Good to be back!

How long has it been ...how long has it been since my last entry. The fact that i am unbelievably weak in subtraction has actually requested my brain no to calculate the duration. Aside from the weakness in subtraction, a lot has happened, has been happening and i am pretty sure will happen in my life, which is nothing different from an average human being.

The recollection of events that came to pass since my last entry is but very hard to execute and all that remains of the memories are really very trivial things. Oh..wait a minute!...I cant recollect anything as a matter of fact. OK. enough said in bit to make the start of this entry look a bit funny, which i am pretty sure is not.

Day before yesterday(that is the 2Nd of May, 2009) i had my convocation. I was conferred the B.Tech(Hons) in Electronics. I don't know how many times i ve concealed myself under the blanket and felt how lucky i d been. I passed all these exams with little effort. Had it been any other institution i d have flunked i do not know how many times. But i have passed and all the "ifs ans buts" are not to be considered.

Coming to the convocation, it was more like a very very expensive holiday in a place which is typically sweltering with soaring temperatures of around 48 degrees Centigrade. I spent two days in that place. All i could remember of the first day is "Beer...more Beer....a joke of a rehearsal and even more Beer..". The second day was a bit different ..it was "Breakfast, B.Tech(Hons), rum, weed rum and rum. and a failed attempt to host a bomb party inviting jibes from fellow batch mates."

The Convo i thought would be overflowing withe Senti but nothing happened in that regard. But who cares. It was more like two more college days. Roaming here and there and talking with friends and saying "Hi!" to people who you do not even recognize. I want to write a lot about Man Utd and the prolixity that is my job. enough for now. I ve seriously lost it.

The last evening..

Ok...now this is my last evening and it is around 8 P.M as i sit here to summarize todays bit of travel. We started at around 7 in the morning , we were on our way to the Top Slip which is must watch if u ever stop at Pollachi, or for that matter even in Coimbatore. It is a good 33 kms away from Pollachi , and is mainly a wildlife reserve with equable climate on the eastern slopes of the Western Ghats. It is part of the Indra Gandhi National park and you have to endure a number of check points before you even reach the foot of the hill on which the Top slip is situated.

We reached the Top slip at around 8 : 30 and had our breakfast there in the Forest canteen there, which is possibly the only eatery there. The food was a shade above decent and the place was a shade above excellent. If one were to write about it, he would use all the synonyms there is to the words "Clean", "Picturesque", and "Peaceful". The top slip is characterized by the presence of varied species of animals and birds. The forest office over there has a museum sort of thing , where specimens of some of the animals present are on display. They also have a notice board which has the names of some of the hard-to-see species of animals and birds and where they were last seen. There are a lot of facilities provided by the Forest department over here including Accommodation, Trekking, Camping in the forests and all that. The only thing you need to do is book them things before a month or two . So planning is essential. You will get a feel of the wild life over there only when you stay over there for a day or two so our trip was basically fruitless.

From the top slip we made our way to the Paravikulam national park which is in Kerala and is about 30 kms from the Top slip. On the way again you encounter a number of check posts making you feel , will they ever reduce their number. Before you enter the park , you have an option of hiring a guide. This wont cost you much. 100 bucks for how many ever hours you want to spend in the forest. The guide guy we had was a local tribe and knew every nook and corner of the forest and to our surprise spoke good english also.

June is clearly not the season to go for a forest visit. Most of the animals wont be out and it turned out to be true. Although we got a glimpse of peacocks, peahens, spotted deers, black monkeys and some birds i was never satisfied and i made my usual promise. If u want to visit the forests u have to be among the firsts to do so, as only thirty vehicles are allowed per day and there are numerous guidelines you will have to follow. Like the top slip, or any other wild life sanctuary they offer you various facilities from accommodation to adventure things. All of them, only when you book in advance. But the most salient feature, i am told, is that you will get the tree-top house in the midst of the forests for 500 bucks a day. Usual promise again here.

Tomorrow i ll be on the first bus home from Coimbatore, and my dad has further plans of some more forest visits. This trip has been a very eventful one and an excellent one not the least because it doubled my respect for the state of tamil nadu as a tourist centre. If all these places are maintained and marketed properly, i see no reason as to why T.N wont become one very important tourist hub. I hope i ll come back to these places again with my friends before it will be time for me to go with a family of my own.
ADIOS.

Contd...

This is pretty much the pen ultimate evening of this trip. I am now in Pollachi, 45 Kms from Coimbatore. We started at around 8 AM from Munnar by a bus to a place called Udumalapet and from there came to Pollachi by another bus.The total journey took around 4 hrs. We came and checked in a lodge at the heart of the town. The rates are pretty cheap and all that, and finally ESPN is available. Couldnt watch Italy trounce France yesterday, because the mallu Kds did not air ESPN yesterday, probably the read my earlier post. Whatever!..

