Bangalore – Srirangapatna - Mysore
30th May 2005
We all were at the Secunderabad Railway Station by 6:00 pm. We were delighted to see our faculty members Mr. Raghunath Acharya Sir, Mr. Shradhanand Sir and our placement madam Mrs. Lalitha accompanied by some juniors and parents of some of our classmates. The train was at right time and departed from station at 6:40 pm. It took almost an hour for us to adjust in the train. In the train some of my classmates were playing cards, chatting, listening to music, etc. Sweta and I were busy in collecting money from our classmates. Most of them were slept by 1:00 am.
31st May 2005
We arrived in Bangalore at around 7:15 am. I was very much tensed about the hotel that we booked. We had to wait for some time at the station, finally the person arrived at station and took all of us to the hotel by name Anmol Residency by 7:45 am. I did not expect that we would get the hotel of such a good standard which has television as well as telephone in each room. The facilities in the hotel were satisfying. Totally we booked 11 rooms for 44 members, including our faculty Mr. Satish Chandra Sir. I shared the room with Prem, Amit, Naveen and Ganesh. Everybody washed themselves and was ready by 10:00 am with their breakfast done. We had arranged the bus for our traveling in and around Bangalore.
All of us left for ISKCON (International Society of Krishna Consciousness) - Sri Radha Krishna-Chandra Temple and reached there by 11:30 am. The founder of the temple is A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada. It was written there that on each and every step everyone should chant “Hare Krishna Hare Krishna Krishna Krishna Hare Hare Hare Rama Hare Rama Rama Rama Hare Hare”. The paintings on the ceilings were awesome. The temple also had the shopping center, food court and a theatre which runs only the movies of Lord Krishna. It was almost 12:45 pm when we left from there. Then we went for lunch at Shri Shiva Shakti restaurant and finished by 2:00 pm.
The next place we covered was Visweshwara Industrial and Technological Museum, which had an entry ticket Rs 15 per head. The museum had the exhibits from the fields of Mathematics, Physics, Biotechnology, Astronomy, Networking, etc. There was a model of the first flight invented by Wright Brothers. It was a three floor museum with a 3-D theater on the top floor. The museum was worth seeing.
Mathematics – Pythagoras Theorem, Logic Gates, Conversions from one system to another, etc
Physics- Optics, Jet Engine, Aircraft Engine, 4-stroke Engine, etc
Biotechnology- DNA (Deoxyribonucleic acid), etc
Networking- Satellite Communication, etc
Near by the museum we saw a structure which looks like a cabinet that was totally black. In that we found a division of SUN and we all felt in love by seeing that construction. We were in the museum till 4:30 pm. Lal Bagh was our next destination which had entry ticket of Rs.5 per head. It was 5:30 pm when we reached there. We took few snaps near the entrance. As we thought of getting into the main garden, the rain started coming down heavily and we were forced to go into the bus. Some of my friends got drenched. We returned to our hotel at around 7:00 pm. Then took rest for about an hour and then went for dinner at Indraprastha Vegetarian Restaurant. We bought a cake for our classmate Swetha Singh and went to her room at exactly 0:00 am and celebrated her Birthday there and also took some photographs.
1st June 2005
The first place we were supposed to cover was Electronic City, which was almost an hour journey from our hotel. We reached there at 11:15 am. We tried for an appointment with INFOSYS but could not get it. But we were happy that they took our College Brochure and said that they will inform in 2 to 3 days. Next at 12:15 pm we went to VIDEOCON, where we saw the manufacturing of transformers which are used in television and UPS.
In the afternoon we had an appointment with SASKEN Technologies, a 16 year old company which works every second. All of us got the visitors pass and then they took us to the Craig Barrett Auditorium where Mr. Balaji, the HR personnel, an IIM-A graduate delivered the lecture on SASKEN for about an hour. In his lecture he said these things:-
Initially it was named as SAS with the motto “Unleashing Indian Creativity”, but as the years went by it changed its name to SASKEN. The first half SAS stands for Silicon Automated System and the remaining half KEN means “Wisdom” in Japanese language.
SASKEN provides solution to Fortune 500 companies like Motorola, Texas Instruments, etc. Its competitors are Wipro, Hughes Software, etc. The 80% of revenues are from service division. And its subsidiary is SASKEN Network Engineering Company. The campus was splendid. We were there till 4:00 pm.
After SASKEN, we all went to Shiva temple where we worshipped Lord Ganesha and Lord Shiva which were almost 15 feet and 40 feet tall respectively. Then we visited Barah Jyothir Ling Yatra at the same temple, which had an entry fee of Rs 10/-. The last place we covered that day was the Bull temple. We saw a huge figure of Lord Ganesha and a Bull. By the time we reached hotel, it was 6:45 pm. We all slept around 0.00 am, to get up around 5:30 am.
