8th Dec 2010
Time of departure : (Official) -> 1:30 PM
As conveyed to Anish -> 2:00 PM
As taken by everyone -> 2:30 PM
Actual Time of Departure from Insti : 3:00 PM
Usually, this time frame is pretty acceptable for a contingent of >120 members, however, owing to IITD's exclusive single court Baddy team alone consisting of a mere 9 people was supposed to leave earlier and this was surely not ACCEPTABLE and TOLERABLE for so few members. Anyway, we did manage to get off on time('on time' based purely on the fact that we didnt miss the train) When I reach SAC, the chairman, Edwin Sir, Vijit and Adhu were already breathless with anxiety about where we all were. The bus had already reached and everyone was like ... Where are you guys?!! You were supposed to be here at 1:30. The others turned up fairly quickly except for Anish. When asked at 2:00 PM, he'd already left for SAC from H4. By 2:20, he was still nowhere in sight from SAC. Then a guy appeared pulling behind him a red bag as slowly as possible. It could only be him. Appaji sir, by now quite furious, commented "He's the captian, he has to show his importance". And the chairman motioned him to come faster. Anish's reply to that gesture ? You guessed it right, simply puts his head down ... and continues to walk at his own sweet pace (if you can call that pace at all )... So, we were finally loaded into the bus around 2:40 at SAC and we left for H10 to pick up the girls, who took their own sweet time to come down. (Sukhada ->" Oh tum log aa rahe ho kya? " As if there ws a choice! ) And with that for the first time in the last 3 years, the whole baddy team was off for Inter IIT Sports Meet together! Quite an achievment really, considering that Anish, Aashish and Sukhada were all uncertain with their placements, and once placed, Anish and Sukhada kept threatening to go home. Sukhada even managed to return in 1 day. Aashish hinted it once, but was shot down so badly that he didnt bother to bring it up again. The bus ride was fairly uneventful. Chuun it seems had put videos in his cell for the first time and was busy watching Munni and Shiela all the way to the station. I hadn't had the time to have lunch, so was quite relieved to find a McD there. And we stuffed ourselves up. Its never a good idea to order fries from McD in a group of >5 people. When asked, they always say, nai mujhe nai chahiye... and jab khud order karo... to sabko khana hota hai ... Afte McD, started the OCD for chaaai .... I will probably never understand what is in that 1 cup of tea... that makes lazy people like Anish and Aashish go right out of the station in search for it... and ... AND pay 10 Rs for it!!! Purely mysterious ... Edwin sir was getting harried with all this nonsensical whims pehle khana... then chaai .. and must have asked us to call these fellows back about a hundred times before they actually came back. Then we lugged our luggage all the way to our coach, B1. Its almost a pain when you book the tickets so early, you get the seats right in the first coach of the train... and then you have to walk and walk and walk till you get there. Everyone was pretty excited to go on Rajdhani. Once in the train, Anish and Aashish once again UNCHARACTERISTICALLY went in search of cards and poker coins ! How?!Meanwhile, Mittal called. He had been getting restless right since the camp had started and we were almost giving him hourly updates about our position. We made plans to meet up the next day. We didnt want to go all the way to his place... he didnt want to come all the way to IITD.... so in the end, it was still undecided... but eventually, we all knew... it would always be like he wants it to be .... jana to hame hi padega...
Train mein.... I had hoped to make a lot of noise... and piss off a lot of people ... just like the Yellow Chilli's treat .... but .... sadly... everyone was acting tooo sober .... and we hardly made any noise. In fact, the people in the next compartment made more noise than us... and it was so SHAMEFUL....
Chuunn stated the traintertainment with Mahabharat ... During camp time, we'd been paining Anvita to tell a story and Chuun suddenly got infi enthu to tell a story ... and from somewhere landed up on Mahabharat ! Sharada got on the bandwagon bcz she has a thing for discussing indian mythology and it was decided... chuunn would tell Mahabharat on the train... It was so LAME! We all expected Chuun to narrate the story in his "funny" and "graphical" way ... and he started in ENGLISH ... "straight from his heart" ... "A long long time ago, there lived a King Shantanu ..... " Needless to say, it was boring ... so we asked him to do it in hindi with his usual "hugga" ... To his credit, he did make it interesting for a while ... but soon enough Sharada was the only one who was interested to listen to him ... and Anish had had enough by then... We were served evening snacks meanwhile... which was pretty nice ...
