Chennai Chronicles 5

Tags

chennai, chennai chronicles, drive, highway travels

Before I go to the next trip (yes Leh it is on Thursday) I thought I might finish the previous travelogue so that I can come back and start fresh, read part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4 before this if u want

So after having a sumptuous and satisfying lunch at Temple Bay we proceeded to explore the rest of the ECR which has many many good options if you ask me, on the way up we had seen a coupe of tracks with ATV (all terrain vehicle) and being the driving freaks that we are we were very keen to try it, so the next stop we did was one of those and heavens we loved it all of us including Ojas (a tip here there are two tracks there one closer to chennai and one a little further away on ECR, the one further away is a better bet. The ATV’s he has are in better condition, the helmets are cleaner etc..)

After spending a good adventurous time in the track we proceeded to another place which was in my must visit list since I had planned this trip. Dakshin Chitra Chennai, a place where cultures meet, lovely handicrafts are sold. A place which is all about culture of the four south Indian states. I am a sucker for exhibitions like these, dastakar, Delhi Haat give them to me any day over the popular markets.. (well errr I love the markets too )

One of my most favourite handicrafts that day, bought the car one for ojas room and sigh I still haven’t put it up

The whole concept of Dakshin Chitra is about showcasing houses of all four South Indian States, it was so nice to observed the differences and yet some similarities between the houses. And one the house from Chittor area of AP is exactly how N’s granny’s village house is… so we spent quite a lot of time there comparing small things which we have back in the village with what it was there. Some of the artefacts and display pieces just stole my heart

There were many artists at work too, the potter, the weaver and Ojas had a good time observing them at work and asking questions

There was also a play area for kids in which predictably Ojas freaked out

There is also a shop there which sells handicrafts item which though a tad expensive has some excellent stuff that I picked up

Post this we headed back home, freshened up and braved the chennai traffic (which BTW sucks) to meet a close friends family for dinner. We caught up with them after a long time and it was such a pleasure

The next morning I had to do what I couldn’t the previous day and had breakfast at Murgan Idly, when I think of it my mouth starts watering all by itself again   and post the breakfast I met the lovely uma for coffee, chatted with her while the boys went back for another round of ATV driving, post that meeting we spent some quality time with family again and alas it was time to head back to Bangalore.

Everytime I go to Chennai I get a strange feeling, I fall in love with some parts of Chennai and absolutely hate some more. I love the fact that there is so much to do there, I love the food there, I love the fact that it has beaches. The city has a soul which it stands by beautifully. But I hate its weather I can’t stand humid weather and Chennai is like a advertisement for humid weather. But more than anything what I don’t like about Chennai is the freedom I have in bangalore, I can wear anything here and walk down the streets without a second glance. I can easily walk up to a booze store, buy what I want and come back home. In chennai stares if you wear even a jeans are not uncommon. Another thing I don’t like about Chennai is the fact that they are so rigid about their culture, agreed thats what has helped them preserve it but still we don’t need to be policing all the time do we? So what I have with Chennai is a love-hate relationship. Love to visit the city but will hate to settle there  

So with this we complete the chennai chronicles.. untill next time Chennai you will be missed

Here is where you can read about the return drive

Day 31 : Cars : Thursday Challenge

Tags

cancer, car, drive, lavasa, lavasa womens drive, photography, project 365, rally, Thursday challenge, womens issues

When last week I had seen what will be the theme for this week which is

“CARS” (New, Old, Sedans, Convertibles, Station Wagons, Sports,…)

I had planned a post like Uma’s doing somewhat of a chronicle of the cars we have owned…. But than I went to Lavasa’s Womens Drive (detailed post coming up soon) for Cancer and other women issues. It was so heartwarming to see the cars that women were driving decorated so nicely. Carrying messages for early detection of breast cancer to save the girl child to education for all to save nature to one support inclusion…

And here is a collage of few that I loved

WW10

Tags

car, drive, offroading, picture, somewhere in chickmanglur, there is always place for two, travel, wordless wednesday