After reaching the place around 12 and decided to take a bath, i found that my spare(and fresh) underwear was missing. I was carrying only 2 and lost one. Bloody hell!. After a bath we went to a nearby Brahmin mess for some good meal and got it.

We hired a cab and left for the nearby Aliyar dam which is situated 20 kms from here.The dam is very huge and is situated in the valley of some peaks of the Western Ghats separating Tamil Nadu and Kerala. There is one ashram near the dam . Me and my dad opted out of going to the ashram, while my mom and sis visited that place. Nothing special about the dam except for its peaceful ambiance and clean surroundings. Hard to find a clean tourist spot in Tamil Nadu.

The climate over here is very good and the maximum was around 32 degrees. I am informed that the temperature her wont cross the 33 mark even in the summers. Its around 7:30 now and i am here blogging.

Tomorrow we will be visiting the Top slips and a national park nearby. Basically the Pollachi visit was mainly for the viewing of the Top slip. My dad actually wanted to stay for a day or two at the top slips, but the place is booked until 22 nd and 23rd so we had to curtail our visit to a single day. I am planing to leave alone day after tomorrow morning from Coimbatore by a bus. Lets wait and see.

Continued

This is my second day in Munnar. It started at around 8 A.M when we hired a cab for our phase II of local sight seeing. The cab then took us to a nearby Maatupetty dam. The maatupetty dam is situated in a picturesque site and had an air of cleanliness about it. It is situated around 13 kms from Munnar, and has boating, rafting facilities. We really weren't into any of these things, and we left the place within half an hour. On the way, the cabbie was briefing us about tea cultivation and related topics.

We then went to a place called top station which is around 31 kms from Munnar. It is basically a view point, very similar to the one that i saw in Kodaikanal. This top station is in Tamil Nadu and comes under the Podi Naikkanoor district. You reach the top station uptil a point where taxis are permitted to, and then trek for about a km to go to the view point. We were lucky to go in the so called off-season, as there was no crowd and the place was very peaceful. The biggest drawback if u go in the off-season is that it will rain in the most unlikeliest of moments and we were lucky as there was no hint of rain anywhere near that place.

This is Kerala. And football is one of the most liked things over here. But only a distant second to liquor. We (My dad and I) enjoyed some old cask yesterday night and came to the room only to be astonished by the airing of Espn in the room. It seems they air ESPN only in the nights , especially for Euro coverage. Felt like heaven. Watched Germany vs Austria, in which the Germans striggled to overcome Austria to qualify for the quarters by a goal, courtesy Michael Ballack. Can't wait for the France Italy match. It is difficult to pick a winner, but i d say Italy would win todays game and Romania will get a draw making Italy qualify for the quarters. Lets wait and watch.

This is Kerala. So there are power cuts. Hoping for a fully lit night to watch the match. And power cuts arent the prime reason for me to hate kerala. It comes a dstant second to my dislike for the Keralites. In my view most keralites are the greatest freeloading bastards in the world. This is not a baseless allegation. In the 2 days i spent in munnar, i talked with a decent number of local people and most of them say 99% of the people over here are Tamilians.But this place is in Kerala. The revenue due to tourists goes to the Kerala government.watever..it is all embedded in the keralite attitude which has as its fundamental principle, Freeloading.

Good, i am off now, it was fun out here, tomorrow leaving for Pollachi for the last leg of our trip. Adios.

COntinued...

Now i am in Munar. We left Cumbum around 6 in the morning..gotta bus for a place called neadukandam and reached Munnar at around 12 :30 P.M. We had already booked a room for us and damn!, no ESPn there also. But the place is really excellent, it salibruos atmosphere and excellent weather, spoiled sometimes due to unexpected rainfall.

We had our Lunch and left for the Eravikulam National park which is around 13 kms rom Munnar. That place is the place where you can find the last few of the Nilgiri Tahrs(wild goats). Zebra: Horses, Tahrs:Goats, understand!. That place is excellent but it was raininng and we were initially troubled. But they have umbrellas for rent and all that, so nothing was gonna stop me from exploring the place.

An excellent site, this, the tahrs climbing on a steep slope, making it look pretty simple. then we came and i am here at this browsing place and it is arounfd 7:50 in the evening.

The rest is for later,
Cheers.

Continued

After a very fantastic first two days in Kodaikanal, the third day also had more of the same in store except that in the evening we decided to go for "Dasavatharam"-the newly released Kamal movie. This was the first time , i went for a kamal movie on the day of its release.Although i was really excited about watching this movie, i also was cautious , i reduced my expectation level owing to some bad experiences with earlier much-hyped Kamal flicks(Aalavanthan, Mumbai Express etc.) The movie guarenteed high quality entertainment because of the presence of the Ravikumar-Kamal combination, which is just as succesful as crazy-kamal combination.

