Yelagiri - - We made it Happening!!

04:45:55
Alarm was screaming at its loudest pitch! But i never woke up! It was a warm saturday morning after a hectic week. No wonder it was hard to wake up. But the sudden flush of enthusiasm poured in.. yes.. yelagiri.. made me wake up like a bolt. I rubbed my eyes, just to discover that, my whole family has woken up because of that alarm but me! alas! but i immediately rushed into the bathroom!
It was 5.30 when i started from my house. already late by half an hour! Picked up Mr.V, Ms.G, Ms.A, Ms.N and Ms.S (Names shortened :) ) Sun had already come out of its den. It took us an hour to go away from the concrete jungle and have a glimpse of some greeneries. The trip was not a school trip to keep "Finger on the lips". We wanted to play. But as every other group has, our group too had the starting trouble. To melt the ice, we had no other choice but to start a fight between, which movie is better, Chandramukhi or manichitrathaz (As our group had tamilians and mallus!!) Even though the argument was mild, it provided us enough spark to create a fire! Antakshari was started. No trip was complete without an anthakshari and ours was no different. Songs varied from Hindi to malayalam to tamil, and from the times of Raj Kapoors to mohan lals to Suryas! Then on, we pleaded time to move slowly. Only then i understood, under the facade of cultural diversity, every kid (22 though :P) loves to enjoy to the fullest in the same way!

It was almost 9 and my stomach showed signs that it was time to break the morning fast. We went to Hotel Saravana bhavan. myself and mr.V faced the usual problem, when the Damsels are more in number,they just ordered a plate of Idly [which just had two  iddlies] and declared that, 2 idlies will be sufficient. Even though we too wanted to stop, we couldn’t. we went on for two more plates of dosa!

The next stop was jolarpettai railway station. One more guy joined our tour. Mr.P. It took another half an hour to reach Yelagiri. Boating was the first activity. We took two pedal boats! Then it was a small trekking experience! (Even though the ppl came for the tour won’t accept it as trekking!! ) We walked in the greeneries
till the foot of a hillock. I took out the phone to make a call, just to find out that there was no signal. I confirmed with others just to make sure whether, it was only for me, but to my surprise, none of the mobile phones had signal. It was a nice feel though, to go off the grid in our own country!! We took pics, standing over rocks, posing with a cranky smile, which just ensured us that we will have great memories down the years when we see those pics.

It was almost noon, and we were searching for a restaurant. We saw one near the park. The variety of cars parked in front of the hotel, the façade of the building, the cacophony of the utensils, gave us the feel that, it was the busiest and the best hotel in Yelagiri (may be the TAJ of yelagiri :P) . But as the old adage goes “Appearances are deceptive”. It just had meals and no variety. The idea that we would starve made us eat there. Our next destination was the Park. The dance performance of Ms.G on a wooden plank was the harbinger of all the joy we had for the whole of evening! We nearly ragged her to make her dance (It was not a pappu dance ppl… a real nice one) That gave a new life to the tour! Then the see-saw games and photo sessions! Everything made us laugh like hyenas! It was almost sunset and we started back! The beautiful mountain curves of Yelagiri was awe-inspiring and Ms.N desperately wanted to take a pic of it! But to her disappointment, the local monkeys present over there surrounded her and ensured that she couldn’t take the picture :D.

The happy tour of us came to an end and we started back to Chennai. To add on, even the movie we watched in the car while coming back ended just before the apartment of Ms.G. Even though I never had the “Happily ever after Syndrome”, this incident took me closer to acquire the syndrome!

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