Yelagiri Trip : A perfect closure to a happening year gone by

This is not the story of a year gone by; nor does it have anything to do with my new year resolutions and expectations. This is an account of the near perfect 2 days I spent with some of my oldest friends bidding goodbye to the year 2011 and welcoming 2012 with new hopes and aspirations.

As the year 2011 was drawing to a close, we all (Ranjith, Ravish, Yogesh, Megha and Dheeraj) decided to get away from the city and enjoy amongst hills and nature.. Our destination - a place called Yalagiri which is around 160kms from Bangalore towards Chennai. Because it was a last minute plan, getting accommodation was turning out to be the biggest hurdle. But Ravish somehow managed to find a resort (KozeeKaves) where a few rooms were available and we got it booked. I still wonder how he managed to get the deal (we later found out about the unbelievable rapport he had struck with Suzanne (the owner of the resort) who helped him with not just finding the acco but also a lot of other things which I will not mention here).... 160Kms would have made for an ideal bike trip, but the weather played the spoil sport and we ended up booking an innova.

With utmost sincere efforts to start early on 31st morning, we finally ended up leaving Bangalore at 9:30am after picking up everyone and having a sumptuous breakfast at Anand Adyar Bhavan. The drive to Yelagiri was pretty comfortable except for Yogesh's straight from the heart rendition of oldest imaginable hindi songs and Ranjith's desperate attempts to flaunt the utility of new apps on his phone(song recognizer, Payback etc etc...) :-). The wheels kept rolling through the picturesque hills of Niligiris and we reached Yelagiri on time for our lunch. After a lot of poking and prodding, Ranjith who had not slept the whole of last night, agreed to not sleep and we went boating on the Punganoor lake. One of the best things about a trip to Yelagiri is that there are not many places to see; so you get a lot of time to spend in one place and dont have to rush to cover everything. After boating, we went to the park and spent some time there.As usual Yogesh was getting hunger cramps (despite the fact that Megha and Yogesh were the only ones who would stop by every roadside vendor and nibble something all along the way). So we stopped at the Tandoori hut to grab a bite and then headed back to the resort.

And here comes the best part of the trip.. the Campfire. The resort staff was kind enough to arrange for a private campfire for our group and after having our dinner, we lit the campfire and just sat around playing dumb charades, dancing to the last ketchup (uniquely choreographed by Ranjith), entertaining random guests (courtesy Ravish), playing Uno ( made interesting by Megha, yes you did win but we all know that you cheated.. :-)), bidding 2011 good bye and welcoming 2012.

We all crashed in our beds by 4o'clock in the morning and did not get up till 10am next morning. We had our breakfast and headed back towards Bangalore. On our way back, we stopped at Krishnagiri to visit the dam.. The humongous water body with sky blue water surrounded by the hills was a picture perfect setting for capturing the memories of the last place we visited during the trip. We had a late lunch at Kamat and reached Bangalore by 5pm.

The trip was made memorable by the company of some of most amazing people - adorable Megha who blended with the group so comfortably, extremely patient Yo! Yogesh who was always raring to go, ever so accommodating and reliable Ravish who managed all the logistics without cribbing even once and was lucky to guess most of the movies in dumb charades, perky Ranjith who taught people with two left feet to dance and delightful Dheeraj who never complained for sitting in the back seat for the longest duration. Kudos to everyone... And may 2012 bring us all another set of great memories to cherish for life!