Off to Pollachi

I had been planning for a trip down south for quite some time and my friend I.S(Arun) had been telling about doing a trip to Pollachi. Somehow it was always in planning stage and I.S left for the US during middle of the year. Thanks to the leave policy of my company, I can just carry forward 6 days of my annual leave, rest would lapse if not taken. So I told one of my close friend Rukku (Rukmangathan) that we would do a trip for about 10 days during the year end and had asked him to block leaves (he also has similar leave policy). We thought of doing trip to Goa, Karnataka and other places but we never sat together and planned anything. So I decided and told him we would do a south trip and land in pollachi and finish off at a friend’s wedding in Thrissur.

We just knew the landing point and the final destination and left out the in between part. We said we would plan it on the fly. So we just went ahead and booked tickets for Chennai – Coimbatore on 22nd night. I had visited CBT sometime in 1999 and at that time it took me 10hrs by bus. So I assumed it should be around the same travel time or probably improved by and hour or so. The bus timing was at 8.45 in Koyambedu bus terminus and the bus didnt get out of the terminus till 10.15. There was a damaged sewage line and the entire stretch was jammed.

We were sitting in the last but one row of the bus and the guy behind us was full time on the phone. Okka makka 8.45 kku kadalaya poda aaramichavan midnight thaandiyum neruthala…engalukka sema kadi..naangalae rendu pasanga porom..idhula ivan appa appo “illati..chumma dhaan sonnaen…yaendi chelllam serious-a eduthukkara…chi azhadha…” appadi appadi nnu sollitu irundhaan…pesattum…vaendam nnu sollala…bus la avan avan kadi la irukkanae..nammoloda volume kammi pannalamae oru yosanai vaendam…and more over after vizhuupuram the roads were very bad…some times we even had doubt if we were goin in a bus or a boat…full-a side ways la dance dhaan…idhukku naduvula indha dog-oda kadala vera…suthama thookam pochu…

Oru vahizya next day morning 10.15 kku we reached Coimbatore and at that time many hotels stopped serving breakfast too. We just went to the ever famous Arya Bhavan and had couple of left out Oothappams…and then pushed off to the Okkadam bus stand to get a bus to Pollachi…Coimbatore and Pollachi are well connected by road and there are lots of private buses running between. But the problem is there is too much of crowd. In fact people still use the old method of throwing handkerchiefs through the window to reserve seats and in fact we saw one guy sending his kid through the window and you should see the happiness in his face after the kid reached and sat in the seat…So we left couple of buses thinking that most of the crowd would have gone by and we could get some seat. Since it was a long weekend there was huge rush. So we restored to our ways of getting seats. Just push through the crowd and dont care about what they are yelling. Somehow Rukku managed to get two seats…the last two seats of the bus.

The speaker was on full volume with all kuthu songs and the driver never took his legs off the accelerator. My guess is he would have kept some stone:) In flat 50 mins he reached Pollachi and there was not even a single stop in between and he almost never changed gears or even slowed down. Rukku’s friend is from Pollachi and he has booked rooms for us. We went straight to the lodge and told that friend’s name and got a room. The lodge owner was telling about how Rajnikanth, Balachander and all had stayed in the lodge and its one of the biggest lodge in Pollachi. We got our keys and went straight to the room and wanted to see how the rooms are in the biggest lodge of Pollachi. The room though was quite ok (cos we would be staying only for 8hrs in the night) didnt even have a latch for the bathroom door. For the remaining three days the other person used to lock it from outside when some one is taking bath (We didnt want to take any kind of risks 😛 )

We got freshen up in an hour or so, had lunch and boarded the bus to visit the first place in our trip…