We said goodbye to Mysore and moved on towards Bangalore, cause the 4th day of our study tour is at an amusement park called Wonderla. I wasn't feeling so good that day and moreover i'm not too fond of amusement parks, so i decided to walk around the whole place with James and Harish. It is owned and run by V- Guard Industries. And its their second amusement park,after Veegaland (now renamed as Wonderla) in Cochin. If you have ever been to Veegaland at Cochin, then this one in Bangalore will surely be a disappointment for you. Its not as exciting as Veegaland. And the number of visitors were so low, that most of the rides were shut down. Too bad we have to waste a whole day in this place. But what can one do when majority rules. Anyway i walked around and took some snaps, ate a pizza and simply watched people who paid to get themselves scared. Come to think about it, arent we paying thes guys to make us scared and cause an adrenaline rush? Anyway here's some pics.
After this rather uneventful day, we left for Bangalore and went to a hotel called Grand Regency Inn. Now, the only thing grand about this place is the filth. I've seen worse so it wasn't much of a shock. But for a few of the light hearted people among us it was quite unbearable. So after dinner and an hour or so of heated discussion with the hotel manager, our tour coordinator Arun decided to find a new hotel for the girls alone. So he left with them while most of us opted to stay back. It was almost 10:30 pm and Binu and I decided to go for a walk. We walked past many intersections, a flyover, a petrol pump and we kept on walking until we came across two policemen. We decided to walk past them. But as we reached them, they stopped and asked us where we were going. I told him I was looking for a tea shop. He then wanted to know whether i was here on business.He went on taking some more in Kannada. I told him we were from Kerala and we didnt know his language. He then switched to Tamil. And Binu was like "Enikku koncham tamil theriyum". As if he had been waiting to hear this, the other policaman started speaking endlessly in tamil by the end of which Binu had to correct his earlier statement to:"I dont know Tamil". Soon enough we all switched back to english and i asked him whether it was ok for us to walk some more. But he told us that there were "bad people, people with knives, they take you purse and phone,so you go back to your hotel". Ok no problem, we said goodbye and walked all the way back to the not so Grand Regency Inn, which was closed!
By this time Arun called Binu and told him that he was at a hotel called Taj and asked us to come there if we could. Yeah whatever, so we walk towards the other side(the way opposite to that we just came from). After walking for a long time, we reach a dark,deserted road full of dogs.There's not a single person on the roads, except for animals, yeah, cats,dogs, mice and cows. Suddenly all those dogs(about 10, i didnt have the time to count)began to growl and they chased a cow away. I smelled trouble, Binu was skeptic and wanted to go forward. Soon these dogs turned at us, they started growling and barking at us. Not a single person anywhere. "Time to go" he said and that was what i have been waiting to hear. We turn back and walk away discreetly, but the dogs started to follow, we increased our speed, which they did too and before we could start running we saw a security guard in front of a hotel who wasn't there when we passed through earlier. We called out to him(actually it was more of a wail). On seeing another person somehow those things backed off. We decided it was enough for a day and headed back to the hotel. Since it was closed we thought we'd spend the night outside the hotel. But again, you wouldn't believe it,the dogs were back and this time, we could chase them away. We banged at the door and still no one opened it, there was a guy sleeping in the lobby, we couldn't wake him up. So we called James, who was asleep inside and brought him down to wake up the sleeping dude who had the keys and opened the door...
We went to the room and slept, knowing that we were this close to being mauled by dogs...
Tomorrow is the last day of this tour.......
(to be cont'd)......
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