Bandipur - Part 1 : The Making of the Trip

The year 2009 has just begun. Get a call at around 1030 hrs from my friend, Vijay C R. He then takes me into a conference call with a couple of other guys (Rishabh and Vijay). They plan to meet either for dinner or lunch today. After a small discussion, its finally decided that we shall meet for lunch. Venue is decided that we shall meet at a place called 'Neel'. Now, this place is located in an area called New BEL road. Here, i get to meet C R, Rishabh, Vijay Olety (we shall now call him Viju henceforth) and Chetan (Big C). Meeting Big C after a long time, for he's in the States pursuing his M.S in San Diego.

Here its decided that we need to go to someplace for an outing. Though the date is decided as the 9th to 11th Jan, the place was yet to be decided. After lunch, we depart and I head home to have a nice sleep, for I'd a night shift that day.

Cut to Jan 4th. Time is around 2200 hrs. Rishabh calls as he would to get a few people into conference. As I'm the only person with the conference facility, got Harsha (Viju's cousin), Viju, Big C and Akhil (my neighbour) in the conference. It's now decided that we shall head towards Bandipur. Though there were some other places suggested, it's Bandipur who won the trust vote.

With the place decided, it was time to decide on the dates and the place of stay in Bandipur. We had a look at several options such as staying in huts, tents, proper brick houses etc. With the current recession in mind and with many people facing monetary issues, it's finally decided that Jungle Homes shall be the destination in Bandipur....wait a minute thats not Bandipur, its Gudulur. This is 18 kms from Bandipur.

Anyway, with all required stuff decided, it was time that we all end our conversation, which lasted for more than an hour. 'T was fun with 6 of us in the conference. But, the phone bill will be the spoil sport at the end of this month :'( .

On Jan 6th, I make a payment to book the rooms at Jungle Homes. With all things in place, venue decided, the rooms booked along with the food arrangements, 2 cars decided, 9 people agreed, we thought the going shall be smooth. Now, hasn't this ever happened to anyone in this world, when you think that everything is in its correct place and nothing can go wrong, there is something or someone to spoil the entire thing. Well, in our case too, the petroleum people decided to spoil the plan.

Now you may think, what can these guys do to us? Well, think hard and think again. They decided to go on a strike, resulting in no supply of fuel across the country. With, no petrol being available for a indefinite period of time, people started to panic and thronged to the petrol bunks. Result, many petrol tanks were dry and some of them who were still operational, had the entire city crowd in it waiting to fill their vehicles to the brim. There was utter chaos all around.

We had to fill our 2 cars too in this chaos and decided not to use the car till the date of journey. This was on Thursday, 8th Jan. Earlier, in the conference call, some of them decided to head towards a place called Ramnagar, just for the heck of it. Due to the unavailability of the petrol in many places, this plan was later dropped. Original plan was to go to Ramnagar on the 9th and on the 10th to Bandipur and return to Bangalore o the 11th.

The strike was on till Friday and was later resolved after the intervention of the Army. This meant that the petrol shall now be available in all stations with immediate effect. Hurray for the Army. This meant that now our journey on the 10th shall a wild one in the forests.

The 10th day of the new year finally dawned and we were now off to Bandipur.

VG
17th Jan '09

An Introduction

Created this site a few months back. Never bothered to check or post any in this section.

Was wondering what to put in this section. I'm not such a great writer of any sorts. Though i enjoy reading, but never wielded a pen so far. Hence there are no such entries in this website.

Apologies if you find no regular posts.

VG
14th Jan 2009