Mekadatu-Day1

First of all, thank you everyone for making this trip happen!!!!!
Special thanks to Nambiar, Archana, Kiran and KR Puram teams for all the help in getting a decent turnout and doing the necessary arrangements for lunch dinner etc etc.....
Day1->Mekadatu...
We started from our house by 8.45 AM (even though we were supposed to start by 8.00).... The bus was a big surprise for most of em.a full 50-seater bus for 20 odd people!!!!!
We started off with Dileesh, Raddy, Sanjit, Mullackal, MP, Elias and myself.
Selvin, the busy body had come to say bye to everyone............
Cejo! He was supposed to come to our place by 8.00,but unfortunately that was not the case. This part was really atrocious, kind of moments we see often in a comedy movie. The details I will skip for the time being...

Anyways we went ahead with our plans and reached Big Bazaar Stop to pick Nambiar and teams (Sree, Anupa, Math and goonda (if u didn’t know its Divya))...So here we are in front of Big Bazaar waiting another 5 minutes for the gals to turn up...This waiting business was really getting on my nerves...ufffff!!! First it was for Cejo in Pai Layout, where he was not there..........At last the gals come and we continued to the next pick up point.... Here one thing I have to say is about Sreedevi!! She has been continuously coming for all the get-togethers from Bombay; I wonder how many of us would have taken such pains to come. Way to go gal!!!!!

NGEF->Kiran and Tejas were supposed to board the bus from this point. Fortunately they reached within a minute. So no waiting here ...Off we go to Indira Nagar.
Joju without wasting any time boarded the bus from there....

Inside the bus everyone had started their favorite hobby – pulling legs.

Our next stop was in front of IIPM, Bimil has always he has been, was waiting for us.
This guy really knows the value of time.

Kiran was very busy inside the bus… Doing what u might ask …Well showing off his latest possession …a digital SLR!!!! Wow!!!!
Everyone wanted to lay their hands on this beauty. Dude you certainly know how to make people turn their head to you!

The bus finally reached Silk Board Junction, the last boarding point. Arch and Ikka was already waiting in front of Silk Board, but where is our hero??? Cejo –No signs of him anywhere. We called and found out he’s somewhere near…Thank God! Police didn’t catch him (beat him) for his anti-social behavior. (Cejo is fast becoming an anti –social as we all are ;)).
Arch and Ikka got into the bus without any delay, thanks to Radio City. (For their “bright orange” color T-Shirt, which I wore for the day). At last,everyone is on-board and we can start the jaunt.
Everyone was catching up on each other’s whereabouts. Meanwhile our driver turned out to be some cousin of Schumacher. Not that he’s German or his parents had any Nazi connection ---“Speed” he was full of it.

Meanwhile we reached Kanakpura – some 80 odd kilometers from Bangalore. We wanted to get some refreshments a.k.a KF cans for all boozers. (This includes me as well
J )

From Kanakpura the road was totally hopeless ……… Dusty as hell. …Some one was asking whether we were going the correct way. The road or whatever it resembled was through some houses. The road was as if we where going to some ones house!!!
But we did know the road was correct –some 3 months before we had embarked upon the same route. The trip to Shivanasamudram –that trip really was the “trip to perdition”. I really hope our sins have been “deflated” after that trip J.

Around 12 noon, after near suffocation we reached 'Sangama'. We parked the bus along the banks of the river. The 2 rivers Arkavathi and Kaveri join here to form the Sangama.

We took the fruits, bread, butter, jam etc, which was our lunch towards Mekedatu.
From Sangama we have to cross a “so called river “, by walking. From the other side of the river you can board a mini bus towards the falls. The mini bus was all rust and 4 tires.
Thank God no one got injured inside the bus. The bus ride was another 4-5Km affair, all bumpy and dusty. I wonder how this bus manages to reach its destination. Anways we reached Mekedatu!

After disembarking from the bus we decided to have our lunch. Everyone ate everything they could lay their hands on. Arch and Sreedevi was very enterprising in making bread-butter jam J.

Mekedatu is all rocks and water. I would say more rocks than water. The place is really good for rock climbing. We reached a top point where everyone was going with ease.
You could see some cool carvings on the rock by Mother Nature. (Ahem...I know I know). The rocks are really wonderful to look at. MP and Mullackal the more adventurous of the lot decided to climb one more set of rocks to reach still a higher place.

Everyone was having a great time taking snaps, talking about how the rocks got such a smooth texture and all. After another group reached our place we decided to explore the terrain a little further.

Another 10 minutes later it was only Bimil, MP, gals, Tejas and I. Bimil and I decided to help the gals on their endeavor. Tejas was really scared; he was having some s@! # Phobia!!! God knows what… Anyways after some time the gals called it quits. Not all gals, the tomboyish Divya was all ready for anything.

But the Monkeys in that area had other ideas. Just at the moment when gals were quitting they paid us a visit. The situation was just great for them, either befriend the monkeys or take the risk to climb down the rock hill. After no second thoughts they decided to take the risk. Bimil was the guide – finding the less dangerous route and guiding the rest of the folks. Divya was blazing around the rocks like a monkey herself. Anyways after taking a hell lot of time we reached the base –near the waters. Except for a small injury to Nambiar everyone was ok and enjoyed the whole thing immensely.

Our folks who reached there earlier had their share of adventures too, Mullackal falling into the river and Kiran slipping from three-fourths of the hills and reaching the base in record time! But God was on our side in this trip, so no one was injured.

We spend some great time on the banks with our feet in water. In between the monkeys played spoil sport and took away all our fruits and other edibles for their usage.
Some one was mentioning monkeys were having a special likening for cell phones these days. No wonder some cell phone company came up with that ad.
But I still wonder what purpose that will serve!!

After some 30 minutes or so we decided to go-back to sangam. The trek, back to the top of hills was smooth. It seems there was an easy route “we missed earlier”. After taking some snaps we reached the bus boarding point, here we had to wait a long time.
Reason- only when bus is full from the sangam side will it start its journey to Mekedatu.
So we had to wait a neat 45 minutes before the bus came. This time around we decided to sit on top of the bus. Yes “On Top of the Bus” just as you see in movies, to portray some rural place. This is one thing we never see in Kerala, so this was a great experience and my first too.

We reached Sangam around 4.00 and crossed the river taking a lot of time. There were some beauties playing with their boyfriends in the water, so you can imagine why the delay. Also the driver of our bus Mr. Khan Schumacher was missing.

Around 4.30 the driver came back from his deep slumber and asked us at what time we want to go back. Playing in the water like tiny tots we spent another 30 minutes and started our return journey to Bangalore.

After some tea and biscuits from a wayside tea stall we reached Bangalore by 8.30.
Dinner at Nambiar’s house was grand. Kannan, T and Selvin joined us for the dinner.
Everyone ate to their hearts content and left Nambiars house by 11.00.
In between I had another task – drop Anupa at her uncles place. Mullackal and I
dropped her and returned back to Nambiar’s house to take others to our house.

Nambiar took her brand new Corolla to drop the remainig few who wont fit in our bikes and poor maruthi to our house.......(May Continue later...)