PART 2 - Yet another wonderful outing with friends to INNOVATIVE FILM CITY.

Note : I hope you've read Part 1 of this post, please read it now otherwise...

Only bad thing about this complete outing was the weather… It was tooooooo sunny… 

We bought 699rs tickets which actually should have covered everything inside but didn’t.
Though we thot the ticket would allow us to visit everything, there were many activities which had separate entry fees. Nevertheless , 699rs was worth it.

The places we visited there were
1. Warnado entry
2. Mirror bizarre
3. Dino park
4. Roller coaster
5. Mini golf
6. Wax museum
7. Skating 
8. 4D movie
9. Aqua World
10. Go carting
11. Happy journey
12. Haunted mansion

Note : I might have missed few and names mentioned above may not be exactly same.

I would like to describe few out of all where we enjoyed the most. 

Warnado entry is a place which will be mostly made use for shooting.
It had a dental clinic where I posed as a doctor and Thanuja the patient. 
It also had an old 70s scooter on which all our girls (oops, aunts) sat and posed for pics.
There was also a court, where Bruce became the judge, Jay and Divya became lawyers, Thanu and jumbo posed as culprits. There were court related costumes as well which we all wore and posed for pics.

Roller coaster, as you all know will be the most thrilling ride. This one was nonetheless thrilling than any other rides anywhere. Jumbo was scared to get into the roller coaster but she was very excited to get on the toy horse ride. (Kids game). Everybody except myself and Jay took that ride.. Just like school kids, they were enjoying it. This made me feel that, we have gone back to our school life :) 

Minigolf.. Nobody knew how to put the ball in the hole. Not even aware of the rules. But still we wanted to play it as we had paid for it… 

Wax museum was best so far… We could see many wax statues of famous personalities such as, MK Gandhiji, M Jackson, Bill Clinton, Adolf Hitler and many more.. We were not supposed to touch any of them. But I was so keen to sit beside Hitler and to take a snap with him. I told Divya to monitor if there is any guard coming in the way and intimate me and I thot I would take a snap. But when I just looked up, I saw a CCTV camera constantly monitoring us… Good that I saw, or else I would’ve got belted properly.

Skating was another funny thing… Nobody knew how to skate.. As already said, we wanted to try everything as we had paid for it.. With full Enthu, we wore skate shoes and got into the skate hall. Damn, in the very first step we fell down. Vinu initially couldn’t even reach the skate hall, then somehow managed to get in… There was none among us who could complete one round without falling down…

It was 3:30 pm by this time and we were damn hungry… Lunch in the food court wasn’t great but since we were tired, had to adjust with what we got… Here the discussion about college life started again… After having lunch, we went to 4D movie.

I can say, 4D was the best of all.. This was just a 10 minutes movie where we could actually experience everything that was happening behind the screen. The visual effects were better than AVATAR 3D. We could feel the water being spilt on us, the seats moving up and down, air being blown on us in accord with the scene and also feeling of rats climbing thru our pants…:) :) This was awesome… One should watch this in their lifetime.

After 4D, we all thought of visiting AQUA world, the beach… Though people were initially reluctant to get into the water, once we got in, we were so reluctant get out of it.. The water was so crystal clear, not much depth and the wave pool which was generated at the end gave us a real feel of beach environment…

Then after having a couple of rounds of Go-Karting, we went to visit Haunted Mansion, the most awaited one.. The clock showed 7:15 pm and the guard did not allow us inside as it was late… But we had to argue a lot to get inside.. Finally we succeeded. Here comes the actual fun… Haunted house was very well planned and designed. We could see some deadbodies suddenly getting up in the middle of our journey, some wierd animals descend down all of a suddeen,  Mummys appear from no where, supported by horrifying sounds, dark and blood shed ambience , everything was perfect to give us a haunted feeling. But before entering itself, ,myself and Jay had made plans of scaring them all more.. As soon as we entered the mansion, we both hid behind some rocks and started scaring all the girls by jumping in front of them just out of blue.. Hahahah, the way they were screaming made the journey more interesting and fun loving..They all said,”More than those mummys and deadbodies, we were scared of Venky and Jay”… :P :P… In between Lalitha was so terrified that she started blabbering “Hey alli nodo, yaaro bartha iddare…(Hey look there, I feel that someone is coming…)”… Her wild imagination provoked us to scare them more… We all came out of mansion.. Here comes the actual comedy.. I came out last and I was all fine until I saw Sowmya’s face.. As soon as I saw her face, I started screaming as if I saw a ghost..(Ofcourse pretended)… Got nice beatings from her…

Finally this was the time to depart as the clock ticked 7:30 PM and film city would close. We started our journey back to Bengaluru, dropped everyone at their doorsteps. Thanuja was the last one among girls to get dropped.  

