I never knew I take one whole evening to pack for a two day trip. Anyway, 90 of us started at 9.30 on Thursday night (16.9.2010), a good hour and a half after we assembled near the bus.
The bus ride was the usual fare-senseless screaming and dancing like other people didn’t exist- exactly what you’d expect from a busload of students just recovering from the latest internal disaster.Guess, the best road to recovery is the one that leads to Bangalore.
Bangalore was up and about when we reached there on Friday morning. The first on the agenda was the visit to IBM ( Mind you, this was about the only thing that we did that vaguely resembled the agenda).After checking into our hotel rooms, 30 of us set out to visit “the hallowed ground” leaving the rest behind to enjoy a leisurely breakfast.What was supposed to be an hour-long journey took more than twice that time, thanks to pur able tour guide.
We ended up attending only one out of the three planned sessions.Despite that, the IBM visit was easily the best thing that happened on the two days.I was very much the awe-struck kid who gets to visit the chocolate factory.Not everday do you get to visit a company that you study sbout in your text books.We knew we were lucky to be among the 30 people that got to visit IBM; What we didn’t know was that shortly after we went in,the rest of the party arrived and camped outside, impatient for us to get the visit over with so that we could move on to more inporntant things like shopping.Let me just say that people didn’t take kindly to all that waiting, more so since lunch was among the things that didn’t go according to the agenda.
We were then dropped at Majestic Circle which we were told was at a “walkable distance” from our hotel and told to get back by 8.00. To someone accustomed to getting cooped up inside the hostel by 6.30, this was bliss. But out elation at our new-found freedom didn’t last long.Wouldn’t you know, it started raining!We jumped into the first auto that stopped( which,by the way, wasn’t the first auto that we tried stopping, or the second, or the third…you get the picture).
The auto driver didn’t recognise the name of the hotel when we told him.Not bad, we thought.Or the street.ok! and since we were linguistically-challenged Kannada-wise, we had no clue if he recognised the area even. Many helpful pedestrians and a detour later we were at our hotel, our purses a 100 bucks lighter due to that auto-ride across “walkable distance”.
Being the incorrigible optimists that we are, we hoped in vain for a better second day.Alas, that was not to be! We checked out the next day and headed to the other planned company.By then, most of us had decided that we had seen enough for one IV and opted to skip it to enjoy a game of anthakshari inside the bus while only the incurably perseverant among us ventured in.Our next stop was at Vishweshwaraya musuem,which, to my surprise, turned out to be quite enjoyable.Science and Fun! Strange bedfellows indeed.
We then tried in vain to get the guys to stop at ISKCON( They were the majority and so they had the say). They had FORUM in mind. And yes, we ended up at FORUM.
A couple of hours of window-shopping and we’d had enough. You know something’s off when a girl gets tired of shopping (alright, window shopping even).And before I knew it, we were on our way back to Coimbatore, wiser and disillusioned.
Lessons from our IV:
1.plan! unless you want to spend the better part of the trip waiting in the bus, waiting for the bus, waiting for the bus to find the place.
2.Pick fun staff( that’s an oxymoron right there!).Not ones that simply sit and sleep or worse yet, sit and stare.
3.Stick to your agenda. There is nothing more disappointing than an ambitious agenda gone awry( I would know)
4.And for God’s sake, pick a guide who actually knows the place around.
GREAT post...seriously, good stuff!!! funny narration..... a bit long... but the matter is entertaining enough to make us forget how long it is!!!! looking forward to the next post!! @_@ post one quick!!
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