2006 New Year's Eve - Journey to the never never land.

It was a quick plan, for a new year outing and just 2 days before the new year, Vijay the travel expert suggested the place Tholpetty, just 2 days to go there was no way to reserve a hotel room, or should I say we did not bother to, we checked with other friends if they would join us and as usual everyone had their excuses, except for Raghu(No, this is not Raghavendra/Paapu), at that time I was still working at Q-soft ...,

Vijay came down to my place, I had just woken up and was getting ready, meanwhile Vijay said he would go visit Big daddy (Sham) and be back, meanwhile I had some work and had to leave and return in an hour, when I returned Vijay had also returned and was waiting for me and it surprised me to see one of his eyes swollen, he said a bumble bee stung when he was riding back to my place, My mother suggested some home remedy, anyways we finally started off and drove to Raghu's place at Yelahanka, had lunch there at Shanthi Sagar and all 3 of us started off to Tholpetty.

We just kept driving all we had in the car was a 2 liter water bottle and a 10s cigarette pack, filled up fuel and drove towards mysore road, it just went on and on and meanwhile we are planning what we would do that night once we reached the place as per the book the place is about 250+ km from bangalore and we were to reach the place by 10:30, and hoped to atleast find some cheap place where we could get liquor and food to start the new year with, Initially Raghu drove for about an hour or 2, then Vijay took over the rest while Raghu was engrossed with his phone calls, the road just seemed to be growing long and long and the sky grew darker and darker when suddenly Vijay said may be we are off track, and we just realized that we on the highway driving in the wrong lane literally, the road was empty for a while and suddenly all vehicles trucks and lorries heading right at us, we had got confused a bit (for now), because of the road work that was happening, Vijay managed to drive through the road till we entered the proper lane, time had flown by it was 7:30 PM and we decided to stop for a quick chai and went a shop at the edge of the road, even before we bought the chai, Vijay asked how far was it to get to the place, and the shop keeper replied from Nagarhole toll gate it is 30 km, and the toll gate was about 1 hour distance, god knows what he meant by that anyways, we dropped the idea of having chai and headed straight just to reach the toll gate 15 minutes late and we did not get entry, then the guy there said the gates are closed till the next day and if we wanted to we could take the side road which is generally used by trucks and lorries.


We paid the guards at the road and entered the alternate road, little did we know what was ahead, we kept driving the night was getting colder and the only lights are of the vehicles head lights, and once in a while we saw lorries passing by, the roads were awefully battered and stones flew underneath hitting against the chasis of the car and time was approaching 11PM, we still hoped to reach the place before midnight, and still hoping to get a place at the Inspection bunglow, Howz that for positive attitude, now and then we hit upon small checkpoints which checked if people carried liquor, and in all the 3 places we stopped and we inquired how far the place was, everyone just replied "another 30 Km", the 30 Km never seem to be finishing, Vijay kept driving without giving up and I sat beside him, by this time Raghu was fast asleep, poor guy had never been on wild trips like these before, after that he never joined us anywhere we went.

Well it was midnight and we were still in the middle of the forest, all cold outside the glasses were mist covered and the wiper had to be put on to wipe away the mist, and then we wished each other "Happy New Year" and laughed over the situation, in fact we had to wake up Raghu, we were travelling for almost 4 hours continuously from the Nagarhole side road and we wanted to free up the bladder, we got down and took positions
at the road edge while Raghu came out of the car and leaning over it by his back and flogged his Mr. Happy, I am sure he was shit scared as we heard the wild cries in the wilderness, what else can you expect, we were inside the Nagarhole National Park .

For a moment we thought (Me and Vijay, Raghu was already cursing us and went back to sleep again.) we did a wrong thing, well there were no options than to continue further, we just hoped we find some human habitation or atleast reach some place, and as we continued then there was this thing which jumped across the car and we were awestruck, it was a spotted deer which leapt across the road in front of us it was a site to see, while we were thrilled, a little fear grew deep within thinking of what is to come ahead.
and then after a while having gone still further we could see that the road curving towards left and right ahead in the dark we could see 2 bright shining spots, what could that be, there was no movement of any sort, we proceeded further and the 2 lights gleamed more brightly, and when the headlights hit the end of the road I could feel my heart in my stomach, it was huge bison, a wild buffalo probably, whatever it was it was huge and hairy, we just continued at the curve and hoped the damn thing doesn't start chasing us, well later I learnt Bisons are shy creatures, well on a day like that I would not have been surprised if the Bison had become the bold one and had started at us.

Finally we reached a toll gate and asked the guy there where was Tholpetty and he replied
Tholpetty was about 50 meters behind us, the time was almost 1:30
and we asked him if we could get some place to spend the night and if we could get something to eat and drink, he replied "Sir, Just proceed 100meters you will enter Karnataka", our hearts just sank, with not much choice we did so and we saw the drunken youth celebrating the new year, to our luck there was this small shop which was open there, people were talking either in malayalam or coorgie or kannada were we asked if we could find a place to sleep and to our luck we found a place it was a new lodge which was still under construction and the guy there said we could stay there but there was no fans, well who cared it was cold outside, we picked up a pack of biscuits, there were no cigarettes available and we were left with just one stick, luckily Raghu was not a smoker so just 2 to share ;-) , though Raghu cursed us, me and Vijay were glad to have reached a safe place and to be sleeping the night on a proper bed.

We woke up the next day and we headed straight to a place where we could eat, we ate like we were hungry our whole lifetime and then headed to irupu falls a beautiful place around and then on the way back we stopped for a quick kudix (booze) and returned home in the late evening on 1st Jan.