Go .

Early in the morning of 24th December 2008, Bhatta & Ajay had already woken up and were busy running around the house making noise and trying to get me & Ashwin to wake up. Now there is no use of getting up early and doing nothing but only waiting for the others to get up. But who cares right, their only aim was to prove to themselves that they could wake up early. After all of our heavy morning inertia got over, we managed to get fully ready by around 7'o clock, and that is when the most luckiest thing of the trip happened to Ashwin --- he lost his lucky charm, his thumb ring.

We started to our first destination, Shivalli MTR on Mysore Road near Maddur. That was the basis of this whole trip, the destination after next was never known. We werent a bunch of guys who were trying to discover new places, our biking expedition was nowhere near being a tough one or something to be boasted about. We werent trying to break new grounds, we didnt expect that we would become revolutionaries after this (a la Che Guevera types), we werent looking to change ourselves in any way but yet deep inside each one of us had this fire burning which to a certain extent we hope would be doused by this trip. A fire related to our age, our jobs, our lives, our girls or our no-girls and many more such things. I had so many unanswered questions and what I was looking forward to on this trip was not the answers but more clarity on the questions themselves.

We reached MTR, had nice breakfast, set to Mysore, I took them through all the main thorough fares of Mysore (Mysore being my native). Photo stop in front of Mysore palace, a quick view of our apartment in Mysore, a grape juice at the famous grape juice centre and we were on our way to Nagarhole via Hunsur.

The lady in the forest office (Wildlife divison to be precise) at Hunsur was very cordial and nice according to Ajay and Ashwin (since they were the one's who went inside). She got us some dormitory booked at a place (which was by far the only advance reservation we ever made on this trip).
On the way, we decided to pick up booze and there we were hounded by the locals offering us to take us by car till our place and also to the safari since two-wheelers werent allowed. We declined the offer, and went by bikes all the way till the entry gate, this stretch of road was very beautiful, and the guard at the gate tells us what we already knew --- two wheelers werent allowed inside (forest area you know, full of man-eaters lions tigers ). But the worst part was that there was no office or a proper compound to park our bikes, just some shabby building and lots of open forests. He also badly scolded a driver of another car for having a quarter of liquor and almost made him turn around for the 'sin'. Considering that our bikes could be trampled by elephants (incident narrated by the guard himself) and that we had a bag full of booze, we turned around and headed back to Hunsur, then turned around again and headed back to the gate, clicked two photos and headed back to Hunsur. Ajay was particularly sad about this since he had committed himself (verbally) to that forest office lady and considered his moral reponsibility and we let him take the blame for it, its always better to have one person whom the blame can be put on when such a situation arrives. So the only reservation that we had didnt work out.

We went for lunch to Hotel Suvarna Palace and decided to halt for the night at Kushalnagar based on the advice given by some nice guy who gave us many details about all the lodges in Kushalnagar. He was in fact a waiter in a hotel in Kushalnagar and it seems had come to work here on a month's leave by lying to his boss!!! Just in case we took his reference we were specifically told not to mention that he was working in Hunsur. God bless his soul. He would time & again come to our table and give us more & more information. This prompted me to ask the others if there was something like free information. They felt I might actually hurt his sentiments by offering him money for his "free info" but in the end I did hand over Rs.20 and after the usual "beda bidi saar .." "illa parvagilla thogoli ..." "illa bedaa saar .." "illa parvagilla itkoli .." he accepted it. This incident proved my theory of 'just like there is no free food there is no free inforamtion as well'.

We first went to the tibetan monastery (also called Golden Temple) at Bylakuppe. It was the first time I saw such kind of structures, huge empty halls and huge statues. There was of course detailed literature about the statues and the paintings behind them, but I left Bhatta to read all that. As soon as we entered Kushalnagar, without doing much enquiries we decided to settle in a lodge (Iceberg something) at 800 per night which proved to be the most expensive lodging of the whole trip.
Since I considered all of the others to be very irresponsible with money and lazy enough to keep tab of accounts I took the onus on myself at the start of the trip itself to collect money from everybody and maintain a common pool which would be from where all our expenditures would take place. In the lodge I was giving unnecessary gyaan on some unnecessary topic (cant remember the context) and that is when
Bhatta: See that was free information
Me: Look Bhatta, my information is priceless, there are some things money cant buy ...
Ajay (interrupts before I could complete) : For everything else there's Anup
This line literally became the basis for all the things we spent on this trip.

It was late evening and we were told some cultural event was happening in Veerabhoomi less than 5kms from where we were. We went to that place, there was a nice stage setting and folk programmes going on with a sitting place for audience and also tables for diners. But the tables were preferably alloted to the people staying in the cottages, so we just sat for the programme, I dozed off during the stand-up comedians show, but the dance cum song cum story (musical types) I did watch, the girls were kind of pretty. We returned back to our place and went to this place called Top In Town (makes for a very bad abbreviation) for dinner, came back to the room and having nothing better to do dozed off after finishing the booze of course.

24/12/08: Bangalore-Mysore-Hunsur-Kushalnagar