went. We marched on in the hot sun, ignorant of where exactly we were going. As the border of the hill lowered, our eyes met a wonderful sight. Bhatta’s house!!! At least we thought that was his house. It was not long before we realised that we completely off track. We stomped on the grass, trying to find our way, cursing the other two goofballs. We had another idiot with us clicking pictures and saying “Wow! Such a beautiful smile ya” every three seconds to Dimps. Cosmo was pissed off that his smile wasn’t being admired! (Heh!) We found a pile of small rocks arranged in a tall triangular manner. It looked very authentic in the middle of nowhere. We clicked some more pictures there and trekked continuously for fifteen minutes. We saw Addy and Suraj waving at us from down below, which was the right path. I remember saying “humph” looking at them. Hehe. The sight of Bhatta’s house and the imaginary food and nice cold water were the only sources of motivation. Only after reaching the entrance of the house did we comprehend that what we thought was the Battey Maney (according to Addy) was actually just a couple of benches.

Bhattara maney was a wide area with two spacious buildings with thatched roofs. One building served as a kitchen and dining place whereas the other one had a cow shed and a bathroom. The first thing we all did was drink cool water from a pipe that brought water for us from a well. The water was so tasty; I filled half my stomach with it. Then we pounced on the food! The delicacies for the afternoon were some sambar rice and majjigay. It is the yummiest majjigay I have ever had. Dimps, Suraj and I had like eight glasses each and were super full and ready for a siesta. We went towards the Areca nut plantations and sought after a shady place. We climbed teeny weenie bridges and found the perfect place. We sat and (ahem) planned the day for a while. We came to a decision and that was to leave to KP at around 5pm and soon I fell asleep. Addy, Suraj and Dimps played 50 games of Rummy (apparently) while I slept. Cosmo was asleep too. Addy termed the sight of our half dead bodies as an African Massacre. Hehe. After we all got up, there was an awkward silence for sometime. I suggested we play Dumb Charades. After two rounds of the game we realised that Cosmo can’t act for nuts. Hehe. We were all too lazy to leave to KP at that time. It was around 6. Cosmo was the only one who was very keen on trekking again. We went to the forest department to obtain permission, almost confident that we wouldn’t get it. To our surprise, the man in charge said we could go at even 6pm and leave immediately and camp at Somvarpet. For some reason, we didn’t leave that evening and again made plans to leave early the next day. I think that day was the dullest day of the trip. We went for a walk uphill, climbed to the highest part of the nearest hill and sat there till it got really dark. It was a starry night. I have never ever seen so many stars in my life! The sky almost looked gaudy with so much jewellery on her. She managed to look gorgeous at the same time. I didn’t take my eyes off the sky because I hoped to see a shooting star. We saw so many tiny dots moving, some quite fast and others at snail’s pace. There was this one particular red and silver dot that led us to a tiny argument. Addy and I said it was a satellite while Suraj, Dimps and Cosmo said it was too fast to be a satellite and that it was a plane. We could frequently see torchlights coming from the path to KP, some of them really bright. They looked gothic. After half an hour’s star gazing, Addy and Suraj started telling us ghost stories. The only one who really got scared was Cosmo. He said “Someone please hold my hand!! Suraj!! Give me your hand!!” Haha! They made a cute couple through out the trip. We left the hilltop with Addy, Suraj and Dimps desiring to call spirits of dead people. Dimps had already done this once, so that encouraged the Hanuman brothers to call the spirit of their friend Ramdev, who passed away under mysterious circumstances. At Bhatta’s house, we had a light dinner and again a litre of majjigay and Su and Addy were off to look for a spot on the hill to pitch our tent. They came back holding the lantern-like tent torch high in the air and gave us a winning smile. They had found a spot on some corner of the hill. Addy, Dimps, Su and Cosmo pitched the tent while I held the torch as high as I could. We put our tents and were checking it. While we were at it, we realised that about just ten yards away, two more groups had pitched their tents and had campfires. We sat in our tent admiring it. It was around 11:30pm. We decided to call Ramdev’s spirit and Dimps wrote down 0-9, A-Z, YES, NO. HELLO and GOODBYE on a sheet and Addy prepared a speech to send the spirit away after “talking to it”. We all held hands and were asked to concentrate on Ramdev for some two minutes. After about thirty seconds Addy and I burst out with laughter listening to some guy singing in Gibberish in the other tent. It was tooo funny! Addy can imitate that guy well. Hehe. Dimps and Suraj had such straight looks on their faces; they had me wondering if they were deaf and didn’t hear the funny song. They yelled at us and made us close our eyes again. We tried, but the song was just too funny. Suraj and Dimps got fed up and refused to do it once more. I think Dimps said something like we were disrespecting the spirits. :P Addy tried convincing them to do it after fifteen minutes when he would’ve gotten over the uproarious song but in vain. Basically, calling poor Ramdev’s spirit turned out to be a fruitless effort. We decided to postpone that along with the trek to KP. After setting three alarms, we fell asleep on the bumpy bottom of our beautifully shaped tent. :)

Trip to Kumaraparvatha (NOT!)

Chun Chun Chun. Oops!

(To be sung with slow, low “Om”s and high pitched Chun Chun Chun’s in the background.)
If you are smart enough, then figure it out. (Chun Chun Chun)
If you are dumb enough, then you’re in without a doubt. (Chun Chun Chun)
With Lungies so tight and heads so shiny,
Everybody here has a brain so tiny!
If you ain’t a hunk, then you can become a monk,
We tried so hard but the knowledge never sunk.
This place is fantastic; I’m just being sarcastic.
Oops! It’s my college!

Hehe, that song is dedicated to Cosmo’s college-AIT. What a perfect way to end the song! That’s the first thing we did in the car, on our way to Kukke. We departed at around 11pm from Addy’s place, stopped at dhaba for dinner where we played a round of truth of dare just to get to know each other better. The only thing we actually got to know was that Suraj hated pigeons. :P

After dinner, we relaxed in the car, talking, playing, telling each other ghost stories, etc. We all tried so hard to sleep but none of us could. We got out of the car at around 4am in a small town, in order to wait for the bus that was coming along with us. We found an old man exercising near a pole and we told him that Cosmo thought he was a ghost :P (C’mon! Who the hell wakes up at 4am to exercise!). The four of them played football with a coconut for a while until we decided to leave. After a shot of tea and some biscuits we left to Kukke along with the bus. In an hour’s ride, all of them managed to get at least 45 minutes of sleep while I stayed up to give the driver company. :P