Then we ended up trying to play a round of DumbC in which Aashish went crazy ... he guessed "Qutub Minar ki saatwi manzil par" with only the words "Qutub Minar" and "saat" and claimed that he didnt even know the movie... HAHA we are not believing that ... Aditya cracked "Rec".. he broke it into 2 parts "re" and "c" ... and for "c" he acted for "sea".... and thereafter went in "repeat mode" to show "re" ... kept lifting the bottle and placing it...Chuun ka giveup ho gaya tha dekh ke.. "kya baar baar wohi kar raha hai..." Kaafi der baad.... they reached Rec... Afte DumbC, we decided to play Judgement.. and the usual debate ensued ... kya point system rakhna hai .... (I hope we can fix the point system for Judgement this time ... Unless there's a 3/4th majority, the current judgement point system shall remain for all future Inter IITs) And the game got underway .... once again with the stupid point system (in which there was no negative marking! ) everyone was clustered around 60 points and only Aashish was the outright loser with 41 points ... Dinner was a subdued affair ... and it wasn't really good ... we had an animated discussion about drumsticks and bread sticks and whether they should be hard or soft ... but the soup was horrible (according to others, I didnt agree) ... After dinner, we were all doing our stuff, Anish busy on phone... Chuunn watching his videos ... me Sharada Anvita engrossed in word games ... once anish was done with his phone, he disrupted all the activities going on... and Chuunn gave this puzzle ... 12 balls with one defective to find in 3 weighings ... As of 12/12/10 we still dont have a complete solution to it .... but I have no hesitation in proudly stating that we have not yet given up and looked for solutions elsewhere ... :P ... The puzzle took up most of the time till 12... when we decided to turn in.... and the usual scramble for berths ensued. Anish, Sharada and I wanted middle berths, Aditya and Kunal wanted lowe berths and Aashish wanted the top berth. Anvita and Tejas being juniors had no say at all ... and after much adieu we got our berths ready to sleep... then, as I couldnt get any sleep, we (Anish and I ) started watching FRIENDS .... thodi der friends dekhne ke baad... as usual... bhook lagna shuru ... then we got moong daal and pure magic and sat munching away... aashish on the upper berth got the whiff of it.. and soon a hand came down "abe de naaa.... kaise kamine ho be!! " ... thodi der mein Ratlaaam aaya ... and we got down... while we were getting down, this AC wala staff says, kisi ko bhi ghusne mat dena... and then, as we were getting down, a completely bedraggled guy starts to get on the train ... Aashish is like .. kahaan jana hai bhaiya.. nai chadhne denge.. and shoo'ed him away .. (apparently he didnt even know where he wanted to go... :P) fir chaaai dhundne ki fight.. (which probably was unsuccessful as far as i remember) ... wapas berth pe aake sooo gaye........
Muzzooorieeee day 3- the last day :(
And before we knew it, the last day of the trip dawned... We all were being very lazy. We had to check out by 10 and somehow anish and i managed to wake each other up by 915. We realized we also had to transfer photos and then it was all memory cards and cameras and hard disks. Somehow we got everything packed by 10. Sharada then gave a piece of her mind to the room service guy as there was no hot water and we had to check out by 10. They got ready around 1030 and we clicked some final pics in the hotel. We went down to udupi for breakfast when aashish called. He'd reached delhi and was getting bored at rajeev chowk. Once again aditya's order came last (Pichle baar bhi jab gaye the tab bhi bichare ka last aaya tha and that too he'd ordered masala dosa... Baakiyon ke exotic orders pehle aa gaye the) breakfast ke baad we entered into one of our usual gross discussions about food only this time it was not initiated by chuunn but by anish. He started pouring sambar into chutni, chutni in sambar, crumpled tissue paper in sambar saying that he is doing all this so that they do not reuse it. And the expected argument followed " what if they do reuse it DESPITE all the crap we did" ... Breakfast ke baad everything seemed to be in slow motion...there ws no real hurry for anything as we had nothing planned the whole day. We decided to go to the company gardens and due to the infinite availability of time, decided to WALK... Yeah thats right!! Walk all the way to the gardens, we figured since the rick wale were asking 30 bucks for it, it wouldnt be really very far from the main mussoorie square. And we started walking... On the way stopping at infi shops.. Looking here and there, anish got his tea. We clicked some more pics... Looked around in more woolen shops and dheere dheere kept plodding along. Our only agenda for the day was the sit in the dhoop in the garden and complete accounts. It was almost as if everyone was scared of getting bored so nobody pained anyone for taking any amount of time in any stupid shop... Slowly we reached the imperial(library) square where we'd gotten off the first day... Then the taxi stand from where we had taken taxis the day before... It was a pleasant walk... The funny thing was, the farther we went, the farther the gardens got from us!! When we started somebody told us it was 2 kms away, by the time we reached the taxi stand, people were telling us that it was 5 km away!! However, with nothing else to do but reach the gardens, we continued on... On the way, stopped at another tapri for chaai and clicked some more pics...( cant remember what exactly we were talking about on the way to the gardens, but i remember it was funny enough, probably it was about sharada's obsessively compulsive clean habits and hand sanitizers ... And how she probably lived in a "clean house" :-P) the sun kept playing hide and seek all the way ... Chuunn kept almost falling over at places "mussoorie teda hai" the snow capped peaks were visivle at some distance... We reached an internet cafe and chuun and anish wanted to take printouts of their tickets back.. The connection was so so slow that once logged in, chuun regretted logging in at all as it took infi time to log out...(god knows why he wouldnt just close the browser, who in mussoorie anyway was interested in chuun's gmail account!!) so on we went again..