Pondicherry

After a month-long taxing ride in the North-East, i wanted to go to some place to put my feet up and relax. And what better place to do that than Pondicherry? Never mind the heat though.

So when Moch called me for this trip, without a second thought (as always), I signed up. Leave on Friday evening and come back on Monday morning with the transportation taken care of. Sounds fairy-tale eh? The catch is in the number of people who had signed up. A full dozen and a three-quarter! Yeah, 21 people.

The team (start counting, you may need ur fingers as well as toes): Moch, Jitha, Subbu, Sirish, Anjali, Flavia, Pari, Babitha, Hasan, Harsha, Akhila, Aparna, Naveen, Praveen, Badri, Gautham, Murali, Ritvik, Sushmitha, Holla and yours truly!

Anyways... to keep ourselves entertained during the trip, me and J decided to go speaker-shopping and bought a set of portable speakers for 150 bucks. The speakers entertained/irritated all of us for a good part of the journey.

A few pre-trip calls that JJJ got were quite interesting and worth writing:

X: Hey JJJ, I have a pair of floaters, do I need to wear sneakers??
JJJ: First tell me what are floaters and what are sneakers!

Y: Hey JJJ, do I need to carry change of clothes??
JJJ: I don't care man!

As it always happens with such a large group, we left Bangalore pretty late (around 1 in the morning i guess), which left Aparna quite fuming i hear. After a tea break near Hosur which was almost as long as an elephant's gestation period, we set off to Pondicherry, via Tiruvannamalai (did I spell it right?). The driver of the other cab decided to keep his passengers awake by driving like a drunkard on steroids. The passengers apparently went "Ooooooo", "Aaaaaaaa" and "Ohhhhh" every now and then. The next morning when I got up at 7ish, we were still 60 kms from Pondi and we could see a small hillock in front of us with a fort on its top. So then, trekking instincts took over and we decided to give it a shot. Unfortunately, we took a wrong route and had to abandon our climb mid-way.

Who slapped these people?

After a stop at a bakery for a doodh-peDha session (its paal-khova in Tamil Nadu), we finally reached Pondi at 1 in the afternoon. The chappars that we are, decided to go for budget accomodation, and headed towards Cuddalore where rooms were booked in Youth Hostel. Good accomodation at a mere 100 bucks for a night!

Youth Hostel Dormitory

After cooling our heels for some time, we decided to check out the silver beach very close by. The place is a little crowded (no no, not by the 21 of us) but we managed to find a good place for our frisbee game.

Frisbee Time!

For dinner, the non-veggies decided to get some sea-food and ended up at an uptown place (dont remember the name). The food was decent but the waiter made us wait for too long. Never mind. The Fish-65 was good.

The "no-nonsense" people. Me, Jitha, Subbu and Holla.

Next morning, most of us wanted to go to Mahabalipuram, but Moch, for reasons unknown, was adamant on not going. Pari almost fell at his feet but the bugger didnt budge. But Moch did manage to get everyone ready to go to Auroville. And what exactly did we do in Auroville? Play Frisbee!! Lazing around for most of the day, we went to another beach in the evening for another frisbee session, while some girls and Subbu decided to go shopping (poor Subbu). In the beach, Mochi managed to get his ankles damaged, Harsha managed to do a cool somersault at break-neck speed, Akhila managed to lose her goggles and her cool, me got an inch long cut on the sole of my right foot.

Though in no mood to get back to Bangalore, "Monday-morning" beckoned us. Also, we decided we got tanned enough and headed back, stopping for a quick dinner on the way. Reached Bangalore at 5:30 in the next morning.

A few pics are here, here and here!

Thus continues the quest...

Kodachadri and St. Mary's island...

My christmas vacation were about to start and I was supposed to go home for those 11 days. But when Moch called me for a 'walk' to Kodachadri and a trip to St. Mary's island I couldn't resist the temptation.. mmmmm.... It didnt take much of a task for my brain to chalk out a plan to accomodate both. I would go with these fellas to Kodachadri and St. Mary's and then head home! Simple! I am sure your brain also didn't have much of a problem in figuring this out. So we started from Bangalore on the 21st of December. Since I had to spend more than a week at home, I decided to 'take off' on my bike.

The team: Moch, Jitha, Badri, Naveen-1, Naveen-2, Navya, Pratima, Akshata, Praveen, Murali, Maddy and yours truly.

