You all know if you have read my other blog, I am a bit of a car enthusiast. So, I naturally hate public transport. But that does not prevent me from using it. Because that is one thing you do not want but you do need. Obviously you cannot use a bike if your friend calls you to go with him for a few hundred miles. Especially if you have an engine in it which is the kind if motor that is used to make milk shakes. Being not so brilliant I could not think of the ideal location. Even my friend Mouli was so wrong that he suggested that we would go to some stupid hilly place called Ooty. If you go to a place where every idiot goes in summer what you do there is predictable. You spend half the time standing in a queue behind some lorry driver or some yokel with a beard telling you about queue etiquette and spend the rest of the time under water falls bathing in the urine of whoever is stronger than you and be able to go further. I made sense you know, “We are going to a place where you see the pristine beauty of Mother Nature, a place where no one wants to go, Kerala”.
“Just think of it like this. We will be stuck in a place where people aren’t bothered about anything. We have absolutely no idea of what we are going to do. And at this particular time of the year how do we get there after all? We got to get tickets too. We will better go to some nearby place and have a relaxing vacation so that we can talk” Mouli was ridiculous and wanted to go to the silliest of places.
“No more Non-sense, I have a friend who lives in Calicut. The only thing I know is that nothing can stop us, we are going to be fine.”
On the afternoon of that very day we set out pretty late because we started late and mostly because of our futile effort to find a proper train. As you would expect we could not travel in luxury coach because that wasn’t an option at all. Due to the unique way the state government transport corporation is funded and most of the people being cheap skates there aren’t any luxury buses to places that are less than two hundred miles away. Two hundred miles! We traveled sitting on a broken seat in some bus with a tractor engine in it, having a top speed of twenty five miles an hour, running on some pre-historic suspension filled with rattles, squeaks and vibrations. Being bachelors, that was all right for us. We were at Coimbatore at about ten, a place to mention nothing about really except that Mr Mouli had been there for four years of his college. I had no interest about that place and just want to buy tickets for the journey ahead. But that did not prevent Mr Cock give a patronizing talk about the city. We were making no progress for about an hour. Because the Kerala transport has been funded in an even more unique way, our next bus was at three. We had no option but to pay some junkies full price and sit on the night bench behind the driver who looked like a druggist and a cleaner who appeared to have come from a trench after sleeping with his sister. The roads we were on with their twists and slopes were just staggering. If anybody does not know the place and tries to drive something as big as a bus, there is a certain crash awaiting him. That gruesome journey eventually ended in Calicut.
O Yes! From there we took a bus to a place called Kalpetta as told by my friend. The place is quite popular too, Wynad people call it. The roads were very narrow with a martial in every corner. The view of the mountains from the bus was truly astonishing. But we had a bad news that my memory card would not work, so I could take back home only a few good photos. In the mean time my friend told me the location of the room he had arranged for me. The good news was it was right in front of the bus station, so we could go there immediately and take some rest which we needed most at that point of time. We were hoping to find some good hotel and of all the things we could have done we went to a hotel called Uduppi. And we got a remarkable special tea there which had no tea at all. Of course we did forgive him for that and moved on. The friend who had arranged for the room came to meet us with his family. His father was kind enough the offer us a room each. We politely showed our contentment with one room. My friend had finished fooling around the place and felt bad for not being able to come along with us. His father seemed to have some supernatural abilities to read other’s mind which will prove on the evidence of what you are going to hear next. He introduced a young female to us and told her to help us out. She looked like a nurse; with the same sense of urgency of a hasty woman, wearing a circular ‘harry potter’ glass onto her tiny face. Strangely we started liking her just for her sheer simplicity and amazingly kind nature. We went to the room which was tidy and had a relaxing bath in that water which appeared to have come from the heavens, I have to say. I was rather too late to come out of the bath room; obviously I came to like that female really. We went to see her and she just marshaled a plan for us with the list of places worth being at. Her ladyship even took some effort to get us a car for rent. And the best deal we were able to strike was renting a Maruti Omni for eleven quid a kilometer, to do which we needed to be absolutely insane. That as far as I could see is the most expensive way of dying, considering that did not come with a chauffeur either. It is dangerous as it is the fastest accelerating car in the world when rolled, and can do a zero to grave in four seconds. So we decided to go to places on bus, well ought to.
