Around five months back I met one of my old friends after a long while. Friends as in, we were what you could call “best buddies” right from kindergarten till high school. After that we went our different ways, didn’t stay too much in touch and had met him just once or twice in the past 6 years before the above encounter. Well, he has this habit of not being in touch for a long time, precisely in intervals of six months according to him, and then pop out of nowhere. Seeing someone you knew pretty well, after a long time lets you feel all the striking changes that has happened to her/him. And I could see a lot of drastic changes in him, physically and mentally.

Well this came up during that long conversation over coffee that day. He had this notion that when you get away from people who know you well, you change much more than what you want yourself to change. And this guy was doing law school in Calcutta, far away from people who knew him too much. And boy did he change! Anyway I didn’t give it too much thought, as it was just an obvious thing. But now I was just thinking about this. It’s so true the other way round too. If too many people are around you who know you too much, its difficult to change, even if you badly want to. Admitted, I have changed a lot from those days in school, but that is just the natural change with age and experience. Nothing has radically changed with me, and as he put it I am that same old Loyolite he said bye to 6 years back, just that my mustache got thicker.

So many things depend on people around us, how we want them to perceive us. May not be true with everyone, but I think this is the case with every common Joe around us. Well I have been fortunate or unfortunate (depending on how I want to see myself everyday I look into the mirror ;) ) that I have been surrounded by people whom I know well wherever I have been. Even in college there were a bunch of guys who were my schoolmates, who brushed off their knowledge about me to my other peers. You sort of get into a fixed “wire-frame” after that. You feel weird yourself, when you try something different, behave someway different because people expect you to fit into that wire-frame. And when pieces don’t fit in, it tends to be “Why is he doing that?” which translates to “Why am I doing this?”. I don’t know, I have been experiencing this phenomenon forever. Let’s see, even after I took up my job, the two people who sit right next to me are my college mates. They in turn have brushed off some info about me, involuntarily to my colleagues. And again the “wire-frame” is in place. Then I went on to live for a while in Germany, there too were more than a couple of colleagues, who were really much more than colleagues to me, to fix that wire-frame on me.

Not that everything depends on what others think of you, but the effort needed to make a change in this scenario is much much more. And also not that I hate being surrounded by people who I am close to me. Well yeah, I take back the word “unfortunate” that I said previously. I feel I am really lucky that there are these people who help me cushion my transitions. But on the other hand, in my friend’s case, having nobody around let him do a total restart, let him do things differently, because nobody cared a damn and because nobody knew what he was before. But it’s like I am living up to the wire-frame, unable to wiggle out of it. It’s like the frame is moulding me.

Maybe it’s a good thing. Maybe it’s bad, only time can tell.

School buses come in all varieties – big yellow buses, small mini vans, ones that reach on time, ones where all kids get a seat – then there is Bus No 3. Our very own “Three Bus”.

I lived around 20 kilometres away from my school and it goes without saying that I spent a lot of time in Three Bus. My best friends in school, the funniest incidents, the time of my life – I owe it to that old cheerful yellow vehicle. We had two rows of seats reserved for our gang. Shankar “Chubby”, Pranav “Paandi”, Aswin & I, being the first to get in, held fort and clung on to these two seats not letting any chirpy young kids or intimidating seniors to enter our restricted area – till our troop was fortified with the arrival of Sandeep, Arun, Vinod “Sticky”, Akshay “Chuksy” and occasionally Vishnu to complete the elite 3 bus gang.

“Three Bus”, now Bus no 8 :)

And as any young kid would do, our main job was to obviously look out of the window and watch the city around us. And yeah we did see the entire city en route to school, for our three bus was the worker horse for Loyola – it traveled to distant suburbs many of my other classmates didn’t even know about. Our major past time was to spot vehicle number plates and find out which is the newest registration number we saw on the street. And the guy who spotted it first was our superhero hehe.

Then one day there was a huge fight. Pranav finally had learned of the ubiquitous 4 letter word and found an opportunity to use it against Akshay. Major pandemonium broke out, with Akshay calling Paandi back “goy”. Well I don’t know how he came up with that, but instantly people started taking sides on what was the bigger insult – the F word or “goy”. We searched dictionaries, referred library books (sadly no Internet at that time) – finally someone decided “goy” was the worst insult in the history of mankind. To this date, I have not changed my opinion. :D Then there was this other fight I remember vividly, this time again Paandi, but on the other side it was Sandeep. And poor guy Paandi, already reeling at the trauma for being called a “goy”, got his ear bitten by Sandeep! Yup he really bit his ear. And the amateur doctors in us were shocked – Paandi is going to loose all his hearing skills in 2 years. 10-12 years passed since the incident, I saw him last week with full auditory powers, helping him hear worser insults than “goy”!

