The Last NIET Tour
It’s May 10, as planned this was the day in which the class boys finally decided to have the reunion in a form of a tour. The reason why girls didnt wish to show up is still a mystery for me, anyways the tour turned out to be worthy one. We planned to go to yercaud and this was the first tour in which I had my Xype with me. Because of the very worse battery life, I had to take my old Nokia 5610 for backup. I had to goto Ooty with my dad for testing one of his projects but I dropped it as I had some kind of intuition that this could be one of the most important days which I no NIETn should miss in their college history. And as I expected the story was not just about the tour, it turned out to be the most special day for some of us in class.
At the start of the day, Morning – 03.00 AM, Battery – 100%
I woke up very early and removed the charger from my Xype. I got ready to move out by 4.15 AM and my mom already hired a cab to pick me up to Gandhipuram but unfortunately the cab company failed to inform the driver. Because of which, there was a half an hour delay in getting the cab reach my home after a long quarrel by my mom with them. At around 5.05 AM, the cab came to our home and the driver raced off to Gandhipuram as he drove lightning fast in the empty bumpy streets and driving in the wrong directions of a one way lane. Within 8 minutes he managed to reach my destination and I joined in with my classmates. Me, Panneer, Mani Vasagam (Panneer’s Brother), Kasi, Shahul, Muthu Sankar, Nantha Kumar were waiting in the Gandhipuram bus stand for the Tour bus to arrive. All of us had the challenge with the dying battery on our Android phones to make it last till the end of the day. Normally, my phone wont last even for half a day but I had to do something to make the best out of it today as I had to take a lot of pictures. I completely ignored all the text messages and notifications by removing the vibration from my phone and disabled every radio service such as WiFi, 3G and GPS to increase the battery a little longer.
The Bus Arrives, Morning – Nearly 5.45 AM, Battery – 86%
The bus arrived at our stop, pre-occupied with Arumugam, Bagavath, Arun Malar, Faizel, Aravind, Leela Shankar, Saba etc. Without further delay, we started off from Coimbatore with no breakfast as the gleaming sun started rising over the calm early morning sky. Maybe because of sleepless night, the boys weren’t looking much excited as they spent their time sitting calm in the seats inspite of Arumugam‘s continuous effort to make them rise up and make the journey more enjoyable. On the way we stopped by in some bakery for having some tea and coffee.
The Real Journey Begins, Morning – Around 8.00 AM, Battery – ~65%
After having some refreshments, we started off once again towards Yercaud and on the way we picked up Natraj. We stopped at Salem for having breakfast at one of the hotels named Saravana Bhavan. I wasn’t feeling hungry and so I skipped breakfast. We had fun with a very strange guy/beggar/sage who kept on irritating us to spare some change for him. Especially, Sadam was very annoyed by him as he grabbed his shirt and chased him as I took video of him. We also had fun crossing the streets by jumping the concrete walls which separated the two lanes of the highway. Soon, Akash also joined us and we finally set off to Yercaud.
Despite several irritating songs playing the background stereo system of the bus, we had lots of fun on the way, played several games most of which were started by Arumugam.
Entering Yercaud, Morning – 11.04 AM Battery – 57%
We entered the foothills of Yercaud and slowly drove up the hill crossing exactly 20 hairpin bends and reached the top by 11.30 AM. We came out of the bus and visited one of the most beautiful schools in Tamilnadu, The Montfort. We were very late, the watchman told us to visit and comeback within 10 minutes since they had to close the doors by 12PM. We had fun taking a lot of photos with friends, and I was putting my Xype to the ultimate test by taking some spectacular shots of some beautiful flowers I spotted with the help of Sadam.
Then we moved to the top of the Yercaud hills, I believe its name is Shevroy’s Temple. It was a wonderful place with a beautiful scenery where our boys had fun shooting balloons with a gun and having more snacks at the tea bars. There was a temple with a very strange legend, where it was told there is a Shiva Lingam idol hidden deep inside the water (water from the Cauvery river stream) which is not allowed to be seen since 2 years back. Anyways, we saw another small cave temple which was prohibited from photography. The cave was superbly cool, the stones around the cave felt ice-cold which was amazing! We wandered off to the areas nearby and saw some giant tanks with some water having some small fishes.
Next we moved out to Lady’s Seat, where we enjoyed seeing the beautiful panorama of the Yercaud hills, had fun with monkeys, taking snaps and seen a guy who sketches wonderful portraits using a pencil.
The Search for Lunch, Noon – 2.36 PM Battery – 47%
We divided into two groups and had our lunches separately. Our group consisted of Kasi, Panneer, Mani Vasagam, Shahul, Sadam, Arumugam and myself. We had a hard time spotting the perfect restaurant for Lunch. We wandered the areas for a good one, and firstly we tried the restaurant run by the Tamilnadu Tourism Board, The Hotel Tamilnadu. They had a good looking hotel, but they had nothing but rice meals for lunch which didn’t look good. We headed out and started finding another one. After 10 minutes or so, we found Hotel Selvam. We dragged our tables and we asked what was on the menu. That wasn’t satisfactory too and so we moved out and found the most classiest restaurant in Yercaud, Hotel Shevroys. The restaurant was beautifully designed, had some wonderful artifacts, some turkeys and few birds running in cages and a very tall Oak tree. There were two restaurants inside and we decided to go with the Silver Oak Restaurant.
After a wonderful lunch, we headed out and joined with the other boys and headed towards the Boat House. On the way, we met with our classmate, Roopa who is a native yercaudian. Just when we got the entrance tickets to the boat house and entered in, the rain starting pouring very fast, making boating impossible for us. We spent around one and a half hours waiting for the rain to stop but the situation got worse and worse. We spent our time standing near the fence watching the Deer Park, talking some scientific stuff. I found Panneer‘s brother to be very geeky with Android and along with Kasi, they taught me that I could zoom on the camera using the volume keys which I didn’t know before even though it was very simple.
Leaving Yercaud, Evening – 5.05 PM Battery – 43%
After some difficult times, we started to head back to our homes. We stopped by another bakery at the foothills of Yercaud where we had some tea at 6PM. Later, we headed back to the bus and had some of the most intimate moments we can have together as NIETns. We discussed about our positives and negatives individually and got a chance to know about ourselves how we were in the views of others for the past 4 years. Although some opinions started some debates, we tried to solve it and stick to the aim of just knowing what others had to say about us from their minds. On my part, I was very eager know about my negatives, didn’t ask much about my positives and we were discussing about it around 15 minutes or so. Every opinion that others shared with me were completely true, but all of them were startling to me and made me wonder about it. We took an oath to ourselves to stay in contact with everyone and also planned to look forward for another get together in the upcoming months soon.
My battery was almost over, struggling with around 25% of juice and I had to drop my best buddy Prince‘s call from Netherlands
My mom had booked a cab to pick me up at Ukkadam at 11.30PM. Our bus had reached Coimbatore at around 11PM and after bidding goodbyes to everyone, myself, Shahul and Kasi started off from BK Pudhur to Ukkadam. We waited for around 10 minutes, I got my cab and came home. My Xype still managed to pack in a juice of about 15% and the funny thing is, the Nokia 5610 which had for backup died fully out of battery, and I didn’t even use it for more than 5 minutes throughout the day
. As I was very tired, I skipped dinner and slept as soon as I reached home.
You can check out the full Yercaud Gallery at Picasa Web Albums here :














