Team trip this year was to be something different as we had Eldhose married and his wife working with us. Hence the long time wish to make a 2 day tour was materialised. This called for a lot of planning and a lot more expenses. Full planning was done and perfectly executed by Eldhose courtesy of his college days when he did all the college tour organisings. Expenses were controlled with some wise decisions by the team. This time things were a bit more complicated as we had 2 offices at 2 different geographical locations. We had estimated 17 people to come and none to drop out as this was a premium event, but alas due to personal reasons many could not make it. Princy and Salini would have really liked to come, but there were more things that demanded their attention, hopefully next time we can have a full team event.

We needed to start at evening to reach mettuppalayam at early morning. Me and Dilip started from Palarivattom office at 8 pm to join the rest of the team for food at Aluva. After dinner we started off around 10 and reached Mettuppalayam at 3.30. We had booked accomodation at Asoka Inn. Every one were sleepy and most started sleeping even when we only had couple of hours to leave the place.

From Ootty Csharks Aug 2010

Day 1

We had arranged breakfast also from there and took off around 6.30 to the railway station. The Nilgiri Express was waiting for us. We had booked tickets earlier (something very wise to do if you wish to really get seats) and only the day before they had got confirmed.

From Ootty Csharks Aug 2010

Here are the details of the train travel. It was a steam powered engine, one of its kind. It was stopped once and restarted so it will be advisable to take this tour before they shuts down again.

From Ootty Csharks Aug 2010

I cannot possibly explain the whole journey where a train snakes through mountains, enters long tunnels, clutches to cliffs and passes over georgeous water falls and coffee estates filling all around it.

From Ootty Csharks Aug 2010

The 2 family got onto one coupe and all the rest were in another. Train had a 4 hour journey to make to reach ootty. It made many stops at different picturesque locals and stations where it also filled the engine with water. We could have photo sessions at these points.

From Ootty Csharks Aug 2010

Some of those stops were extremely beautiful and looked like out of a wallpaper.

From Ootty Csharks Aug 2010

But there were times when after few hours every one got contented and started sleeping off due to the last nights long journey. TA certain station the engine was changed to a diesel one and we continued onto ootty. We reached there to see ootty town covered with mist.

From Ootty Csharks Aug 2010

Suddenly rain started as though to welcome us and we all were terrified if this was the end of all our fun. Some decisions were to be taken fast and we decided to check in at our stay. The traveler was already there and had reached hours before the train. Our stay was at a most picturesque local called green county resort, although not much posh, yet satisfactory.

From Ootty Csharks Aug 2010

Misty mountains topped all around us ans we were all feeling the cold. Family couples were given individual accomodations when bachelors crashed into 2 rooms. After lunch we set off to botanical garden which needs to introduction. We spent a lot of time there even though partial rain try to play spoil sport.

From Ootty Csharks Aug 2010

I hope the couples too had a great time. I felt like the odd one out here LOL.

From Ootty Csharks Aug 2010

If you are interested in flowers and nature then this is your paradise. All kinds of vegetation was there and it was spread for acres.

From Ootty Csharks Aug 2010

We visited the Tea Factory after wards on our way to Dodabetta. That place made us buy some tea powder and home made chocolates for much higher prices than outside and made us late for the dodabetta entry. It had closed at 5 and we decided to call it a day. We had skipped rosegarden as everyone were feeling the cold and wanted to get back to the house. Had couple of beers and food at night and the team were terrified at the idea of a campfire. The cold was really too much for most of them but as the locals had later informed us, it was really low and a god given gift for us.

Woollen covers saved the day for us and we were all shivering while we slept that night. Next up Day 2.

Related posts:

1. Athirampally Csharks Trip – 1
2. Athirampally Csharks Trip – 2
3. Csharks at IGDS 2010

Adobe summit was held on August 25/26 at Nimhans convention centre, bengaluru. Me and Aneesh anand represented Kerala User group for the event. These turned out to be most valuable days for me as I had the privilege of meeting many of my twitter friends and flash veterans in person.
I have tried to aggregate some presentation slides found on slide share here
The summit page has all the presentations listed here.
The official photos of the event can be checked out here.