The Perfect Date

Tags

celebration, drive, love, perfect date, the serai, valentine

I have been having a very quite valentine today, the first after we have met… We both are always looking for something or the other to celebrate a day… I know most people say that its a cliche everyday is a day for love but I strongly believe that little celebrations just revive the love, the romance factor in a relation… So valentines is a perfect reason for celebration for us and we make it a special day everytime… A holiday around that time… the 12 o’ clock celebrations, a romantic candle light dinner, a evening in the city club… something for just of the two of us…

But this valentines due to my neck (which is much better BTW 🙂 ) we are at home… doing nothing and just resting and so when I read this post by Goofy..  I felt a little sad and happy at the same time…

So here is what my ideal valentine date would have been (and that is what we had planned before the neck pain hit me 😦 well almost minus the thin sexy avtar and the Ferrari)

A sexy red Ferrari convertible with a sexier me 😉 , N driving on the lovely highway… we zipping past sunflower fields and hair flying away stopping only for a cutting chai on the road side and finally reaching the destination a lovely resort tucked away in a lovely coffee estate… just the two of us in quaint and a very romantic suite with orchids on the side and a private pool, endless conversations flowing, reading books side by side, long long walks followed by wine in the pool,chocolate and  and ofcourse lots of nocturnal activities happening at all times of the day 😉

So whats your perfect date? What did you plan for valentines and did it happen that way?

WAW again

Tags

drive, love aajkal, movie, personal, review, videsh, weekend pleasures

I do look forward to weekends as most of the people do and most of the weekends I end up having a blast… but there are few weekends in which u feel like saying What a weekend… this one was such after a long time 😀

The weekend started for us on Friday as N was on leave just like that… u know I love those days where u put leave just like that and laze at home… and we did exactly that on friday… some grocery shopping plus lazing at home… In the night we watched Videsh on DVD

And I loved it… powerhouse performance by Priety Zinta… I think one of her bests… The movie is about a girl from Punjab who moves to Canada after getting married to a guy whom she has never met and who she gets nothing out of the marraige and deals with it… It starts brilliantly well… u feel totally gripped to it,towards the second half Deepa Mehta brings in a parallel with a sheshnag and how preity imagine her husband to be what he likes as a snake… a little absrtact but very well executed…

Saturday started with a bang… me and N decided to have some couple time and leaving Ojas behind went off for a drive to Dharampuri (about 150kms from blore)…. just like that for a drive and came back home at about lunchtime having cruised at the speeds of about 140kmph…. had a blast… more on the drive coming up on the travel blog soooooooooon…

The afternoon was spend in getting the 2nd shot for ojas’s rabies vaccination…. and a yummy dal makhani made for the pot luck dinner at a friends farmhouse beyond sarjapur… another 20kms from our house… and the evening was a blast…4 couples, a single friend, 5 kids and what a blast was had… its actually uncanny that I read this post by chandni today when this is exactly what we did on Saturday night… As usual she expressed it so well too :)… its a blessing to have couple friends where we can just be ourself as a couple… no hangups… no pretensions and total fun….

I thought after this fablous Saturday nothing we do on Sunday will be able to match upto it…but man I was wrong… One of our very close friends  bought a brand new Grand Punto and it was time for a party and a test drive…Its an amazingly good looking car… infact we called it baby ferrari… it failed to impress me in power though…. here is A chachu and ojas with the baby ferrari

We took the car and went to More than paranaths as the boys wanted to have beer and biryani and I stuck to my fresh lime but what time was had… we laughed a created a riot and they had to virtually throw us at 4:30 saying we have to close the place 😀 and then we around the Fab India’s of the town looking for some furniture that A wanted to buy

And in the night we went to watch Love AajKal….

We were pretty pissed by the time we were seated in the theatre because it took us 30 mins to enter the parking of Fame Lido how can u run a multiplex and say we dont have enough parking??? and then their pickup kiosks were not working 😦

Nonethless coming to the movie it was an average movie for me, I had great expectations from the movie specially looking at the 4/5 rating from TOI, personally I think the concept of the movie was great… running two love stiores of different era in paralle and comparing the nuances, it caught our generation bang on… the pratcial approach to realtions… for me what killed the movie was Deepika’s horrible performance… her so clear south indian accent in hindi…   But its a decent one time watch….

