Risky Travel
Yup, its bangalore again…. I missed out to blog on pondy trip (31/dec), there wasn’t much action out there…. so its bangalore again on this edition of my travel blogs…..
Bangalore, Nice place, cool, serene, peaceful city… people live in fun and masti ….. This definition matches all except in case you are from Tamil Nadu or mistakenly speak Tamil… If you are a tamilian and you luv to speak tamil, bangalore becomes the most uninhabitable place to live in…. Especially when some cauvery issue breaks outta court.
I travelled this time exactly during the announcement of the cauvery river water case judgment… the result fortunately /unfortunately favored the tamilians, and I was traveling to bangalore from Chennai, friends and ppl at synap were telling me all sorts of stories about tamil people suffering in bangalore during the recent riots regarding the cauvery river case… But I was never really worried about all these…. You know when it comes to travel, I forget everything else…. I travel for the sake of traveling. I got my tickets online, but when I was trying to get a ticket back home, IRCTC website gave me a BULB (it usually happens). So I had to resort back to booking tickets in KSRTC. So this time I was sure that I will at least have a hassle free travel back home….. don’t be over excited, read on you will get to know the truth.
It was some lone Friday night (9th Feb), my train ticket was reserved for night 11:30 train starting from Chennai, which will drop me off in bangalore next day morning. I started outta office at some 10:30 with this guy called Davis (* a very good friend of mine at syanp, he is so good that he almost convinced me to cancel this trip) WE started off in his bike from office, on the way he started giving me all sorts of advices and nightmares of the situation of tamilians is in bangalore now… I was like saying this to myself “did I make a wrong choice???” … We landed at the station some 30 mins ahead of time …. Stupid thing again the ATM doesn’t work …. He started giving me weird advices that I never heard of before… He was saying words like…. “You are a great warrior Krishna … I have never seen sucha brave person like you !” ….. and I was like …”What? @#@#$” It was 11:29 at night and I was thinking… “Shall I cancel my trip now…. ?”Atleast I made up my mind Let whatever happen, I won’t give up…. And I BRAVELY said good bye to Davis….. I was feeling like a Boarding a Train to Islamabad during Kargil War …. 
I stepped into the train, took my berth, did speak a word with anyone, switched on my XpressMusic Player and slept, this guys reaches office and calls me up at 1 am asking “How come you are still alive….? I thought they would have bombed your train by now….?” …. I was saying… “Dai please da… don’t do this to me..“
Amidst all nightmares I managed to wake up alive in Bangalore station, Now I m all set to forget one language from my résumé…. Called up Deepak, spoke in hindi + english in a very low voice, hung up , just to notice that the guy sitting next to me was shouting at his son “Eadatha vittu navundhaey , konnu ea pottuduvaen” (I will kill you if you move)…. I felt like I did the dumbest thing on earth…. Ah I found this guy… Deepak traveled all the way from mangalore , he knows bangalore very well so he comfortable with the local transportation… I step out of the railway station and we head towards the tea-stall. All our communications are either in the dumbest version of hindi or fairly reasonable English. No tamil …. I felt like I landed in islamabad with some traditional Indian wear….
Now we headed to the rooms, the place was near somewhere…. I don’t know much about there… so leave it now… we managed to reach the hotel…. And atlast we found the place.. kannan anna was waiting for us. Rest, bath and sleep, food, coffee…
Were were all set to visit Infosys Bangalore., considered to be one of the world’s largest software campuses, Infy Bangalore is truly an exciting place. It was clicking all the way with our multi mega pixel mobile cameras… We did some shopping for eatables and were back on room. While coming back we took an auto, and I spoke with that auto guy in telugu…. That was really funny. Telegu is obviously my mother tongue, but you know first time in my life, I was like speaking my mother tongue for survival J. Next day we were at Indoor stadium for some event.