( repeating the phrase in hope of capturing how long it realllly seemed it took ) then we came across a puppy and anvita and sharada got all typical girly about it... "soooo cute" wala stuff :-P anvita even went ahead and asked the owner if she could take the dog along with her to the park... Guess we finally did reach the park after that... And i want to say it was soooo worth the walk! But... Just cant stretch the truth to those limits... It was a sad sad garden... There were no lush green lawns that i'd been hoping for... There were no beautiful exotic flowers, just a sad little fountain in the center. There was some sunshine when we reached which disappeared quickly enough and it became really chilly later. Sharada and i went on the giant wheel... ( bechare aditya ko bhi jana tha but faltu mein kataya in hope that they'll have me and sharada sitting together, but their plan was foiled as it was better for the balance to sit on opposite ends) giant wheel ke baad we started looking for a place to sit in the sun and carry out our accounts... We found the perfect place by the "pond" ( cant think of any other word for it) and lots of sunshine. Within minutes our placing the order, the sun went behind the hills and i became so cold, i could hardly write the expenses down properly) we decided to finish eating quickly and proceed inside the copper grill (glass housed restaurent)... We had probably the most intelluctual session of the trip then ( oops not really, chuun's puzzle is yet to be solved) we started figuring out expenses. Took a while for getting everything marked down first, then who owed how much to whom. Made a "from to" matrix and then reductions were carried out in the matrix to clear the balances in the minimum number of transactions. I realized cs minor had indeep taught me something and for the first time in my life, i could think in cycles in a directed graph and stuff... But enough of it, dont want to get too geeky here. Once done with the expenses, (which was a pretty exciting affair for everyone actually, at one point of time, aditya was goin to get 400 bucks and in the end ended up getting only 35 :-p, the unanimous conclusion reached was that aashish owed a lot of money to everyone) we started heading back. Tejas and sharada wanted to do some shopping so they refused to walk all the way back and took a ric. I simply felt too lazy to bargain with the rickshaw ppl and decided it was better to walk to be involved in tht stupidity. And everyone else too seemed quite in a "walking" mood. We had the most awesome discussion of the whole trip... It all started with chuun telling anvita that it was high time that she start talking, otherwise, for example when anish came 2 years later to insti, he wouldnt even remember her... And then somehow we started disussing marriages. Aditya provided his customary radical views on marriage which as always made sense but were just too shocking to really believe in. He said something like if a guy has to resort to arranged marriage, he is not capable of finding a suitable person (specifically not capable to convince a suitable person to marry him) and hence, even after marriage, as he is not going to gain the power overnight, he will remain faithful. On the other hand, a person in love marriage is capable enough to "pataaofy" someone and so even after marriage can get someone to marry him(/her, not to sound sexist :-p, atleast this is what i understood from the discussion, correct me if i'm wrong aditya) and then we reached live-in relationships , good or bad... Chuunn was all for it and the rest of us not so much. The Minutes of the whole discussion would require a whole new blog post( a task which anvita is going to perform admirably :-p, hai na?) but the funniest part of it was, chuun brings this up at his home pretty frequently, just to vex his parents and it always ends up with his mom getting angry and senti and chuunn not getting food to his liking at home for a week :-p, and so he has to drop the subject. Engrossed in the discussion, we just didnt realize how quickly the time passed and we already were at the tea shop. "chaai to peena banta hai yaar" no prizes for guessing who said it, and chaai peeke we continued on our way. We decided to walk till where tejas and sharada were and then head back to the hotel. Somehow we had managed to spend the whole day without getting bored at all ( at that moment it did seem like a big task, but today it feels stupid to even think that we would have gotten bored with each other) anish and chuun found a place to get printouts of their tickets. Chuunn was in a big dilemma whether to go by the sleeper train in the aftrnoon the next day which would take 30 hours to reach or take a chance and hope that his ac ticket would get confirmed. I had 2 tickets too and wanted to go by the evening train but it was waitlisted 1. Anvita anf i went to look for tejas and sharada. Having found them, it turned out that sharada had succeeded in buying nothing at all in all this time!!! So there was some last minute hurried shopping she finally had to do. The others had already headed back to the hotel and taken their things to the taxi stand. Anvita sharada and i were the only ones still left in the market area. It was 6:30 and high time for us to head back. And jaldi jaldi we reached our hotel back, took our luggage and left for the taxi stand too... The others had already hired two taxis and our luggage was loaded. ( luckily, in all the hurry, i forgot to feel sad tht it really was over now) we packed 2 alu parathas to eat on the way to dehra dun and we were off. On the way back i again got to hear anish's story, this time narrated for sharada's benefit. We pestered anvita and sharada to tell some stories from their schooltime but both didnt have anything interesting( was my school the only school where interesting things happened?!! ) by the time we reached down, anish and i had started feeling a little giddy. It was one winding trip down and i was also a bit worried that we might be getting late. We did manage to reach by 9 and our train was scheduled at 9:25... So peacefully mil gai. Once in the train, everyone first seemed enthu for a nightout, after all, it was our last night together in 2010. We played random cheezon ki antakshari like names of movies and names of places, all geeky geeky stuff... Aditya was awesome in movies ki antakshari. He would come up with random movie names and then say,"sunny deol and urmila matondkar ki movie hai" with full confidence as if the person who did not believe him was such an ignorant fool! I remember us having particular difficulty with movie names starting with n And y. (someone had come up with namaste london and it was crackk as it ended in n too ) but, dheere dheere, logon ka enthu kam ho gaya and once anish says sona hai, theres no point even arguing about it. Sleeper was a bit of a mistake in the season. It was damn cold and i just couldnt sleep. Infact even others had a bad night and when we reached delhi in the morning, everyone was infi tired.
