Taste of a first trip

The value of a plastic money was never felt more before this trip. We a group of 6 students were strandled in Mysore with no cash in hand. What do you do ? cry out that somebody should have planned better, but Sattu akin to his mind called up his native place friend doing his engg. in mysore to the rescue. it wouldn't have been big deal but realizing that you haven't talk with him for a while the guy was humble enough to lend us 500Rs to go back to Bangalore.

The world was a little new for a group of friend who joined VIT ( Vivekananda Institute of Technology, Bangalore ) for a course in computer science. Sattu , Pratik , Ranjit , Harish , Sumit. Harish would be regular to my house on mysore road for a cup of tea, after which we would drive to his house in Vijaynagar on his TVS Fiero. This time we went to out VIT hostel in rajajinagar to meet our rest of the newly bonded friends sattu pratik and ranjit. Discussing about the long weekend ahead out of a blue we decided to make a trip to Mysore.

Questions started flowing out from every one ? how do we go ? how much money we need ( since we used to have student account and in those days you need to go to bank on a working day to withdraw money) ? who all are coming along and so on and so forth.

We thought let tackle all the questions as they come little we knew what planning is. Ok its decided we will all to go to my house in kengeri have dinner take the last train which starts at 12 midnight. In the mean time collect all the money we have and loan the rest from our local moneylender friend Ranjit. One last issue cropped up everybodies clothes are in wash bucket oveing the weekend. I told never mind I bought al ot of t-shirts last weekend from a roadside shop on brigade road, we will share them.

12 O'clock midnight not a soul on the small kengeri railway station, we eagerly waited for the train to arrive exited about our trip. The train came on time and the first time in few months we saw the "train" whose whisle was no stanger from us given the fact we used to hear that everyday in our house.

Its kind of a strange feeling you get when you go on a trip with bunch a new friends. we chatted throughout the night on train sitting on the compartment door and then on the wooden seats when a railway police guy forces us to close the door. I always think that we started to know each other only after this night. As the night came to close with dawn on the anvil our eyes started showing signs of fatigue, the euphoria was settling down.

We jumped off the train as we touched Mysore. Its still 4:30 AM somebody said what do we do till its morning. the common answer came let have tea and we will chat out time away. Sattu had different plans he went to a tourist information center on the railway station and figured out that for 800 bucks a cab would show us around in Mysore. Little we realized that till we heard what Sattu has in plan we didn't know what and how to roam around in Mysore.

Voila.. we have a ambassador and a driver for sight seeing hurray... Our first sight seeing was to Chamundi hills an abode of goddess Chamundi the way to to hilly top was fantastic. the faitigue was lost again for the time being. cameras came out different poses were tried with the analog camera to get to full view.

The sight seeing went on to see Bull temple , botanical garden , mysore palace , mysore church and then we realized we are left with 870Bucks. Oops... the dream run came to an abrupt end. "We need money to go back", I remember somebody yelling. Couple of sane minds said let evaluate our course of action. We need 127 bucks to get the train ticket back, we haven't had lunch yet. ok so we are left with 70 bucks after we pay the taxi and assuming that we dont tip the driver.

What are the options ? let go WT ( without ticket) drink tea instead of lunch, or let say we take one ticket at least so that if we are caught one person can go home get the money and rescue others. Nah.... 2700kms away from native home neither of us were ready to take this big risk. Fortunately Sattu's mind came to rescue again, he said during his visit to home before joining college some friend said about a common friend joining a college in Mysore. Wow some ray of hope in the end. The problem is how to contact , we don't have his address / phone or even the college he joined. After talking to couple of his friends Sattu managed to get his Mysore friends number.

We were all anxious what if the friend is not in town , what if he refuses to help ? But he came directly from hospital helping somebody else. Gave us 500 Rupess and we took a photograph together for our memory. Each of us thanked him telling him, "you are like god to our rescue".

we took a sigh of relief had our lunch ( dosa) and train ticket back to home with a few lessons learned.

1. let one person handle money
2. plan out a trip in advance, rather than at last moment.

We adhered to the first lesson learned in future trips but never managed to get the second one right as I will key out our second trip in less than 2 months to Goa.


Comments

  1. You made my day.. It feels like i visited mysore again ... Oh GOD i can not forget those days and perticularly this trip Our first trip .. Thanks for writing the blog :-)

    ~ Sattu

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  2. The post is nice and interesting....will visit more often.....welcome to world of blogging....

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  3. wow thanx shan...that was my first trip..and i enjoyed a lot...i can't forget to that trip...muh...muh...muh...

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  5. This Trip was a kind of eye opener to us, The first step is planning(which is still being figured out) but it really taught us how to take the most of from the available limited resource.
    This is really a good way to revisit our GOLDEN MEMORIES OF ENGG LIFE.
    4 YEARS WHERE WE CHANGED FROM BOYS TO MEN.
    KUDOS SHANTANU.....

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