THE MALNAD MADNESS..
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PART-1
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It was a calm Saturday morning when my blissful sleep came to a sudden end at 10:40AM, there was a weird loud noise accompanied by vigorous vibration of various...
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parts of my bed. I woke up startled, my semi conscious mind unable to figure out the source, turns out it was our admin hero of the lands beyond lottegollahalli, Tejas, calling me to ensure I wake up in time to book tickets in Tatkal. It was ancient history to me that I had promised him the day earlier, that i would indeed wake up on time and book them in time. These were for our next day return trip from Bhadravati in 16580 SMET-YPR Tri-Weekly Express. It also hit me that we were to depart in a few hours onboard 16201 SBC-SMET Express to Chikmaglur and i was barely in the position to open my eyes fully.
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Tejas however didn't know that I just woke up to his phone call, so he was duly informed that i was up since morning and the tickets would be taken care of, feigning complete nonchalance. After all, I didn't want my reputation of being punctual, stickler to trips committed and completely dependable be dented. After a series of phone calls and trying to book tickets in parallel, we finally got confirmed reserved tickets for the next day(I have never really imagined the tri-weekly would go into such long WL forcing us to book CK, but then weekend it was).The two other members joining us were also the lone voyagers of lottegollahalli, my very old unpredictable regular travel partner Shashank Bhat and subbu, a dear friend to all of us.
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There are quite a lot of destinations mentioned like Chikmaglur, Shimoga and Bhadrvathi in what i wrote above so in case you are wondering where this trip was to, then i'd ike to say to explore the Chikmaglur-Kadur line. But like things have always been when a combination of any four of us or all go on a trip, it was an absolute maze of the weirdest of situations which made the next 36 hours turn out different in entirety. Delayed trains, broken brains, lazy legs, sheer madness and of course quite a lot of green chickpea along with their plants.
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Do keep watching this space for a detailed trip report and be a part of the railfanning escapades and them class while i would try to recollect details and put them into words :)
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TO BE CONTINUED..