Now i m definitely not going to write about the last day as it makes me very very sad to recount those moments of
Bidding everyone goodbye. Bas the imp thing was, anish's train did go to ajmer, i couldnt manage to get waitlist 1 cleared( kiske saath hota hai yaar aisa!!) chuun and aditya reached infi infi late and sharada anvita and i wr lucky enough to reach home only with a few hours delay.
And so ended The most memorable trip of my life till date ... Wishing everyone could go sometime again...
Now i m definitely not going to write about the last day as it makes me very very sad to recount those moments of
Bidding everyone goodbye. Bas the imp thing was, anish's train did go to ajmer, i couldnt manage to get waitlist 1 cleared( kiske saath hota hai yaar aisa!!) chuun and aditya reached infi infi late and sharada anvita and i wr lucky enough to reach home only with a few hours delay.
And so ended The most memorable trip of my life till date ... Wishing everyone could go sometime again...
Muzzooorieeee day 2
Day 2 Mussoorie:
We'd planned to get up at 7:30 and get ready fast and go around.... we got up at 8:40 ... once again, Anish started screaming ... "kya sote rehete ho yaar" and then we got ready quickly and went down to have breakfast... once again, not so good... we then got into ricks to go to the taxi stand. It was already around 9:30 when we got to the taxi stand. At the stand, we had a long long discussion about where we should go... and it was decided we would go to lake mist, yamuna bridge and kempty falls. We tried our best to bargain a little but were thoroughly unsuccessful :P ek paisa bhi kam nai kiya usne... plus.. when we asked him to give us ambassadors, he didnt even agree to that. finally, after a lot of pain, he agreed to give us one alto. The motion sickness-prone people (Sharada, Anish, Anvita and I) got into the alto and others got into the van. There was some confusion about where we would go first... Anish wanted to go to Lake Mist second, the driver said it could only be first or third ... and eventually, we were off to Yamuna Bridge. On the way, we stopped at a couple of places to click some pictures. In the car we sang songs ... but Anish got all sleepy and Sharada's throat was gone... so it was basically Anvita and me who were doing the singing. The ride to Yamuna bridge took about an hour and it was a pretty beautiful place. The usual photography session ensued ... first on the bridge.. .then we went down to the river. It was a very quiet and serene place. Sharada got unusually lost in her thoughts and chose the farthest possible rock to contemplate on her hygenic life :P I tried to take a different (less steeper) route to the river, but it ended in a herd of goats and a very steep path down. I was feeling kinda reckless that day... and decided to go along with it ... I did manage to get down successfully :) Anish found his own rock to sit on and look into the distance (basically, he was hoping someone would take his "natural" pic :P ) The others, were all lined up on a horizontal tree trunk and were clicking shadow pics. Then, there was a rock just adrift and I very much wanted to get on it... but the flow of the river was quite fast there and had I not been in the reckless mood I was in, I probably wouldnt have been the first to attempt going on it. I virtually had my heart in my mouth when I reached the rock because my feet had gone cold the flow was really scary and there was no place to hold and pull myself on the rock. Anish and Aashish were coolly laughing at my misery :-/ Once I was there, everyone wanted to come .. and one by one Aashish, Anish, Sharada and Anvita made their way to the rock too. We were sitting there for quite a while clicking away random pics. The taxi people finally called us back and we started going back ... In the whole going back process, Anvita dropped Aashish's camera in the river and luckily it didnt flow adrift... but it was fully drenched in water. Aditya asked something about "kitne ka THA wo" and Aashish was like .. "THA nai.. HAI !!!" (@AA: How is the camera btw?) On the way up, we clicked some more shadow pics on that tree trunk (as the ones in Aa's cam were probably destroyed :P) we were looking really stupid from the bridge as Kunal and others were telling ... wahaan se ... we got back into the cars and headed for Kempty Falls... The Kempty falls took about half an hour to reach and from there it was a 10 min walk down to the falls. Frankly, the falls were a bit of anti-climax. This was the prime sightseeing point of Mussoorie and it didnt even seem like a Fall. Plus, there were some people continuously removing sand and gravel from some sort of swimming pool below it. It was pretty cold there too. We had Maggi at the Falls and in the cold weather, it simply tasted awesome! Needless to say, chaai bhi piye the ... and we got a nice mini-campfire burning around which we all sat. We started heading back up