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Munnar - The forgotten trip

Kerala – God’s own country!


Agriculture: Lush green fields, Tea & Coffee plantations, Rubber & Eucalyptus trees, Bamboo shoots… That’s not all!

Makkal and Costume: Men – Lungies are a compulsory wear; Women – Watch mallu movies… ;-). Most of their father, brother, uncle, grandpa or sometimes mommy might be in Dubai.

Food: All the items that are available in Tamil Nadu are available here; well after all it is part of South India. But the catch is “Item + Coconut Oil”.

Common: Arrack shops, Toddy bars, Brandy shops and finally – Tea-kadai or Chayya shops. Four benches outside the shop and men folks (with their lungies folded till their inner-wear is shown) saying, lazily, “yedo, a valliya penn-kutty…” This is a common site after ‘another tea-kadai’. That explains it.

Munnar-

That’s where we all headed to – Munnar, a hill station (rightly explained by Alok – a station where a hill is located) in Kerala.

After 48 hours of sleepless days, rejuvenation came in the form of a trip – Munnar. Till the last minute, i.e., when the driver stepped on the gas pedal, our team wasn’t sure on the count of Engineers who would make it to the trip organized for the 50% of the Finance Vertical.

Well, we did depart at 2015hrs from our campus and reached Hotel Saravana Bhavan, Hosur, for our dinner. Two onion oothappams made my night, well for most of them! With few cassettes rolling on the tape player in our Tempo Traveler, we rocked hard! Fun-unlimited – was the motto. We kept our eyes open almost the whole journey (except me at few places). The other 3 Tempos weren’t keeping pace with our ambience. They were only ahead of us in travel.

We reached Munnar at 1030hrs and straight to the rooms. We cleansed, broke-fast then tea’d our souls to energise for the tiresome trip scheduled for the day. First on the agenda (we drove in van that was assigned to some other project, yup, we stole it! Thereafter named as Tempo Thieves...) was a fall which was a private property used for drinking purpose. Without giving a second thought we lifted the fence under the board which read ‘Trespassers will be prosecuted’ and headed directly to the falls to cleanse – again. Then we headed back for lunch, after which we headed to a Tea estate and then to a boat ride. The best part of trip started and ended, here. Powered by Yamaha 450CC, the boat’s man drove like a pro – a champ! Made 8, 0 and swirled it bringing our heart to our mouth. Whatever, it was beautiful. Nature soared to her maximum beauty! No gorgeous babe can beat this kind of beauty! Women, huh!, would go un-noticed, carrying a feel of jealousy before her… Chayas here, there and everywhere was the best drink for that cold climate.

Day was wounded by 1930hrs, dinner call. Our camp fire had to be booted due to the police restriction and also hmmm… answer this “How can anyone campfire on a rooftop which has a roof?” Pretty difficult, ain’t it? Hmmm… Even I thought as much. After dinner we had a little ganging about the next day’s schedule. It was decided we head to Rajmalai National Park, a place famous for… Yes, a wild goat – Nilgiri Tahr and a flower – Kurunji, a flower that blooms once in 12 years. We headed to respective rooms after dinner, made maa-naadu (meetings) at the rooms available. Few of us made it to the massage parlour at the 2nd floor. Perverts! It was run by a man (an ayurvedic doc). Gosh! OMG! Do not think otherwise…

Next day we checked out and left to the National Park. We stood in queue to get an entry ticket for the darshan of a goat (Nope! Not the same you see outside your house every day or the one you feed upon…)

With no food to feed upon we left Munnar around 1500hrs. To feed, we stopped before a bakery and later realized that some good hotel would actually do good, so further down, we hit a small hotel and for the hunger struck souls who were ready to part with everything they possessed, guess what?! We were advised to have small quantities of food so that we can feast, 70kms later. Grrr! Food cannot be separated from me!

Virtually with trip nearing its end, sadness shrouded everyone’s heart not because we were leaving a beauty behind but because we will be making it to office, the next day in time!

That night’s journey was un-forgettable as the game “MAFIA” was introduced and played by the occupants of the Van. That’s it, 3 games and people were actually craving for “Give me more!”

We reached back by 0515hrs… and back to work!

NOTE: Schedule of events was not as exactly as written. Author is not responsible for the bad event timing recognition owing to his bad memory and re-collections.

Hmmm… There’s wasn’t much to be written about this, was there?

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