The most awaited Blog as well the trip to Puri

As like other trips, this trip also came into limelight after Parveen’s mail for the participation. The moment the mail came, everybody started asking their leads and Project Management team for one day planned leave….. As usual the moment u ask for the leave then only all the pending issues come out of the carpet and you being blamed for not delivering the same. I don’t understand why issues were being logged and being tracked and monitored, inspite consultants should ask for leaves regularly so that they will be aware of all the issues under their carpet which they have to resolve before exit… J

The plan was in air and the group which never had been to Puri started discussing about it… The best part of the planning was Prem and Parveen checking all permutation and combination for booking the tickets and after doing so much of R&D they have asked Vishnu (Our Official agent [whom we know is good for nothing but still we believe him]) for booking the tickets… This decision was the only wrong decision apart from discussing the trip plan with Rakesh and including all places which u could have covered in 5 days, he being FI/CO consultant made the visits most economical but simultaneously more hectic….. After daily taking the printouts of revised planning Prem and Parveen reached to a final cut to cut plan… which was so precise if u happen to get late by 5 minutes also I promise u r gonna miss atleast 5 events….. The best joke was sunrise was mentioned at 5:15 AM as if they have sent the plan to Sun also to rise at that time on the day specified in plan. J

After all the pains Parveen and Prem took to plan it the day has arrived when we were starting our journey. Here I need to mention that we were 9 people going for the trip including families. We started here from Raigarh on Friday (i.e. 01.05.2009) hoping that Vishnu will get our tickets confirmed….. but that were hopes only….. We went to station and asked Vishnu to confirm our tickets inspite of knowing that this is not gonna happen….. We had a ticket where we needed to break the journey and to change the train at Jharsuguda…. There we got down and had 2big hours to spend with our luggage in hand. There we had dinner prepared by Pallavi and DK and had a photo session as we had a non stop working photographer Prem and his motivation Sangeeta. After that we all decided to go out just to have a look around market…. We decided to carry our luggage with us, the decision was stupid but we took it.. While going outside I realized that Pallavi was carrying a bag much bigger to her capacity. I offered to exchange the bags which I soon relaised was a mistake as carrying that bag was even trouble for me… For me I will carry that luggage only when I shift my whole baggage from one place to other…. But as usual Ladies carry everything whatever they cant leave at home. So knowing that our coming journey to be hectic as our tickets were not confirmed still we were torturing ourself by roaming around without any reason outside the station…..

We came back to and stood on the station where train was supposed to come. There we had everybody giving some expert suggestions of getting the ticket, we had all kind of rubbish ideas including the best one from Pallavi of begging seats from TT showing we are needy people and to make it more prominent carrying Himanshi and some kind of sad looks.

Train has arrived and we all were inside the compartment where we had 3 seats in 9 people, here simple maths fails as no permutaion combination will allow 3 people sitting on one birth. But here started the comedy circus of our team as Vikas and Prem sticking to TT and asking for tickets… Soon there was everybody in the compartment knowing that we had seats not confirmed and ladies sitting painfully in one seat…. Suddenly one uncle came and offered his seat to one of the ladies without knowing that the seat will be occupied by me….. Anyway I went to the seat and pretended to sleep thinking that somebody will grab it if I don’t do so…..

I saw TT passing from my compartment (Need to mention here that I got this seat in different compartment from the one where my team was sitting) many times and always Prem and Vikas following him… In morning they told me that they all got the seat, but I can surely tell that TT has given them seat just out of frustration to get rid of them.

Now in morning I woke up because Chinmay gave me a call… (I should mention here that Chinmay has already left our Project and was waiting at Bhubneshwar station)… Here I should tell that we had a very good system of delivering gifts at home, if u r not in our project. So anybody who has missed their gifts in Project can contact us as we have a very good system of home delivery of goods.

I was in continuous touch with Biswa, for hotel and Taxi bookings, in all this I forgot that he should was a also a part of our tour and he should be invited (typical boy’s mentality, they think that everybody is invited without actually inviting them) But here I will tell I felt very sorry for Biswa and felt guilty that in this communication gap he was missed out to be a part of this trip…….

Now here we had some problems resolved as Manas reached Puri before we reaching there… so pain of carrying luggage and checking the hotels was taken away by him as he booked hotel and taxi in advance. We just had to call him and everything was at our steps.

So we reached Puri in 2 hours late and that’s the indication of missing many events as per the tight schedule…..

As soon as we reached hotel we were restricted of taking rest because as per the plan were already behind the schedule…..

So we started for Chilika lake where on the way we bought some beer bottles as Vikas was very much insecured of not getting chilled beer in places near by lake… I dint understand the point as it was one hour drive and no ac can keep beer bottles chilled till that time… here me and Manas were against this Chilika visit as we have seen the beach near our hotel and we (bachelors) guys were more interested to have a dip in sea rather than going for a boring lake ride…

But I never knew it will become so interesting as Vikas and Manas were with us (interesting thing yet to come)…. So we all hired a boat to go for a Dolphin ride…. And started giving poses to Prem… I was unaware as the guy (who was sowing the boat) had some grudges with me, which I soon realized whe I tried to move from my place in the boat… He started shouting in his local language.. (Her I need to mention that he was not happy with me, and I understood it from the universal language which he was speaking and that was his facial expressionsL )

Vikas became impatient and started drinking his beer (The name of the beer was knock out, I mentioned it because it really knocked out Vikas)….

So as the driver was not allowing us to move a bit me and Manas were repenting for the decision of coming to Chilika Lake, but Driver’s point was to balance the boat… I think he was the only one who was afraid of drowning.

