(Missed
the first part…. Click here)
Suddenly
we saw a hotel open and a petrol bunk nearby. We decided to intake our fuel
first and let the car wait for sometime. So we barged into the hotel and a
waiter came to take the order. Me: “Idli vada for all?” Others agreed, but it
means nothing if we agreed, the main guy waiter replied: “No idli vada. Still
not ready, sir” Ok, so we changed our order to masala dosa or poori. Waiter:
“Not yet ready sir. Only vegetable upma is available. If you wait for five
minutes, I will get vada also”. We all stared at each other then in one voice:
“Get the upma first and start making vada’s and get them too.” When you are
hungry, anything you eat seems tasty. That day, the upma was so tasty that we
were almost tempted to order another plate, but just as we finished our upma,
the vada’s were ready on our table. We pounced into vadas and finished that in
no time. It was hot and again tasted delicious. Then had a cup of coffee each
and then as we started to leave, we remembered that it was a decision time.
Remember we had to take one of the two routes from spot 1. This was exactly the
spot 1 where we had to deviate from highway. We looked at each other and
discussed on which route to take. Obviously we were not able to decide. Best
thing now was to gamble. Out came the one rupee coin, heads – route 1 (little
bad one) tails – route 2 (better one). Flipped the coin in air.
We
took car to petrol bunk, added fuel and continued on the route 1. Few kms on
that route and it seemed to be nice road. So Prashanth spoke up: “Hey this is
not bad at all. Seems good road” Just then the potholes started from nowhere.
After some distance, the road got better. This time Prasad said: “Ok, seems
like only that part was bad” Just as he spoke, again the road got bad. Some
more time and again the road got better. We stared at each other and nobody
dared to speak about the road condition now. We did not want to take any
chances especially when we had encountered such situations with rain first and
now roads. So we continued our drive silently. Thankfully the road continued to
be better and finally we reached our first destination Sirsi. In Sirsi, we had
to search for some new bus stand and continue on that route to reach Hulekal.
So
whenever we came at some junction where the road split into two, we searched
for sign boards as to which road goes where. Surprisingly the sign boards
always pointed in one direction and always showed the way where one of the
roads lead. There was not even a single clue as to where the other road leads.
Somehow with our own guesses we took one or the other roads and at every such
split junction, we always knew where one road goes but not the other. Thanks to
the “well planned” sign boards. Finally we had to take help of some people who mislead
us for some time on wrong routes and finally lead us onto the correct one.
Finally
we reached Hulekal. People greeted us and gave us some scolding for our night
drive. Then we freshened up, had one more round of breakfast and at this moment
we were totally tired and exhausted. Our eyes were slowly coming down and
vision was getting blur. At around 10am, all 3 of us thought of taking a small nap
and slept off. We slept like logs on that day and don’t think we even changed
the position in which we slept and finally we got up when we were forcibly
woken up for lunch at 2pm. Then had lunch, went out for some shopping and
finally returned home at night for yet another long sleep. Next morning we were
supposed to leave back to Bangalore with my wife at around 7am, but as usual we got up late due to our
tiredness and finally left for our return journey at 11am.
So
this marked the end of my first night drive and the most amazing till now. I
still don’t know how our elder people agreed for our night drive. We three
amigos set off without any planning or schedule or the proper decided route on
this memorable and the most enjoyable drive which I would cherish all the time.
As far as possible, would be avoiding anymore night drives as it is always
safer to drive in the morning than night. Nevertheless, this night drive would
always remain as a wonderful memory for rest of my life.
[THE END]
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