Ranjan, 2008 you got in or got out? Mine was 1996-2000 batch. Doing those times, MSRIT used to look like 500 year old Hampi ruins - with half broken statues, temples and palace like structures. I heard our college looks like an IT park now.
BR HILLS TRIP
BR Hills is a part of hill-range that links Western Ghats with the Eastern Ghats and is inside a wildlife sanctuary. It is about 200 kms from Bangalore. Although it is shorter if you go via Kanakapura, we took the faster Mysore route. Even if you take the Mysore route, you don't have to go all the way to Mysore. There is a road to Kollegal - Chamrajnagar - BR Hills from Mandya.
Anyway, as mentioned before, we didn't do enough research before embarking on this trip - so we drove all the way to Mysore and from there, went to BR Hills.
Pic 1: Our new travel buddy Sandeep (my cousin) is an IT guy, like most others I know. And these IT guys have a strange habit of carrying a laptop/college bag wherever they go. So although this is a day trip, the boot is full of bags.
Pic 2: Just as we entered Mysore city, cops flagged us down and asked us to pay up Rs. 300 for overspeeding. Fine for overspeeding? In a small city like Mysore? In 2005? Naturally, we denied overspeeding. Our arguments were the usual - No way! Do you know who I am? We are a distant relative of the Mysore Police Commissioner's neighbor. And we were hardly doing 30 kmph!
Pic 3: The cop doesn't argue, he smiles. Now that can't be good. He pulls out this picture.
Pic 4: We were genuinely shocked! Remember this is 2005, and we are not exactly on Pune-Mumbai Expressway. This was in a city like Mysore. We were doing 67 kmph in a 40 kmph zone. We paid the cops Rs. 300, chatted up with them for sometime and left. If our faces were visible in the photo, we would have paid the cop a Rs. 200 tip!
![Big Grin](https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/images/smilies/biggrin.png)
Pic 5: Outside Mysore, we stopped at a roadside sugarcane juice vendor and ordered 4 glasses. Jagga found a housefly in his juice. When he showed his glass to the juice vendor, he simply put his hand (4 fingers) inside the glass, removed the fly and gave it back. Jagga looked at us, shrugged and drank the juice. Apparently, it was the best sugarcane juice he ever had.
Pic 6: We found this temple on the Mysore - BR Hills road. Looks pretty cool. Any idea what this is?
Pic 7: BR Hills/MM Hills hill-range in sight, and the road narrows down. We are forced to park behind this mound to allow the bus to pass.
Pic 8: We reach the BR Hills forest checkpost. The guard asks for a tip, and we pay him Rs. 20.
Pic 9: On the road to BR Hills, we saw this rare Blurry Elephant (normal sized elephant but looks blurry all the time).
Pic 10: The roads are nice and curvy - but we don't speed (not after getting that speeding ticket) inside the Jungle. We came across a "View Point". But in the afternoon, the scenary was so dull that we decide to take our own photograph from the view-point.