after that and on the way, Anvita crackked "chanawala" Wihle coming down, Anvita had bought chana from a vendor and she wanted some yellow "dal" for which he was charging extra 5 Rs. On reaching the falls, she found that the vendors there were not chargig the extra 5 bucks. So, while going back up, she says "Kaise chor ho aap ... neeche waale to iske 5 rupaye extra nai maang rahe! " Anish Aashish and I burst out laughing! It was hilarious... bina soche samjhe kuch bhi bol deti hai.. and then she argued half the way up ki maine kuch galat thodi kiya... wo chori hi to kar raha tha ! Upar chadte chadhte everyone started feeling hungry ... Aditya was of the opinion that we should make this climb a regular part of our daily warm up and I was totally for it :D We were to go to Lake Mist next, and what a stupid thing it turned out to be! First of all, the place where we were taken had no lake in sight. Then we were told that upon entry, we would be taken to the lake and in any case it was an artificial lake so it couldnt be very big... we told him that let one of us go inside check out the lake and then decide whether all of us want to go in ... he flatly refused for that ... and we decided to hell with it! It seemed a very stupid place.. not a single person around except for us and the rates for entry were so HIGH! OMG!! We went back up and asked our taxi walas to take us to some other place instead (kinda reminded of of that Mall in Kanpur!) and he agreed to take us to a temple. The temple also had a long climb up but the views from the top were breath-taking! We also saw an owl and a woodpecker .. it was a very quiet and peaceful place.. by the time we left from there, everyone was deadd tired and hungry. We realized that we did not have any money to pay the taxi walas, so they had to take us to an atm first and then they dropped us off at the library square. It was around 5 then... already time for Aashish to leave :( and the sense of trip coming to an end loomed over everyone. Aashish's taxi was at 7 ... and we had our meal and headed back to the hotel. once in the hotel, we wasted no time in getting under the blankets... aashish had to pack and leave.. and he took away my camera for the much awaited "bonding session" :P (abhi tak wapas nai mila hai camera) .. we started watching movies.. pehle I Robot, then Transformers, then Pearl Harbour ... in between we were supposed to have dinner but were in no condition to get up. Chuun and Aditya went for non veg and we asked them to get some biscuits and amul kool for us. Thoda sa room service se order karwa liye and till 1-2 we were watching movies, then some friends.. and then finally good night. The valley looked very beautiful from our room at night. It was like a sea of yellow stars stretched across the valley .. at 3 AM, Sukhada msged saying that she had finally reached! What a torture it must have been for her! And with that, another awesome day came to an end ....
(why am i the one subject to THIS torture always? I get so sad while writing it :-/)
We'd planned to get up at 7:30 and get ready fast and go around.... we got up at 8:40 ... once again, Anish started screaming ... "kya sote rehete ho yaar" and then we got ready quickly and went down to have breakfast... once again, not so good... we then got into ricks to go to the taxi stand. It was already around 9:30 when we got to the taxi stand. At the stand, we had a long long discussion about where we should go... and it was decided we would go to lake mist, yamuna bridge and kempty falls. We tried our best to bargain a little but were thoroughly unsuccessful :P ek paisa bhi kam nai kiya usne... plus.. when we asked him to give us ambassadors, he didnt even agree to that. finally, after a lot of pain, he agreed to give us one alto. The motion sickness-prone people (Sharada, Anish, Anvita and I) got into the alto and others got into the van. There was some confusion about where we would go first... Anish wanted to go to Lake Mist second, the driver said it could only be first or third ... and eventually, we were off to Yamuna Bridge. On the way, we stopped at a couple of places to click some pictures. In the car we sang songs ... but Anish got all sleepy and Sharada's throat was gone... so it was basically Anvita and me who were doing the singing. The ride to Yamuna bridge took about an hour and it was a pretty beautiful place. The usual photography session ensued ... first on the bridge.. .then we went down to the river. It was a very quiet and serene place. Sharada got unusually lost in her thoughts and chose the farthest possible rock to contemplate on her hygenic life :P I tried to take a different (less steeper) route to the river, but it ended in a herd of goats and a very steep path down. I was feeling kinda reckless that day... and decided to go along with it ... I did manage to get down successfully :) Anish found his own rock to sit on and look into the distance (basically, he