I had reached right on time as my bus from Kochi only reached at 9 am. Thanks to Anand and Gitcy for providing accommodation where i could freshen up and reach the event venue by 9.30. An auto guy did cheat me for Rs.80 for a drive from Madiwala to Nimhans, which actually was around Rs.40.
I was amazed to find Sunil Nair, from Ahmedabad User group just standing in front of me in the registration counter queue. We formed a good team and were together for the full event.
First event was Keynote bu Ben Forta and truth be said, i was just there to see him in person. The Session was basic overview of the platform and mostly evangelism. After the session we had coffee break were we saw the long queues forming up and lots of networking happening. After this there were parallel sessions running which gave most of us difficult choices to be made. I chose Spark Internals, PixelPlay, Realtime Social games, Object oriented concepts and PaypalX for the day. I missed AIR 2.5 and realtime web sessions which could have been real useful for me. One of these sessions about social and realtime gaming got cancelled and this was real loss for the game developer in me.
Met Himanshu Mody and Yash mody from Teknopoint, the main sponsors of the event. Himanshu gave me nice goodies – RIA badge, UG manager Badge, RIA Cup and Flash class diagram posters. A big thanks to teknopoint.

Meanwhile I met Vipin chandran, Team from Impelsys, Aneesh and team from Amrita, Muhammed Khan, Mrinal Wadwa, Saurabh Mathur, Harish sivaramakrishnan, Saurabh Narula, Mariam DH- The great game dev I was really looking forward to meet, Arul Kumaran from Singapore UG and many more. Great thing was meeting the 3 musketeers from RIA RUI via Prabhakaran.
I went ahead to check the device demos at the Adobe stall. I was really happy to see Csharks flash site loading easily on a nexus one.

Food at noon was excellent and i did skip one session time to communicate with all the people who had come for the event. Me and Aneesh tried for the Intel App-up key chain but lost.

Day 2 was basically for designers and yet more developers turned out.

From Drop Box

All the three keynotes were good ones and we got to know more about the sponsors and companies who put up the stalls for the event. I found iPlotz team as a sponsor for the event and felt happy to see a team from Kerala making it big. I chose Visual experiences with Flex, mobile design considerations, Multiscreen design, Less verbose AS3 and passion driven development sessions for the day. I really missed out on Brain power and Interaction do’s and don’ts which were both rocking sessions.

I could relate to whats Arul was talking in both of his sessions and passion driven development felt heartfelt. At the end of the day I had to rush back to catch my bus back to Kochi, but I was certainly a satisfied man. More than the sessions, the opportunity to meet these great people was well worth every effort. Congratulations to the Adobe Team and Saltmach for this wonderful experience. After the event I got the Tshirt, certificates and Adobe branded watch I also came across one of my seniors from college days representing TCS as they were one of the sponsors for the event.
Write up on IGDS event at same venue

Related posts:

1. Csharks at IGDS 2010
2. Adobe User group meet at Oberon Mall

60 kms north of Bangalore is the summer resort called Nandi Hills. Also known as Nandidurga, it was one of the summer retreats of Tipu Sultan. Nandi Hills was popular with the British too who built bungalows and laid out gardens here. Today of course, it’s a hot favourite among Bangaloreans who find this an ideal get-away for weekends.

So our Raj Bar gang decided to have a getaway to this place, courtesy yet again Aby. Me , Anish, Abraham and Anoop were once again together inspite of our hectic schedules and differences in geolocation. Original idea sprouted through Anish who found that Aby and HL were available, seemingly for one last time as Aby was getting married soon Aby took the car and we bought some drinks on the way from forum. It was a long drive and no one really knew the exact location and hence we got lost couple of times, but this one was a real carefree run, so no one really cared.