So, we set off a bit late. The first thing we wanted to do was obvious. Yeah, we went to a wild life park for a safari, sort of. We had to take a bus to a place called Sultan, something or other. We saw a very agreeable homely female only to find that she was standing next to a, O! Excuse me. A bunch of blokes soon recognized where we had come from and told us politely that a Tamil movie called KURUVI was a disgrace to the country. We then got a mini bus that would take us to zoo and it did, but made a meal of it. Immediately I saw a murderer who was sitting inside a cramped little room with a word tickets painted on it. At a very reasonable charge of three hundred and fifty quid for the safari, you would expect us to go on. But being a cheap skate Mouli talked to a ruined man with an arrogant female standing aside and they agreed to ride with us in the same wagon. Fortunately they brought a cute little girl instantly attractive with them who I think they had kidnapped. She is absolutely not connected to them in any way, aesthetically, genetically, culturally; not even slightly. She was desperately pretty and just seemed to say,”I am the sexiest one alive on this part of the world”. She was just a school girl in lime green t-shirt, shorts, cute face, short hair, black spectacles all of which sound wrong, but believe me she is just up there. She was law breaking-ly sexy. Nothing prepared us for a shock when we saw the car that would take us to the forest. The type vehicle will of course be a 4×4 and it will be quite indestructible. We could face anything from a bug to a lion in that hostile forest. We expected it to be something military with an inch thick steel bar for protection. Guess what? It was a car with a soft top and the door was, well there wasn’t any. We weren’t worried at all, not even slightly. With his usual patronizing speech Mouli got himself introduced to the driver and took the front seat. Normally I would try to fight to get the front seat in these occasions and if my words fail it will politely turn around and grab something and hit him out of the cab. But I was not going to do that because I was sitting cool inside, opposite to that girl. The car has a top speed of, as near as makes no difference twenty. But I loved it. It looked simple and it was rugged. And I loved the absence of doors which would give a sense of adventure and I loved the macho feel and the noises it made. But most of all I loved the way the rear seats were designed to make people sit opposite to each other with sparse leg room, nice! And you can guess what I could have done in the car. I was cocking about my knowledge in wild life. She seemed impressed though. But as the conversation progressed I could not think of things not being an animal explorer. I just told them the fact that I am an Engineer. She did give me a ‘You are a nerd and a blithering idiot’ look, but the lady was pleased and actually surprised. She even asked me how I managed to know about animals so much, despite being an Engineer. I was a bit smug about that. Mr. Cock could not stand any of these and with his usual sense of urgency he started chatting with the, er old lady. We got out of the cab for some time near a lake and at that moment we felt like we were really standing in a forest. The only thing we did not see was animals but with a tiniest bit of hope we got into the car again. I with a bit of difficulty tried to observe the girl’s pretty features, whenever she noticed she seemed to enjoy that, but she was too young and I did not get the nerve to talk to her anymore because of the presence of that bossy female and I think her servant. When we were talking about elephants, we did meet some of them. We didn’t get quite close to them. I was just exclaiming ‘Sweet!”, again not being able to say something wiser. Occasionally we were reminded that someone was hanging from the rear end of the car with a first world war shot gun to protect us all from any possible attack, by his voice. He was as far as I noticed a malnourished man and I wondered if he would be lucky enough to be able to protect himself. But it was nothing like an adventure, we did not see animals which were really wild, we only saw buffaloes, a deer and some birds. The malnourished manufactured idiot screamed and the car stopped. We were so curious and of all the things on earth we could have seen we saw the head of a dead deer, and he pretended as if he had done a brilliant find. After that for about another half an hour we had some off-road fun, but no wild life appeared and the girl never said anything. Though the woman was talking to the servant about something she wanted to do. She appeared to be a botanist, judging by the conversion. Finally we got out of the machine after getting to see venison for all the money we had paid. We walked past the zoo entrance waving good bye to the girl, a rather sad moment.
We did manage to get a bus back to the Sultan thing, well sort of. That was an amazing piece of design, because it had a first gear and then a fourth gear. On a slope that will rev too much and if you change gear you go backwards. So, most of the run was on first gear. From that place we were actually planning to go to some cave or some heritage crap you may call it. Our luck did not favour us much. All we did was find a bus back to hotel. There seemed to be a thousand people inside it. It was horrid. A man was sitting on the floor near our legs and was smoking. At that point of time we had not been used to it and we were really annoyed. Mr. Cock could not stand that anymore and started shouting at him though that blithering idiot tried to strike a friendly conversation. Mr. Cock told him politely, “Won’t you be annoyed if I pee in here?” which seemed to me a sensible question. By the time the idiot was thinking of a reply our station had arrived. We had a serious discussion about the girl we had met the day before and both of us agreed that she was very agreeable. Then we hit the bed at six p.m. not knowing that we would sleep for twelve full hours.