was hoping someone would take his "natural" pic :P ) The others, were all lined up on a horizontal tree trunk and were clicking shadow pics. Then, there was a rock just adrift and I very much wanted to get on it... but the flow of the river was quite fast there and had I not been in the reckless mood I was in, I probably wouldnt have been the first to attempt going on it. I virtually had my heart in my mouth when I reached the rock because my feet had gone cold the flow was really scary and there was no place to hold and pull myself on the rock. Anish and Aashish were coolly laughing at my misery :-/ Once I was there, everyone wanted to come .. and one by one Aashish, Anish, Sharada and Anvita made their way to the rock too. We were sitting there for quite a while clicking away random pics. The taxi people finally called us back and we started going back ... In the whole going back process, Anvita dropped Aashish's camera in the river and luckily it didnt flow adrift... but it was fully drenched in water. Aditya asked something about "kitne ka THA wo" and Aashish was like .. "THA nai.. HAI !!!" (@AA: How is the camera btw?) On the way up, we clicked some more shadow pics on that tree trunk (as the ones in Aa's cam were probably destroyed :P) we were looking really stupid from the bridge as Kunal and others were telling ... wahaan se ... we got back into the cars and headed for Kempty Falls... The Kempty falls took about half an hour to reach and from there it was a 10 min walk down to the falls. Frankly, the falls were a bit of anti-climax. This was the prime sightseeing point of Mussoorie and it didnt even seem like a Fall. Plus, there were some people continuously removing sand and gravel from some sort of swimming pool below it. It was pretty cold there too. We had Maggi at the Falls and in the cold weather, it simply tasted awesome! Needless to say, chaai bhi piye the ... and we got a nice mini-campfire burning around which we all sat. We started heading back up after that and on the way, Anvita crackked "chanawala" Wihle coming down, Anvita had bought chana from a vendor and she wanted some yellow "dal" for which he was charging extra 5 Rs. On reaching the falls, she found that the vendors there were not chargig the extra 5 bucks. So, while going back up, she says "Kaise chor ho aap ... neeche waale to iske 5 rupaye extra nai maang rahe! " Anish Aashish and I burst out laughing! It was hilarious... bina soche samjhe kuch bhi bol deti hai.. and then she argued half the way up ki maine kuch galat thodi kiya... wo chori hi to kar raha tha ! Upar chadte chadhte everyone started feeling hungry ... Aditya was of the opinion that we should make this climb a regular part of our daily warm up and I was totally for it :D We were to go to Lake Mist next, and what a stupid thing it turned out to be! First of all, the place where we were taken had no lake in sight. Then we were told that upon entry, we would be taken to the lake and in any case it was an artificial lake so it couldnt be very big... we told him that let one of us go inside check out the lake and then decide whether all of us want to go in ... he flatly refused for that ... and we decided to hell with it! It seemed a very stupid place.. not a single person around except for us and the rates for entry were so HIGH! OMG!! We went back up and asked our taxi walas to take us to some other place instead (kinda reminded of of that Mall in Kanpur!) and he agreed to take us to a temple. The temple also had a long climb up but the views from the top were breath-taking! We also saw an owl and a woodpecker .. it was a very quiet and peaceful place.. by the time we left from there, everyone was deadd tired and hungry. We realized that we did not have any money to pay the taxi walas, so they had to take us to an atm first and then they dropped us off at the library square. It was around 5 then... already time for Aashish to leave :( and the sense of trip coming to an end loomed over everyone. Aashish's taxi was at 7 ... and we had our meal and headed back to the hotel. once in the hotel, we wasted no time in getting under the blankets... aashish had to pack and leave.. and he took away my camera for the much awaited "bonding session" :P (abhi tak wapas nai mila hai camera) .. we started watching movies.. pehle I Robot, then Transformers, then Pearl Harbour ... in between we were supposed to have dinner but were in no condition to get up. Chuun and Aditya went for non veg and we asked them to get some biscuits and amul kool for us. Thoda sa room service se order karwa liye and till 1-2 we were watching movies, then some friends.. and then finally good night. The valley looked very beautiful from our room at night. It was like a sea of yellow stars stretched across the valley .. at 3 AM, Sukhada msged saying that she had finally reached! What a torture it must have been for her! And with that, another awesome day came to an end ....