By eighth standard we had become grown ups. Hormones were raging and it played an important part in us trying a major (failed) attempt to shift our seats to the other side of the bus. We all developed a crush on this girl who used to wait for the bus in a common bus stop. Someone told us her name was Praveena, I don’t know till now whether that is really her true name. Poor thing, I don’t think she ever knew so many prying eyes were on her all that time! :D Hmmm.. I wonder what she is doing now… ;)

Time has gone on, things happened, life’s changed… We have gone our different ways, I became an engineer, Paandi is doing his MBA, Chubby became a lawyer… Yet those days don’t seem so long gone. They are so vivid in my mind as if everything happened yesterday… the golden days in Bus No 3 :)

Bytes were being churned, products were being released, books were being digested and Life continued monotonously. It was time to go off the beaten track again and this time our journey took us to that majestic corner of Kerala called Wyanad.

Bachu, Kurian and I started off from Bangalore towards Kozhikode on a rainy night. There we were joined by Ranjith, Hazer, Anand bhai and Bose from such far away lands as Chennai, Kochi and Thiruvananthapuram ;) The plan was to rent a car and drive into Wyanad and as usual do what we do best – go where the roads take us. Using the deep rooted network of Bachu (the king of Kozhikode) we managed to rent a Toyota Innova without driver at a very cheap rate.

First day we started off with the goal set to Kuruva islands, but on the way after some typical spontaneous (in)decision making, we shifted target to Chembra peak. The route to Chembra is through a private estate and you need to pay a 20 rupee gate pass to take your vehicle through. We could travel only up to the end of tea estate and from there began the long 5Km (estimated) trek. It was incidentally Bose’s birthday that day and we gave him a grand celebration he will not forget, atop a small forest guards’ watch tower on the way to the peak. Half way through the path to the peak, yours truly lost all his stamina and decided to wait, while others tried for glory. It was a big miss though, and from the photos they took the peak was an amazing place with a small reservoir on top of it! Anyway Chembra is definitely in the must-visit list for Wyanad.

By evening we left Chembra for Thirunelly. The drive through the forest in the night was fun. The major attraction in Thirunelly was an ancient Vishnu temple there, and in another first for our trips, this was the first spiritual destination in all of the 16 trips we have had. We only just had time to have a quick darshan just before the temple closed at 8PM. That night we stayed at a decent government owned lodge there costing us merely 40 bucks per head.

After visiting Lord Vishnu again the next morning, we headed down towards the Kuruva islands. En route, I managed to put the car into a small gutter resulting in some annoyed looks from the co-passengers. Shrugging off their looks I continued on and 100 metres ahead as I looked into my rear view mirror, I could see a tyre lying on the road behind us! And yeah you guessed right, it was one of ours! Shocked, my first reaction was “Oh my god! Am I driving on 3 wheels?” Well that couldn’t be.. it was only our spare tyre that somehow slipped from under the chassis. Hazer the master took to the task and in no time we had the tyre back up. It was an experience especially since all this happened right in the middle of the forest and we had seen 2 or 3 boards saying ‘Do not stop your vehicle’ and ‘Do not leave your vehicle’. ;)

We did’nt find Kuruva island that interesting, but probably because we expected more because of a lot of hype surrounding it. Anyway crossing the river by walking across it to reach the island was not that bad. We left the place by afternoon in search of a lesser known destination Meenmutty waterfalls near the Tamil Nadu border. This is one thing you should not miss! I do not know how to explain the adrenalin, the nature, the greenery in words. You have to be there to believe it. The place requires a 5KM walk of which 4KM is a treacherous climb down through non-existent paths. It was the most thrilling experience I have ever had. For every small step you take, you need to convince your brain that you are not going to die. Seriously!

It was an early start to Sunday as we headed towards the Muthanga wild life reserve. Though we were early, we were unlucky and couldn’t see too many animals except for some deers, foxes and peacocks. Hard luck! But anyway the forest experience was enjoyable indeed. By afternoon after a brief stop over at Banasurasagar dam, it was time to head back home. The journey back again was another adventure. We had to stand all the way from Kalpetta to Mysore in a KSRTC FP and just about got seats in the last non-stop bus from Mysore to B’lore, reaching home somewhere around 2AM.

