Well, that was quite a holiday I took from blogging. I've been away. I had a blast.

So we leave from here on a friday (I dont even remember the date correctly, but I think it was 14th).. and we reach Delhi on Sunday. Over here, Chotumama (who waited 6 hours) picks me up and we head off to Gurgaon. I spend the day there (with beer!) and in the evening its time to leave again.

I go with Meera to Hazrat Nizammudin Station (pardon me if I spelt it wrong) and meet the rest of the chumps there. After that we head off towards Sawai Madhopur (spelling is wrong for sure!) and we reach there at I think 1 in the morning. Our transport from the station to the tent place (I dunno where it was) was by open top trucks. Now, at one in the morning, open top trucks are fun, as hell!! Me, Arjun and Bharat were tripping on The Beatles (rather SINGING Beatles songs) while the rest of the chumps were staring at the stars. Stars were beautiful. Never in my life have I seen so many of them out at night. Zothan wanted to see a ghost, but he was sorely disappointed when no banshee/ghoul jumped out at us from the forest and started drinking our blood.

We reach there in about an hour and we see tents. We see toilets without flushes. We see toilets with gaps in them (for voyeurs). We see everything by then. But fun is just on its way.

Now the next day, while everyone is in plenary and shouting their lungs out (except me and Arjun, who is bathing). I was guarding the bathroom and making sure nobody got in. He's very shy you see.

Anyway, while we were all in our respective places, a tent catches fire. There's loads of stuff in there worth loads of money! The MC gets pissed and we decide to move venue. Not a small task. 350 people for 5 days.. certainly not a small task. But it happens! And we're off to some new venue which apparently was only 40 kms from Jaipur but Arjun thought (and I suspiciously agree with him) that we were in Iraq. I mean, we were transported there during the night, when everyone was asleep, nobody saw anything. And we were taken away from there in the dead of the night as well! What is with that?

Anyway, we are there, the new venue and we are given rooms. Certainly not permanent rooms. There wouldnt be any fun if we werent given new rooms every two days and made to carry our bags around! Hehe. Small joke, I hope nobody got offended.

So that night, we decide (very unwisely) that WE WILL NOT SLEEP! So loads of us machas and machis from Chennai decided to stay awake a view the Rajasthani sunrise, because its so different from sunrises elsewhere. So we saw the sunrise.

Next morning the conference begins.

I just have a few things to say
1) The Jives were amazing. Apparently you can find jives on youtube!
2) The history session was pretty boring (Sam said he was sleepy that day.. anyway)
3) My FLC was the best (everyone says this)
4) My Faci was the best (refer above)
5) I didnt want to leave after the conference (refer above)

So anyway, the night the conference got over, after being kicked in the nose by an OC member (I'm sorry, if you're reading this, I dont know your name). We leave for Delhi (Gurgaon, okay fine!). We reach there early in the morning and I have a fever, so I dont give a rat's ass about anything other than hitting the sack, which I do eventually. I wake up and breakfast (bread and eggs and maggi, for vegetarians) is being served. I eat two slices of bread, which to my mouth (because of the fever) was tasteless.


I go back to sleep and when I wake up again, amazingly, its time for lunch! McDonalds delivery man arrives and we eat McDonalds burgers (obviously, the McD's delivery man does not deliver Pizza's). And then, tragedy!

Due to a host of reasons, 14 of us miss the train back to Chennai (very sad, no?) and ten of us are still stuck between two traffic signals in Gurgaon. Now, anyone who's been to Gurgaon knows that there's no such thing as public transport there. So we try to get ANY form of transport that comes our way.

And salvation comes in the form of a Goods/Cargo auto! So technically 5 of us got smuggled into New Delhi for 300 bucks. All we had to do according to the driver was shut up, sit down and keep quiet! Zothan, Sam, Gautam, Avinash and myself are in this. Sam is from Zambia and he doesnt have his passport with him at the time. Double thrill!

We reach the station late, obviously and we decide to book tickets for a train the next day, which we do.

We spend the night at a house. I dont know who's house it was, but whosoever's house it was, we are eternally grateful! And we also thank Anica for taking us there.

The fact still remains, like Zothan says, we have so much bragging rights for being smuggled into the capital!