My Incredible India Discovery

Saw this song before? Envied the water and the catamaran they were on? For the few of you who don't know, this song was shot in the outskirts of Chennai at "Fisherman's Cove" hotel. Ok, I didn’t mean to write the review of this song here, however, I wanted you to know that I had the exact superb ride on the Catamaran at the exact same place :)) hehehe Envy that??
It was just those lazy evenings at work, we suddenly decided to something fun and adventure during the weekend and then we jumped to the idea of going for a Catamaran ride. Our gang wanted to do this for over a year now and we always had no time to go for it, but somehow this time we all just wanted to go, no matter what! So, as an enthu organizer I went ahead and booked this ride offered @ Rs.600/- per head by the Fish Cove Hotel.
Before we even reached fish cove, we announced the day to be eventful. Why? Yen? Kyun? -  For 2 reasons. One, my friend was driving his new car for the first time, and that too on ECR from his home to Fish Cove. Second, The moment our folks at home came to know that we are planning to get into the middle of the sea, they completely freaked out and gave us a piece of their mind!
Well, none of this brought our spirits down and we managed to reach Fish cove safely! The guy @ Fish cove welcomed us and started doing his duties. Made us sign a paper which said - "I, the Hotel, am not responsible if you die or drown or come alive after this ride" - Well it was not written this blunt, but you get the message! We started walking towards the beach and the group was feeling nervous. Some of us were already saying last prayers, one said, I am just so glad I am going to die with you. And another one was screaming – Oh no, Mummy and daddy not even here to see me for the last time. (Yes, we are a bunch of drama queens and kings :)..)
After wearing the flashy orange and yellow life jackets, we were about to leave for the catamaran and our volunteer from the hotel said - "Guys, I take leave now, Have fun". And we were like - What? You are not going to die with us?? ...OK exaggeration. He left us with the boat owners and the catamaran started with a bang! The catamaran as such is couple of wooden logs tied together to make a sleek boat. We held each other as tight as we could and began to drink all the sea water which came splashing on us. After that, I realize I can close my mouth and stop screaming: P
The water was salty (what else do you expect?), so salty that I was almost puking. We halted in the middle of nowhere (I think we were closer to Andaman than Chennai..hehe) and then the boat guy said, jump. “What?” Said my friend, he didn’t bother to give an answer and just pushed her down. We finally held on to the rope and slowly slid into the sea.
It was just too overwhelming! So much Water, so much salt, so many waves! In a few minutes all our anxiety cooled down and we started enjoying the water. The life jackets actually worked (We had doubts if these would even withstand us). The gigantic sea had won us over and we were just so glad we were there. We floated and floated and floated in all directions the waves took us for about 45 mins and then like obedient kids, came back to the boat.
The catamaran brought us back safe to the shore and we were alive! yes! we made it! We are the most courageous of the lot God made! the ride left us with awe and tan :) and what a memorable day that was!

Interested to do something similar? - Contact Satish from Fish Cove @ 9176178422. Have a great time! Ciao..

Vishnu and I had set out from Chennai on Oct 31st to explore North East India. Our journey was very long and involved different modes of transportation. One thing we knew was, no matter how far or how long it would take, it is gonna be worth it, and guess what, IT WAS!

From Chennai we took a Flight to Kolkata. Our flight experience was pretty weird. the airlines called us up 2 days prior to the journey informing us on the change of timings. We religiously followed their time table and reached the airport 2 hours in advance (the flight timings were advanced), the weird part is, the flight was delayed for 2 hours and we finally took off at the same time as before! Grr..

At Kolkata we had 4 hours before our train to NJP and we decided to check out the most wanted tourist spot in Kolkata - The Victoria memorial. The cab ride to this place was quiet an adventure as we did not know how on earth he fit his big ass cab in between 2 lorries and 3 bikes! The cab driver stopped at a strange dark quiet place telling us “Victoria Memorial aa gaya” - We turned 360 degrees to spot where the monument was, but couldn’t spot anything except bushes and trees. Our hearts sunk thinking that we have been cheated by the Cab and he has for some reason Kidnapped us! (hehe…we should have realised that we are no celebs). The cab driver had to “literally” convince us that he brought us to the right place and because of our strange reaction he quickly took his fare and drove away. Like aliens we walked towards the trees and then found the huge monument hiding in the DARK! To our surprise, the Victoria Memorial was not lit and we could not capture the beauty in the night! :-( the only good part was the surrounding garden. We simply witnessed the ‘Colourful Fountain Dance” at the gardens and headed to Sealdah Station…

At the station we took our dinner @ the “humble” IRCTC cafeteria. (I will explain the “humble” - ness in my forthcoming posts…). We ate some quarter dozen bread omelettes (only 3 duh!) and waited for our train to arrive. As the train arrived at the station, we saw a huge crowd of people very obediently getting into a queue at the platform. Trust me, I have never seen such a disciplined queue anywhere before! This queue was guarded by the Cops (of course, what do you think we Indians were born with discipline in the blood?)- This queue was to get into the “unreserved” bogie! Luckily we had confirmed tickets and did not get into this ever-growing queue. The overnight train to NJP (New Jalpaiguri) was comfortable and yes, well lit! (Thank God!) - NJP was our starting point to our 1 week long vacation and we wanted to get there as fast as we could (or rather as fast as the steam engine could).

The train started and so was our reading time..:) We read for a few hours until we heard our co-travellers complain about lights not turned off. We bid good-bye to our beloved books and the co-travellers and proceeded to see some beautiful dreams :)

Some photos and lots more stories coming up next »