I am not going to bore you with the details of the movie which u can find in any run-of-the-mill chennai based newspaper. I am just gonna bore you about my opinion about the movie.
1) The movie's screenplay was not as good as the earlier kamal screenplays. The movie is really long and the screenplay tries to accomodate more Kamals in a very unnatural way.
2) The dialogues are typical Kamal Hassan, it does all there is, that can be done by dialogues. One particular dialogue that i liked was the one at the end when Asin and Kamal debate about God's excistence.
3) Kamal by playing these ten roles now has created an indelible mark in the history of world cinema by playing 10 different roles, in an exceptional manner. Kudos! my lord!. But the make -up is really showing in the roles of Fletcher, Bush and the 8 ft tall kamal. But the Japanes kung-fu master make up was executed to perfection.
4) The camera, stunts and art direction is stunning. Surely one-of-a-kind in Indian Cinema.
5) As for graphics, there is too much of it.
6)Himesh??, does he compose songs like these also?

I am not all that satisfied with the movie but keeping in mind Kamal's efforts and the technicians
effort i will give the movie 75 on 100.

Now back to the trip, after dasavatharam my dad and i went for the usual ritual . Next day morning we were off at 7 from Kodaikanal and were on our way to a place named Cumbum(stop laughin!). Yesterday was basically a rest day and i was roaming in the town , and was quiet astonished looking at the development of the town. It has got everything u 'll ever want within a square km of the bus stand. The climate here is tolerable. The most and possibly the only irritating thing about this place is none of the hotels over here have ESPN, so missed the Euro action.

The next day(Today), we were off at 5 in the morning to thekkadi in a bus. That requied us to got a place in the TN -Kerala border named Kumuli and cross the border manually and then catch a jeep to got the thekkadi wildlife reserve. The reserve is a wonderful and peaceful place. You ll get to see different animals in their natural habitats, and they ll take on a boat and charge you 45 -100 bucks for an one and a half hour ride. There are also various events that the K.S.R.T.C organizes and as usual, i promised myself that i ll come here on an other day with a bottle of the best of french wines reading a book of my choice . We were back at around 11 and went to a nearby waterfall named Suruli waterfall. And now it is around 7:59 P.M , when i am typing this post. tomorrow we will be off to Munnar.

Excuse them spelling and grammar mistakes as i am in a hurry and will find another day to edit this stuff.

The Trip!

With the Euros alive and kicking, the self-proclaimed football fanatic me was on to embark on a trip to until-now-only-read-about green parts of Tamil Nadu. Having roamed around the far-flung corners of Northern India, there was always this nagging feling in my mind about my not having roamed the deep interior parts of the state from which i hail. So when i heard that we(my family) were going to go on a trip to the western ghats i was xcited right away. This was something that i have always wanted to do, and i was willing to forgo the Euro fever.

We started our two week long trip by going to Kodaikanal hills. We boarded on Nellai express at around 9:30 in the morning only to reach Kodai Road(The nearest railhead) at around 8 P.M. Then we took a taxi to the hills and reached the accommodation that was waiting for us(Courtesy: My dad's office). The physical haggard got the better of us and we had a very good night's sleep. Next day was like our rest and recuperation day which saw us goto a nearby lake and take a refreshing walk along its circumference. I realised that staying with my family in that peaceful environment was not what i wanted. So i eluded their party and sat in a bench adjacent to the lake and started with a book, Success by Martin Amis. Although not a great book by any standards i devoured the pages just the way a hungry tiger would on its prey. A really fantastic experience. I promised myself i would certainly come back here one day armed with the best of French wines and will look to better my current experience. The evening , saw me and my dad, go to a bar nearby and have a glass each of whiskey. The stories that both me and my dad had to make up to elude my mother and sister showed u can incorporate crazy mohans dialogs for kamal movies with nominal success. We came back to watch Portugal beat the Czechs 3-1.

Today we were off in a taxi to a place, whose name i dont quite remember, where we had to trek for about 6 Kms to view the various hills in that particular range. The trek was physically demanding but it was a mental stress buster. It made me feel like i ve worked and sweat ed on something after a really long time. The evening is panning out to be wonderful as i am i here sitting in front of the computer in a browsing center recording things that come to my mind as i type.

Our plans are we ll leave kodaikanal day after tomorrow to place called Kambam and then make our way to Munnar.And then we will be off to pollachi to view them Top Slips, and would part the company of my sis and mom and make our way to Mudhumalai forests. Hope everything stays according to plan.