Tanjore Trip

It was good! :) One of my team mates (colleagues) got married on 27th Jan. First of all, Congrats to him and God bless his married life!

The reception was on 26th Jan. That being a national holiday, we guys (from office) decided to go for the reception. We started from Chennai on the 25th night by train. I have to mention that Indian railways has gone really bad now. Earlier it used to be only rats, now there are rats and the resident cockroaches. But then there is an improvement too, to be able to charge laptops and mobile phones. So I was able to watch a movie till 4 AM. :)

We reached Tanjore by 7 o'clock in the morning of 26th Jan. We got out of the train and were greeted with this wonderful view.



Went to the hotel (The Oriental Towers)




Its a real good hotel for a town like Tanjore. Eight storey, I guess.



Well maintained, has a swimming pool and if you get a room like mine (room no. 715) then you can have beautiful view of the temple top.






Then we went to visit the periya temple (means "Big Temple")and yes it is really big!
Built by this Chola Raja







Some better Tanjore pics are available here.

Then we went to the Tanjore Sivagangai Park. Not much to see there, but if you are going with kids, it's definitely a great place. There is a mini zoo with peacocks (and Peahens), foxes, deers, Guinea pigs, rabbits, pigeons, parrot, oh and lots of "love birds"... :)

park pics are available here.

On our way back to the hotel, we had lunch(very good lunch) at the marriage hall and slept blissfully at the hotel for four hours before going to the marriage hall for the reception.

Joe

Read more...

Chennai to almost so many places!!

Chennai to ooty / Gokarna / Coorg / Nagarhole

This time when my good friend Deepak made his visit to India, we thought we will do a trip. The plan was to go to Blore, pick up Andy and then decide on where to go.

And you will read on to understand the title of the blog and my pitiable state of my health. :)

Deepak and me started from Chennai on Saturday at 9:30 AM, reached Blore by 2 PM. I had a bad burger (didn't know that then but it did taste different ) at McD Blore. Over the BAD burger we decided we will go Ooty, by the end of that BAD burger two things happened:

1. I felt like puking
2. Somehow, someone suggested we go to Gokarna. Seemed good, so we all agreed on that. It was only 480 Kms from Blore and two out of the three of us could drive.

Thus Ooty got cancelled. And Gokarna began.

We walked around for a while and my whole body started aching, which generally means I'm gonna crash down with fever. The cool evening breeze didn't help the cause either.

By dinner I had fever and with one of the drivers down there was no way we could have done the 480 Km drive. So we decided to go some place closer - Coorg.

Thus Gokarna got cancelled. And Coorg began.

We started out from Blore by close to 10 PM. On the way I started shivering and the fever started. We figured a stop at Barista would do us good. Nice place on the highway.



As we sat there and discussed about the route, we realized the roads were real bad for a night drive. So we decided to go to Nagarhole.

Thus Coorg got cancelled. And Nagarhole began! :)

We began from Barista by midnight. The roads had lots of bumps and some part of it didn't dividers. So Deepak had to go slow. At some places there were no sign boards and of course no soul on the road to ask.

Sign boards, sign boards everywhere, not one useful one!!



Somehow we managed to reach Hunsur by 4 AM. All the while me shivering and the body temperature increasing. It must have been close to 104 degrees fahrenheit. At 4 AM we saw a "Coorg Cafe" open. We went in to get something hot and I was almost blacking out. My mouth started tasting funny and I knew it was coming. So had run out of the cafe and puked. BAD BAD McD BURGER!! We were in the middle of a freaking forest, no hospitals nearby and I was burning. Guys decided its better to get back alive than stay there and have one of us dead. So by 5 AM we found a malayali lodge (There's a malayali everywhere. Thank God!) It was dingy but had bed and we were happy for that. We took a 3 hour nap and drove back to Blore, reached by 1 o'clock in the afternoon.

Thus Everything got cancelled !!

That was the account of how we almost went to Ooty / Gokarna / Coorg / Nagerhole. :)

Cheers

Read more...