This is Sunday(11th Feb) night , I had my ticket booked for this night 11:20 Volvo bus from KSTRC, I was waiting till 10:40 ,, busses for 11:22, 11:30 etc have arrived but not mine… I was little worried, bcoz there was a local bandh here the next day for cauvery issue. Atlast the bus came… I boarded the bus.. and slept…
After a while…I hear some one shouting Koyembedu… I open my eyes…Its 5:20 AM My left leg is aching ,, probably I slept in some wrong posture…. I manage to snatch my bag and get down, I landed safe and fine in chennai…. I was so happy when I stepped down, I felt like I won a war against them…
The ground reality is that situation is not really that bad out there… But you need to be cautious at times. Jus keeping yourself updated of what’s going on will be enough. And regarding Tamil there are 100’s and 1000’s of them speaking Tamil with freedom out there… so don’t really need to panic …. But again be careful, speaking Tamil might end you up getting pissed off somewhere… But there is nt much to worry about… there aren’t much terrorists around.
Tags: Bangalore, College, deepak, Travel Blogs
Bangalore This Time
It has been long since i had posted any travel blogs. This one is for Bangalore TRIP, a relatively short one , and of course a miserable travel back. i don’t know how, but i have developed this weird affinity towards, facing hard times while traveling home, all the fun and enjoyment i get i traveling and visiting places gets lost in the way back home( Its like i m not happy to find my way home. )
This was in mid-December, i was already in between a hectic schedule. I was busy in some personal activities, new-site went live, was busy fixing up some new scripts that i wrote a couple of weeks back, etc… it was all busy times…. i really needed a desperate break and arun calls up one fine day saying that , he has an interview at some company in bangalore (*for those who dont know about Bangalore, more than
50% of the world’s blue chip companies run out of here…) and said like, he s moving alone and needed a company….. “why not, with pleasure….:-)” and here we go, i got the reason to slip outta chennai one more time….
I made it to the bus stand, very earlier than arun on that day, i was like waiting for this guy to come for close to an 30~40 mins…. i m very serious about timings…. i don’t like waiting for others, i will only make others wait…. he he , this guy made it very late…. we fortunately found some couple who were about to sell their tickets, got the tickets…. what next, board the bus…. it was close to 10:30 in the night… i thought we will reach comfortably by around 7/8…
ITs all old memories crepping in when the bus crossed Sastha Inst., ” College life was fun na…. ? i miss it badly …” it was around 11 odd then. I pulled on the bedsheet and went into sleep………………….damn,… . that driver halts the bus in 4:30 in the morning, 4:30 AM ….. :0….. imagine, i have never seen such a time in my life for more than 4 months…. and you are in Bangalore during december, just imagine the amount of chillness we would have felt…. i was shivering like anything .. my jaws were making a new music every time i tried to speak… We had to goto a place near kemp-fort, it was don’s brother’s home… so we called up don’s bro… he guided us to that place… we took an auto… we told the auto driver, not to go very fast as we were already shivering….. never in my life i have seen an auto driver flying through the city roads… he was cruising in 60’s and 70’s…. atlast he stopped near some kids shopping mall…. someone had opened a tea dhukaan outside… wow… tea… tea means fun…. and having a tea in that climate is like crazy. we went to that place… i slept for some time.. had some nice breakfast made by don’s anna… arun in the meanwhile slipped for the interview…. i ran through the streets a couple of times but did nothing….
Arun came back from the interview…. we headed to the shopping mall… did some jaldi-jaldi shopping…. i wont forget what arun asked for in the shopping mall…. I was desperatley searching for some toys for a 1 year old kid…. while .. he was searching the same for a 25 yr old kid ( what he calls as ‘boy’ ?)… amazing…. the salesman was stumped when we asked we need a toy to play for a 25 yr old….. then arun says ‘boy’ …. (I will give you the choice to guess who that 25 yr old kid is…?) …. forget it … kemp-kids reduced the thickness of my credit card by a few millimeters…..