From Nandi Hills

On the way we had those drinks and HL was really in form mixing drinks with coconut juice. This eventually paid off as he totaled later on at the summit in a vomiting series we mallus call ‘vaal’

From Nandi Hills

There were lots of monkeys on the way and everyone got really inspired. The path to the top is like that of a hillstation’s which make us wonder how the whole city rush has all of a sudden given way to such natural beauty.

From Nandi Hills

We could see clouds making huge shadows over the villages and also see bundles of rain pouring over specific regions.

From Nandi Hills

There was a temple at the summit and we spent a lot of time talking and discussing old days. There was a good restaurant on top where we had nice food along with couple of drinks.

From Nandi Hills

It was late in the evening when we decided to head back. HL who had turned off after his ‘vaal’ session came online as soon as we started our descent. He entertained us for the later stages of the journey by telling us some stories on complex relationships
At the end of the day it was a unique experience as we were all busy people who had some how found time to get together from all different places. Such events will be missed now that most of us are getting married this year. Yet, cheers to friendship!

another trip with these people

No related posts.

Team from Csharks consisting of Eldhose and me (Juwal) had this wonderful opportunity to attend Indian Game Developer Summit at Bengaluru on Feb 27, 2010.

From IGDS

We reached at the venue close to 9 am in the morning traveling through train from Kochi. Nimhans convention centre was a great venue and many of the attendees were already talking snaps of the place. Registration went smoothly and saltmarch kits were provided which included a laptop bag, brochures, timetable, lunch coupon, notepad and pen.

Going in what caught our attention was the first stall by Adobe. We for pamphlets on the flash platform and Adobe keychains. We were really happy to see Adobe as gold sponsors for the event as our primary development platform was Flash.

From IGDS

We being an online game development company, were focusing to attend many of those informative sessions on online gaming. But there were sessions covering different streams of game development with focus on 3D, social gaming and mobile development.

From IGDS

There were stalls by nVidia, Ubisoft, Playdom, Aiga and more which also included refreshments sponsored by Redbull.

The event started with keynote session by Carl Jones from Crytek. I had played all their games and was a big fan of Crysis. I couldnt hold onto my seats when he demoed the latest CryEngine3.

We had some coffee and snack after that. Meanwhile i had met Yadu rajiv, a veteran open source game developer from Trivandrum and also the team from Chayowo games.

From IGDS

I choose to attend ‘creating successful online games’ by Robin Alter of Kreeda games. He explained the methodology followed at Kreeda for their MMO game about to be released soon.

From IGDS

I missed out the nVidia session which ran in parallel and came to know that they were raffling some nVidia graphics cards to lucky people in the audience. If i was a student at that point, i would have only attended all nVidia sessions LOL.

From IGDS

Next session i chose was by Harish Sivaramakrishnan, tech evangelist at Adobe. His session was on creating, distributing and monetizing flash games. He informed us how easy it was to really deploy iphone games with the new CS5 version of flash. He also let us know more on the Shibuya platform for monetizing flash games on AIR marketplace.

From IGDS

Next session for me was ‘the business of online games’ by Tridib Roy. This was really important session from our perspective as he disclosed lots of statistics and information which we could use for our online game business.

From IGDS

We broke for lunch and had some networking with delegates from other companies. Eldhose had some meetings scheduled with dignitaries from same domain. I took the time to catch up with Harish and the Adobe team at their stall. Met Ramesh, hemant and Vysagh and we talked about some usergroup activities for 2010. The team showed great support for the interest that we had shown for the platform and promised to help us out with the upcoming special events with the Kerala UG.

I happened to see people enjoying 3D gaming in real 3D with goggles at the nVidia stalls.

From IGDS

Next up was a session on Ghajjini, the game made by FxLabs on Torque game engine. We wanted to know more about this as it was an IP from India and an engine for which we had license. Imran khan explained a lot about how they went about the whole project from concept to final marketing. This was an eyeopener in many sense.

From IGDS

Sumit Gupta had this excellent session on ‘preparing for the great indian gaming rush’ which focussed on the need to get started with facebook social games development. He explained why the social gaming arena is ripe for getting started and how all will benefit on the long run.