I was asked to meet these people, who were all cosy in the TT, at 9 near Nelamangala. But the bloody %$^#&^#&s made me wait for more than an hour! Finally when they did arrive, I realized they all had had their dinners too, which I hadn't! Again...... #^%$#%&^s. (Please notice that this swear word is different from the previous one). But with someone like Jitha around, dinner plans are never out, never mind the time and place. Also, when I was riding the whole night, these #$%$#%$$#s (another swear word) were happily dozing off in the TT. None of them even offered to give me company. Grrrr. We reached Akshu's place in Shimoga at 5 the next morning, and I rested my eyes for about 2 hours. It took the aroma of Masala Dosas and the sounds of Jithu munching them next to me to wake me up from my sleep! The MDs were lip-smacking yum.

After a customary group photo with Uncle and Aunt, we started off towards Kodachadri, this time Moch giving me company. On our way, we stopped for sometime at Nagara fort, which has a decent view to offer from its top. A lake at some distance, a river nearby and a few hills scattered here and there... u get the picture. We were soon reminded that the MDs are being digested and we started hurrying towards our destination. There are a number of routes to Kodachadri, the most prominent two being through Hidlumane falls and the one that starts from exactly 11 kms before Kollur. We took the second one. I parked my bike at a check post about 2 kms before the left turn we had to take and started walking. The first part of the trek is a casual walk for about 4 kms on a level jeep track after which we reached Kaka's angaDi (Hotel Santoshi) which served Mallu delicacies (don't have too much expectations though :) ). Loads of puTTus and iDlis and butter-milks later me, Moch and Jitha decided to give others a head start and took a brief nap for about 20 mins. Another two hours of lazy walk uphill and even Murali was at the top!

Just before the top there is a temple and an Inspection Bungalow where we camped. The IB chap charges around 200 per person which includes a dinner and a breakfast, which is pretty reasonable and he offers non-veg food at extra cost, for which you have to order in advance. After a good dinner, we got down to playing DumbC. Badri enacting "The chronicles of Narnia" is worth mentioning. After letting us know that the movie in question was an English one, he expected us to guess the name, without doing anything!!

Next morning got up at 5:45 and, anxious not to miss the famous "Kodachadri sunrise", we sprinted to the top, only for the sun to turn up 30 minutes after we reached the top. Damn the late comer. After breakfast, heavy as usual, we hired a jeep to come back to the main road. The jeep cost was 125 per head. Me and Moch reached Kollur much earlier than others, courtesy my bike. Happy, we walked more than a km just to get some chicken! As we were pushed for time, others who came late made do with some biscuits and we skipped Maravanthe and headed straight to St. Mary's island. Reached St. Mary's island just in time for the last ferry. The ferry made us poorer by 70 bucks. The last ferry to the island is at about 1530 (although depending on the crowd, they sometimes have a ferry at 1600 also).

The island is small and beautiful but gets crowded on weekends. After finding a suitable spot, we got into the water where Jitha and Badri managed to get pricked by a weird looking thingy and Jitha ended up limping for another week. Took the last ferry back and it was already dark when we reached the mainland and as is customary, we decided to get some "tandoori chicken" (you need to bring your two hands, fists clenched, closer to your face and crouch a little when saying this), at Dollops in Manipal. But on the way, we stopped at Akshu's cousin's place to munch on something before the dinner. But even before that, me and Badri squeezed in some time to get some sea food at some arbit restaurant (Anjal Masal fry was good!).

When at Dollops, I suggest you order curds... Amazing quantity you get. Me, a curdaholic, after a heavy dinner, ordered two cups and was quite taken aback when I saw the size of the cups! Post dinner, we saw off Prathima, cooled our eyes (kaNNu thampu, translated from Kannada) at the Manipal junction and hit the road again. Me on my bike, Badri for company, and others getting horizontal (not literally) in the TT, reached Mangalore and I headed home. Others, with plans for the next day, continued and spent some time in Coorg the next day before heading back to Bangalore...

Starting from Badri (with the towel), clockwise: Badri, Naveen, Murali, Kid, Jitha, Naveen, Maddy, Mochi and me

The route: Bangalore - Tumkur - Arsikere - Bhadravati - Shimoga - Kollur - Udupi - Mangalore.

The contact numbers of the IB chap (Rajendra) in Kodachadri:
Mobile: 9480205657,
Residence: 08185-290368.

Thus continues the quest...