Getting back to Tada, it is a wonderful place, full of greenery fresh water and close to nature. Mahen was pretty well versed with the route and after travelling by train and share auto we finally reached there. The beauty with Tada is that as you go higher and higher it becomes more beautiful, you get lost in the beauty and finally get lost! We took the wrong route while coming down but it was pretty adventurous and at last we found our way through. It was one helluva trip and one of the best treks i have ever done.

This was the initial rough terrain where we had to jog, run ,walk and drag for about 3 kms to see the first stretch of water.

The first place where we took a halt, changed , got wet and played ultimate Frisbee for some time.

Our “Typical” shot

Me trying hard to get on!

Bliss!!

After completing the tough stretch.

Check out more photos from the trek HERE

After Tada we had to face the final wrath of sitting for three hours in the same place and scribble some thing in a booklet. They do call it exams and we were do it for one final time. We didn’t complain. As usual previous day photocopying, over night stand and we finally did it.

On the day the exams got over a few of classmates started to a place called Veerapandi a small village near Theni district. We stayed at my friend Arun’s place and the four days i will never forget. The thiruvizha, the sweet and loving family, the farms, cows, the river, the palm trees, Arun’s grand father and many more. With all these the days went off with amazing fun.

The thiruvizha (temple fest) was SO massive and i never imagined some thing like that. There were about a lakh people from the surrounding villages and the city never slept for the entire week. Music, dance, religious rituals , shops selling unseen items and two eyes was not enough to see all those. The first day we roamed the thiruvizha and one thing which made every one gape their mouths wide was the death well or the Marana Kinaru. It was a 50 foot deep wooden well like thing and the stunt men rode cars and bikes on the wall. High point was there were 3 women in the team. Imagine a car running perpendicularly on a wall at 100 kmph and the man taking his entire body out of the window controlling the steering with his legs and hands partly! You have to see it to believe! But they were risking their badly…. i second mismatch between the vehicles , sure shot kabala moksham!

Indeed…A Death well!

The next day we spent it in the farms, the river and had nungu straight from the palm trees. Also learnt the art of eating it directly by putting one finger inside the soft surface. We then went to the river and dipped in for a couple of hours.

Natural Shelter to beat the heat!

On the way back we saw the die rolling game. (Recall the Pithamagan film where Surya cheats Laila). Some what same thing. 10 ruba vecha 20 ruba. One thing which is synonymous with villages is that there will be no pechu, only vetu , kuthu, kolai! One guy made a comment during the game and it turned to a big riot. Only thing which we did was ESCAPE! The next day we went along with many of the family members of Arun and had food in the farm. Veerapandi is one unforgettable experience and i has some good conversations with Arun’s grandpa. Hard to see a man like him. He would be some 80 years and was so passionate to take care of the farm and daily went and did the irrigation and stuff.

Theni is really an excellent place with a pleasant climate. It is centrally located between Munnar, Kodai and Thekkady. We decided to go to Kodai the next day and head to Chennai from there. Kodai was good except for the summer crowd. Lots of places to explore there but we just alloted one day and so we hired a cab and checked out many places. We went to boating when the sun was about to set and the lake was filled with mist.

Finally after battling in 4 government buses and travelling for some 18 hors finally reached home!

Not but not the least, yours truly is now an ENGINEER!
The final semester result was a pleasant surprise. Scored 85% which i never thought. Although not a big accomplishment feels good to be a first class with distinction grad!

You can beg,borrow, steal and do anything during the trip to live and cover your travel expenses. Right now me,sagaro,sathish and Gitu will be doing it. Some others have also shown interest in joining the big race. Right now i haven’t thought of the possible ways but am sure they will pop up as we move. Do throw me your views.
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I will also be doing a cycle expedition to Pondicherry in the first week of May.(Making the best use of study holidays). Mostly it will be Me and Ganesh. We may be joined by Kausik( Don’t know if he is alive though,long time since i saw him). Saw the pictures of Auroville and hopefully if things go on well we may stay there for a day.
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I went to the air show this weekend. We had the TKF meet this sunday and it went on till 3 o clock. So i went to my friends place near by and went to marina around 4:30. It was damn crowded. Police estimated that there were around 4 lakh people in the entire stretch. Few moments before it started Siddharth came there. He brought two SLR Nikon D70 cameras. Wow! it is amazing to hold the SLR camera and take the pictures. The one which belonged to his father had those high end accessories and lenses (It stretched more than a feet!) and we took some close up shots of the maneuvers. Although i screwed up a little in the starting, later i also took a few good shots.

Check out more pictures of the air show HERE

Agli gaadi….

How to sleep inside a 45.76cm x 32.58cm rectangle (sitting, squatting, leaning, etc, any of the ways)??? Better you should have travelled in an unreserved weekend compartment of the Indian railways. The real Indian population mass could be seen in this 30 feet stretch .I once had this awe inspiring experience as I had to attend a competition in Coimbatore and so I along with my comrades decide to take a trip by the friday night bound train in an unreserved compartment .

We as a precautionary measure reached the station very early hoping that we could have individual seats and have a nice slumber at least sitting but the scenario was completely different. We lingered on the platform 10 as per the same age old voice announcing “Coimbatore jane waali agli gaadi dus number platform par…” ,I suppose this voice sounds the same from time immemorial ,might be from the inception of the railways, the agli gaadi was really UGLY!!! Not to mention the stinky railway toilets (No, no I’m not ambi rules ramanujam here, just a mention for name sake)

Then we somehow made our way through and settled for the window seats but the nastiest part of it was when we came to know that the train would depart two hours behind schedule and finally it moved and soon gained impetus. Everyone around started yawning announcing the onset of their siesta and here starts the struggle, with almost seven or eight people on a four seater, the amount of space you get is directly proportional to the size of your butt with no little extra space even to let your fart escape. The space between your legs would also be best utilized with someone lying like a cadaver with a news paper spread beneath and they won’t even mind if you use their head as a foot rest. Now the whole cubicle looks like a necropolis which has attained saturation but left uncovered.

The next best part of travelling in such an atmosphere is to attend the calls of nature or to piss!!! We were caught up in the center of the compartment and going on either side would mean the same uphill task. If you are able to cross it with ease then you would be the strongest contender for Tatyana Lebedeva or Anju bobby George at the Beijing Olympics. Somehow performing a 2 ½ somersault and then a 90° right maneuver in mid air (I deserve a place in the IAF’s suryakiran team with this rich sort of experience). I suppose I stood on my toe (oops…sorry) toenail and at last stamping the last man’s balls, I reached the destination i.e. the toilet gate before he could recognize and ask me to f%$& off.

But still say shit someone is there inside but there is a western style one on the other side and I reluctantly opened it and to my dismay ‘chiiii woooaaak’ someone has peed on the seat and I wait for the moron inside to come out but soon realized that I am the crack pot here seeing that the door was ajar and realizing that there was no one inside .I swear railway toilets really tend to cheat you in this facet.

I then got back to my erstwhile position which was already half invaded by the big butt aside who was pretending to sleep, I gave him slight shove and made my way .When it dawned we had interesting conversations with the co passengers and then got off with our bags as we reached the junction.