Now its time to do some routine shopping…. we stepped out with don’s bro and his friends…. JP, kathir, etc… we ran thru… all city malls…. BG road… city center/…..lots of other places…. and the gud thing is … were never bought anything…. thats the spirit of shopping….
wat else… lets find our way home….. sweet home….. but how is the question… this is severely unplanned travel… i didn book any tickets, neither did arun…. i had to be in office the next day… i din have a choice…. We went to bus-stand… trying to find some unknown travels… jus to get them saying “NO TICKETS”… we were feeling very hungry… so we thought of having some food… and continue the ticket searching…. food …. one bad thing about karnatake… food is always worser than your least expectations…. nothing changes here… we managed to have what others called as food… and continued our ticket searching…
We found some guy who was selling tickets for some unknown travels company… i bought the tickets…. and we ended up walking some 5 kms to get to the place where the buses stop for that “unknown travel company”.,… arun is one guy , who worries about comfort, quality and brand… in my travel dictionary these words never exist…. “So no matter, what he says , or whatever i feel….. i was not gonna worry about it”… and that “Unknown-travels” guy…. takes so much time to bring out buses…. that u end up going pissed off by their service…. but theres’nt much of a choice either….
We ended up in chennai by some 5~6 am in the morning….. thats all for this edition of my travel blogs…. will catch u in some other place….
Tags: Arun, Bangalore, Krishna, Travel Blogs
Thing You find only in Mangalore
Managalore Engleesh
The City Traffic Police is using Eggjelent engleesh par itz Safety Hoardings … have a look at this
25 NayaPaisa
I didnt have an opportunity to use 25 Paise coin for the past couple of years…. i dont even remember the last time when any one use the denominations in 25 paise and 75 paise… Bu when i came to mangalore… i was astonished that people here still use 25 Ps and 75Ps as denominations… here are some the sample bus tickets … (NOTE the values 325 and 375 denote the numbers in paise not in ruppees [esp for chennaitees]…)
Tags: deepak, Krishna, Travel Blogs
Mangalore Nagaram….
Mangalore Nagaram….
I jus wanted to jump out of chennai for a weekend, thought of going to mangalore but tickets were not available,but i desperately needed a break out of this flyover-city, i had very few reasons to travel 1), to meet deppak 2),i want to travel because i love traveling, at last found a ticket through tatkal in some coach bound to mangalore which will drop me there at 5 am on sunday….
Sunday 4:45 AM
A Lightning of noise awakes me i turn down from my upper berth jus to see an empty seats, wow, i have reached mangalore, its shivering now, i rang up deepak he said he was on the way, i packed the stuff that i brought with me, came down, its stupid man, unbelievable i saw the railway clock , it ticks 4:45 ( the train is supposed to arrive at 5:15), for a second i got confused as if the train has stopped in some other station and it would leave to mangalore now, but i turned back to confirm that its mangalore only…. the recent hike to railways’ guys is paying off in gold for us…
While getting down itself i get a message on my mobil saying that i have a meeting with my CEO scheduled on Tuesday 10:00 am, I have to be in chennai on monday morning at ANY COST… So my deadline was to take the 1:10 chn mail from here to chennai on monday morning …. so i have been allocated 30+ hours to enjoy …
Deepaq came down to pick me up…. we headed to his place, a nicely furnished room, had chat about latest updates in both our lives, went for bath an then headed to beach (dont ask me the names), it was nice place, great beach guys i ll update fotos as soon as i get their soft copies, the beach was very close to the port , we saw a big ship crossing in front of us, dont know why I started to develop some kinda of HATRED towards SHIPS…. i saw a restaurant nearby the beach , i said we can have some dinner over said , deepak said we can have it near his office, i told we can have it here, bcoz i was very hungry, i didnt eat much during travel also… BIG MISTAKE i did, food was as horrible as ever… checkout deepaks’s blog for a detailed description… We then headed to his office , INFOSYS Mangalore , It was cool man… great building, interiors, facilities.. the company was nice…. we took some snaps , he would need some for his orkut….
5 hours katham, 25 left
Then We did some shopping had some famous ice-cream, whose names i never knew, dont even know that anyone else back home will know… We headed to meet that FaztArithmetic Guy, i wanted the meeting to end in five minutes , it lasted for more that some 1 or 2 hours… man this guy ate a huge chunk of my time…. when we stepped off his office it was raining and raining cats, dogs, donkeys, and cows tooo… chalo… its has been long since i last got wet in chill rain, enjoy that one tooo… at last we found some auto to drop us in the bus stop that will take us to udippi,
One crazy thing about Mangalore… Auto-Rickshaws run on meters.. unbelievable stuff na… believe me or not this guy charged us with 18 Rs… i dont even remember last time i got a auto in chennai for less than 20 rs…
15:45 (Sat)
We took some odd bus to Udippi Which will leave us in udippi terminus, we had lunch before we took of for the bus, went to udippi beach … (aval parandhu poonaley …. udippi beach povarey bus le oru ponnu… marakka ve mudiyaley)… went to the beach … enjoyed the sunset in beach … first time in my life i m having the sight of sunset at the beach …..(back in chennai-east coast its only sun rise by the beach) took some awesome snaps with the indian ocean….