(why am i the one subject to THIS torture always? I get so sad while writing it :-/)
Muzzooorrieee day 1
The first day at mussorie. We reached dehra dun in the morning at 615. Took infi time to get down from the train. We were probably the last people to get off. We were so lazy that we started the process of getting down only when the we heard the train whistle and got scared that it was going to the yard. Sharada was the first to get up and was so hyper that she was down from her berth more than half an hour before the train arrived. From the dehra dun station we took 2 taxis to mussoorie. It was early early morning. Even before sunrise. Infact during the taxi ride, we saw the sunrise. I felt a bit dizzy during the ride and around 730 we reached the top. We took rickshaws to the honeymoon inn hotel and luckily the rooms were already ready. And they were AWESOME!!! The girls got a proper honeymoon suite complete with a circular bed and curtains:-p it was really funny!! They also had a huge mirror facing the bed and we'd a mini photosession then and there. They seemed pretty pleased with the room too !! We ordered our breakfast and most of the things werent good at all, i guess apart from the pao bhaji (for which ironically anvita had been subject to a lot of ridicule already) nothing was good at all. The milk had a layer of oil on the top of it. Post breakfast anish and aashish left in quest for tea. I was so sleepy, i probably couldnt anyway have stayed up a minute longer. We decided to get up by 12 for sightseeing. I got up to anish's screams " do baj gaye be... Kya sote rehete ho." and bas sabko zorr zorr se uthane chala gaya. Fight maarke we all got ready to go by 230 and then began our search for finding an agreeable place for lunch. Sharada anish and i wanted to eat at nirulas, chuun aditya and tejas wanted to have some proper nonveg food. They ended up eating somewhr else. Nirula's at mussoorie was pretty nice, the ambience was really good and the food was not bad either. We had pizzas, chole bature and death by chocolate which after chuun's arrival hardLy anyone got to taste ... Oh yeah, on the way to nirulas we stopped at infi roadside shops for buying gloves and topis. Must have irritated atleast a dozen shopkeepers looking at their stuff and not buying anything at all... Aashish and i became glove partners too :-p we then went to the gunhill point. We had to take a trolley to the top of the hill. Anish had never been on a cable car before and so he was quite excited about it. But it was one boring ride up and it hardly took 5 minutes. On the top of gunhill it was quite breezy and chilly. We got engrossed in our usual random photography clicking away arbitly here and there. The funny thing was there was a sort of balcony like area where everyone was clicking pics and the doorway to it had "toilet" written on it :-p the views were pretty good from the place. There were infi tp games shops at the top. Chuun tried his hand at that balloon shooting game and he turned out to be quite good at it. Obviously, his gloating accompanied his success :-P we also tried our hand at archery which was quite fun...the girls bought some funny springlike bracelet thingy. We then had an unusually quiet time as we all sat cramped between 2 shops watching the sunset. With that we decided to proceed down to the mall road. Anish had been having a relatovely quiet bday till then and we wr all thinking how we could make it better, once down from the cable car, i decided to fake sickness ( which incidently is a very genuine excuse for me now :-/) and see if somethin could be done in the room. I told sharada to take as muh time as possible to return to the hotel while i got all the stuff required. In the end, i must say that i was quite pleased with what i could manage and the only dampner wad that i anish came to the room unexpectedly and hence i didnt have the time to light the candles and put on the happy bday song on my laptop. (He just had to choose that moment to pee didnt he!!) anyway, he was very touched with the surprise and went on like " pagal hai kya be!! Ye sab kaun karta hai... Gale mil yaar!!" we had a great time then with the snow spray and the ribbon spray and cake and balloon bursting. The only thing missing was putting cake on his face, but the baddy team is too mindful not to waste any cake. By the time we were done woth the celebratuons, the room was in such a mess that we were too ashamed even to ask the reception guy to clean it up. Thankfully, the hotel ppl were very helpful and sent someone to clean up the room immediately even at that late an hour. We went for dinner at udupi where the food wasnt so good... But everyone was probably on their best mood of the trip, so dinner was a very enjoyable experience. Chuun was thoroughly satisfied with his onion uttapam...idlis were ok, but sambaar and chutni were horrible. I started feeling very senti that night when i realized that anish and aashish wont be around the next year... After dinner, anish and aashish wanted to have tea and we went in search of that. Chuun tejas and aditya had "gatored" plans and were getting their stuff ready. We wandered off in search of tea... It was a beautiful night... Soo starry ... Plus it wasnt surprisingly very cold too. Anish and aashish pained me for a while and then anish narrated his love story to aashish (will i ever tire of hearing that one!!) later we headed back to the rooms ... Huun and others had already got underway and were strting to go in tht "funny" place ... We decided to play cards for sometime and after a lot of debating, started playing 250 a game much like 304 which mittal (wish i had an option to tag people in the blog, that way mittal wouldnt have had to read the whole entry to see where he was mentioned :-P) had taught... The girls had refused to play with us, anvita was probably feeling very uncomfortable and she went off to he room. Sharada wasnt feeling well and she was reading her book. The game finally got underway but 5 minutes into the game, we realized it was a futile activity tryin to play woh chuun in that state. Everytime the game reached a crucial juncture, he did something stupid and started laughing like an idiot. Chuun wad blabbering random stuff about MI "youngistan ka wow" how he was interviewed and what not...Anish aashish and mera kaafi giveup ho chuka tha and we decided to turn in for the night. Anish went off with his phone and so did aashish. Tired with such an eventful day and happy that i could make a very special friends bday memorable, i went to sleep in a very happy state :) for once not thinking about the inter iit loss...
