Random Chaos

Penny Farthings were called Bone Shakers

Got back to Bangalore on Sunday morning, after nearly 3 weeks with my parents and still getting used to my "regular" sleeping schedule, guess it'll be next week before things get back to "normal".

The break from Bangalore was good for the most part, except for me gradually losing access to my machines in Bangalore, the last 5-6 days were longest I've gone without access to utopia my email/vpn/gateway box since 2002.(Thanks to a blown fuse on the powerstrip that my modem was connected to) I guess it deserved the break too from running almost continuously all these years!

The return trip took much longer than the trip home, 60hrs vs 18 hrs, and way cheaper (< 10% of the trip home). But it was much more fun.

The trip started on Thursday evening/night more than 1.5 hours late, but thanks to my parents living in a tiny village, I got to spend the time waiting comfortably at home and boarded the bus right in front of our gate. The bus rattled so much that my name on their log-sheet probably looked worse than any earthquake ever recorded on a seismograph and made me realise that the Penny Farthing riders had never got to experience this.

But a short while later the experience of having slept through 2 earthquakes/tremors kicked in and I was fast asleep, holding onto my laptop bag hoping that the hard drives survive the shakes. And had an uneventful ride until I woke up in Coimbatore.

Landed up at Ashok's cousin's place after a nice little misadventure of both of us landing at the wrong building, and spent around 30 minutes walking around a lot of familiar territory after many many years, and anyone from SNR reading this, 8 years on, it's still hard to get on a bus at NavIndia!

Headed off to a village in Palakkad, Kerala a little later with Ashok's family, where he was engaged to Sowmya in a short traditional ceremony around 1300hrs. Had lunch there and headed for Coonoor via Coimbatore.

Reached Coonoor around 2000hrs, my first trip there since college when George and I decided not to attend classes one afternoon in 1998.

Spent the whole of Saturday in Coonoor, took a nice long walk in the morning and after that I shot my first 360° panorama with a tripod perched on the chimney of Ashok's house. Also my first QTVR movie that goes all the way around!

Left for Ooty around 2000hrs and started for Bangalore around 2200hrs, the ride this time was less bumpy and I was home in Bangalore around 0800hrs on Sunday.

Will put up the photos from the trip later this month, too bad my hosting plan won't allow me to put up the 170MB QTVR file!