A trip to Munnar - One of the wonders of God's Own Country

Before reading the post, keep these points in mind:

Some things about the post:

- its written in a very informal language, so please don't mind, if you come across some grammatical errors.

- I've tried to include most of the things which occurred, in case I've missed some, do excuse me for that.

- Sorry for the photos scattered here and there, too lazy to sit and edit them.

Some things to know about Kerala:

- always go with a friend who is a Keralite or at least knows Malayalam, because its very difficult to make conversation otherwise, as most of them know nothing other than Malayalam.

- look out for some beautiful mosques and churches, as they keep coming, at a distance of every kilometer or so.

- you'll find ads only of gold jewelers and sarees on the way.

The main motive of this semester for me was to visit as many new places as possible. So, when I heard that Rotaract Club was going on a trip to Munnar, I requested them to put my name also in the list. And that was an awesome decision. All the arrangements, regarding the transportation, stay and the local sight seeing, were done by the Presi Sourabh. And there were totally around 30 guys and 10 girls. I didn't many guys from the club, except for my juniors and few other batch mates. But, by end of the trip, I was befriend with most of the them. There was so much in the trip, its hard to recapitulate the fine details. But, I will still go through the whole journey, whatever I remember.

We boarded the Mangalore-Thiruvananthapuram Express at 1840 from Mangalore Junction. The train journey was fun. Me and Poo slept for an hour or so, in the start, but after that we were fresh, and we went to meet our juniors and other guys. We found them playing cards and joined them. We played poker, UNO, trumps, etc. Then, we had dinner and, just when we started playing cards again, the TTE told us to stop, since it was already past midnight, and we had to go back to our seats(which were all scattered here and there). We reached Aluwa at around 0350 hours, after a delay of an hour or so. On the way, we saw Cochin Int'l Airport from the train. Our bus was ready, and we boarded it to Munnar at around 0410 hours. It was a pretty decent bus, with 2 and 3 seaters. Guys in the back starting rolling. Some started dancing to Sexy Bitch, which was in turn declared as the Roto Anthem, as it played most of the time, and we were so sick and tired of it. Anyways, the journey was pretty good. On the way, I saw some beautiful mosques and churches. We stopped at a place at around 0600 hours for tea. I had black tea, it was decent(for 3 Rs). As the sun rose, the road turned out to be really beautiful, there were awesome valleys, tea plantations and waterfalls on the way. And yeah, the hoardings, how can I forget about them, every other hoarding would be either of gold jeweler or a Saree shop. If not them, then a poster of Mohan Lal or Mammooty would turn up. We reached Munnar at around 0900 hours, and our hotel's name was SN Annex. The rooms were pretty decent, but it was freaking cold over there. We had to remove our jackets and sweaters, to cover ourselves up. We got refreshed in the hotel, and were then on our way to explore Munnar. I'd started liking the place there itself, because of its weather and the scenic beauty.

Day 1:

Then we went to this huge dam (I forgot the name) which was in a place called Mattupatty. There was an elephant camp there, but none of us were interested in an elephant ride, so we just stopped there, took photos and left to our next destination. Our next stop was at a boating park. There was speedboating over there for a group of 5 in each, apart from a platoon ride for 10 people. We guys selected our group of 5 and went for speedboating. It was a fun ride, the valleys and the tea gardens looked beautiful, and the boat driver would occasionally surprise with a tilt and splash of water. It was for 10-15 minutes. After that, we guys just chilled out for sometime over there, since other guys were still getting there boat rides. In that time, some guys came up with an imaginary subdivision of Roto Club, called PMR (perverted members of roto), by looking at the chics at that place and rating them out of 10. Then we guys left for another dam called Kundla Dam, where, yet again there was boating, but pedal boating and Kashmiri Shikkaras, this time. We just took some photos over there, and had lunch. The bread omelette in that place was awesome. We also tried passion fruit, and I absolutely loved it, I had like 4 or 5 of them for myself. Then, we bought some home-made chocolates and marsh-mellows from there, which were pretty good. After that, we left to a place called Echo-point, and there was pedal-boating over there too. Some of us did boating here, whereas rest of us just sat in the bus. Later, we left back to hotel, relaxed for sometime, before we were served dinner, courtesy - the hotel where we were staying. Then, we had camp-fire at supposedly a park(which wasn't at all like one) planned for the night. At around 2100 hours, we took multiple trips in auto and left for that place. It was freezing cold by then. It was totally not like a camp-fire, but we still enjoyed whatever it was. The music wasn't that great, and there was another group (who were supposed to be after us) which was just staring at us dance. We stayed there till like 2230 hours, and then we had Innova arranged for our return to hotel. That night, I had an awesome sleep. It was cold, cozy and comfortable, because we had the necessary supply of blankets(thankfully). Me, Poo, Shaun and Andrew all slept on the bed.

Day 2:

It was difficult waking up in the morning, with the conditions we're under. It was too cold to leave the bed, and we hadn't slept for the past two nights, and we were tired. But we still managed to wake up by around 0830 hours, freshened up and had breakfast. Then, we vacated our rooms in an hour, and left for a trek to tea gardens in the nearby valley. It was situated beside a dam, and the location was beautiful. We guys started our trek over there, and after reaching like quarter of the hill, we decided that we have to reach the summit. We didn't take the easier path, but we took the harder way of climbing through the tea plantations, it wasn't that difficult, since you always had strong branches of the tea plants to catch, in case you slipped or something. The trek was tiring, but reaching the top and just resting for sometime over there made us fresh again. We took lots of photos over there. And there was just one girl, who made it till the top with us - Snehal, hats off to her. And thank god, she came, because, she was the only one who had camera amongst us. And she didn't mind taking photos of us, some of partial nudity too. Then, we took the easier way back down. Then, we guys thought of skipping the lunch, since most of us were interested in having a sumptuous meal, as we were going to Cochin, and what better than something finger lickin' good - yeah KFC is what I'm talking about. We reached Cochin and headed off straight to KFC, whereas some veggies from the group decided to go to Marine Drive, instead of joining us. We had two buckets over there of 20 pieces, shared by four guys. After that, some guys wanted to do sheesha, so we found a place for it, where we could even watch a very important football match between Chelsea and Arsenal. We watched till the first half and then headed for the station, since we had to catch our train back. Train journey this time was not so great, we just had to go back and sleep, since it was already pretty late and we had our seats scattered all over, and most of them were either in upper or middle berth. We reached back to Mangalore at 0900 hours.

Some things which I might have forgotten:

- Sexy Bitch (by David Guetta feat Akon) was officially declared as the anthem of Roto, since it played so many times in the bus. And, Ranjhani, my civil junior, was given the title of the song, since she would dance to it for all the times it was being played.

- Whole bus journey, we had just one audio cd (with around 18 tracks) which kept repeating all the time.

- By the end of the trip, there were number of groups formed amongst us - Team A was headed by the presi Sourabh himself, which included all the north Indians, Team B included some of us, and Team C were the remaining random ones.

- I made so many new friends during the trip, and I got close to many of my juniors, and so many of them were so much of fun, like Bhowmik, Ramsel, Jeeva and all.

- Overall, this was one of the best trips I have had in my college.