From IGDS

I wanted to attend Yadu rajivs session on open source development but it coincided with ‘mobile game development’ session by Hemant. Hemant went about demoing the great Adobe Device central and Flash CS5 and showed how easy it was to create an accelerometer controlled game for your mobile device. He also controlled a PC client using a mobile device accelerometer control over a remote socket connection. For someone who understood the implications of the whole thing, it was huge

We had tea in between and got Tshirts and certificates from the counter. Eldhose, me, Yadu and harish hooked up after the sessions and had a great ‘Mallu’ time.

From IGDS

It was yet another of those unforgettable experiences, similar to one we had for Ficci frames. All thanks to the great event by Saltmarch, Wifi by Airtel and the great sponsors. We understood that our choices for the year 2010 were correct and got some solid information regarding online gaming sector. Looking for ward to a bigger event next time.

Related posts:

1. Csharks Team trip to Ootty – day 1
2. Adobe Flash Platform Summit 2010

As part of my interest in Adobe technologies, I had been part of Kerala Adobe User group. Trying to build a community of Adobe technology users to share info and support each other. I have hosted the UG site at godsowsdevelopers. We had a very successful user group meeting at Oberon mall on 12th Dec 2009. Being the first meeting it was conducted on an unofficial manner in order to measure the attendance and support of the members and as a bench mark to plan ahead for future meetups.

From Adibe User Group meet 12th Dec 09

I would be entirely grateful to Mr. Vipin Chandran and all the members of Toobler for making the event a success. Majority attendees were from toobler under the guidance of Jerry and Bobbin. We had SEO specialists, PHP expert, Artists (award winning at that), cold fusion expert, Flex and flash developers.

From Adibe User Group meet 12th Dec 09

We started off when the team from toobler reached us. We were joined by Musavir and couple of others later on. We had general discussions, introductions and the distribution of the Adobe goodies. We venue was not exactly suitable for open discussions as there was this music going on. Yet once vipin joined us things heated up as he took everything into control with expert views and opinions from his vast experience with Adobe software.

From Adibe User Group meet 12th Dec 09

Later on we decided to have a stand up talk anchored by Vipin where we had some discussions on web services, flex 4, Cold fusion Builder etc. He advised on how to move forward with the group and gave some valid points regarding other User groups and meeting which he had known in his 9+ years of industrial experience.

From Adibe User Group meet 12th Dec 09

We all had a lot to learn from the bits of info he was sharing. He also told the team about planning the next meeting more officially with dedicated sessions and support infrastructure. Later on we planned about spreading awareness about the user group among other IT companies and institutions and taking it to the next level in 2010. We have decided to conduct next UG meet in Kochi itself at a more dedicated meeting space with projectors and sessions. All those who missed out on this one are welcome to join up and be active in strengthening the activities and spreading the news.

Special thanks to all those who attended

Related posts:

1. Adobe Flash Platform Summit 2010

So I had the opportunity to take a full day workshop on Blender at the Engineering college, ASIET at Kalady. It was organised as part of the software freedom day by the Computer Science students at the college.

From Drop Box

I had prepared a lot this time around which covered all segments of character modeling and animation. Mr. Vishnu from the college who had contacted me for the workshop, had mentioned that all students were interested in character development. College turned out to be highly disciplined and all the students were already present and seated when i arrived. Was a bit late for that matter and thanks to some real driving from bro’s part, we reached almost on time. Manoj was with me for the workshop. I had a meeting with the principal and HOD at the principals room. We talked about how 3d art can be used for inter college competitions and the betterment of students.

From Drop Box

I used my mac mini for the demonstration and blender worked just fine. The students helped screen the 2 ope movies in blender. I also showed them some games which were developed in blender along with final character rigs for some of my characters and some professional characters.

From Drop Box

The sad thing was that, i could not even take 20% of what i had originally prepared. Well but i hope i had instilled some interest among the students there.

