Weekend to be remembered

Last weekend I was in Manipal, meeting up few of my buddies who were working with me in Cochin. We were five people in the trip



Namratha(Nammi)- Our host took great care of us ,also the tour organizer planning the trip for a month.
Ashwin - Guy came from Australia for a vacation, was literally hitting house flies in Trichy ,so this trip was much needed break for him.
Avinash(HA)- Reached Manipal after a sleepless train journey from Bangalore, his long time prayer was finally answered as a good looking girl sat opposite to him.
Sandhya - Sacrified her weekend work in office for this trip, also saved Nammi from embarrassment by not making it an all guys trip to her home.
Yours truly- taking a break from my hectic schedule :P .

On Saturday morning I reached Udupi railway station around 6:15 ,I was looking out for this station from 5:30 afraid I might miss it ,Nammi and her dad picked me up and took to their home. Ashwin came after an hour found her house by himself ,was proud of his intelligence and common sense.HA and Sandhya reached 2 hours later. After finishing our breakfast we started our journey - roaming around Manipal.

Our first stop was MIT-Manipal institute of Technology, place were Nammi studied. It was so close to her house that when lecturer calls her name for attendance she could say present from her house itself. The main reason to visit the campus was to check the crowd there. Because just by looking at Nammi we shouldn’t come to conclusion about all other people studying there. College campus was looking green everywhere! Properly mowed lawns and trees all around. We went to the campus canteen and decided to have fresh juice ,I ordered chocoberry thinking it might be a mix of chocolate and strawberry but it tasted like cold bournvita.After taking few pics around the campus ,we walked to the hostel areas. After having enough of it, we were picked by Nammi s dad back to her home.

Thanks to Nammi s mum, we had delicious lunch - Aloo Capsicum,Cabbage curry,sambhar,rasam etc. We relaxed for a while then Nammi dad took us to their village some 15km nearby. There we visited Nammi s ancestral house ,Nammi was proudly saying the house is more than 100 years old. Nammi s aunt gave us fresh tender coconut juice. After that we took a walk into the fields ,it was a wonderful sight paddy fields all around till the sky meets the land. I tried getting into the field not know the fact it was full of mud. My foot was full of mud, Ashwin and HA were waiting for this moment to pull my legs. Thank God there was a canal at the side of the field, were I washed my legs and others were playing in the water. It was Nammi s turn to fall down in the canal and one side of her dress getting wet, it was looking like a new fashion. We came back to her old house ,Ashwin was trying to catch chicks but failed as usual, HA was trying to get a good pic with dogs around but they didn’t cooperate. Nammi s aunt gave us a cup of tea,choclate pastry and few snacks, when we were done with it we were late by 15 mins.This spoiled Nammi's dads perfect plan of reaching Kappu beach on time and he decided to take us to Malpe beach.

Malpe beach was looking calm and serene ,waves gently coming and washing our feet.HA suddenly got sea sickness and told he was not interested to come inside the beach and he sat on the sand taking care of slippers also doing bird watching. But after sometime he got bored of bird watching and plunged into the water. After that myself ,Ashwin and Sandhya had bhel puri and HA,Nammi and her dad wanted to have fish fry.HA wanted to try Sting ray whose meat was more or less looking like frog s but who can stop him from eating that.

From there we drove back to Nammi s home taking a shorter route in the end become some 5 kms longer. We reached home around 8.We planned to have dinner outside. From there we went to a temple a good architecture with a Christian cathedral, mosque s dome and Krishna idol residing inside it. Sandhya wanted book her tickets back to Bangalore after enquiring at KSRTC we went to restaurant which was damm crowded and I protested I m not going to eat there. So we went to Chinese nearby where HA cleverly managed to park the car in the little space we had almost kissing one of the cars. When we got settled and looked around ,almost all the tables had hukka except ours ,all people smoking were younger to us. We had American Chopsey and spl rice noodles ,for dessert each one had different variety of ice cream.