So we were on the spot where Dolphins were supposed to be seen… We saw some of them, and then our analytical mind started working out on all options how the Dolphins were being restricted to a place and were visible only there. The best was that the Dolphins were some plastic toy running on mechanical power and tied in that periphery. I don’t understand y we people never believe in originality… by this time Vikas has finished his second knock out and was asking for the third one (without knowing that this is going to be a disaster for him)….

Now we are almost an hour inside the Chilika Lake from shore. Here I am mentioning time because it was a factor which really bothered Vikas who was controlling himself of the temptation of pissing (needless to mention here that this is the side effect of Beer) He was controlling himself as Manas got his favorite topic to discuss here… Special mention here that Manas jumps into the discussion wherever pissing and shitting being discussed. So he was the one who was giving him all weird suggestions of coming out of this embarrassing situation….

Height was when Vikas took out 100Rs and was bribing the man to take us to the shore…. I can understand how desperate can a person be in such situation….

So we reached to the shore which was so called the midway of our Chilika tour. We reached there and the first one to get out of the boat was Vikas who suddenly disappeared and came back with a great relief on his face… This was a place where everybody was interested in different things, like DK and Pallavi in pearls, Vikas and Honey in Nariyal Pani, Parveen in taking photographs of pearls coming out of shells…. Me, Prem and Sangeeta in Prawns… Manas in teasing everybody especially Vikas, Himanshi in playing…. and the vendor of pearls in cheating us…. Inspite everybody knowing that the pearls were not original the guy was able to sell more than 300 pearls to us…..

So our precious time we have killed there just in counting the pearls and recounting them. Most of us got pissed off just because in our tight schedule we were wasting our time in buying those pearls which everybody was aware that were fake. We reached back to hotel in night and soon planned for Puri Jagannath Puri Darshan,

We were there for more than 2 hours… which made Manas getting pissed off. He was waiting for us to accompany him in beach and for dinner….. At some point I was wondering how we have commercialized even the temples… I wanted to quote one incident in this trip where I had been to a temple, where as soon as I reached near to the god’s Idol, one Pandit (Priest) came to me and kept some flowers in my open hands and asked me whether I am doing Pooja? I told am doing but what are those flowers all about…. He told he is going to do some rituals for me, the moment I told him that I dnt have money, he took the flowers back and gave me some strange looks… I felt dejected with no reason, but was thinking how commercialized are the temples now….

So when we returned back to hotel it was almost 10:00 PM and Manas has broken the news that Hotel will now not accept the Dinner orders…. We have got food only in one hotel by that time and that was also only egg curry and prawn masala…. First time I have seen a hotel where we had seen the menu but order choice was made by hotel not us….

We had our dinner and went back to Rooms where me and Manas were staying together, when two destructive minds work together there will always be some mischief happening and it happened there also as our minds were working together. I heard some sound coming out of Vikas’s room… I called him but he dint reply so we rang his room’s bell and ran back to our room and slept like nothing happened.. after some time we went to Prem’s room and rang the bell came running back and slept again, the moment we switched off light I heard somebody opening our door and that was nobody else other than Prem….. We disturbed all staying in Hotel one by one and were feeling proud of doing that un noticed.

Next day was the hectic day in pipeline, as everybody had to wake up by morning 4:30 as they have planned for Sun to rise by 5:15 he he he and we have to stick to that plan… It was so difficult to get up by morning 4:30 after sleeping at 2 AM, and it was so evident when we started waking up Manas… The best joke was Manas did not wake up and did not got to beach even have not touched the sea water which was the main attraction of our trip….

We were there on beach till 8:30 AM and started for our hectic day by 10:30 AM. We were on our way to Konark temple and stopped in 2 or 3 places in between. We were excited to reach Sun Temple… when we reached there many guides were behind us, out of them we have hired one, who was being called Rasiya after his explanatory note on the Indian architecture of the sexual poses being displayed over there. I was thinking about the Indian King’s who are in real term the Rasiyas, not to mention here that the whole kaamsutra was being displayed there, and being bachelor me and Manas were out of the explanation which that Rasiya was describing after seeing those idols.

Somehow we managed to listen to that guide with patience and embarrassment, Everybody took many photographs there but when they uploaded the photos in central server I came to know how many were obscene as they have uploaded not even half the number. So after finishing our photo sessions at Konark, we have started for Nadan Kannan Zoo, we have hired a guide there also and started for a Lion Safari in which we have not seen even a glimpse of Lion…. But the only attraction of that was the zoo. The guide was calling Lion and Tigers with their names as they were his friends, and to our surprise they were responding too. He told us that the zoo was named after the lioness Kanan as it came running after the lion which was being trapped from the Forest. The lioness came searching the lion and jumped into the cage leaving her freedom for her love, and they lived together there for 11 years and died together. People say love never dies, and it is true in this case as they might have died but their love is still being remembered.

After finishing all the cages of zoo, we were returning to our taxi…. In between we had seen Elephant’s shit and Manas’s favourite topic too… We had photo sessions there too which was some of the disgusting moments for any normal person to imagine of…. We were planning to click few pics sitting over it and giving some lively facial expressions, but somehow we managed to wake up the decent guy in us.

While returning to the station we had been to ISKCON temple which was not in the list before but as Parveen was not willing to miss a single thing in Puri, we were there. I have seen DK’s heartbeat running faster than the train, which he was suppose to catch in half an hour from the time we were in temple. I can guarantee that his heartbeats were faster than the train as he has finally caught it….

So thanks to our team especially Parveen, Prem (in foregrounf)