From Drop Box

Session at Amrita

Related posts:

1. My Session on Blender

So this was the big event of the whole trip. I squeezed this one in and made everyone else follow suite. Let me tell you that such a trip attempt for 1 day visit from Mumbai to both the caves is something that is to be perfectly planned. We got in our Bus from Thane to Aurangabad at 11 pm at night which was Netha Volvo and the tickets ran at Rs450. We had the pleasure of knowing a tour agency who controlled the ‘Royal cars’ which had bus and cars arranged for travel. An Indica car with AC for the whole day cost Rs3000 and without AC it will be around Rs2000. (Royal Cars owner:9823533532, Mankesh Driver:9765449330). The AC was good and we were in shorts, all pumped up. We reached Aurangabad at 7am the next day.

From Mumbai Trip 20-26 jun 09

The indica was exactly at the spot where we were getting down, we had called the driver to sync up. Now we had to change and freshen up, this was something which we didnt plan ahead. So we had real problem finding a good accomodation for single day and it cost us Rs800, but could have bargained for less if we had time. After a superfast bath we left some of our stuff at the hotel room and started journey to Ajanta. Ajanta is 100 Kms from Aurangabad. Just before we reached Ajanta there was this local Dhaba where we had Poori Bhaji and Milk and it was damn economical.

From Mumbai Trip 20-26 jun 09

The driver told us that there was the Himroo handicrafts sarees available nearby which costed upto 11 lakhs per saree. The Abhi-Ash wedding bulk booked these ones from here, he said. Remnants of old forts and palaces were scattered all the way. We saw the Ajanta village which was enclosed in an old fort fence. We came to Ajanta valley where we needed to take tickets and some other passes. We gave signed agreement that our photos will be used for non commercial purposes. Also there was a ticket for using light inside the cave, which meant we needed to carry extra lights. If we dont have extra light the guides inside the caves had LED torches to help, but you needed to pay them.

From Mumbai Trip 20-26 jun 09

There are AC/non AC buses going up and down the road to Ajanta. You will need to take tickets for these too.

From Mumbai Trip 20-26 jun 09

Guys dont hire external guides, just buy the guide book for Rs20, dont offer anything more than this. The book depicts all the caves you need to visit and the total layout. The initial scene of the horse shoe cave structure was unique and you wont get to see something like this anywhere else. I cant possibly explain the caves and their architecture. There are loads of murals and sculptures inside the caves which are primarily Buddhist.

From Mumbai Trip 20-26 jun 09

In each cave you will get guides who will tell kinds of stories about the murals and how the cave was built. You can give Rs20 in each cave.

From Mumbai Trip 20-26 jun 09

There is a big reclining Buddha in cave number 26 and other good caves can be 9,15,16 and 21.
There is a viewpoint in the middle to the other side of the rived that flows below the horseshoe. There is this small hill which sits in the middle which offers good view of the whole caves structure.
But as we didnt have much time, we hurried back and even skipped the beer parlor at the bottom. Bargained with the shopkeepers around for some pictures of the caves and bought some to be framed later. Now we had to get back all the way to Aurangabad and the start for Ellora. So the driver was speeding away when suddenly one of the tyres was blown away.

From Mumbai Trip 20-26 jun 09

It was the driver who saved the day with his presence of mind and super fast tyre change skills. We skidded for 50 mts on the road until we came to stop. Ellora was 30kms from Aurangabad in another direction. We had our food in a near by hotel. The caves here was spread all around the place and there were Autos running among them. The caves are mixture of Brahmin, Jain and Bhuddha cultures. Hindu carvings were enormous and we just lost our ways inside Kailasa cave.

From Mumbai Trip 20-26 jun 09

We just get to think that these people had nothing else to do back then. Dont miss Cave 16-Kailasa, 6,10, 30, 31 and 32. We misses the Indraprastha caves which were a little far away. The driver had booked return tickets by phone and we saw Daulatabad Fort and panchakki on the way back. Panchakki is just a waste of time and effort, but daulatabad can be a hideous climb to endure. If you loose your step you are a goner.

