First Trip of My Engineering Life !

It was my first trip of Engineering life with my friends during my First semester holidays.

There wasn’t much planning for this trip. We- Me, Sunil, syed, Udhay, Vinodh (kalam), Vinod (burette) discussed about a few tourist spots of Karnataka and finally came up with Mysuru (Mysore) which is situated at about 140 kM from Bengaluru. All 6 members were ready when we started planning, But it was Me, Sunil , udhay and syed who finally showed up. (This is common with engineering students!). One thing to remember was that, one of my friends vinodh (Burette) made his mom call us, to tell that he isn’t coming for the trip. Udhay used this to tease vinodh throughout the rest of Engineering life.

–Day 1–

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I was residing in bidadi (ramanagara). The others were from Bangalore. They boarded the train to mysore at Bangalore city junction around 6 AM. Due to some uncertainties I couldn’t accompany my friends on the same train to mysore. I boarded a train at Bidadi around 7 AM and reached mysore station around 9 AM. My friends reached there around 9:30 AM. But I was fined at the platform for no reason by TTE(Travelling Ticket Examiner). His argument was that I travelled in express train (in which my friends travelled) with a different ticket. We failed to convince him that I travelled in a different train (what a great start to trip!). Then we had Breakfast! We didn’t had any perfect route plan for the day.

From left- Udhay, Me, Sunil and Syed

Nalvadi Krishnaraja wodeyar statue at KR Circle

Finally an auto rickshaw driver suggested the route plan (experienced!). We took the same auto to reach the first spot- Sri Chamarajendra Zoological gardens, commonly called as “The Mysore zoo”. On entering we found a notice board about Student discount for entry ticket! But when asked for it at the counter, they said it wasn’t available (so sad 😦 ). We bought the tickets and placed all our belongings in the baggage counter, and moved on. Many species of diverse animals are being well-preserved in the zoo. Few of them are giraffes, elephants, gorillas, bears, monkeys, lions, tigers, crocodiles and rhinoceros. It took almost 3 hours for us to look at wide variety of animals which were living in the 150 acre area.

The King

The Punished 😉

Then we boarded a City bus to our next destination which was “Chamundeshwari temple”, situated on top of Chamundi hills. At the temple entrance there was a gopura which had fine carvings. We moved inside and got the blessings of goddess chamundeshwari. Then we thought of resting for a while and sat on a wall behind the temple and the city view from there was mind blowing. One funny moment was that syed’s pronunciation of word VIEWS which made us laugh (Reason sensored!). He said views nodo, views nodo (watch the sceneries). Another tourist attraction was the statue of Mahishasura (king of asuras) located near the temple.

Statue of Mahishasura

Gopura of Chamundeshwari Temple

Our next visit was to mysore’s famous and most visited place – “The Mysore palace”. It was the official residence of the Wodeyars during their rule. The palace is surrounded by garden and has 3 gates. We entered through the south gate (public entrance). All historical things are well preserved in the palace, the main attraction inside the palace was the “Chinnada Ambari” (Golden Howdah) weighing around 750 kg, which is made of pure gold.

Mysore Palace

East Gate of Palace

Tonga Ride

Our final visit of the day was to KRS Dam (Krishna Raja Sagara) which is built across Kaveri river. We hired a tonga (horse drawn vehicle) from palace to reach the nearest bus stop and then headed towards KRS Dam in a city Volvo bus. It was around 5 PM when we reached there. We bought the tickets and entered “Brindavan gardens”. The garden has a botanical park and also has many water fountains.  Then there was the most awaited event, which was the Musical fountain show. It was a spectacular show. The colored lights added beauty to the water flow patterns following the music beats. After the show we had some snacks- Fish fry and Gobi manchurian and then we went to Sunil’s relative’s home which was a few kilometers from the dam.

Water Fountain in Brindavan Gardens

Musical Water Fountain

We were served with a delicious home-made dinner. After dinner we had fruits.  And in spite of exhaustion we had a long chat in the room. That words from sunil “Lo malkolro saaku belagge bega elbeku”(Sleep guys, should get up early in the morning) made us fall asleep. It was like a warning, especially for me.

–Day 2–

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We got up early in the morning around 5 AM (I know few people won’t believe this, well, sometimes miracles happen). We had a hot water bath (water courtesy: Sunil), then dressed up and had breakfast.

Our day schedule was well prepared. Well prepared because, there were only two places to visit i.e, Edmuri and Balmuri mini waterfalls. We took a city bus to a place nearby the falls. From there we hired an auto, it wasn’t a passenger auto, it was a luggage auto! Amazing ride with all the delightful village nature beauty on both sides of the road till we reached the edmuri falls. We spent about 2 hours there. Had wonderful swimming experience with complete refreshment! Then we headed to our last destination Balmuri Falls where there was balmuri temple near the river.

Edmuri mini waterfalls

Balmuri Check Dam

It was time to head back to Bengaluru. We reached the railway station and bought the travelling tickets for 3 of us except sunil as he planned to stay back in Mysore for holidays. As there was 1 hour left for the train to depart we went for lunch and by the time we returned back the train was fully packed. We didn’t even enter into any compartment (indeed we didn’t get a chance in that crowd) so we travelled to Bangalore standing near the door. Udhay and I were chitchatting throughout the 3-hour journey, While Syed was busy on a phone call (come on, you can guess with whom he was talking 😉 )

This trip was special and a memorable one as it was the first trip with my new friends!!!