And it ended...

Flash back ...

20/12/2001

Evening all set to go. Everything ready when suddenly two sad dropouts. Jacob has a bad eye & Tyre's very own stomach gave away. So the number drops down to 57 including David Sir & Feroz Chettan.

21/12/2001

We gathered together at the railway station by about 10.30 am and got our luggages inside the train. Raman, Pulci, Subru, Sreeku, Jacob, Closi and Kali were also there to bid us farewell. The train started on schedule at 11.10 & we waved our hands away and straight away started a new life altogether. Though not as steady as time, the places too kept leaping fast through that life & every second offered a new treat for the eye (if we had the time to look out).

Settling down didn't take much time, Thap changed over from mundu to bermudas & pp & jackey followed suit. And the first goal (first in my knowledge) of the new life, by the very old striker thap himself, "go find some other girl ... "

Most of us had lunch packed from home, & dipu got his share from chenganoor. Then evening arround 50 packets of seva from booto's uncle at palakkad. Dheeraj joined us from Palakkad & oopi got his kit from Ekm earlier. DP had some good chicken fried rice with him & there is still a myth going about a kappa & chicken curry being served by Thanni.

Mary's mom accompanied us till Thrichur.

Cards & Anthakshari started that day itself.

Train: 2625 Kerala Express Day 1 mostly through Kerala

22/12/2001

Ramakundam, Identification parade, 3228 bucks help & promise for further help during the return. Smells of a negative budget.

Day 2 mostly through TN, Andra and Maharashtra. Not that good scenery outside.

Everyone got into sweaters by the evening & was waiting for the first taste of cold. ... and it didn't disappoint. the night was dead cold, most of us got up to increase the layers of protection. The night nagpur to bina, will p'bly be remembered as the most cold affected stretch of the entire trip. Some of us were awake and beating each other from 1pm onwards.

23/12/2001

Manish's uncle and Aunty were waiting at Bhopal. We reached Bhopal at arround 4 am, and uncle told us it would be about 8 - 10 degrees then and we started to freeze at the predicted minus temperatures at simla. Anyway the good news was that 50 idlies & 50 pooris were loaded along with chatni & sabji & a nice pickle.

Most of the long sleepers started waking up by 7 am or so (Bina) and was terrified by the cold. Some were cuddled inside blankets, some were running inside the train to warm up, some believed in mutual helping by rubbing each other & crowding inside the same blanket. Anjana was counting money to get a flight ticket back home.

The ice cold water prevented us from washing our faces & so the day started very late. Abru & Dipu were keeping guard of the luggage in turn that night. Balkri, Ashaj, Manish & I were also awake most of the time after 1 pm. So we tasted the cold awake and if i had the vengeance to kill somebody, i would have changed my plan and made him sit awake in that cold. The happiest were the ones who slept the soundest. We practiced many a rounds of boxing.

The day was pretty much normal. Sabari got down at Gwalior to see his sister, promising to join us at Delhi the next day.

We reached Delhi by arround 4 pm. Raja Bhayya joined our life there. Met Ajay (comsci) there. We got into the two Panicker's Travels 35 seaters (DL 1P 4545 & DL 1P 5357 - if i remember right). Old but healthy lads, specially tuned (according to the drivers) for High Range rides with a good power steering. Lot many useless switches and valves above our seats misleading us to expecting heaters.

Hotel was an almost thuppals compared to the picture of Sheraton that we had from here. But the rooms were at least hot & fairly comfortable, with continuous supply of hot water in the bathrooms. We split into 4 or 5 per room.

After a bath most of us started hunting for a place to dine & came back and started sleeping. I don't know if there was something else going arround.

24/12/2001

One day to Christmas.

The day was left for shopping. It was Monday Market at Karol Bagh (the place we were staying). All the regular shops are closed and its just roadside marketing. Great bargains & very profitable shopping altogether. Most of us did their shopping at karol bagh itself. Some went to Sarojini market also.

