Month: January 2008

Today I travelled by jetlite from hyd to bangalore…it was after a long time after the merger of air sahara with jet airways that I took this journey…and the experience was not at all gud. I don’t say that the ground staff or cabin crew were not polite or behaved strangely but looking at the things one can easily make out the pathetic state of jetlite now. I guess the airline was pretty good under the air sahara tag and maybe after the merger its struggling to make an identity of its own. I think naresh goyal wanted to use it to give a tough competition to the LCC’s like air deccan, etc. but the fact is that jetlite is now neither a full service carrier nor an LCC.

Just after entering the flight one can make out the diff….at this point one thing comes to my mind…last year I read an article in Economic Times wherein kingfisher’s vijay mallya and air deccan’s capt. gopinath were interviewed together…and vijay mallya just says one thing I am not into aviation business but into aviation hospitality…and thts 100% true once you fly in kingfisher. On the contrary what I found today in jetlite was a very sad hello from the air hostess once I entered the aircraft…no signs of smile in her face …it looked as if they were doing their job just for the sake of doing it….the way the snacks were served appeared as if they were doing a favour by giving them…and the snacks that were served were hopeless…instead if they want to go with LCC tag why not stop giving snacks instead of serving some hopeless stuff…..even the way the announcements were made by the cabin crew was not appealing…on the whole I think the air sahara…jet airways merger has made air sahara lose its complete identity including its  service as well as reputation. Maybe after the merger this has become a victim of sheer negligence.

I hope the same thing would not happen with the proposed kingfisher, air deccan merger….. lets see how vijay mallya is going to handle it….

This time I thought of starting the new year in a different way. So, with some of my friends, I started off for trekking in skandagiri hills. It was a night trek. We started off from bangalore at around 10.45 PM on 31st. The place was about 75-80 kms from my place. None of us knew the exact route 🙂 . Anyways we reached the base of the hills within 2 hrs. Thanks to all those local ppl and night patrol police who helped us in finding the place.

Looking at the base camp we were really happy to see so many people over there 🙂 ….happy because there are many other mad people like us who came to spend the 31st night trekking 😀 🙂 . After paying the entry fee (tht was a nominal 15 rupees per head), we started off for the trek. We started the trek blindly following others (assuming tht they knew the place better than us 🙂 )and ended up at a dead end. But luckily we did not go too far…so came back soon and decided tht we will go on our own rather than following others…we decided to show the way to others rather than following them 😉

Anyways after taking the correct route, we saw many ppl following us….tht made us happy becasue if at all we would be lost, we will not be alone 🙂 .With not much difficulty, we managed to reach the top in 2.5 hours. So, by 3.30 AM we were on the top of the hill. On the way we took a wrong path and made our trek a little more adventurous 🙂 . After reaching there the view was awesome…..it made us to forget all the pain we had taken to reach there…On the top we found some locals selling tea n some snacks. We took tea n started looking for a place to setttle down. It was very cold on the top…and the biting wind was making it worse. We managed to get a local villager over there to get some firewood n lit a fire over there. Things were a bit fine after this. Luckily we even found six other colleagues of mine who also came there.

From tht highest point we could actually see a cloud forming in front of us. From a distance it appeared as if there was some water body over there…but its actually a cloud. Tht was too gud to see. All of us were actually wating over there for the sunrise. Heard that the view would be gr8888. After an eager wait of 2.5 hrs, at around 6 AM we could actually see some sun rays. The view was awesome. The different colours has mesmerized everyone. The view was something like this……the clouds over there looked like a sea…and at far away distance we could see the sun rays in all different colours (orange, yellow, light blue n green n a combination of them)…..and below the clouds we could see the city (or rather village) lights n they appeared as small stars. The scene was too gud n i really can’t describe it in words…one has to actually see it in reality n no cameras can capture the whole beauty. And atlast after a long wait we could actually see the sun rising in the sky. It started as a small dot and kept rising……this was the first time I had seen sun rise in such a manner….. and I think its really worth to take all the pain to get to tht place just to see this.

After taking some snaps over there we started off to get down. It was pretty quick and we reached the base within 1.5 hrs. From there started off on our bikes to bangalore. And one more thing tht I forgot to mention. The road from bangalore (to be precise from marathahalli…becoz everyone knows how pathetic the city roads are 😀 ) to devanahalli is too gud..thanx to the international airport coming up over there… it was a six lane highway with service roads on either sides. We reached bangalore by 11.15 AM.

On the whole, the trip was awesome..it was a really gud experience to see the first sunrise of the year from such a point. Hope tht this new year would definitely bring in many gud things like tht for me. Will upload the photos when I get hold of them…this time I did not take my camera..so waiting to get the photos from my friends.