19:45 (Sat)
We headed to manipal …. still dont know why we went there…. thought of finding some nice place to eat… but ended up finding that manipal is not tourist friendly place ( i mean in terms of navigation and pathfinding). We had to resort back to mangalore very quickly … so that we can at least find some proper place to eat , its a 2 hours travel from here and the roads are the worst in the record…..
21:45 (Sat)
In the bus we found this tamil girl… aiiyo avaliyum marakka mudiaythu…. 2 hours non stop discussion…. about nothing but useless stuff… we get down and say … bye bye
Back to mangy… now we had rush in to some hotel for FOOD… Food for survival… got one… and learnt a lesson… Kannidiga Biriyani’s are the worst preparations of biriyani in the whole world… dont ever bother to try it… its that horrible….
Get back to sleep…. The next day i will have to find my way hometown….
In the bus we found this tamil girl… aiiyo avaliyum marakka mudiaythu…. 2 hours non stop discussion…. about nothing but useless stuff… we get down and say … bye bye
Back to mangy… now we had rush in to some hotel for FOOD… Food for survival… got one… and learnt a lesson… Kannidiga Biriyani’s are the worst preparations of biriyani in the whole world… dont ever bother to try it… its that horrible….
Get back to sleep…. The next day i will have to find my way hometown….
09:00 (Sun)
We went to a place called sultan battery to take some nice snaps…. and headed to railway station…. Nothing spl on trains… Nothing Spl on train, except for the fact that i had to travel through kerala and lots of college girls are returning back to their hostels after their weekends…. Found a friend on the trains , he was a 70 year old , we discussed a lot about the young age comparing with what that guy used to do when he was of my age….
We went to a place called sultan battery to take some nice snaps…. and headed to railway station…. Nothing spl on trains… Nothing Spl on train, except for the fact that i had to travel through kerala and lots of college girls are returning back to their hostels after their weekends…. Found a friend on the trains , he was a 70 year old , we discussed a lot about the young age comparing with what that guy used to do when he was of my age….
Back to chennai… Back to home… a Fast brush and a lightning quick bath… Meet the Web Master, Synaptris.com in the mirror… and get to back office… and life restarted as usual but on a different role….
Tags: deepak, Krishna, Travel Blogs
The worst travel experiences of my life…..
hi guys,
Welcome to this blog post on one of the worst travel experiences of my life…. this for for my friends marriage., it was to happen on a place named KODAD in some remote location beyond Vijayawada, the marriage was on 18-aug so I took leave on Friday , it was schedule at night , I thought like I can have a comfortable travel by train and bus on the day and go to the marriage in sharp time, but life is not always easy… it sucks… I had my leave confirmation on Wednesday evening … I thought of booking the tickets on Thursday morning… I went to online booking … got the tickets paid the money through HDFC netbanking … everything went fine till a JavaScript error popped up that had crippled my transaction in the middle …. money has already been debited from my account… but no tickets…. full tension… called up HDFC and irctc… they atlast agreed to restore the money…. I had to go to Southern Railways booking office directly to get the tickets…..
Anyway I got them after long tensions….. now I had to go to office…@ syanptris… huge chunks of work was waiting for me…. something has to go live by monday… but I wont be available through weekend…. chalo kaam karo… hardwork till 1am on Friday… now i get back to home…. next morning i have train… i reached home by around 3 and then ofcourse slept…
Subhae Subhae utthe hi time hogaya 7 odd my train is by 9 odd and travel from pallavaram to the central takes a luxurious 1 hour…. run boy run….
chalo paunch gaya station in cool time but no money… my purse is empty now…. the canara bank ATM in the Chennai central wont work…. i m helpless…
Suren Sir (one of the great faculty members of my college and a good friend of mine… now he is working in some MNC ) was on his way to the staion on the same train… after hearing that i had a sigh of relief…. now i thought like i have some company to suffer with…..
