My Best Friend's Wedding

Not a review of the movie by same name :P
Literally, my best friend kicked the bucket (of bachelorhood!) last week. The victim in this case is Girish, my first "cramster pillion" :P or my "cop friend" as he's known to my biker friends :P

He got married last week in his native, Kunigal. I didn't go by Karizma for a change, got caged with friends. Hopped on to one of my friend's Ikon car and 4 of us had a whale of time all the while driving till kunigal, one advantage of car is that you can talk with your friends who are accompanying you while on the move, samething is not possibile in bike rides, atleast till Bike intercoms are made available here.

He got married on May 1st, since it was an off for me (labour day ki jai!) and for my friends, we all made it in time. We left bangy on April 30th for his reception (had taken off for one day :P) Got stuck in horrible traffic near dasarahalli circle in NH4, after scraping our way through bumper to bumper traffic, my friend kartik aka Rossi on 4 wheels :P made sure that we reached kunigal in hardly 1 hour.
Caught up with college gang, they had come in another car. After reception, we headed to nearest daaru point, grabbed our beers and hit an isolated part of highway and drowned our sorrowness through beer :P reached hotel and the fun started, fellas were meeting each other after many years, few were meeting eachother for the first time since they had left college!



Obviously lot of catching up was done, not to forget leg pulling and wise ass comments!:P I was left capturing all the moments on my cam, the chat session was hilarious and comical most of the times, time flew and it was 2.30 am when i hit the sack! Caught up with few winks of sleep and wokeup early morning to be there for muhurtham. Few kumbhakarans were still sleeping, left them in their lalaland and 5 of us who were ready, headed to choultry. Girish was all decked up like a goat who is decorated before being sacrificed :P he was going through rituals and traditional ceremonies, I went click happy with my cam and captured some good off beat shots :P



The best uninterrupted spot for me to take pics was right behind the marriage photographer who was taking pics, so i stood behind him all the while, used my height advantage :P and craned over and got good shots. With in 15 mins in to muhurtam time (7.30 Am onwards) girish tied one of the most important knot of his life and lost his bachelorhood, needless to say, i captured the moment :P later, My friends and ExHtmtians RaminderSingh and Ganapathy arrived, they were followed by my colleague Ravindra and his wife. After wishing the couple, i escorted them for breakfast downstairs. It was too crowded, somehow managed to get seats and chaps had breakfast, i had already had it early morning when it was less crowded :P



By 10 am, Ex Htmtians and my colleague bid byes and left, By 11 Am, we started to move, but girish wanted us to stay further, but we felt that we could cover Melukote on the way back to bangy, so we bid byes to him and moved out of choultry by 11.30 Am. I had taken the State highway during one of my earlier rides from srirangapatna on mysore road to Kunigal on NH 48. The 60 plus kms of it was pure bliss with serene countryside scenery, i wanted to show my friends in cage the same route, but ended up taking wrong deviation from kunigal! We took the first left pointing towards Maddur, we should have taken second left instead to hit that state highway. But this new route took us further through interior villages and country side and lots of offroading too! it was first time for me, offroading in a cage :P My friend kartik, who was driving, thoroughly enjoyed this route, others didn't complain either. The serene country side with village folks going about their daily life was a treat to see. We stopped on the way to take some pics, i was missing my bike already :(



The only reason i felt good was due to Cage comforts like AC and plushy seats, AC was giving us much needed relief from outside heat and hot weather.
We finally hit Nagamangala and from there melukote was just 6kms. Savoured jackfruit sold on the way and stopped to take pic of melukote temple seen on top of hill.



The narrow roads led us in to the temple complex and we set out to explore by 2pm. The temple was well maintained and painted too, found some similarities to other temples i have visited.



Took pic of the Rath which was parked in a giant enclosure and tried to have darshan, temple was closed for darshan, so off we went towards "shooting spot" as it's called. The task involved climbing a small hill, i was too lazy to venture out, so was kartik. The other two fellas went exploring and came back sunburnt and dehydrated :P We moved on and hit nagamangala, from there on we were on the correct route towards srirangapatna-mysore road, the road was ala US style, with road side markers running parallel to each other. It was difficult for fellas to believe that it was a statehighway!

We hit Mysore road-srirangapatna and proceeded to Maddur Tiffany's hotel for much needed lunch. Savoured local speciality maddur vada and couple of dosas. It was the same hotel, where we had breakfast during the BN bangalore meet few weeks back. After my friends had finished oogling at few pretty faces there :P we moved on to Cafe Coffee Day near channapatna, more known as maddur CCD or 24hrs CCD. It as again the same CCD which we had haunted during the BN bangalore meet. Got to witness PDA (public display of affection) by one couple whose hormones were working overtime i guess! :P much to the amusement of everyone present there, the couple stirred up lot of hushed whispers there and not to mention my friends drooling over the moderate babe :P

Found a cutie kid near our table and kartik snapped a pic of hers.



Kid's mom was overtly exposing types with complete backless kinda Party wear dress, she was looking like she was dressed to go to a disco party or something! we couldn't believe that she was mom of that kid, could have said kid's cousin by her looks :P Kartik's flirting instincts kicked in and he made a small talk with the mom of kid by showing her kid's pic, he even got her addy! (or so claimed by him, not verified :P) thankfully not the phone number :P All the while, her hubby was not around, so not to worry :P (sorry Mr Hubby!) After savouring mochas and some CCD crap, we decided to move on.

Kartik was belting his Ikon through out, this guy's got some awesome driving skills, he has all those thousands of kms of highway driving experience under his belt (or seat belt :P) i strapped on my seatbelt and watched the "Video game" through the windscreen. He as hitting 150/160 kmph few times, gave me goosebumps sometimes, but being in a cage alters your perception, only time i could feel the speed was when i tried to stick out my hand through the window or watch the speedo :P In no time we were in bangalore's bumper to bumper traffic. I reached home at 7.30PM and the rest of the guys carried on to their places.

Overall, it was a nice occassion for old friends to get together and bitch collectively :P will get another such occassion soon, another college friend of mine is tying the knot this month, so the gang will meet up soon, camaan the enjayment! :P