Southern Tour

Shekhawat announces 'picnic plans' to a captive audience

Shekhawat today pulled out a new rabbit from his cap, announcing that the next excursion from the Club would be down south. It will be a ten-day tour, slated between end-November and early-December 2015 and would cover principally the cities of Bangalore, Mysore, Ooty and Hyderabad.
“The journey out of Mumbai to Bangalore and the return from Hyderabad to Mumbai would be by air,” he informed. “In between, there will be an overnight train journey from Bangalore to Hyderabad.

Arun Patil

The rest of the trip, including local sight-seeing and shopping shall be by chartered bus.”
Getting into details on costs, he explained what the Club was offering is a “tour package” that would cover travel, hotel stay on a twin-sharing basis, one-time daily meals (veg and non-veg) etc. “Those who do not want to travel by air may opt for train and avail of the senior citizens’ concession,” he said. “But I must also inform that we are getting air tickets for merely Rs2000, should we book right now.

Swati Punjabi celebrates her membership with a big treat

This early-bird advantage will not last long. So those who want to join in, please give your names at the earliest.”
Effectively, this puts to rest all speculation of a foreign tour any time soon. Even as this is the second trip down south (the earlier one being a 40-member contingent to Kerala between February 10 and 17, 2014), the clinching factor here is clearly the dirt cheap air tickets. But Shekhawat added that he would restrict the group to 30 members this time. “So all bookings would be made on a first-come, first-serve basis,” he declared.
Meanwhile, Swati Punjabi celebrated her 'joining the Club’ (ref yesterday’s post) with a big treat that included home-made dhokla, poha and pakoras. And Arun Patil kept his word on ‘surprising us’ (ref post of August 31) by showing up unannounced. The moment he appeared at the Gate, Srichand Arora left the exercises and ran up to escort him through the Garden. Arun came limping in with his prosthetic leg on (and a single crutch) to a spontaneous round of applause from all present, followed by an extra laugh at the end of the exercises.
Welcome back, Arun Patil!