It was finally Myra’s birthday that Saturday and we were glad that it was during the weekend. We'd planned a cake cutting for her at the Oasis food court on Friday night at 12 AM. We wanted to plan a surprise getaway for the weekend but sixth sense told us to ask her what she wanted to do for her birthday. When we asked her, she said that she wanted to visit the holy Chamundi Hills with just the two of us: Arjun and I.
On Friday, all our college mates plus Chetan and Suraj gathered for the cake cutting. There were about 25 of us and it was a nice celebration. Her birthday was the first birthday in our group at Mysore and not one person missed it. It was also nice to see many other cake cuttings happening around and Myra got wished by almost everybody in the food court.
We all dispersed after the cake cutting. I wished Myra “Happy Birthday” once again and retired to bed. We had plans of visiting the Chamundi Hills the following day and had to wake up early. She had plans of meeting Chetan for dinner. I could see him itching to ask her if he could join us but she was firm with her decision.
The next morning, we woke up early. I packed all the gifts that Arjun and I had bought for her. I then went to her room on the pretext of borrowing clothes and placed all her gifts in a closet that she never used. We wanted to give her gifts throughout the day but it would be a lot to carry them.
We wore traditional attire and boarded the bus from Infosys bus stand to CBS (Central Bus stand) of Mysore. From there we hired a taxi to reach atop the Chamundi Hills. Tourists can also take the bus to reach the hilltop but there’s also a trekking option of climbing 1000 steps.
We got into the taxi and slowly it started ascending the hill. There were a lot of twists and turns but I could see the view getting better at every turn.
“What are the famous places here?”, Myra asked us.
We had done a lot of research and couldn’t wait to show off.
“First you have the famous 16-foot-tall Nandi statue. It is halfway from the bottom. Then there’s the actual Chamundeswari temple on the hilltop. The statue of Mahishasura is also famous”, I said.
“Tourists usually first go to the temple and on the way back, at about halfway down, they visit the Nandi statue. There’s also a viewpoint there”, Arjun said.
“You two have done your research”, said an impressed Myra.
We reached the hilltop. It was surreal. If the weather in Mysore was good, on the hilltop, it was perfect. And there was the actual temple which was golden yellow in color and had a quadrangular shape.
The darshan line was not long and the idol of Goddess Chamundi was spectacular. The three of us were particularly silent that day, maybe we were just lost in our own thoughts or we were just taking it all in. After the darshan, we bought some idols and little gifts for our family.
Coming out of the temple, we walked towards the large statue of Mahishasura who demonized people and got ultimately lost his life in the hands of Goddess Chamundi. The statue of Mahishasura had a sword in one hand and a serpent in another.
We took pictures of the idol and got into the taxi. Halfway down, we got down at the statue of Nandi. It was beautiful and a lot of people spent a good amount of time near it.
There was a nice viewpoint where a lot of people took pictures. The three of us stood looking at the view. It was like meditation.
“Happy Birthday Myra”, Arjun and I shouted from there. Myra had tears in her eyes.
We then got back to the taxi and went to a restaurant called RRR. It served local South Indian meals. We had lunch and none of us said much. Guess we were having an out-of-the-world experience.
On our way back to the campus, Myra hugged the two of us and did not let go for a long time…
--To be Continued
This post is a part of the Blogchatter A2Z Challenge.
This is turning out to be such a pleasant read .. ! 😌
ReplyDeleteGlad that you liked it :) <3
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