David Sir sponsored 2 cakes for the christmas celebrations. We were planning to cut the cake in the 2 buses during the night, but later decided that we would rather celebrate christmas together the next morning.

We set off to Simla by 6 pm in 2 buses. Our bus had enough stuff inside to make the ones in the ambulance (the code name for the second bus) sail ships in their mouths. Burgers, Pepsi, and Thandoori sponsored by Anish, while it was potato chips in the ambulance. We were waving the burger packets & pepsi glasses to them while they were peeping from behind the pulled down curtains. Finally we hung them in front of our bus. We crossed the haryana & himachal borders that night.

We had our dinner from some dhaba in Haryana. Then stopped at a level crossing & then at a place were some one had lit up a fire. Most of us in the first bus was awake to exchange the christmas greetings at midnight & ashok & dipu were singing some carol songs late into the night. It was very cold by the time we reached Dalli, Simla. But Shiva was there to inspire us all arround.

25/12/2001 - The Christmas Day

We reached Pranchal Guest House by early morning & wasn't long before we set off to Kufri. The hotel was at a place called Dhali or Dalli (pronounced like Delhi itself) which was 7 km from Kufri & 7 km from Simla. The boy at the Coffee shop told us there was Snow fall two days ago at Kufri, but its over.

David sir & Feroze chettan cut the cake that morning and ashok, mathews, dipu, vinod & abru sang some christmas songs to begin the first one from the list of celebrations.

We left to the promised snow mountains of Kufri by arround 9 am, and reached there to find lots & lots of horses. We started seeing snow live for the first time on the way. The horse ride cost us 250 bucks & we also had to pay Rs 40 to lend the rubber boots. (I heard the civil guys saved some money by sparing the horses & walking up that hill)

The spot was beautiful & we could pluck out the snow and our sweat plans of throwing snow at each other materialised there. Some of us got dressed in the traditional Himachal cloths and took the snaps. We climbed some small hills & 3 of us (Feroze chettan, booto & me) were mad enough to spoil our pants by sliding down along the muddy snow. But the thrill was worth the wash i think.

The fall season also started there. Pooja, Indu, Chakki & all were registering there falls. Ashok also had the chance to experience the fall season from the horse-back itself.

Our return was delayed by the traffic block & so we set to explore the terrain ourselves. Some of us had a thali from a Punjabi restaurant there. Those who got in there might never forget the lady who managed that hotel. Some went into the zoo, creating artificial snowfalls. Some of us found out some great snow clad hills near by.

We started our return trip by 3.30 & reached back our hotel to take a bath. Then most of us went to the simla market. But i stayed back at the hotel itself. So someone else add the details.

Thap, GS, Biren, Ani & Feroz chettan had some surprise plans. Thap got a conical cap, some balloons & sweets from the market. We started molding GS into Santa Claus in David sir's room under tight security. Very few others had any clue. But most of them helped unknowingly. The red jacket was from oopi, the red pyjamma from bhat, the cotton for beard, mustache & eyebrows from neuro, the face powder from siva, the vaseline (used as gum) from someone else, the head band from balkri, gloves from lini, guitar from nuero, the jacket for kudavayar from sujith etc.

We got mathews to sing "jingle bells" & "merry chrismas" and started our carol from 9.30 pm. We danced into every room & ani was in charge of collecting the money. Shiva & team tried to lock off the room doubting us to be locals. Anyway finally everyone gathered at the front of the hotel & started singing & dancing. Even the people from nearby houses & hotels were enjoying the show.

The make up was done by Feroz chettan & very few recognised that the santa was actually GS. Many thought it was potti. 3 cheers to feroz chettan & sujith.

Abru, Ashok & Dipu where caught at the Simla market when the lift shutdown. So they missed the carol.

Off to sleep.

26/12/2001

Whole day travel. We set off by about 7 am from Simla. The second bus was virtually turning to an ambulance with some developing vomiting tendencies due to the descend from simla.