I hope by now you all got to know why this get-together was a special one…

3 Cheers to all my friends who made this happen…

Cheers,
Venky

PART 1- Yet another wonderful outing with friends to INNOVATIVE FILM CITY

This time it was with classmates. It was supposed to be a reunion of GVIT (Golden Valley institute of technology) ISE(Information Science) 2006 pass outs however turned out to be a small get-together with 8 people( Gang of 8 close friends).
Vinu(Thalai)
Jay(Cheta, Sujay)
Sowmya(Jumbo)
Thanuja(Nirma) 
Ragini(Brucelee)
Divya(Billi)
Lalitha(I don’t think this lady had any other name) and
Myself.

Most of the times, the get-togethers we planned used to end up as a flop show. Nobody used to show interest in making it happen. But this time we managed to make it.
I have few strong reasons which actually made me write a blog about this outing.
Unlike our usual get-togethers, this one was special. 
 Vinu and Lalitha had night shifts on Friday and still they managed to join us on Saturday morning. I think they didn’t even have a couple of hours of sleep.
 Jaykanth, despite suffering from cough and cold didn’t want to skip the outing as he wanted this get-together to happen.
 Divya had to apply leave on Saturday.

This idea of get-together after almost a year was actually initiated by Divya the great and organized by Vinu the leader. So I would like to take this chance to appreciate both of them.  
One interesting point to be noted here is, all the five ladies mentioned above, once our college beauties are now aunts… :)  All are married.. I just gave a though before joining the crew, “How am I going to bare these aunts, will it gonna be a boring trip???”… Ooops, I was utterly wrong…. They all have the same enthusiasm, same interest.. They all still value the friendship…!! The outing really rocked..!

Mr.Vinu had booked a Tavera. He was the first person to get in and started picking everyone at their doorsteps. Jaykanth had come to my house and we both got into the car together.. Thanu was the last one to get in. She had told us that she would wait near Lifestyle. As we reached the place we actually couldn’t find her there. I said, “Kulli astu easy aagi kaansodilla, hudukbeku…(She is so short that she won’t be visible so easily. Shud search for her…) ”….
Except Ragini, everyone else had confirmed previous day, their presence for the outing. But as we reached Kengeri, Ragini gave us a call and told that if we can wait for half an hour, she can also join us. We always wanted to increase the strength and agreed. So just thought of eating something whilst we wait for Ragini. We halted near a small hotel in front of RV Engg College, had some food and then went to Global village (Mphasis building where Ragini works). Here we met Swathi (our classmate who unfortunately couldn’t make it this time) as well. 
It was really nice to see all our classmates almost after 1 year. Nobody had changed except Jumbo, who had put on some more weight. Bruce Lee was just justifying her name :). She was still Bruce Lee….!!! Not many changes in people when looks are concerned.

On the way to our destination, it was so nice to recall all the funny and precious moments we have had during our college days. Stories about old crushes, Funny pranks on lecturers, bunking classes and subsequently getting caught, internal marks, external examiners what else and what not… We never realized that we had already reached our destination whilst we were busy discussing these stuffs. 

We reached INNOVATIVE FILM CITY at around 1 PM.

... Continued in PART 2

An outing to Kodachadri with friends....

Hey ppl,

This is the first time I've planned to write a blog and the motive behind this is my Kodachadri trip. I couldn't stop sharing with you people the awesome experience I had and I thot writing a blog is the best way... So here it goes....


On 6 Feb, 2010 we( Karthik, Harish, Rakesh, Vamshi, Raju and of course myself Venkat) planned to visit kodhachadri, located in Shimoga dist...
V decided Qualis as our mode of transport. I Started at 9 30 from my office (Keane) and reached Harish’s house at around 10 . We were supposed to leave at 10 30 But this idiot Karthik being punctually late for everything, was late that day as well...

So we somehow managed to leave at 11 55 PM. On the way to Tumkur just as we reached Yeshwantpur railway gate, there was a huge traffic jam. The reason being Railway crossing. But when we discovered that the traffic dint move even after 10 mins, we 3 got down to check what was wrong.

Here starts the comedy.. Mr.Rakesh( We call him Kaaki,meaning Crow in telugu) is a kind of person who is ready to become bakara by default and Vamshi is a kind of person who never misses an opportunity to make fun of kaaki.. Vamshi is a real humorous guy. Can make any person laugh in any situation. I admire his sense of humour. 

I , Harish and Vamshi came back after enquiring about the traffic jam and told kaaki that "Govt has advised railway dept to put humps(Like road humps) on the rails in few places and hence this goods train is taking so much time to pass thru humps …" LOL, Kaaki actually believed it and didn't respond for a minute and then realized the fact... We all roared with laughter….

