A day away

We work in a branch office and like most of the branch office employees, we feel a bit neglected by the head office. We are never invited on any official picnics, off sites or any official celebrations. Most of us have never even been to the head office till now. To add to the misery, the group cos. even got moved from the original building and now all we get is a mail for all the Christmas, Diwali, valentine's celebrations. Nobody bothers to even give us chocolates or decorate our office on such occassions.

We were feeling so frustated that we decided to just organise a picnic for our team over the weekend in Feb. Most of us are married and since the chosen day for the picnic was a saturday, we decided to make it a family picnic. After much research, we chose Bheemeshwari. Bheemeshwari is a small town that lies between the Shivasamudra falls and Mekedatu falls, on the Cauvery River in the Mandya district of Karnataka. Bheemeshwari is around 100 kms from Bangalore. We all met at Hudson circle on 4th Feb 2011 at 9:00 am and took the Kanakpura road. We were 9 of us with 3 children and took a few stops. We made it to Bheemeshwari by 11:30 am as the traffic on Kanakpura road is horrible with the metro work in progress. However, after Kanakpura road, the hills on the way and the trees provided quite a scenic view.

On reaching Bheemeshwari, we realised that we need to book jungle Lodges in advance, else they don't even allow one to use the restaurant. They agreed to let us in if we paid Rs.500 extra per person apart from the Rs.1100, which is the actual charge per person. By that time, we were feeling quite adventurous and decided to just explore the area and choose a good spot for picnic. One of our team mates knows Kannada and he spoke to the locals. They arranged for coracle rides for us to the other side of the river. It was the first time most of us were taking a coracle ride and we were quite excited.

We crossed the river and chose a quiet spot for ourselves. When i saw the water, i couldn't control myself anymore as the whole arrangement had taken quite some time and it was getting very hot, I just jumped in the water and found a nice rock to sit and soak my feet.

The water was quite clear and we could see small fish. Soon, we all were playing in the water and splashing it at each other. The children were also having a gala time. My husband found a rock where he took me from where the water just got very deep. So we could sit on the rock and enjoy the feeling of hanging one leg in nearly 30 ft deep water. There was a beautiful red color rock on the bed of the river, from which one could see beautiful rays of light scattering around because of the sun hitting the rock. It was a splendid sight! We also spotted some water snakes and a lot of monkeys.

The locals had also arranged for food for us, some spicy chicken curry, boiled eggs, steamed rice, sambhar and mirchi bhajjis. We took a coracle back to the other side. This time the guy who was riding the coracle was only 12 years old and quite a fun guy. He gave us all a twirl in the coracle. That's the best memory of my trip, we sitting in the coracle and the coracle going round and round like some exciting water park ride :)

Overall, it was quite a memorable, adventurous, impromptu and economical trip, which the team planned. We decided it's better to enjoy ourselves than to wait for somebody to wake up and grant us an official trip!