We had a long weekend coming up... JK insisted on starting a 'Bangalore Chodo Andolan.' I was not so keen on a 4 day outing.. primarily because I didn't want to miss Jujitsu classes over the weekend. At around 5 pm..We began googling for 1- day trips from Bangalore. By 7 pm, we had completely finalized trips to 3 different locations.
Suddenly at 7.38 pm,we dropped all three locations and decided to go to Hogenekkal. We booked our cab and persuaded Pradeep and Samba to join us. By 8.30 Samba had dropped out of the plan twice... finally at 9 pm he decided that he would come. We decided to leave office at 6.30 am. We managed to leave at 7.15 am.
As impromptu as our trip was, luck was truly on our side! We managed to get the perfect driver for our trip. Why do I think he was the perfect driver?
1. On reaching Hosur, he told us there were two routes to get to Hogenekkal.. either via the main road or via the interior roads (read jungles, mountains and natural terrain)and.... he took us through the junglee route :-)
2. He ensured we stopped for breakfast before we went into the jungle territory. Breakfast was at a 4x4 sq ft soot covered Hotel Selvam... needless to say, the food was awesome.
3. When we needed a pee break, and there was no hotel/ petrol station in sight, he stopped at his friend's place and so that we could do what we needed to :-)
4. He negotiated with the Coracle guy so that instead of the usual 500, we had to pay only 350.
5. By the time we came back from our Coracle ride, he had already made arrangements for our lunch.
6. And most importantly, he put up with JK's and my singing.
After the Coracle ride, we were famished... our knight in the white Indica (aka our driver) took us to this tiny shack with 3 rickety plastic tables. By this point we were beyond questioning his judgment, we just pulled up chairs, sat at one of the rickety tables and indulged in a never-witnessed-before spree of gluttony.
Our initial plans included visiting the local Aquarium and a Crocodile Rehabilitation center (well I was not too keen on meeting Crocs in rehab)... Anyway, once lunch was over with, all that we wanted to do was get inside the air-conditioned car and fall asleep. After a quick round of ice creams, we left Hogenekkal and headed back to Bangalore. And that's how the one day vacation ended.
P.S. We also discovered Pradeep had Velcro feet- he just would not slip on any of the rocks. Samba has also patented a technique of ensuring one never loses his/her balance while boarding a coracle... he just crash lands sideways and then sits cross legged where ever he's landed.