Next morning after careful deliberation we found that we had a lot do that day. We had no second thought, obviously when we decided to go and ask her for help. Then it actually turned out to be a pleasant morning. But the conversation went a little too long as we asked her a million billion questions. We hoped that the conversation had gone forever but we had to get cracking. We just set off and thought if the second day was anything better than the first we were there for a treat. We told ourselves, “Next stop! Islands” So again with our poor sense of direction and only with the help of the local people we managed to travel to a place called something or other, no idea. And from there we went to some other something or other. This time the journey seemed too short because of a distraction. When I say distraction I mean a pleasant one. According to Einstein’s theory of relativity when you are near an object which has curly brown hair, fair complexion, green eyes, crimson lips and a godly smile, time appears to run faster. That incident was indeed a manifestation for the theory but our pleasure was short lived when the conductor of the bus courteously reminded us to get out. Naturally when your mind is filled with sorrow and you are out of this material world you tend to forget your belongings and that is exactly what happened to us. After we entered the material world which we did once we came out of the bus and out of that time dilating environment, we came to think of things and in that time the bus had managed to move by several meters. We shouted to alarm them using some words like “BAG!”, “BUS!”, “STOP!”, “AAH!” or words to that effect. I believe that the conductor was in one of those moods of merry, so he kindly stopped the bus by translating our alarm to a whistle, only sound that can be recognized by the tiny brains of the bus drivers. And when we took some time to free ourselves and this time our things too from that other world, he started making some noise which seemed polite because we did not understand a bit of it. We soon realized that we were in what seemed to be a no man’s land. At that point of time we asked Mr. Rajan a local auto driver for direction. As the place was still eleven kilometers away we decided to go on his auto. I have to say the journey was pleasant; we were relaxing, looking at the twisty roads and houses alongside. Mr. Cock gave the man a friendly invitation to join us for the trek which he had to accept.
When Ms. Agreeable was telling about the hostile nature of the terrain and that only those who belong to the place can easily walk on that, we thought it is the usual sort of exaggeration that elders normally do on those occasions. We never expected that to be so true. The place was brutal. There was dirty water, sharp edged rocks that seem to wait to break someone’s skull, and some other rocks which were as smooth as silk and as slimy as a snail’s mucus. There was absolutely no clue about the area before we step on it. Occasionally we needed to walk on and along the logs. Mr. Cock once lost his grip and as a responsive reaction he clenched my shoulder bags and quite damaged it. I was angry with him for a while obviously but on those occasions we needed to be nice to each other, didn’t we? We were really struggling but the driver with his bathroom slippers was swiftly jumping on the terrain and made a terrific progress like a diving duck. Then we did find some easier terrain with clear water which we used as mineral water. For some time things were going well as there was neither water nor rocks, we even shot some pictures and relaxed. Then it was time for Mr. Cock to throw another one his patronizing speeches, this time to a bloke who was working in Bangalore. Soon we waved good bye to him and faced another brutal task that was lying ahead. This time the rocks seem to have been imported from hell. They were carved when god was in one of those bad moods really. It was designed to kill if someone falls on it no matter what angle he comes from. I slipped once but spectacularly regained balance without clenching someone else’s bag. We walked on all types of rocks and all types of slippery sand and finally managed to reach the other side. But the place seemed endless and we wanted to keep going further. But we needed to walk all the way back again so we held back. When returning, it seemed a bit relatively easier. Then we saw an old man pulling off a trick with a stick to find the depth of water before he took another step and seemed to have colossal grip. So he was helping females of all ages, shapes and sizes cross the river and he had a beard, O dear! Finally before moving to our next venue we felt the final traces of pleasure. A really cute child was walking across the place skillfully sitting down and moving with four legs if you know what I mean, we really enjoyed the sight. And then the unbelievable happened. Mr. Cock splashed some water on the kid; I have absolutely no idea why he did it. When we were walking our way out, we were slowed down by females. They were neither making good steps nor did they allow us to overtake them. By the time we were waiting for the driver to turn up we felt another trace of pleasure. But her younger brother seemed to notice us. After finishing lunch he walked to us and asked our names. Not being able to say anything clever we asked the same thing back. And he fairly told us “I asked first.” We drained the lemonade and entered the auto waving a good bye with a forced smile. I was thinking “You young fathead, Balls to you!” We then wished Mr. Rajan a good partner and departed. We had one last chance to see the beautiful room again and had no luck to see Ms. Agreeable. In no time we were at the bus station again.
