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weekend in namma bangalore..enjoi maadi
we travelled to bangalore on friday night, with sridhar and ranjini, in bangalore express. reached cantonement by 4.30am n then bengaluru by 5am.
weather was cooler than cool! we hired pre paid cab n reached university campus if iim-b where we were put up. the temperature inside the campus was easily 3-4 degrees lower than city (which was also cold by the way) due to crazy amount of greenery, well maintained landscaping in every nook and corner and stone structures all over..
entire bangalore is characterized by lots of greenery, cleanliness and an underlying aesthetic sense to every house, every shop, every girl walking down the street who is innovatively dressed.. the climate was rainy n cloudy n it spiced up our holiday feeling..
however theres really a lot of orderly non-honking traffic, on these quiet green roads, and it takes long time to reach from one place to the other… this phenomena is more bogging down than in mumbai… which was one surprising thing for me.
we met smita and naveen on mg road and hung out in the area, had chat amongst lot of chit chat n laughter, n later went to one of the many malls on brigade road.. smita has been a very good and old friend and anand and naveen met for the first time. but we all struck off surprisingly well and had fun.. there are some people who connect, and not bring other material things in between, and i think we all had connected with honesty. it was a nice evening.
sunday we went to banerghatta national park, as it was close to where we were put up. its grand safari is worth seeing, there is good variety like white tiger, lions, bears etc. the zoo is also worth a watch. we have shot peahens spreading the entire beautiful bunch of colourful feathers on the rainy day n a baby elephant playing mischief with his flock 
sunday night, a university car dropped us back to bengaluru station, and we had a night train back home again.
it was a crisp n memorable weekend.
take aways:
1. i knew about one new city
2. we thought we should do something to stay in a better city.
3. smita got inspiration to start a walk in the evenings, after she learnt our morning schedule
cunnoor or coonoor ?
it was the first time i experienced such a long pongal vacation, in mumbai we never knew anything more than its name! mom n dad (the ‘in law’ suffix doesn’t make much difference in my life, yeah they are as loving as my parents) are visiting us, and we wanted to make the most of the weekend… hence coonoor… generally travelogues start with how we started n which bus we took and where we stopped etc etc, but unless you are planning to go there like next week or something, you really don’t feel like reading all that… so with a li’ll fast forward, we are in coonoor… its as picturesque as dreams can ever get!! we are put up in a pretty citibank guesthouse (anand is a citibanker). overlooking the taj garden retreat, this is in upper cunnoor.. just very close to the marketplace… the first day was spent lazying about and taking long walks, and playing golf in the mini course, the cooks in the guest house put together really tasty and simple food… the next day we took a coonoor tour in a tourist cab and like a typical hill station we were shown few places like dolphin’s nose, suicide point (theres one in every hill station i bet!! :) ) , water falls etc etc. we have a fresh stock of snaps n videos now, will upload on the photos link here tonight.. the third day we took an ooty tour, which is half an hour away from coonoor. its bigger n more commercialized tourism, pretty place though.
in the daytime we used to freak out, eat in some very good places, evenings would bring in cold with them and gradually chilling breeze, and then was time to retreat to the guest house, gather in front part near the porch n play cards next to the heater, all four of us sitting under different corners of the same blanket..
i am glad we breathed in more of the essence of the place than from a tourist point of view.. the whole place is full of tea estates, all the hills are laden with neat carpets of tea plantations… walking down the hills, seeing the sky change colours, having a hot cuppa chai at a local stall is life. there are tiny government transportation buses that take you places if you’re tired walking…
this was pretty much my version of our trip. cute n crisp holiday ‘twas..