We boarded the train… shared the experiences… was a lot of fun…. atlast i have found someone with time to share whatever thats going on in y life after college….
We made it to vijaywada in good time…. 4:30 or 5 pm… it was evening…. Krishna river was flooding like crazy…. We stepped out off train to the road outside…. there we headed staraight to auto-rick stand… we asked if he can take us to the bus-terminus…. he refused… we stood like stumped…. ( where ever i have went… rick drivers will tell you like it will cost more or atleast will try to cheat you… but this is teh first time that i had to hear something like this… “AUTO RAADHU….” IN A HARSH TONE…. translates as “auto wont come” in telegu….) we found some auto atlast … but that was damn cheap man…. he charged just a mere Rs. 5 per head for each of us the distance was close to 2~3 kms….
aha ha we reached… the terminus…. but hang on teh confusion begins here…. where is KODAD… i went to the enquiry asked for KODAD (spelled like K-O-DAD) …. she said like that there is no such place there…. then she revealed the correct pronouncation “Kodhadu” (spell like KO-DHA-DU… translates in telegu like some synonym for riverside … i m not sure)…” goto platforms 25 and 26… u might find some buses there”
No busses here again… Some bus driver ws trying to persuade us to take his bus ( his bus will not take us to kodad but will take us to somewhere from where i cand find busses to kodad…. but that place will waste a lot of my time and money). We dont have time… its SIX already…. i thought like “Marketing ke Makrketing a…. dai … adangunga da ”
We got a bus but were unsure whether it will take us there or not…. got in and slept…. that bus driver was sleeping too… he almost went on to crash the bus on a steep curve….. anyway hum bachgayae …. we dont have a choice… “lets believe it takes to kodhadu”…. finally we reached kodadhu… we were astonished to find that this place has cars, ATM’s and an engineering college tooo (ha ha …. suren knows the joke behind it)…. It was crazy man…. the Image we had for kodad was a very remote village with nothing but cows and farms… but it was far more advanced….
Some of my friend’s (bride’s) friend came to take through to the place where we are gonna stay…. it was a place (no comments about it…) … deepak* reached there in the meanwhile…. nothing crazy… this guy never took a leave… cameback staright from office… anyways… no harsh feelings …
{ * Deepak works in SCM for Infosys and is currently havin his training at hyderabad}
Awesome man… marraige was over by 1 am on sat…. wished her all the best and found our way back…. my eyes were burining … i havent slept for more than 40 hours by then….
No the return saga beging…. Morning train is at 6 AM at Vijayawada….. Its 2.30 AM here in Kodad…. We have been waiting for aroun 1 hour… no bus has crossed us.. thought like we will be in trouble if we dont get a train….I have to reach chennai at the earliest…. bcoz i need to help a friend to make his national level event live at Chennai Trade center on Sunday….
Finally we got the bus…. made it 2 railway station… by 4 odd…
We didnt have tickets 2 chennai…. I thought like we can travel in PINAKINI Express… i is by all means on the most emptiest trains…. i have travelled in it… u can sleep and travel till chennai in the general … its that empty…. so we took a General Ticket…
now our stomach’s were in trouble… no PROPER food for more that 18 hours…. after a little search we found some place which can sell us food …. had some idli’s…. he asked if we need “COOLING WATER” (office memories of awdesh asking for it…. ha ha)…
Got the train… and now i came to know about the mistake i did…. it was the worst thing i had ever done to travel in General…. the compartment got stuffed with all kinds of nonsense…. fights, fun,chaos,,, everything that u could imagine….. i dont have any chioce…. i haev to travel by it…. If i had time i would have stepped out and took some other train…. it was that crazy….
Making it to chennai was like winning a nobel prize… ui stepped in to chennai… and started jumping in happiness….
Trip to KODAD may be one of the worst travel experiences in my life…. but it also made one of our friends happy by showing our presence at one of the gretest moments in her life…. Cheers for that….
Tags: deepak, Krishna, Travel Blogs