So bolo want it WAW!!!

PS: the only sad part in the weekend it put on 500gms of weight :(will have to workd hard this week…and the cough gosh I am fed up of it… I think it has makde friends me forever 😦

Vote

Tags

drive, great driving challenge, passion, vote

Regular readers of this blog know that what travel freak couple we are… so about 10 days back when we were test driving Outlander (no we are not buying it:D), the sales guy mentioned about the Great Driving Challenge that they were organising, needless to say both of us were very excited with the idea and decied to go for it…

So here we are taking part in the contest which involves something we both love driving…

The first phase will elimintae the applications from 1000 to 100 mainly on the basis of votes… so guys please vote for us… use all ur ids, gets ur friends, famiies, everyone to vote… spread the word as much as u can…

Remember that statement friend in need is a friend indeed 🙂

Here is where u can vote

Happy Comfort Day

Tags

drive, personal

Flashback some years back, a couple who had started dating sometime back were having a leisure lunch at Ebony located on 13th floor overlooking the lovely cubbon road chatting about everything under the earth, the strong emotions playing underneath…

inbetween chatting about the passions, long drives even planning the dream Delhi-Bangalore drive the guy just suddenly holds the girls hand and asks so are comfortable, comfortable to take this relationship to next level?

Yup ladies and gentleman this is how I was proposed… what the heck… I made him compensate sometime later but thats an another post….

Honey I wont say the 5 yrs that have gone by have been only comfortable but u have made the uncomfortable times a little more comfortable to bear…

Happy comfort day my dear….

PS: on a side note I am totally totally addicted to the Farm Town game in facebook…Shail are u listening 🙂

Destination Coffee Paradise

Tags

bangalore, coorg, drive

Come a long weekend and we start thinking of where we should head to, the phenomenon was slightly reduced since Ojas also came into picture but now that he is 1 we intend to get back to ourselves 🙂

So this Republic Day long weekend, four adults along with two toddlers planned to head out to coorg… Myself, N and O and our friends S,P and A packed in our elephant(for those who dont know thats what we call our Tata Safari) and to start at 7:30 am was the plan…

I absolutely love Coorg… This is the second time we went there and it was as beautiful as it was the first time… It never does fail to charm…

For me its the heaven in South India… a gorgeous place to say the least

so we started at about 8:20am from our house and I think that was pretty good considering I had O and N also with me 😉 the drive in the city took us pretty long and we picked up the S family at about 9 am from Banarghatta Road and then proceeded on the NICE road to meet the Mysore highway… the traffic on the road was pretty bad… I guess the whole blore was heading out for the long weekend… We stopped for the breakfast break at Barista about 10:30 in the morning and had a stumpous meal of eggs, hash browns and tea… A (about 2.5 yrs old) had a nice pineapple pastry and O had some cereal that I was carrying with me…

O had so much fun here… running around all over the place, going and making friends…



he even went behind the counter so I know if he doesnt do anything else he will atleast be able to sell pastries…

About an hour later and having wiped out all available food on the table we started back towards Mysore and then there is was a huge huge huge traffic jam near Mandya we were stuck for about 45 mins there and we finally managed to cross Mandya 12:30 (127 kms from the base) from Manday to Mysore took us about 50 mins in the midst of traffic and we hit the Mysore ORR at 13:10 (145 kms from base) and took a right turn there to head towards hunsur… the road from here was actually superb… very well metaled and brilliant to drive on and we reached Chilkunda at 14:25 (242 kms from base) and from here we took a left turn in one of the insignificant looking roads… the road was pretty thin from here on we reached Pariapatnum (coorg discrict yippe) at 14:35 (252 kms from base)… till now the landscape looked like plains… no coffee plantations to be seen and we were all getting very disappointed… as we knew that the place we have to go is not very far from here… anyways from here on we drove through a dense jungle patch where the road was just wide enough for the elephant to go if at this time there would have been a vehicle from the opposite side that it would need to go reverse till a point where the two vehicles could pass and now it was getting interesting 🙂