We soon we able to get into something and moved on. That was by a mile the noisiest bus I have ever traveled in. It made some weird noise, we even thought driver had had an undigested meal that was upsetting him, but found that it was coming from brakes. We thought it was going to fall apart; instead it was tearing through the country side at incredible speeds for its size and the corners. This time the view was unbelievable and we saw the pristine beauty that we had been waiting for. After a nice drive in the Ferrari way the bus stopped in the middle of nowhere and from there we had to walk a couple of miles. We were just wondering that how did we do that even without any idea two days before then. The road seemed pretty long with hardly any human and with slopes that made the walk treacherous but we finally reached. I tell you nothing prepares you for a shock when you go there for the first time. There were slippery rocks, rocks that were shaped like a butcher’s knife, plant life that make your progress a misery, that cascade of that wonderful water, some more rocks to sit on, some land to sit on, a few females to look at and a bunch of blokes to look at if you are of that type. We were not in the best of our forms but our spirits sprang to life when we saw an elderly female make it to the foot with slight assistance from the bunch. Eventually we did make it. My effort to make it to a rock to get direct shower that was a couple of meters away was fruitless. Finally the inevitable happened to me; I felt dizzy and soon was out on a rock. Mr. Cock wanted me to shoot a couple of pictures of his attractive figure as you may see it. I told you we had to be nice to each other, didn’t I? Finally we managed to get going out of what seemed to be so savage. We went to a shop to find something hot to drink and were wondering why all the family members were busy cooking when there were no customers, but then realized that the whole crowd was single family of tourists. The clever attractive housewife made us jocose by telling us that we could get a meal for twenty five quid for which we resentfully told no. We drained another lemonade a guess what, went to another shop only to find it big and empty, but got a couple of bad and expensive bajjis. Surprisingly the way back to main road seemed shorter. It may be partly because we felt another trace of pleasure when a decent scared female was sharing the walk with us for a while. At that point being time conscious you might expect us to run to the bus stop. But we could not let the place go off that easily as we really came to like that it. From the top of a cliff we observed the roads and were stunned by the sheer beauty of the whole thing. We stopped doing our usual immature chat full of rubbish and started thinking about our being there. He told me that I was as good a friend as he is ever going to get and I reassured him by saying that the feeling was mutual. And that view we decided was a tribute to our selfless, true, divine, god-created, never waning fabulous friendship which at that point of time stood above all. We felt sad too. There was a good reason for it. Since the trip we have been separated and are into our jobs and we are hardly going to get any chance to do such a thing again. That incident could well be a once in a life time thing for us. We decided not to talk about anything then and just face the future. On that rather philosophical moment we reached the bus station and were happy that no human was there within a mile away. There was only one thing we could have hoped that would make things better and it did happen. Yes, it rained and the scent was sensational. There came a cab a few minutes later. When I was getting into the cab my eyes were still looking at that view and my lips were saying “This is just about the most astonishing places I have ever been”.
From there we reached the town and had a hasty meal. We went on a bus back to Calicut after checking the services from the station to our place and then got another bus to Palghat which was again a morbid journey and then another, another bus to Coimbatore. Once we came back to Tamil Nadu the entire place looked too crowded. In the railway station there were five million people and in train there were about a two million. It was one of the most irritating trains in the world. You have to work hard to have a seat and when you are moving a gentle man with a beard will bitterly tell you to give away your place to some females or elders or some annoying kids. If you don’t they let their fat kids sit on your genitals. The most polite word those local yokels know is whore or something to that effect. But then none of these mattered. We were busy thinking about the thing we had achieved. When we set out we thought it would be as easy as eating chips. But it wasn’t. The place was brutal and unforgiving. Yes, from outside it looks calm and serene, but you remember who gives India most of the horror movies. And try counting the number of strikes happening there every week as an exercise. There is a sense of darkness all around the place. The people do not do a thing and when they do it isn’t good to anyone in any particular way. And how many of them like to stay there? And from what state we have maximum NRIs? As a place for everyday living though it is horrid. But it will do exceptionally well for a jaunt for some good old fun with a good old friend, a short experience, an experience which is wonderful. It is as good a place to visit just like we did as it is bad to live in. It is mind you, properly brilliant for a boy’s own adventure.
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This is on our way to the falls
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View from the bus of Wynad
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Lake in the forest where I think animals once existed
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If you want to do the same just have a look
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This is how the Kuluva Islands invited us
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See, We were clueless about the terrain, I wasn’t lying
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No board to tell us the depth of this
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Yes, I said that too
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Mr. Cock chooses a spot for rest
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I choose a spot to quench all my thirst
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Some of the portions that were not so brutal
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A pleasant place to slip in and have some good old fun
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Not easy to reach the foot as it looks
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These knife shaped rock occasionally like to kill
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Look at the road, wafting its way through the mountains
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Now, this is what is the fuss was all about, staggering