We reached home around 11:30,Nammi s dad told us wake up at 5:30 next day so that we can go to Endpoint a place which will be worth watching at early morning. When we are about to sleep Nammi said we are not sleeping without playing a game of Pictionary!
Myself and HA were in a team,Nammi,Sandhya and Ashwin formed another. Game was thrilling ,exciting made us to think in weird ways as possible. In the end it was more like a hare and tortoise race. Like we were one step away from the winning point and were waiting to get one in the dice. But here Nammi did a match fixing as she didn’t allow me to roll the dice and allowed poor HA to roll the dice that being a pitch hitter (cricketer) was hitting four s and sixers with the dice but not getting a single. In the mean Nammi s team used this opportunity very well and won the game. It was way past 1 when finished our game, wondering how to get up early morning next day.

At 5:30am Ashwin kicked me and woke me up ,one by one we got up had morning tea. Got ready by 6:15 ,it was some 10 minutes drive we reached Endpoint. Place was an absolute beauty made us to wonder whether we are in a hill station. Foggy weather made us impossible to look at whats ten feet in front of us. We walked 1 km in the footpath admiring the beauty of the place. It was a cliff facing the river. Nammi s dad suggested we trek down the hill and go to the river. We never seen a Sunday 7am for a long time, were jumping down the hill to reach the river, we visited the temple near the river. The boatman Francis who was supposed to take us on a ride across the river had gone to Church being a Sunday. Now I realized what is really meant by an uphill task. Nammi s dad said we will take the shorter way of climbing up, a path not much traversed. Pathway was full of bushes and steep stones making life difficult for us. I almost slipped, was about to fall into a 5 feet pit but caught by Sandhya at the right time,HA and Ashwin were rather disappointed as they were waiting for something to happen like that. After 20 minutes of huffing and puffing we reached the top. After this early morning trek we drove back home after having a view of Manipal lake.

Back home we had our breakfast puri and tasty channa Masala.After freshening ourselves we left for Udupi temple.Good temple was not crowded we had dharshan in 10 minutes.We had to look at Krishna by peeping in from window hole as Krishna idol in that temple was facing the opposite direction.After the dharshan we did some shopping HA got some CD s and Ashwin got Udupi Krishna idol. I was looking at hand fan made out of Sandal wood ,I tried opening but in the wrong way got it messed up. Asked the shopkeeper how much it was, he said 675 bucks. I asked him to open, he tried and said it’s a damaged piece.HA still believes I only did the damage. I wanted to have Udupi coffee but Nammi didn’t take me there .

We went back home, again to have a wonderful lunch prepared by aunty and we relished it as usual. After lunch Nammi,HA and Sandhya were preparing to go to Shimoga to attend Chadrika s(my another colleague) marriage. When we reached the bus stop and waiting for the bus ,HA found something is wrong with his T Shrit,he realized that he had worn it inside out. Then he went behind a lamp post and changed it back. After some time a dabba bus fully crowded came there ,I doubted whether it will cross Manipal. They left it to go and waited for the second one ,the next one was no different from the first but it was less crowded. To avoid further delay these people got in, we waved goodbye wondering whether these people would stand all the way to Shimoga. Once back home myself and Ashwin crashed and woke up around 5pm.Talked with aunty for some time and then left to Udupi station to catch the train which was at 6:15. Ashwin had a train from Mangalore at 9:30,so he thought he will come in my train and get down at Kankanadi(M'lore Jn) and from there go to M'lore cantonment station. As his luck turned out my train got delayed from 6:15 to 6:40 ,from 6:40 to 7:15 and at last reached station at 7:40. We reached Kankanadi at 9:20.He took a high speed auto and reached other station at 9:30.Like in the climax scenes of Indian movies our hero reached the platform to see the train moving, started running along the platform got into one of the compartments only to find the heroine missing :)

All in all happy and thrilling end to our weekend!!!