In God’s Own Country

Well, we got a whole host of hols this October and it was decided to fully “utilize” the hols by going on an industrial visit Anyone at all familiar with the ‘CEG industrial visit’ knows its an alias to a group outing by the whole batch – the only industries we visited were restaurants and souvenir shops

The organisers of this IV were Vinod alias ( undertaker music in the bkgd ) The Bun alias *censored-stuff*,  Nitin ( who, as the song goes, tried so hard and got so close ), Anand Balaji and Madan. Full credit to them for organizing an IV at the last minute!

This IV was a rather subdued one, compared to last IV, since most people, for a variety of reasons, opted out of it. The hostelers in particular, getting a long 16 day holiday, had already made plans with their family and couldn’t change to accommodate our last-minute-desperate-lets-grab-this-chance IV plan So with only 66 people coming along, we started on the final industrial visit of our college lives.

Munnar

Our first stop was at Munnar. Warnings from everywhere had come in that it was gonna-rain-cats-and-dogs-dont-go. Despite all that, it was great weather at Munnar One funny thing about Munnar – they seemed to have abolished any names for places – The shops all had names like Pharmacy, Hotel, Brandy Shop, etc. I kid u not

Most of our Munnar trip was spent in walking, walking and then walking some more. The highlight of our frustration was when we were asked to walk to a viewpoint, which as the adage goes, was “right around the corner”. Well, we walked and walked and finally after 1 hour of trudging we finally came to the “viewpoint” : A tea stall with a board near it that said ‘viewpoint’. Sweet isn’t it And to top it all, while we were hiking up the hill, The Bun came and went by auto. For free. Talk about icing on the cake. Or fuel in the fire.

Munnar had 2 good things – one was the Saravana Bhavan restaurant. We had all our breakfasts there. The second thing was the boating We went on a motor boat for a 15 min trip. Our boat driver was a great guy, who swerved and curved the boat on demand, and while the boat was doing an 90 curve, took our photo, with one hand and using 2 fingers Poor rep though, he was shivering and cowering while we stood up and took all the photos  

We also went to Echo point where we had fun shouting stuff and hearing light echos. But the highlight of the visit there was the boating – which 2 people made full use of One was Logesh, who dragged off Shanketh with him on a trip where they often stopped the boat near the coastline and took pictures The other was our very own Nari, who went off pedaling with his best friend ( not Nitin ). Now Nitin cudnt quite take it when their boat disappeared behind a hill and along with Rohith, went off to drag Nari back to this world While we waited with bated breath, Nitin’s boat also disappeared behind the hill. Finally, with our guide yelling, both boats returned to the shore  

Cochin

We stayed at Cochin for the rest of the trip. The hotel needs special mention. Like in one Karthick film, “hotel maari irukum, aana hotel illa”. It was supposedly three star. One wonders how much bribes those stars took. The “hotel” is built plum in the middle of a residential area. The road to the “hotel” is so narrow buses cant pass through it and only one van can. It is supposed to be “water-front” but the water-front looks like a dirty ill maintained river. Poor Bun got misleaded by the fancy pictures in the catalogue. The hotel’s lift was comical. The corridors were so narrow, I doubt if Venky and Logesh would have fitted there side by side. 

The management have done a good job of keeping up appearances though – there were Emus, turkeys and other exotic birds to keep the poor guest sufficiently distracted. We took some good photos in the lawn, over by the pool and near the birds, brightly capturing the “Do not use flash here.It will frighten the birds” card with a flash.

It was in Cochin that I first saw Exclusively non vegetarian hotels. The veggie part of our batch had a tough time legging it in the sun trying to find a restaurant that served veg food. And the people of Cochin must all suffer from Diabetes I think. Once when we ordered Coffee at a restaurant, we found it very bland. Conv with waiter follows:

The Bun: Hello, sugar…

The waiter: ( Very eagerly  ) Podavae illa sir

The Bun looks at waiter, waiter looks at The Bun. Veins stand out on The Bun’s head. His (apparently adorable) cheeks go red.

The Bun: Appo get us sugar!

The waiter: ( Giving us a weird look ) Ok sir

Others tell us they had similar experiences. We empathize

Vegaland

The first time we went there – “Vegalanda suthi pathom”. Literally. We cudnt penetrate the human masses and enter the park. So we went off disappointed ( and dirty, since we hadn’t bathed in anticipation of vegaland ). The day was not fully wasted though, since we hit the beach. Nari nool vitutu irunthan ( cha, I meant kites, dirty mind, dirty mind ). Poor Srivats had a small accident which garnered huge mass attention. Seriously, if that event were a televsion show, he would have garnered impressive TRPs . Thinking back, maybe it was the way the four of us carried him from the water to the beach – one guy holding each limb

The next day, we actually got into Vegaland We really enjoyed the Wave pool, going for multiple times and touching the deep end of the pool during the waves. I still remember something Glamour said to Raghuram : ” Un mela nambikai irukanum da. Avlo thaan”. After that you should have seen Raghu. Practically dancing in the water. After that, Raghu was constantly taking photos of Glamour. Life long fan

Speaking of photos, Jegan went crazy this IV. The poor pappu like guy was totally overboard on a certain serial which I will not name here for fear of spreading it The source of all this trouble is, of course, Buu. Seeing Buu, Jegan saw 174 episodes of that serial in one go. No points for guessing what happened The guy took around 500 photos in one morning – from the plants to the shop keeper to random dudes who posed for him.

There was this one ride in Vegaland called Twin Flip Monster. True to its name, it flipped in all the axes while flipping the arm holding you in all the axes. If you dont get that, understand this : You will be rotating round and round, while you are hanging upside down Anyway, the Snake and I first went on this ride. Snake closed his eyes at start of ride. I kept mine wide open In the middle of spinning upside down, Snake to me: “Vijay, irukiya?” . I loved the ride and immediately went again, this time with Fraud. This time it was even more funny – Spinning upside down, eyes closed, Fraud showing the finger in both hands and shouting “F**K you!”

Other than that, we had all the usual fun – Dumb C ( Three words. Middle word. Inviting action. Come.. Came. Rohith: Along came Polly! ) and Anthakshari. We also celebrated three birthdays and seizing the occassion, several guys danced with their pairs. Highlights among that was The Bun, whose cheeks were so adorable, 2 gals danced with him for that So all-in-all, the last college IV definitely gets a thumbs-up

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