From Mumbai Trip 20-26 jun 09

At Aurangabad we also had the pleasure to see the Taj replica, Bibi ka Maqbara. It was delightful for me to compare the structures as i had visited the Taj. It looked almost the same if you analysed from far away and thus didnt notice the size difference.

From Mumbai Trip 20-26 jun 09

The caves closed at 6pm, just in case and they are not open on 2 different days(mon/tue) respectively each week. We started back at 9.45 Pm and reached back at Thane at 8 am due to some delay with roadblocks.
We went for shopping the next days and saw 2 movies, Xmen Origins-wolverine and Terminator salvation. T-IV was an opening show at 7.45Am which we enjoyed in an almost empty multiplex with reclining sofa chairs. The journey ended when we got on train at 4.50 back to Kerala. The train journey was fun as we had this full gang of 150 ppl who got on this Garib Rath with out tickets. We had to adjust with them as they had missed their train and paid some money to the TT. These people were manual laborers coming to Kerala. It was so evident fro their expression that they considered Kerala like a heaven, like US for us. Amazing.

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No related posts.

This day was supposed to be a vegetarian day. We all were having a heavy stomach after the other day’s chicken bash. First stop was 4D cinema at the Orama 4D theatre in the Atria Mall. It was recommended by Eldhose, but i had say you save the money. Its a 3D film with physical feedback through the chairs and surroundings. We got our ass poked, face sprayed with water and felt air pumped at different points on the body. The cost of the show was Rs240 per person for 15mins. We saw that lots of tour planners have booked the shows and we had to wait till noon for our show. This one was among the default tour plan list for the Mumbai tour trips. After the show we roamed around the Rolls Royce with watering mouths.

From Mumbai Trip 20-26 jun 09

We had some simple doughnuts at the food cafe and no one was feeling particularly hungry. We had a walk about the worli seaface. Here too te water looked damn filthy. Cousins were keeping the distance while small kids were enjoying the sea water sprayed from the sea face.

From Mumbai Trip 20-26 jun 09

It rained heavily on our way back, but then we never minded. There were couples everywhere enjoying their private moments and sharing it with us. Rain didnt matter to them too. We tried vegetarian food by trying pau bhaji, onion oothappam and stuff. Then we went to Juhu beach, the all so famous celebrity residential beach. The beach was crowded like no tomorrow. It was majorly normal people and indian tourists. No celebrity was seem anywhere and we missed foreigners too.

From Mumbai Trip 20-26 jun 09

The beach was huge and there were more than 10 football competitions going on among the local gangs all around the beach. We had a walk along the beach which made us realise how withdrawn the sea really was. Water was supposed to come upto the cocconut groves and it was like 100 mts withdrawn at that time. Tides would have a big effect on this beach.

From Mumbai Trip 20-26 jun 09

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Related posts:

1. Mumbai Trip – Train journey
2. Mumbai Trip – VT, Taj and GOI

Majority of the city traveling was done in the Honda City with Jubind Driver ‘Mama’, who turned out to be best in the business. Traffic in Mumbai is one of a kind, you just got to see it to understand. First visit was Victoria Terminus or the Chatrapathy Shivaji Terminal. We got it without a ticket and saw metal detectors and policemen/policewomen on alert. Lots of trains having their last stop here and huge crowd was coming out in the morning time. I just could not imagine a better place for those terrorists to chose, no one would miss in such a crowd.

From Mumbai Trip 20-26 jun 09

We went to Manish market and Crawford Market in search of game cds and saw all kinds of electronic, textile and other goods there. Jubin then took us for his treat at a Zafrani hotel. We ate all kinds of chicken – Mughal, Afghani and what not. After this it was time for hanging gardens, which no one should try if on a tight schedule. On the way was Chowpatty beach and Marine Drive.

From Mumbai Trip 20-26 jun 09

We had a relaxation session at the hanging gardens, where there was nothing much to see. Then we went to fashion street near oval maidan which is the famous stadium of sachin tendulkar. We bought lots of cheap dress from the street for low prices as Rs100.

