"24 and Still Single"

"24 and still single, aren't you ashamed??" is exactly what Pande asked when he met me first on 4th April. Yes you guessed it right, It was my 24th birthday and I am still single.

A few hours before that I had been getting calls from friends and family. There is something special about birthday's , you get a lot of calls and people around you try to make it very memorable for you. I really enjoy this, absolutely no complaints. Although I must say that the number of callers has reduced drastically after college. The number of people who wished was nearly half compared to what it used to be in college, courtesy, I had not displayed my birthday to everyone in orkut. Nevertheless I got calls from all of them whom I expected.

Since my birthday fell on a weekend, we planned to go out of Bangalore. Nothing was fixed until the previous night except for the fact that we would go out of Bangalore for a couple of days. Pande booked a very comfortable TT and on the way he had picked up Jayashree, Naveen B, Pooja, Prashant, Pratik and Madhu. It was finally decided that Mysore would be the destination and we set towards that direction. On the way we picked up Bala who was our guide for the next couple of days, from JP Nagar and hit the NICE road. They collect a toll of 18 rupees to travel on NICE road from Kanakpura road to Mysore and its completely worth it. Within 10 mins on the NICE road you will reach mysore road. We still did not have a concrete plan on what would we do or where would we go in Mysore. Bala and me were very skeptical of getting an accomodation in a decent place in Mysore for the weekend. Considering the bad experience of GOA we wanted to have the accomodation booked before reaching the place. Thanks to my uncle while we were having breakfast in Kamat maddur, he made a reservation of 4 rooms in Hotel Sandesh. After a heavy breakfast we headed towards Tannurkere as per Bala's suggestion.This is not the usual tourist spot of Mysore but thats also the best part of it. You cannot see the the lake till the last moment and then you can see a huge lake with very clean water.The 9 of us had one part of the lake completely for us. We swam in thelake for nearly 2 hours and then half heartedly left Tannurkere.

After the swim, all of us were very hungry as we headed towards Mysore. We had lunch in the famous Infy Dhaba which is right opposite Infy campus of Mysore. Lassi is speciality of this place. We then checked in to Hotel sandesh.I guess the heavy lunch was soporific, all of them were into a quick nap except me, Prashant, Pratik and Naveen B. The next 45 mins were very entertaining for me and Prashant because of Naveen's comment on Pratik. I never thought that comment was to be taken that seriously until I saw Pratik's reaction. But after 45 mins I knew we would for sure have fun for the rest of the trip.

At 6.30 we left to the very famous Chamundi hills. This was one of the place we all had thought we would visit for sure in this trip. After a good darshan we had "Yel neeru" (Thanks Madhu we drank a lot of them in the trip). As we climbed down the hill, Bala made a quick call to his friends to decide where should we have dinner. It was between Olive Garden, Opium and Planet X.
Eventually we landed in Planet X. Of what we saw this place has a lot of things from playstation, Bowling Alley, Pool Tables, Go Karting, and a good restaurant. We did not have time to visit any of them. The cakes on the pastery shop was very inviting so I had my share of cake for the birthday and we moved on to the highlight of the place "Hookah". We entered this lounge bar with disc which serves good Hookah at 9. Within an hours time, the change from Chamundi to Planet X was too much to handle. The next two hours were great. Not much can be described here but all of us had a great time. The music stopped at 11 which was an extension from 10 inspite of election because it was saturday. It was funny when these guys started singing the Happy Birthday song in disc for me, what was even funny was the entire crowd in the disc joined and sang the birthday song. We then went back to the room, since we didnt have water in any of the rooms we went around in Mysore searching for water. Mysore sleeps very early, we walked a lot eventually to get water. After fetching a couple of bottles of water we came back to room. None of us had any more energy left after a tiring and eventful day. We hit the bed soon with an important agenda left uncompleted.

Day 2 started on a good note with Bala fetching us a dosa each from the famous Mylari hotel. The dosas were so good that we went back to Mylari again after checking out from Sandesh to break the fast second time. We then went to Zoo. Although I wasnt too keen on this place everyone else enjoyed it a lot.The giraffe was the standout of the zoo. We went to the east gate of Mysore Palace and clicked a photo, much to the persuasion of Jayashree. (Half the people didnt even get down from the cab, Lazy people). We then went to Chitravana resorts to have lunch which eventually was my dinner as well. Chitravana resorts is a very pleasant place with a lot of trees on the way to OOty, a must visit according to me. I only wish the food was served a little faster, however the food being served late gave rise to a lot of interesting conversations.

Pande had picked up a CD at the zoo. We watched movie "Straight", starring Vinay Pathak and Gul panag which ate up close to 2 hours of our journey back. The movie was cheesy comedy. A one time watch. Good time pass. By 11 I was back in my bed because I had to go back to office the next day.

1) Thanks guys for making it one of my memorable days and a memorable trip.
2) A lot of friends were missed on this trip.
3) I wish birthdays are this much fun everytime for everyone.
4) "24 and still Single, but Life still rocks".

Luv,

Sri!!