The Lazy Bum: The Sitanadi Trip

The Sitanadi Trip – Part 1

How we decided on the trip:

Sometime in mid June, one Friday afternoon, Nagesh, our PM called for a quick team meeting of the projects he handled viz. AISMART FE, AISMART, BOP, ER, NUCORE and RATABASE. This must have woken all those who were in the snooze mode (almost :D). People from all these projects gathered in a conference room with a confused look on their faces. Vijay (the main organizer) and Ashley (played the role of co-organizer on this day) had prepared a presentation of the places we could visit for a team-outing sometime during the coming weekends. It was decided that the destination for the trip would be Sitanadi Nature Camp. After the presentation, as Vijay and Ashley looked around, people still had that confused look on their faces. Perhaps this was not what they were expecting. All of us were given time to think about it. And time passed by …….

Time whizzed past……long enough for everyone to forget about the whole plan. In the mean time, all of us at the AIG account had been on an outing to the PVR theatres one Friday evening to watch the movie Die Hard 4.0 All was well and everyone was happy. And life went on as usual. People were continually getting pestered for their approval on the trip but to no avail. You must have heard actors say about them not having dates for movies. This was a similar situation. The trip was spoken about in the passing and the dates were postponed two or three times. Then in the 2nd week of July, there was another team meeting. The dates were decided as the 14th and 15th of July. 12 people volunteered to go on this trip filled with adventure and excitement: Shivanantham aka Shiva, Lakshmi, Vijay, Ashwin, Randhish, Jiten and his wife, Balamurugan aka Bala, Sunil, Lavanya, Ashley and Vishal.

We decided to start from Bangalore on the 13th night. The excitement amongst the team kept growing as “The Date” approached. The travel guys were contacted well in advance and a tempo traveler was arranged for the journey. The vehicle had a DVD player which was an added bonus.

Excited team members unable to hide their happiness (above).

Shiva working as hard as ever minutes before the trip began

About Sitanadi Nature Camp:

The Sitanadi nature camp is situated amidst & inside the wilds of the Someshwara wildlife sanctuary along the banks of Seethanadi River in Udupi District and is about 400Km(approx.) from Bangalore. The nature camp is located close to the river Sitanadi and the setting is an awesome experience of raw reality. A pleasant drive away from the camp is Agumbe, which receives the third highest rainfall. This location in short is for those daring to go where only eagles have!!.

Indus Outback and Adreno together conduct the monsoon white water river rafting activity & the Koodlu theertha trek.
There is also a very different kind of trek that you are taken to, where you go approx 6 kms into the 8th thickest biosphere in the world…and climb to the Koodlu Theertha waterfalls. The complete experience is exhilarating & just pumps up your adrenaline.

The route: Bangalore -> Tumkur -> Gubbi -> Tiptur -> Arsikere -> Kadur -> Birur -> Tarikere -> Bhadravati -> Shimoga -> Agumbe -> Tirthahalli -> Hebri

July 13th Friday: We start from Bangalore….

(Itinerary: Bangalore ----> Sitanadi Nature Camp, 13th - 14th July 2007)

The trip must have meant different things to each of us. For me, it was a chance to visit this place so close to Udupi in good company, have lots of fun, and slack off work, something I hope to get really good at, so I can write a book about it, and live off the royalties for the rest of my life. Our trip was supposed to be packed with things to do and places to see and we wasted no time in mobilizing ourselves to reach the first rendezvous point, our Banashankari office.

All of us gathered at the MindTree Office at Banashankari at 9:30 pm, well prepared for the journey ahead. At about 10pm we boarded the tempo traveler and we were on our way…

12 excited and restless MindTree minds in a conjusted tempo traveler were making some noise!!!

Along the way, some of us felt thirsty and so we shared “The” Sprite….not everyone wanted this drink…….some quenched their thirst with water. Ashley and Randhish prepared the drink and distributed it to us.

Since there was not much we could do inside the vehicle to pass time, everyone suggested it was movie time… Spiderman 3 it was then…

As the vehicle drove on, many fell asleep. The driver took a pit stop lest he fall asleep as well. It was a welcome respite (to those who were still drowsy) from the cramped seats we were in. Some of us had coffee. We resumed the journey and the rest of us saw the whole movie.

The looong journey continued……

All of us were faast asleep…The headlights of a passing vehicle woke me up from my slumber and only then I realized that the vehicle wasn’t moving. I was rubbing my eyes to be sure when I noticed that the driver was napping on his seat with his legs sprawled across the dashboard to his left. The poor guy must have had a hard and long tiresome day. He had stopped the vehicle a good 100 something Kms from Shimoga. It was 4:30 in the morning. Randhish, Shiva, Vijay (the others who were awake) and I decided to wait until 5am and got of the vehicle to have some tea in the teashop nearby. This was the only shop on this never ending stretch of road and surprisingly open at this unearthly hour. We chatted away till 5am when it started drizzling, slowly at first and then the rain picked up pace. All of us got back into the vehicle.

Shiva always has this serious look on his face but you never know what’s cookin in his mind…Well this was when he decided to have some fun. He started at first by clicking photos of the people who were sleeping and then he did something which made everyone jump out of their seats. He played this ringtone which had a ghostly feeling to it at the loudest possible volume that his mobile could muster. All sleepy heads woke up with a start (except the driver). They didn’t know what hit them and the rest of us had a hearty laugh :D We awoke the driver at 5:15am. He took some time to refresh himself and at 5:30am we resumed our journey. It was pouring cats and dogs outside and were on our way again.