A Travelogue

I have always liked to travel around but somehow I have never cared much to remember much of my travel adventures. This is one which quite cannot be called as an adventure, but still I thought to write a travelogue on this short family trip to “Gods own country” that we had recently. It was the first long trip after my brother’s marriage and with Vidhya (my manni).

It was meant to be a very hectic pilgrimage actually as we had plans to visit as many as six temples in two days along with visits to some relatives. Might sound simple but with the strict timings that’s followed in Kerala temples it’s quite an achievement, if at all achieved.

It was planned that we will leave Bangalore by the afternoon/ early evening of Thursday, 25th January 2007, so that we can make the most of the three day long weekend, thanks to Republic day falling on a Friday. We got the request/ news that my aunt and uncle would join us, who were supposed to travel the earlier day by bus, and were unable to do so due to cancellation of the bus. (No prize for guessing that the bus was cancelled due to a Kerala bandh (read strike/ protests, famous in communism). So it was a fully packed Maruti Omni with seven of us. Yeah, we have two additional seats on the back of our one year old beach wagon.

Thursday evening, on a long weekend, going out of Bangalore, is a deadly combination. All negatives joined together. Almost half of young Bangalore moves out of the Silicon Valley city on such a day. We started by four o’clock in the evening, picked up aunt and uncle at Madiwala, and by the time we crossed Electronic City, it was nearing thirty past five and getting dark. It was a mere thirteen kilometer drive from Madiwala. That’s the spate of traffic on the Hosur road, but I should say it has improved by leaps and bounds in the recent six months.

So then that’s how we crossed out of Bangalore. Luckily I did not have to drive this patch as I hate driving with such heavy traffic; though I love the challenge it poses to the drivers’ patience. But always you have the up and booming FM radios to your rescue. It helps you keep your calm listening to some of the latest hits. I took up to the steering after we almost reached Krishnagiri. It was almost as we glided our way through a glacier till we reached Krishnagiri, on such good roads. With a short coffee break on the way, we munched on to some snacks that aunt had brought, not fully aware what was in store.

As we started again and crossed Krishnagiri, we were welcomed by an array of potholes on the road which never seemed to end. Our travel speed drastically reduced from an average 70 kmph to 35 kmph. This was in the end the worst patch, roads from Krishnagiri to Dharmapuri and almost up to Salem. We had a long debate over where to stop for the night, Salem or Erode? Both being nearly 60 kilometers apart and time running out very fast we thought we better stop by Salem. We finally reached Salem. We started searching for a nice lodge to stay and managed to find a decent one. We booked two rooms for seven of us and settled down. We had a nice idlis, tamarind rice and curd rice for dinner, which amma had managed to prepare. After a fulfilling dinner with Sun TV showing its prime time mega-serial “Lakshmi” much to the satisfaction to serial watchers of the family, we prepared to take some rest.

To be continued...