2nd June 2005
We started for Srirangapatna at 7:30 am. On the way we had a halt for breakfast. We reached Srirangapatna at around 12:00 noon. Firstly, we went to Gumbuz where the tombs of Tippu Sultan and his parents could be seen. While going to Tippu’s summer palace we saw his tabulet. We reached Tippu’s summer palace which had an entry ticket of Rs.5 per head. It was a small museum consisting of the drawings of his seven sons, the furniture, the coins of that time, the dresses, the weapons, etc. We were here for half an hour. The third place we covered at Srirangapatna was Sri Ranganatha Swamy Temple. Then at around 1:30 pm we reached Mysore and went for lunch at Hotel Siddhartha. After lunch, we went to Mysore Palace which was fantabulous, which had an entry fee of Rs 20/-.. The construction of palace was completed in the year 1912. The main building is of massive grey granite, three storeyed, and dominated by a five storeyed tower covered by a gilded dome. The tower is about 145 feet high from the ground to the golden flag on its summit. On the ground floor, is the impressive elephant gate. Immediately to the south is the beautiful Kalyana Mantapa or the marriage pavilion. On the first floor, still facing east, is the great Durbar hall. Divan-e-Am, measuring 4.25 m by 12.80 m. On the same floor, towards the south is a daintily decorated private Durbar hall, called Ambavilasa, the Diwan-e-Khas. The second floor has several rooms and large halls on the sides. The Kalyanamantapa or the marriage pavilion, in the ground floor, is a beauty to look at. The star attraction of the Mysore palace is the traditional ceremonial golden throne. The paintings on the walls were eye catching. We all were in the place till 5:15 pm. We had to take few snaps from outside the palace as the camera is not allowed in the palace.
Next we went to St. Philomena’s church where we can speak volumes about the construction. After that we went to Brindavan Garden which had an entry fee of Rs15/-.. As we reached there it started raining that made us more enjoyable. The garden is having many types of fountains like Russian fountain, Globe fountain, North Bank fountain and Crown fountain and also the marble statue of Radhakrishna. The illuminated sight of the garden was splendid. The sight of the river Cauvery was breath-taking. Then we saw the musical fountain there. It runs from 7:00 pm to 7:50 pm. At 8:30 pm we left for Bangalore. On the way to Bangalore we had dinner at around 10:00 pm and reached Bangalore at 1:15 am.
3rd June 2005
As we arrived late from Mysore everybody got up late. Today we had to go to IISc (Indian Institute of Science) by 2:30 pm. Mean while we three of our friends went to Vidhan soudha which was superb. We also saw the High court. We reached IISC by 2:00 pm. We went to SERC (Supercomputer Education and Research Centre) block which consists of four floors. Two persons divided our batch into two and showed the entire SERC block. The ground floor consists of super computers of IBM (International Business Machine) Regatta, SGI (Silicon Graphics Interface) and also PARAM 10000. The configuration of Supercomputer was 1000 TB Hard Disk, 256 GB Main Memory and consists of 32 processors. The temperature needed to maintain these computers should be between 18 and 25 C. The Supercomputers were very huge like the size of an almirah. We had a good time in IISc. The campus is very big and was marvelous.
The first floor lab was meant for browsing, the second floor lab was for PhD students and the third floor lab was for M.Tech students.
On all the floors from second onwards we find the systems of IBM, SGI, SUN, APPLE, HP, etc with different flavors of operating systems like UNIX, LINUX, MACINTOSH, SUN SOLARIS, WINDOWS, etc. We were in the campus till 4:00 pm and then returned to our hotel.
In the evening along with my friends I went to Burma bazaar and did some shopping. Then went to Brigade road around 8:30 pm and purchased a watch for my sister and came back to majestic around 10 pm. We went to Andhra hotel were we had a nice meal.
4th June 2005
I got up at 6:45 am and then packed my luggage as we had to check out the hotel by 8:30 am. After checking out, we went to WIPRO Technologies at Electronic city. We reached their by 10:30 am. We were lead by Mr. Surendranath of Operation team. He showed us all the campus. The campus even had a amphitheater which is used for plays. He took all of us to the conference hall by name Indian Ocean. There he showed us the power point slide show that was about WIPRO. On of the interesting things we found there was, each and every department is named by something related to water. For example, we saw the departments by name Dolphin, Pearl, Indian Ocean, Bay of Bengal, etc. It is PCMM level 5 and ISO 14001 certified. In this campus there are about 43 conferences hall with approximately 7000 employees.
Then at 1:00 pm we arrived at “The Forum” the shopping mall. We got time till 3:30 pm.
My school mate, Harika who helped me out regarding accommodation and boarding came to forum at 1:20 pm along with her friend. We went to Accenture where she works for it. I got a visitor pass and she shown me all the spots in and around the campus. We had a coffee in the cafeteria and came back to “The Forum” at 3pm. I went to Apple show room where I operated Laptop and I-pod. Finally went to station and got settled by 4:15 pm. The train departed at exact time 5:00 pm. At around 8:30 pm we all had the dinner in the train, which was manageable. We played cards in the train till 1:00 am and I slept at 4 am.
We reached Secunderabad the next day at 5:45 am. The overall journey was victorious.
Finally I would like to thank Mr. Satish Chandra Sir, who was very friendly with us every time, Harika - who helped us in all the way and also would like to thank the Principal and Placement department for making the tour successful.
~ Prem & Kranthi