Manali is 265 km from Simla (570 km from Delhi) and at an altitude of 6260 ft above sea level. But that 265 kms took a whole day (arround 12 hours). That explains the road. (Simla is about 5600 ft asl, Kufri is 6660 ft)

Potti, Remya, Vijay, Preethi, Mary & Neuro were performing through the mike in the ambulance.

We will never forget the Sutlej Daba that we stopped for lunch. The taste of that fried rice, with raw vegetables & half boiled rice drenched in soya sauce. One of the worst lunch i ever had.

Hears it was a dance party in the first bus that after noon. It was killer game in the ambulance.

The evening journey was terrific. Unforgettable sights all along. The hills & the beautiful, crystal clear Beas was a feast enough to quench our days hunger. We were riding through beauty into more beauty.

We reached Hotel Mahadev Resorts by 7 pm & was delighted to see the grand hotel. (Tea costs Rs 15 + 10% tax) It was arround 2 to 3 degrees cold outside that night. Some of us got out of the room to experiance that. (Ashaj, Biren, Chacko, Sujith, Ashok, Abru Feroz chettan etc) Most of us had the longest wait for dinner. It took two hours for the food to reach our lips from the order slip. But the taste was good & we had a days hunger to quench.

The hotel was decorated with lots of paintings & an animated one. Vajpayee seems to have been a visitor there. Lekha, Philo & Mrudula found there equals in many of the paintings there. And Neuro started giving captions to them (lion's dream)

This was the first & only hotel where we had the luxury of a room heater though at a cost of 150 bucks a day. There were Good TVs and we watched the snaps from Abru's digital camera in them.

Next day was going to be one of the best days of the trip.

27/12/2001 - The Campfire

We were to go to the snow mountains of the Solang Valley. As expected Rohtang Pass (51 km from Manali) was unreachable due to snow & we decided to go to Solang Valley 13 kms from Manali, famous for its skiing slopes.

We had to leave by 8 am to get to the hotels before rush & also to get manageable traffic along that narrow broken road. But as usual we were 2 hours late and started at 10 am only and so half of us couldn't enter the Madras Restaurant and so had to spent Rs 35 instead of 20 for a masala dosa. We also lost two hours at the valley due to the delay.

We reached the alley by 12 noon after getting in the rubber boots, glows & coats. (50 bucks lend). Some also got sticks which proved very useful later. Some of us also got the skiing kit for 200 bucks.

At the valley the skiing party started there training on a flat ground & gradually advanced to the slopes. Some got a fast ride down on the tyre seats along the slopes for 50 bucks. Some didn't forget there bargaining skills there and Ani got the skiing experience for 50 bucks. There was also a slight accident when Potti & Biren crashed there tyre into a lady who was stuck on the way on the skiing board. Biren broke his specs.

Some of us went straight away to climb the mountain on the side of the skiing ground. It was a snowy experience to climb that white giant. We were at times buried waist deep in fresh snow and the ice that slipped into our boots freeze the toes and we had to remove our boots and rub warm our feet frequently. The snow was so soft that we could punch shoulder deep into it. After 5 stops three of us (Feroze chettan, Manish and me) reached the top of that mountain to be greeted by a sunlit meadow. Preethi, Chakki and Aswini had accompanied us till the last stop, but they halted there. Preethi seemed to develop some incredible resistance by which she failed to respond to a fire kept lighted under her palm for a minute.

At the top we found a wire fence and we three named the other side of the fence "Tibet". It was a deep valley walled by a taller and snowier mountain on the other side, and we could see small spots of men walking down there. We named them "Tibetians". After leaving our mark there, and carving "CET" on one of the trees, we dried ourselves in that sun. The descend was almost skiing on your backs. The slope was too steep to walk down with out falling and so we opted to slide down on our back. The descend was more difficult than we expected since we lost two of our sticks and so we were late to join the bus.

We set back by 3.45 pm and on the way back, most of us got down at Manali market to have the lunch. Some of us went to the hotel to get fresh and then walked back to the market. Some also got to one temple there. Some one add the details.

