Don't plan a one-day trip to Ooty!!!!!

Meh!

The trip was not how I had imagined it would be.

The first failure was the duration of the trip itself. The one-day trip to any place that is more than 50 kilometres would be an exhausting one. The plan was to start our ride before 6 and reach the hills via Mettupalayam on or before 10 AM. It would’ve been a perfect trip if we had followed this timing. But our trip started nearly at 7 AM and we reached Ooty way after 12 PM.

The next disappointment was the places. We planned to visit 2 most important locations in Ooty – The first one was the Botanical Gardens and the second place was the Dhoddabeta. Again, this was failed due to the timing. It was partially my fault too. I was adamant in having the refreshments and spent nearly one and a half there. Later it became a huge money issue. Then we went for shopping. We wanted to visit at least one of these places and decided to go to Dhoddabeta. 

We had almost reached the place and suddenly, the rain started pouring in. The coldness went up a notch and I couldn’t able to feel by fingers anymore. It went rigid and still. Numbness. All I could feel was numbness. With a smoke inducing sigh, we made our way back home.

 

 

Last but not the least, a civil war broke out! I had never imagined that we would have problem because of food and money. In every trip that I had before in my college days, we used to share the money. I still remember my last trip of Kodaikanal. We were planning for the trip for a whole semester. So, I had been saving money at that time. I used to skip meals and dinner to save the money. Finally, after 4 months, I had saved nearly 3000 rupees. I contributed my amount to the gang of 10+ people that were travelling. I never cared about how my money was being used. But this trip was a different one in all sorts. Not only my friends were arguing with me about money, even I too couldn’t able to control myself in spending the money. What originally was a trip of 1000 rupees became 2500 rupees. As far as my personal expenses, I bought a saree for my mother and a purse for my friend.

With a heavy heart, we left Ooty. 

Except NSK and me, all the others went to their respective houses. NSK and I stayed for in SJ’s house for that night. That’s when the pain and the tiredness hit us. After talking for some time and taking pictures in a moody light which SJ had bought recently, we enjoyed the last minutes of the day as we liked.

I dozed off thinking about all the events that transpired the last 3 days.

I had a dream that night thinking about the good things in our trip.

It’s been ages since I spent some quality time with Gundu Mani. Though we started late, we had a blast travelling together. All the discussions we had while travelling were the best moments when compared to the whole Ooty Trip.

The sceneries were beautiful than the ones I had seen in Kodaikanal. But the fact is that we had visited Kodaikanal on the summer holidays. And now, we planned this Ooty trip on the bad time of the year. Travelling Ooty in winter was a bad idea. But to be honest, it thrilled the shit out of me. Especially, going to Dhoddabeta and coming down, we had experienced a kind of mist where all we could see was only the mist. Not even the light of the vehicle. It was so dangerous and so thrilling at the same time. 

I always love shopping. They say shopping is a feminine thing to do. If that’s correct in any way, then I like that to be my feminine part. And the shopping in Ooty was an extra special one. And a bizarre one too. I had never shopped anything in that kind of state. The chillness numbed my brain out and I had a lot of dizzy spells frequently. I hate when it happens and at the same time, I love it. It hard to explain this mixed flow of emotions. And with that feel, I chose a saree for my mother and she liked it. I bought souvenirs for the memory and ate biriyani (which tasted like trash) for the lunch.

The one thing I missed was Pangu. If he’d been there, it would’ve been a perfect trip. We were the outcasts of our college. Now-a-days, Pangu became so busy in his farm work. I hope we would plan for Vellingiri trekking soon.

Though our Ooty plan was a flop. We had learnt from our mistakes. I had an honest man-to-man discussion with SJ on the money issues and the planning we ought to have taken.

I know it’s not easy to plan for this kind of trips. But I did my best. It once again proved my incapability of planning an event well.

So, SJ and I were planning to have a Round trip to Kanyakumari at the end of March. Lovely and TK were tagged with us later. I am in the middle of saving the money for that trip. Not yet started planning for it but, this would be my most well planned (I hope) adventure that I have ever taken. Let’s see how it goes.