The only problem we were having was that A was having a bad motion sickness and had thrown up thrice during the trip poor girl…

We reached our friends estate at 15:00 (280 kms from base) and what a lovely place it was… the first thing that happened when we landed their was O and A playing with chickens and dogs… though A was a little scared and my daredevil was trying to catch them…

They had a lovely lake in the back of the estate





had some juice and some yummy Jackfruit sweet made by their granny in their lovely house…





the whole was so nice that I was so J of them to have a place like this to spend the weekends…

After spending about an hour their we started for our final destination the bamboo club in Pollybetta… we went through siddapur and reached Bamboo club at 17:00 (310 kms from base)… A was doing better now and we were all very hungry as lunch had not happened till now so the first thing we did was hit the dining hall and had some nice veg and chicken sandwiches and Ojas had some egg bhurji which was followed by some excellent Coorgi coffee….

The children didnt seem tired at all and immediately found the small play area and had a blast there

The evening was spent drinking in our room with some nice kababs made by the chef… the original plan was to go the bar and have fun being a club they have an excellent bar but P had forgotten to get his shoes which was required to enter the place… The rooms were actually huge with private balconies and it was a evening well spent…

Fierce discussions were had on where we want to next morning…I wanted to go see the Kushal Nagar monastery as I had missed it the last time I went to Coorg too… but P and S were afraid of A’s motion sickness and didnt want to drive so far which was fair and hence for the children’s sake it was decided that we will go toDubare Elephant Camp

The dinner was gobbled with with dal-rice for the kids and surprising O eat without any fuss though the dal was slightly spicy for him… A did a lot of drama though and eat only french fries and kurkure for dinner… and a brilliant mutton curry and paranthas along with some goobhi aloo… the food was really good

The next morning started by O trying to cuddle with us in the bed which rare and nice in itself as he sleeps in his own cot at home… and then slowly all three of us moved from the bed to the balcony and had fun… this the coffee growing right below the balcony

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and here O’s fav game became opening and closing of the balcony door and peeping from it 🙂

After gulping down the breakfast of eggs and toast and not be missed coorgi coffee… we started for Dubare at round 11:30 or so very well aware that the main attraction in Dubare i.e. the bathing and the feeding of elephants would be over by now but we wanted to show the kids elephants anyways… We reached their about 12:15 or so by the new road suggested by the club guys and the route was lovely… we encountered some beetel trees on the way and they looked so pretty

We also saw the a thin very thin Cauvery flowing, we actually couldnt believe its cauvery but then it was written so.

The first thing that stuck us all when we reached there was boy its damn hot… much much hotter than blore… which was strange and we decided that this weather demands that a ice cream be had… and we all had Chocobars and the kids shared a vanilla cup, interestingly it was O’s first ice cream and he loved it…

And then after finishing the ice cream we realized that oops there’s a lot of crowd here 🙂 The main park was to be reached by a short boat ride, we took the ticket and stood in queue… S was really worried that the boat will be able to take us to the other end as it looked really shabby and overloaded…

While we waited for the boat O had fun dipping his legs in water, he actually refused to come out



My fearless son O sat on the elephants, touched them and actually wanted to go down and hold his legs…

some of the elephant pics for u 🙂







the elephant taking bath

The boat ride on the way back…

Post this we argued on where to eat… another fierce discussion with everyone throwing in their view :):) and decided on Orange County and at the entrance in the lobby there was a wood structure on which my son decided to model a little… check out his poses

We had some excellent food and the star of the shows were A and O whom so many people wanted to click them together… they were actually bonding very well apart some some minor fights here and there for toys… A was behaving like a perfect elder sister I guess… if O would venture a little far she would go hold his hand and bring him back… they even shared food… check out A trying to feed O cheerios…

We reached back to BC in the evening around 5:00pm and tried to put O to sleep so that we can catch up some sleep too but kids have an amazing sense of timing and he just refused to sleep infact he was so full of energy so we decided to go to the park and play for sometime we also drank two cups of coorgi coffee here (ya i know i have mentioned the coffee too many times but then what is coorg without coffee???)

