Trip to Wayanad with some old friends

It was like a dream come true. Twelve college mates getting together after almost 5 years. For two days, we all went back to our engineering hostel days and lived life as if we were 5 years younger. It was wonderful…

 

The coordination for the trip happened through a number of calls mainly anchored by Mr. Pandian. By the way, Mr. Pandian is our dear friend, who happens to be the only person to be in regular touch with all the twelve guys throughout. Among his various ‘talents’, Pandian is also very mature and responsible and we all owe it to him for making this trip possible. As part of planning for the trip, we had a number of conference calls. And these calls were great fun- imagine 10 old friends getting into a conference call and people trying to pull each others’ leg. Before I get into the details of the trip, I should not forget to thank Mr. Janakiraman, who was brave enough to put in his own money to book the train tickets for all of us. Knowing Janaki’s nature, we were all genuinely surprised that he would trust us all and actually put in his money. This didn’t stop us from pulling his leg throughout the trip.

 

The trip was to be in the 2^nd weekend of December. For my room mates and myself, the 

adventure started even before the trip began. We had to rush to the railway station praying to God and we managed to catch the train with about 5 minutes to spare and huffing for breath. Some of us took a couple of minutes to recognize each other. Four years is a long time, and a few of us had changed considerably in appearance. I cannot describe the feeling, but I felt very very good and very young when I suddenly met so many old friends – many of them after a gap of four years. The entire train journey was a lot of fun, but maybe not so much for our poor co-passengers who had to contend with a lot of boisterous noise and crass language.

 

We reached Calicut at around 4 am the next day. It was pretty cold. We caught a bus to Kalpetta (a place in Wayanad district), which was to be our base for the next 2 days. We checked in to the hotel at around 7 am, freshened up and made plans to go mountain trekking. We had a brief taste of mallu food and tea during breakfast and made our way towards Chembra peak. We reached the base at 11 am and were told that it will take 6 hours to scale the peak and come back. Knowing the fitness levels within the group, we didn’t have much hopes of scaling the peak, but nevertheless, we started on our way in high spirits. The scenery was breathtaking even at the base, which was a tea estate. The group was fully equipped with digicams, which didn’t help in speeding up the ascent. Two people stood apart in the group due to the quintessential mobile phone being a permanent attachment to their ears. Mr. Prabhu was talking to his fiancée, which is understandable. Mr. Shiv Narayanan was apparently talking to his company sales team which was handling a product launch. But it was a little strange that there were reports of Mr. Shiv using terms like yes babe, miss you, dating, etc while taking to his sales team. Anyway, moving on from scandals, lets get back to the climb.

 

Excited as we were, we knew that not all of us will be making it till the end. The first casualties were Prabhu and Shiv, who stopped about 1 km from the start. There was speculation from some quarters that they stopped because beyond that point, the mobile phone signal coverage was inadequate. Well, I am not someone who likes to make fun of people, but it did give Prabhu the chance to catch his breath and explain to his fiancée how he was braving the conditions and continuing to climb steep cliffs. I am sure she would’ve been impressed. After some time, Shiv took the tough decision to stand up and continue the climb. Its another matter that his mobile ran out of charge at that point.

 

Midway through the climb, we reached the Heartin lake. It was a small lake- more the size of a pond - in a beautiful heart shape. We took a refreshing break and had an extended photo session in the lake surroundings. From thereon, the climb was quite steep and challenging. The higher we went, the more breathtaking the view was. It was a 5 km climb and I think the group went up till about 4 km. It was difficult, with people having to help out and manage with the slow movers. I, along with Vijay and Janaki took the liberty to leave the group and go another half kilometer further upward and we were rewarded with some truly breathtaking vantage points.

 

We returned to the base by around 4 pm. We learnt that in our absence, our immobile Prabhu was taken for a lifeless rock by a group of insensitive girls who refused to recognize that he was a living creature while making their way through the path. After consoling our distraught friend, we planned for the rest of the day. we were very exhausted and given a choice, I would’ve gone straight to the hotel and crashed. But as it happened, we next proceeded towards Soochipara waterfalls. We reached the waterfall with about an hour of sunlight remaining. It was my first time at a waterfall and I took the opportunity to take a bath. It was thrilling, what with the slippery stones making it a real adventure to cover even 50 meters towards the waterfall. We thoroughly enjoyed – not only the force of the water, but also the scene created by a group of mischievous girls. As we made our way back to the Jeep, I was at the point of extreme exhaustion. We went back to the hotel and I checked my weight to find that I had lost 1.3 Kg of body weight from morning to evening. It was an indication of extreme fluid loss. We took the cue and went into the hotel bar. A bit of brandy and a heavy dose of mallu non-veg food refreshed our bodies before taking to the bed.

 

The next day, we checked out of the hotel and left for Kuruva Island after breakfast. The island had a fairly dense cover of trees and had several streams of water running across. It was a water trek, in which we had to cross the streams, where the water levels varied from knee deep to hip deep (although some would say it was waist deep, its really their problem that their underwear got wet…). The scenery was really cool – and it consisted of more than just Mother Nature.

 

We went back to Kalpetta for lunch and after another heavy round of non-veg attack, we left for Calicut to catch our train. We did some last minute shopping for home and caught the train. The group was much more sober during the return journey, partly because we were exhausted. We browsed the photos that were taken and reminisced the two days of unbelievable fun we had. Morning arrived, Chennai came and we departed on our own ways, back to the life we had been living. The trip was over, but it helped form some of the golden memories in my life.