Muzzooorieeee
Thus begins our mussorie trip... And not without much excitement... Infact 5 hours ago, we were at the brink of canceling the whole plan. The one thing that excited everyone for mussoorie was the mahindras resort, and when i went to print the confirmation today, to my great shock, i discovered that the booking had been made for november 22 and 23. Wow!! Could i really mess it up this much?! Sharada was with me when i made the discovery and to her credit, she was quite cool about it. I probably experienced a million emotions in that instant. Was i really this dumb?!! Why always me?!! And why on this tour everything that could go wrong continued to go wrong :-/ i dreaded telling aashish anish and others that the one thing we'd been looking forward to after our defeat might also not work out. Well, in the end, it has somehow been sorted out and we hv ended up with 3 super delux rooms in the honeymoon inn hotel. :-P the name has already been a talking point in the team. So it ws decided to leave the hostel at 930 pm for hauz khas metro and by ten we bid farewell to the iitd campus. I was surprised to find no one else really senti about leaving (except for anish, though for entirely different reasons :-p ) i, on the other hand felt quite sad to be leaving. Lots of things kept goin through my mind in those final moments of packing. Its really strange how one experiences such contrasting emotions while packing. When in bombay, i was thrilled!! Today, i couldnt bring myself to start packing right until the last moment... All those scenes of inter iit kept playing in my mond .... arriving in the morning and finding those stupid partioning walls in the rooms ... Moving the beds together in aditya and tejas's room only to never really use them... Going out for late night tea ... Sitting in the room with aashish chuun and anish and watching friends... Siting with sharada and sukhada trying to work out kgps doubles ... Even lying on the bed all day sick worrying whether i'd be okay for the quarters ... Making plans to move around delhi ... Going to these boring historic places only to click infi infi pictures ( god knows how many facebook display puc every has now to choose from, though i'd sure miss putting the annual pic with the trophy this time :-( ) ... Am i ever goin to experience all this again?! :-(
Anyway, digressed a bit there, (still obviously experiencing the post inter iit blues) so our ride from hauz khas to new delhi took about half an hour. I was sitting with anvita and she was on a roll. Some guy was playing music on his cell inside the metro and evidently its not allowed in delhi metros. And this gets anvita started " kaun dhakkan hai ye jo zorr zorr se gaane bajaa raha hai? " " Main zorr se isliye bol rahi hoon ki wo sune aur band kare" this even got the stranger guy next to us laughing :-) at ndls we walked walked and walked to get out of the metro station, then took some time in figuring out which platform the train would be on. Delhi station sucks! For one thing they dont even have proper boards showing which train is on which platform and the overhead walkway is so so high, its a real pain carrying all the luggage up. Our train was on platform 13 ( another unlucky number :-/, i seriously have my fingers crossed literally all the time. I couldnt help wondering if we really were getting on the right train, only when the TT left after checking the tickets did i breathe a sigh of relief)
We celebrated anish's bday on the train. Once Again, thanx to my (and aashish's) lack of foresight, we didnt have a knife to cut the cake. Jugaad to the rescue and after a rather sombre celebration, junta started getting ready to sleep. Sharada took her usual infi time to get the cleanest sheet, pillow and blanket and then setting up her berth. Anish pretended to be asleep barely minutes after cutting the cake. Guess he's still very sad about leaving vasudha. Aashish and aditya waited quite patiently while sharada had her fun with the bed before going up on their berths. Poor anvita was left waiting for ghaziabad to come as the TT had given the berth to some other guy till ghaziabad ... And now as i write this, someone has really farted a bad bad one :-/ :-/ why is this the only time i dont have a blocked nose!!
Anyway, digressed a bit there, (still obviously experiencing the post inter iit blues) so our ride from hauz khas to new delhi took about half an hour. I was sitting with anvita and she was on a roll. Some guy was playing music on his cell inside the metro and evidently its not allowed in delhi metros. And this gets anvita started " kaun dhakkan hai ye jo zorr zorr se gaane bajaa raha hai? " " Main zorr se isliye bol rahi hoon ki wo sune aur band kare" this even got the stranger guy next to us laughing :-) at ndls we walked walked and walked to get out of the metro station, then took some time in figuring out which platform the train would be on. Delhi station sucks! For one thing they dont even have proper boards showing which train is on which platform and the overhead walkway is so so high, its a real pain carrying all the luggage up. Our train was on platform 13 ( another unlucky number :-/, i seriously have my fingers crossed literally all the time. I couldnt help wondering if we really were getting on the right train, only when the TT left after checking the tickets did i breathe a sigh of relief)
We celebrated anish's bday on the train. Once Again, thanx to my (and aashish's) lack of foresight, we didnt have a knife to cut the cake. Jugaad to the rescue and after a rather sombre celebration, junta started getting ready to sleep. Sharada took her usual infi time to get the cleanest sheet, pillow and blanket and then setting up her berth. Anish pretended to be asleep barely minutes after cutting the cake. Guess he's still very sad about leaving vasudha. Aashish and aditya waited quite patiently while sharada had her fun with the bed before going up on their berths. Poor anvita was left waiting for ghaziabad to come as the TT had given the berth to some other guy till ghaziabad ... And now as i write this, someone has really farted a bad bad one :-/ :-/ why is this the only time i dont have a blocked nose!!
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