The evening was again started with dear Vodka and sprite and we had a good time chilling out… Post that we went for a walk in the club and surrounding area and wow the sky was looking amazing with so many stars that one cant imagine to see in the cities… whenever u go out thats my biggest thrill…

The next morning was time to start back… alas but in the morning post breakfast we went around the BC and did some photography…

at the fireplace BC verandah



and thats the full view of the verandah



mr.hero on one of the chairs…



O and N i love this pic

there was also a 165-year old church in the BC campus… some pics in and around the church







and finally the whole group together in front of our rooms

and post this we started the journey back at about 11:45 (370kms from base) and we stopped in a place to buy some Coorg Coffee powder how could I come back without that and reached Hunsur (which we had totally missed while coming so engrossed we were in talking) at 13:20 (438 kms from base), the roads were brilliant and A was also doing fine this time as we had given her anti-vomit medicine before starting from Coorg… we reached Mysore at 14:05 (490 kms from base) and had some absolutely yummy fish at Fish Land… I still have the taste in my mouth… We started from Fish Land at 15:10 and by mistake A saw the rhymes CD in the car and the result from Mysore to Blore we heard only Wheels on the bus on repeat… We reached Mandya at 15:37 (523 kms from base) and then we reached Blore S&P’s house at 17:28 (633.6 kms from base) and starting towards our home sweet home and reached back to Base at 18:15 with a total of 657 kms done…

It was indeed a great trip… coorg always is…

What do u do when….

Tags

drive, society

a person hits someone leaves him unconscious on the road and comes back to hospital to apologize 3 hours later….

I had done a post on how humanity on the road is dead but what happened now has left me confused

Ya that’s what happened… one of our very close family friends son met with an accident last week, he was spotted lying unconscious on the road side by an acquittance (thank god for that)… the kind soul rushed him to the hospital and then called his parents… he is fine now though on bed rest for 4 weeks atleast as he has had multiple fracture in knee and gone through a surgery for the same but that’s besides the point…

so after these guys had reached hospital and very busy getting things sorted… confused as we didn’t even know how the accident has happened as the guy couldn’t remember anything… there comes a guy who comes and says sorry… his accident happened with my bike… he came in front way too fast and I couldn’t control… frankly my mind went blank and I didn’t even apply brakes… I knew he is badly hurt as he went unconscious at that time only but I had to go to office so I went off… and then later I realized that its not right and I went looking at the accident site and figured out that he has been brought to this hospital… please let me know if u need any help…

So what does one do? Get angry that he left the boy unconscious on the road when he needed help? atleast he could called from his cell phone… that doesnt take too much time or Feel good that he atleast has some conscious and guilt in him….

what do u feel?

Humanity on road… is it dead?

Tags

drive

The other day I was coming back from the airport and infront of me I saw a car touching a kinetic and it fell down… and the car guy just drove away without bothering anything about the person who has fell down… I couldn’t get myself to do the same so stopped my car in the side and went to the girl… I asked her if she needs any help… thankfully she wasn’t hurt much atleast no bruises etc… (rest she’ll anyway know next day morning…) when I came back to my car I observed that everyone is giving me dirty looks…I couldn’t understand why so I just shrugged and kept walking towards my car and then one guy shouted at me and said…. Gaadi chalani nahin aati tou mat chalaya karo… accident kar diya na (if u dont know how to drive please dont drive)

Then I understood all the dirty looks are because people think that I did the accident… its not in our DNA to think that someone could have actually stopped the car to help the person who has fallen down… how strange right? One of the most basic thing like humanity has become so distant to us…. Or was it because I was a female driving and they assumed that I would have done the accident…. In both the case it makes me wonder when will the attitude of the people change…

What u do think it was?

On a happy note I finally found a baby sitter for my son and I am going back to work full time tmrw… my son likes her and currently I guess that was the most important thing 🙂 now just hoping she stays…..