I was definitely amongst the stupid ones to not see in advance how cold munnar could have got. Early morning wind were the chilliest I had experienced in a long time (I did give delhi winters a miss because of our IIMK academic schedule).
The cottage caretaker came to take order for the breakfast and I asked him to bring 5 of each of the items he named. Of course there was a rush for bathroom as hot water wouldn’t have continued for eternity. And considering we had been travelling entire day before nobody except Neelu could have thought about skipping the bath.
We literally pounced upon the food when it arrived. Everybody was so hungry that we had to repeat the order. Neha, meanwhile got angry as people didn’t leave anything for Daisy (and Devakee) as they were busy under shower when food supplies came. Second food suppiles came and got finished in no time. Morning coffees and teas never felt so good against the chilly wind blows of Munnar. I had 3 cups of coffee, a personal record.
We had called for two commander jeeps to take us around in town. After having loads of jokes cracked on Daisy and Neelu over their snores, we made a move to explore the hill station. There are three directions roads take us to in Munnar. We could at most cover two directions in one day.
The first destination was some screwed up flower garden. Why I said it was screwed up, was the fact that they wanted us to shell 20-30 Rs (plus 50 for each camera that we take inside), to see a place with randomly grown plants, some of which had few colored something at their branch ends. We stopped there to provide for holistic satisfaction of shutterbugs accompanying us. Of course they were seeing the first of million tea gardens that we saw on our trip.
The next 3-15 (I can’t remember the number) destination were named as “'X' Point”, with X standing for words like Photo, shoot, 'Y' View (with Y standing for words like valley, moutain etc), chunnu, munnu, tilli, villi etc. ‘Pleasantly surprised’ was my reaction when people unanimously decided to skip all of those. With that pace we could have made the record of going in all three directions in a single day.
The next point we stopped for was some Elephant ride place. Chiru’s troubles got a positive reinforcement by seeing elephants shitting all over the place. We could see the unrest clearly on his face (Santosh claimed he saw unrest over his lower tummy too).
Next we made way for the damn oops Dam.
Everybody tried their “Shooting Balloon” skills. Three people actually managed to hit the balloons they were aiming for. Divya looked very funny with her shooting stance, barrel over her shoulders.
There was another smaller Dam, where few of us chose to enjoy a pony ride. Others including me, found a dhaba serving delicious vegetable maggi, omlette and another dish (which I can’t recall now). Divya had been crying to go to this place, where adventure sports were being held. So we had to make an early move from the place. We stopped at another view point with Santosh daring to taste chocolate tea from a stall named after Anish.
We faced our first dissentment as Neha, Daisy, Chiru, Deepika and Devakee found the adventure sports idea too risky. And santosh rejected the idea to split. And Body, Divya and I wanted to go for the adventure rides. (The reason that they were for free was another incentive). Finally we split up and group of 6 left for the adventure sports, but it was joy to find out later rest 6 turned up to. After 2 hours (most of it involved in waiting for our turn), we made our move back to the cottage. We stopped at a place called Mahavir Jain bhojnalaya for dinner, where food was of decent quality. Santosh disagreed (dying to dig his teeth into something meaty)
At night it was heavily debated, in a light tone of course, what to do with the snoring people. I had troubled cough sequence everytime a joke was cracked, which in all probability ended with Neelu maiking an entry in his diary!! :P
We somehow managed to sleep. By this time snorers campaign had claimed two more victims in form of Body and Anish. The four distinct yet rhythemic sounds, with their unique composition could have put even Yanni to shame. Deepika couldn’t appreciate an orchestra of such great quality and finally surrendered by moving into common room, finding respite on a chair.
to be continued.....
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