Cochin-Munnar Trip - 20-24 March

When we started, this was going to be Mysore -Ooty backpacking trip with no fixed plan. Just plan as we go, we expected 10-15 takers at the most. But, now this had ended as a 2N-3D package tour of Cochin-Munnar and Athirapally falls with '23' .. yep 23 guys. I'm tempted to even draw parellels between the IPL rescheduling issue and the trip plan, that was how messed up it got inbetween. Everyone came up with their own dates, a few of us were rooting for a quick plan right now, some wanted it after the model exams in the first week of April and a few even wanted to do the tour after the project reviews/sem exams. Somehow we got everyone to accept a plan before our model exams. Ram got us a quick quote from Sun Tourism ( who're supposed to be 'specialists' in college tours .. we promise a review when we get back) and we came up with 2-3 tentative tour dates.


Now, with the list of tentative dates up, everyone came up with reasons why the dates were not 'okay' for them. Everyone had different plans and we had to squeeze the tour in somewhere. We had to work around stuff like Subhash going off out of town, Paramesh going on a family tour etc. and 'models exams' on top of that. At this stage, a few gave up their own plans and helped us pick a final date.. Friday the 20th March.

we're ON ..

I need to thank a few people for making this trip possible...

Ram - for your quote which started off this plan, and for taking care of all interactions with the Sun tours guy.. and also for convincing all of them to join.. i'm sure you busted your mobile bill planning for this tour. ( btw.. i just found out, ram has a post-paid connection.. i'm sure this info will be useful when we all run out of balance on roaming).

Srivatsan - for all the slick convincing you did/helped with, and for the bargaining at Sun tours the other day. too bad it did not work so well. The guy knows we're desp. to do this tour and we had very less time to make other plans.

Venkatesh - for your support convincing everyone and for helping with the plans for Subhash and for making it possible for Yugesh to join us.

Subhash - macha .. you're 'the' man.. i don't think anyone else would agree to such an insane plan to join us directly at ernakulam after a eight hour travel all alone from Kanyakumari.

Prakash - for not getting (too)wild with all the frequent plan changes, extra cash requests ..

all the guys who said 'i'm okay with any plan, any day' - for being so cooperative. for making life easy for us..

the rest of them - for making it somehow.. :)



I hope everyone'll post their trip log, experiences, album links on the blog when we get back. That'll be an awesome way to archive our thoughts for later.


P.S: I know we weren't very efficient planning this, we gave little time for everyone to get the cash ready, we could not do much about bringing down the tour price etc.. but.. all we wanted was for the trip to happen somehow within the planned dates and we wanted a good turnout. So forgive me if i rubbed you the wrong way somehow along the way during all this.