We had planned a campfire in the resort at 8pm. We started it by 8.30 and there were only 10 or 15 to see the fire being lighted up. We started running arround holding our hands and then broke off to dance our hearts out. It was the first time that most of the girls of our class had a public exhibition of there dancing skills. The rest started joining in, and it was almost full quota by 9 pm. We danced to all sorts of music from jayan through dappan koothu to rock. Das was real flexible. It was a great experience and no one wanted it to end. But since we had to leave by 6.30 the next day, we decided to end the show by 9.45 or so. We ended the campfire by singing "Ye dosti".

We had a session for rock after that till the fire finally burned out (till about 10.30). Abru, Ashok, Dipu, Pinku, Mathews, Jinu and me were ther to listen to Nirvana, Metllica and Clapton.

Ani, Azhak, Thap and Pachas were planning some demo that night.

28/12/2001

It was 2 painful days ahead for me, and so i couldn't involve in all the fun that was arround.

We set off from Manali very early, and had a nice journey through that hills. We stopped for combined breakfast and lunch at a spot very near to our old Satluj Dhaba. But here the food was pretty decent. Biren hijacked some cassettes from the ambulance and it was a melodious journey for the rest of the day till we reached the Pinjore gardens in Haryana by 5 pm. The garden has a very long history tracing back to Mahabharatha. The garden arround that seven terrace construction was very calm and deep. We left to Chandigarh by 7 pm.

The heavy mist clouded our expectations about the most beautifully planned city of India. The visibility was so poor, that it seemed a miracle how we were driving. We were also alerted by the security rules to pull up all the window curtains while inside the Union Territory.

We stopped near an ICH to have our dinner. By that time Feroz chettan was having high fever, my toes started paining heavily, and chitra's knees too. All of us shifted to the ambulance turning it into a mobile hospital, with Lekha as the chief physic.

It was an exchange of advertisement songs in the other bus.

29/12/2001

We reached Delhi 6am to be greeted into the luxury of Panicker's Guest House. That was the best accommodation we had. Some rooms even had bathtubs. All the rooms were splendid and we split ourselves into 15 rooms in the 3 floors.

We left for the Delhi site seeing by 10 am after our breakfast. Our first Destination was Qutb Minar. On the way we also saw most of the Embassies, then the IIT and JNU campus, the ISTE office etc. Qutb was tall as usual, but most of us were disappointed to see the iron pillar fenced, preventing us from embracing it.

Then we left for Lotus temple after a name-sake shopping at a nearby shopping complex. The Lotus temple was a beautifully calm sight and the atmosphere was maintained well by the Bahais.

Then we left to India gate, and enroute had a glimpse of Red Fort and Parliament house. We spent some time near the India Gate and the Amar Jawan Jyothi. We got the group photo taken from there.

All except one got down at Palika Bazar for the some shopping. Since i was that "one" here also someone will have to fill in the details.

There was a Bankra by the four Punjabis, Pachas Singh, Paramjeeth Singh, Thappar Singh and Onthar Singh that night with the beard bought from Qutb.

30/12/2001 - Taj

We left to Agra by 7 am. Mathews went to his uncle's house and so didn't join us. We had different buses waiting for us this time. A 38 seater and a 25 seater. There was heavy rush in the big one but the audio system in it was not working. The smaller bus was less crowded with only 17 inside, and it had a good audio system and potti had some nice cassettes to compliment it.

We stopped for breakfast at a place called Palval in Haryana. The food was good, most of us had iddli and vada. We reached Agra Fort by 11 or so but decided to skip it to spent more time at Taj. Raja Bhayya got stranded there trying to co-ordinate the two buses.

Taj was a feast to the eyes, though its history wasn't a feast to the thoughts. More than 20,000 men toiling for 17 years. Built in 17th century with marble brought from more than 20 countries. There was nothing but marble used.