From Mumbai Trip 20-26 jun 09

Then we visited the terror attack places, the famous Leopold cafe which was full of foreigners. At the Taj there was huge Indian crowd who were mostly tourists. We could take a boat to elephante caves from here, but we chose not to as it was already late. The renovation work for Taj was in progress and we could see the floor which was on fire.

From Mumbai Trip 20-26 jun 09

The Gateway of India was just infront of the Taj. The sea water looked real bad and was dark brown in color. Water was sprayed into the roads as the waves smashed to the seaface. We decided to enjoy the night view of Taj with the lights on.

From Mumbai Trip 20-26 jun 09

We went to Bademiyan open air roadside restaurant to eat and had a bash with all kinds of chicken items.

From Mumbai Trip 20-26 jun 09

Thus day 2 ended with out much crowd seeing. We were disappointed but at the quality of the crowd at Mumbai, we expected more colors.

The first post on the trip

Related posts:

1. Mumbai Trip – Train journey
2. Mumbai Trip – Worli, Juhu, 4D

Had a great one week getaway to Mumbai with my brother and cousins. The idea was there always, but i could not find the right time as all my cousins were engineering students and getting a vacations and making it coincide with a week break in my time schedule was near impossible task. But then we got
the break in june and me, my brother jeevan and cousin ashwath were on our way to mumbai. We
had our aunty and cousin jubin, who is now having his training in federal bank after his engineering.
The tickets were booked by ashwath and he was the original tour coordinator. So we took the netravati train from Ernakulam and got on in the general compartment. Although we could fo to the AC as we had booked the same train to mumbai, i was kinda hesitant. The general trip was a killer and we all were mashed up in the heavy crowd till we reached trissur. At trissur we were joined by vijay and ashwath. Vijay was the other cousin and had come to see us. He had this wish to join us but had
classes. The tickets were booked in tatkal and i had my berth in B1-52 and the other 2 had in B2. We
had booked normal tickets too which were always in waiting list and we had to cancel it.  had bought some 3/4ths to wear in Mumbai as they were alien to our regional ‘mundu’. Shaym had chappathy and bread with cheese and tomaro curry which was kinda intuitive from Mani aunty. Chappathy wrapped in tomato was a new thing to us.

From Mumbai Trip 20-26 jun 09

I woke up at 6 when the train was traveling though goa. It was beautiful, it was greenery everywhere.
I never felt that i ever exited kerala. It was my first konkan experience. I had always traveled in
the other routes and exiting kerala was always painful as we had to endure barren wastelands and
rocky mountains with thorny bushes scattered everywhere. THis was a totally new experience, nature in
all its marvel. We saw viaducts and hundreds of tunnels. Passing through tunnels were really fun for
the firsttimers. For once it will be total darkness, then there will be a ray of light, then blast of
light.

From Mumbai Trip 20-26 jun 09

Lots of farmers were working in the fields below and we all enjoyed the beautiful kerala like
sceneries. Then after some times the tunnels started to be a boring sight. As we approached Mumbai it started to rain. It was the first monsoon tain in mumbai and we thought our trip was spoiled. But it
was a welcome sight as it broke all conventions that i had about bombay.We couls see low lying mist, and slow rain. There were no big bldingd or any industrial look to the place. There were mountains
looming above and around the city. I never thought i could see mountains and greenery inside a metro. We were welcomed by a last tunnel as we approached thane station. We saw numerous suburban trains rocketing past us.

From Mumbai Trip 20-26 jun 09

Jubin was there to welcome us and we took off to their flat at Raheja gardens in the honda city. The
day was for resting and we started to see the T20 finals which turned out boring. So we went to Rmall
which was a mall nearby, it was claimed to be the first mall in India. We had a whiskey for Rs10
Getting back we had a great talk with each other catching up and planning for the days ahead.

Now onto day 1.

Related posts:

1. Mumbai Trip – VT, Taj and GOI
2. Mumbai Trip – Worli, Juhu, 4D