Well our journey to kodhachadri continued then, as we reached Gubbi, near tumkur one of the car tyres got punctured. So our driver replaced it with the stepney and went to get the punctured one patched.

Since the last seats of qualis had a slight problem, Mr.Harish decided to use his talent to repair it. He was infact highly talented to break the legs of seat completely... :P Then we all used our hidden talents and gave the seat a support with 8 bricks which we stole from a building near by which was under construction. I’m sure the owner of building would’ve cursed us properly as there were just 10 bricks from where we stole 8 :P . By this time, our driver came back... 

Our rest of the journey was fun filled and all the time we were laughing ... Most of the times we used to make fun of kaaki. We reached Shimoga at 7 Am. Refreshed for sometime, reached nittur via Hosanagara and had our breakfast there. Finally reached our destination Kodachadri at around 10 30 AM . Our initial plan was to start trekking at around 11 AM.

Just at that time someone among us gave an idea that we shall get some food parcel while trekking. So we drove back 4 kms to Simha farms in search of food. We had to order for food and it would take 1 hour for preparation. In the meantime, the owner of that Simha farms was good enough to provide us the cricket ball and bat. 

We played for around 1 and hour and the food was ready. Then started eating. Hmmmmmm, the food there was sooooo yummy that we hogged almost everything as if we hadn't eaten for a week. Then our researcher Karthik went in search of tender coconuts and of course got them. Damn, the tender cocos were sooooo sweet...

Then Karthik told, "After having full meals and big tender coconut how can you ppl even think of trekking in the blazing sun, noooooooo, we will take rest for some time." We all being a group of lazy buggers agreed and took rest for more than an hour.

Finally our adventurous trek started at 4 PM with a guide ( Paandu, a real nice guy).

Actually there are 3 routes to reach the peak point,

1. Take Jeeps on the mud road which would cost 1000 per trip( To and fro).
2. Walk on the same jeep route, not a big deal.!
3. Get inside the forest thru edlumane falls and trek from there...

Yeah, we took the third one, the most adventurous one.

After walking on the road for 4 kms and trekking for 0.5 km, we reached Edlumane falls, a beautiful, serene falls amidst the dense forest... Couldn’t spend much time there as our guide paandu kept on reminding that we need to reach the mud road before it becomes dark. 
But we were really tired. So opened our parcel which we had got from Simha farms.. Again started eating... Then continued our journey... Believe me guys, this is a real challenge to trekthis way and of course an enjoyable one. At some point when we entered the forest , the huge trees covered us completely giving us a feeling that we were actually trekking in the night and when we came out of the cover we felt as if the sun has risen .... We experienced this day and night feeling almost 5 times during our trekking.  Everybody but Raju were tired trekking coz Raju is a guy with hardly any flesh in his body... He can easily climb Himalayas without even halting once.

With full josh, we reached the peak point. ... There is one house on the peak point called Bhattara mane. The people there will take care of providing food and shelter for us... Bhatta, the person iuncharge there asked us"Yen beku thinnokke"(What would you like to have).. We asked him "Yenenidhiyo, yella ondond plate tagond baa"(Get one plate each of everything you have :-)). This shows how hungry we were…

The shelter there was a tent, which of course is a different and lovely experience.... When we looked up in the sky, wowwwwwwww, we could see millions and millions of stars… The reason being we were above the clouds and the sky was totally clear. I really have no idea when I slept while I was watching the stars… 

Got up at 6, reached the peak point , the point from where the best view of sun rise can be captured.By the time we reached there , there were already many people sitting and waiting for the sun to rise. They all were sitting as if they were waiting for the most interesting cricket match to start. Well, we joined them too..

At 640 AM, a small red dot appeared in the clear sky.. Entire crowd started shouting... "Yeahhhhhhh surya banthu, surya banthu...." Yes this was the moment we were waiting for..!!! The red dot , the SUN , started rising slowly. At 6:59 AM, we could see the best view of completely risen sun.. It was all just a matter of 20 mins... wowwwwww, this was the most wonderful and best view of sun rise I had ever seen in my life.  

Captured enough fotos, posed many in front of the sun.... 

Later we got down in Jeep... Reached Sharavathi back waters which is around 20 kms from Mittur.. Here we took bath, swam , played for some time and then left to Sigandur Chowdeshwari temple...
It was 6 30 in the evening when we started back to Blore... 

Overall, it was a wonderful and unforgetteble experience.

Other details

Over all cost per head : 2K
Places covered : Edlumane falls, Kodachadri, Simha farms, Sharavathi back waters, Sigandur temple.
Overall distance covered: 1000 kms.

Cheers,
Venky