Most of us missed the Taj Museum by its side. It had paintings of Shajahan, Mumtaz, The Taj and the Agra fort. It also had information about the construction of Taj. It displayed some of the swords used at that time and also the plates used to serve the king, which (according to the inscriptions) will either split or change colour if the food served contained poison.

We had our lunch from agra and since it was late to go to Fathehpur Sikkri, which was open only till 4.30 pm, we headed straight back to Delhi. Nisha earned her designation IFS (Indian Funny Service) during that return trip.

We reached Delhi by 8.30 pm and settled back to our Sheraton Palace. Most of us went out for a good dinner. David Sir sponsored sweets for us for the New Year - Burfi and Laddu.

Balkri, Sujith and I was hunting for a shop to find some decoration items and learned that 11 pm was not the time to do that.

So now the return journey alone remains, iced by the new year celebrations.

31/12/2001 - The New Year Eve

All were given strict orders to board the bus before 9 am to leave for the railway station. The buses again changed. It was two nearly dead 35 seaters. In the mean time another batch of students from Coimbotore had arrived at the Hotel to occupy our place.

Three of the girls were late for the bus, and so Balkri waited for them at the hotel and brought them to the railway station in an Autorickshaw. The bus reached the station by 9.30 and we transported our luggage to Platform 6.

Booto and I, immediately went out to the main entrance to find a shop to get baloons, cray paper etc. After having our breakfast, and then a trekking through a labyrinth of a market, we finally found a shop exclusively for such decoration items. We got samples of almost everything displayed there. We traced our way back and joined others at the platform by 10.30.

After some farewell songs for Delhi, we boarded the train and it set off at 11.30 am. Kerala Express - 2626.

Feroze Chettan was in full form and we started playing Tennis and even Basket Ball inside the train. Sujith and Lekha were in charge of organising the New Year Celebrations and they found many singers, poets and also a thall group - AAA (Aravind And Aravind). Manish got down at Bhopal at arround 9 pm.

By 9.30 we started decorating the compartments. The train was much bigger than booto and i expected and so we had a lack of cray paper and stuff. All the baloons got aired and all the compartments decorated by 10.30. Everyone got involved and Nisha rendered her valuable services with the cello.

The programs began at 11.30 with a song by potti and then continued to a megha thall by AAA. The thall didn't miss many of our class mates. Then we switched off the lights when it was 1 minute to midnight and started a mass countdown from 60. All the lights went on, the baloons bursted, and the gilts flew at the last count. That was our New Year. We presented a gift to David Sir and Feroze Chettan and then distributed the sweets. There were New Year Messages from David Sir and Chettan. Then there were more songs - aswini, vijay, jolly, anjana, mary, ashok and all. Sujith's poem recited by GS, Anish's thall and even Jinu was singing hindi songs. Everyone exchanged New Year wishes to every other one by that time. We also celebrated Abhi's B'day along. It was too unique a New Year for us. We went off to bed by 1 o'clock.

01/01/2002

Most of us woke up only by 9 am. The journey was mostly through those hot and dead Andhra and TN. Many were involved in Cards and Anthakshari.

Ashaj got his fingers smashed under the window shutter.

We were joined on the way by Swapna, a first year B Tech student from Coimbatore Engg college.

02/01/2002

The last day of the trip. Morning 6.15 we reached Coimbatore and bid farewell to Swapna. Then at 7.20 we reached Pallakkad. Dheeraj, Ashaj and Mary got down there. Booto's uncle came at the railway station and 200 iddlies, chatni and podi was loaded.

We distributed the iddlies by 8.30 am. Dipu got some cake from Chenganoor. Deepthi and David Sir got down at Kollam.

We decided to make a grand end by forming a train inside the train and singing and cheering up.

We reached Pettah by 3.45 pm. Abhi, Pinku, Shiva and Chacko got down there. Sujith lost his watch there, to be found by Abhi.

And finally we reached Trivandrum Central by 4 pm to be greeted by Raman. All dispersed in short time.

And it ended....

Deepak R