It was tiring but brilliant fun! So glad that these trips keep on going.. on and on… Lesson for the day? When you need a break, go back to nature, its well worth the effort :)

The Route:

Kozhikode – Kalpetta – Meppadi – Chembra
Chembra – Meppadi – Panamaram – Thirunelly
Thirunelly – Kattikulam – Kuruvadweep
Kuruwadweep – Meenangadi – towards TN Border – Meenmutti
Meenmutti – Sultan’s Battery – Muthanga
Muthanga – Sultan’s Battery – Ambalavayal – Banasurasagar Dam
Banasurasagar Dam – Kalpatta – Sultan’s Battery – Gundalpet – Nanjancode – Mysore – Bangalore

Tips:

• Petrol pumps are few and far between, so ensure that your tanks are filled at the major towns.
• Keep your base as Kalpetta or Sulthan Bathery and then plan as it is difficult to get acco. at other places, unless you are looking at expensive resorts.
• Have some salt handy as leech attacks are possible in the forest.
• When going into the forest, do visit the nearest forest department office as they might have important information and some places do require a written permission from the department to travel into (which is free of cost).
• English is more or less understood but don’t always bet on it especially in the more remote areas, so it is always better to do your homework and plan if you do not have someone with knowledge of Malayalam with you.
• Enjoy the forest and don’t complain too much about inconveniences, because the whole point of going to the forest is that it is a Forest… away from civilization! :)

Its been two weeks. I see a lot of changes here and there, but the essence of “home” remains the same.

I was in Bangalore for a week and in Trivandrum for another. Bangalore, every where I turn, there is something new. Trivandrum has a few things changed here and there, but overall it is just that same old city! Everybody was also apprehensive of me driving, to say the truth even I was, a bit. But it was not the least difficult. Ok, first few minutes I tried to do things “right” but very soon my Indian instincts took over and lo I was honking, not stopping at pedestrian crossings, not following lanes.. hehe.. it was smooth from then on! One thing that changed regarding driving in Trivandrum is the number of FM stations available. When I left, there was just one.. now I turn the radio on and there seems to be a channel every other frequency – Big FM, SFM, Club FM .. what not! Then I see that there *are* traffic symbols posted neatly in India, just that before I never noticed them before and even if I did, never knew what they meant. Enough of blaming the government, our road culture is the first problem, nothings gonna change without improving that!

Most of the week in Trivandrum was spent visiting & being visited by friends and family. I even cooked for them. The shock on my mother’s face when she saw me cooking (‘Chicken Trivandrum’ ;) ) was a priceless moment. Nobody thought I had it in me to cook :D Well, not any more dear ones.. Even I can cook! Many evenings were spent idling away in the city.. brought back many flashes of nostalgia. I even managed to go to a cultural show organized by some department of my old college in the amazingly beautiful Kanakakunnu palace grounds. Sat there for hours with my college buddies… it was the best feeling ever! :D

It was a not a totally smooth transition, but not as difficult as I expected. Things seem changed, and I look at things differently than before.. But I am so happy being back :)

In the first 22 years of my life, I have never been anywhere far from home. To be precise, never even been beyond the south of the country. And now here I am… 8 months in Europe, having visited 8 countries, experienced cultures totally different from what I am used to… It would not be an understatement to say it was all a life changing experience.

So what did I find different? The people, the attitudes, the landscape, everything is different, sometimes better, sometimes worse. The most important thing I learned is that if the attitudes are right, and everybody does what they are supposed to do, the whole setup just works. The foundations are similar and it is not impossible to make the setup work even in India, just that nobody is willing to make the change. Ok, I am not going to start preaching… And definitely not everything was perfect here and in a lot of things India has done much better, we just dont realize it.

On to the less serious matters… As you can see from the blog, I did travel a lot and had a lot of experiences. I had a lot of fun. Here I present my ‘Top 10′ (yeah, I can see some of you laughing ;) ) experiences in Europe…

1. Driving in the autobahn
2. Formula 1 at Nuerburgring
3. Ocktoberfest
4. The 5 days spent driving around Norway & Sweden
5. Venice – absolutely beautiful
6. Neuchwanstein – the fairy tale castle
7. Berlin on a rainy day
8. Vfb Stuffgart vs Wolfsburg – the football match live!
9. Trekking in Oberstdorf
10. Europa park

I was also very lucky to have a few of my close friends here with me during the whole time. Having them here, the time spent with them & the trips with them, ranks above all. What would I have done without you guys!

When this gets posted and if everything goes right, I would have already left Germany…

Auf wiedersehen, Deutschland!