WORST EXPERIENCE BEING THE BEST TEACHER

3 years of college life(almost the end of 4th too) and we had never went on tours as a whole class. So we decided we had to do it, and we started planning. It was a miracle that more than 20 agreed on the trip, and said they would come. We decided that the trip would be to wayanad, and that we'd be travelling to, and exploring there, in a van. By the end of planning stage, the group strength came down to 15, which was still a miracle though.
We started late at 6 in the evening, had the usual college guys fun in the van, and that's pretty much everything about Day 1. Not many pictures to highlight this few hours of Day 1 stuck inside a van..

Now that I think about it, I dont have much pictures to show the beauty of Wayand(or atleast the very few places we visited there). Me being dumb, deleted most of the landscape pictures I took, the only ones remaining being selfies/portraits(sorry.. you're going to have to endure looking at my face instead of Wayand's beauty)
So, back to the trip now... All was going well and fun, we reached ooty early morning and halted for a while. We had to get the kerala state permit for our van. This was march- the onset of summer. It was already burning hot in chennai. After living in that kind of weather, ooty felt like being in a freezer. We felt numb in the cold weather there, but made the best out of the few minutes we halted(Wayand was our priority! Ooty was nothing... Or so we thought)
From then on, the journey was full of mountain roads with the many twists and turns, making our ride feel like being in a rollercoaster. The weather, the scenary, everything changed and we knew we had entered kerala border. God I love everything about this state(Their biriyani being an exception😐)...
We had made reservations in a lodge-cum-resort(I dont know how to describe it. It looked like both), and we reached it by evening. Being tired from the journey, we decided to rest for a while and start touring after 5pm. This was where things started to go wrong. Turns out, the tourist attractions were only open until 5pm, which we found out very late. So we had to spend the night enjoying the view from our lodge(It was one of the only 2 best things that happened in this trip. Our lodge overlooked a valley. The view was truly amazing)

Day 3 went by well. Nothing much to complain about. We planned for a bunch of places, but ended up going to only 2 of those. One being Kanthanpara waterfalls, the other being Edakkal caves. We went to the falls at morning, had our bath, then began the climb to Edakkal caves. A climb of a million steep steps(or so it seemed) later, we reached Edakkal caves. This was totally worth the climb. Definitely not recommended for older people. Again, my dumbass missed out on taking pictures of the place without people in it. You'll have to take my word for it, that, it was beautiful. We began our descent, had our lunch, then started for the next spot.
I don't remember where we were headed because our tour came to halt there. Our van experienced a clutch plate issue, and the rest of our day was ruined. We were stuck between our lodge and the other tourist spot. These tourist spots in Wayanad are so spread out that it wasn't possible for us to walk to it too. We were a long way away from our lodge, so we couldn't reach it too. So we decided to make the most of what time we had left(for we would be departing the next day), and roamed the roads. We ventured into tea estates, took pictures(again with people). This is where we witnessed the second best thing that happened in our journey. The sunsets among these tea estates were soo good, that we stood mesmerized, watching it for a long time.
It took till late night for the van to get fixed. Our tour being ruined, we headed for the comfort of our lodge, tired to the bone.

Okay.. so Day 4. Where our troubles multiplied..
The lodge(the name of which I'm not going to mention out of pity, cuz their service and ambience was excellent) charged us a different rate than what they agreed on initially. We were already grumpy from the previous day ending like a nightmare, this seemed to bum us out even more. We argued for a long time, and finally settled for a rate that was inbetween. We never expected this from the hotel staff who were so polite and humble throughout our stay. Our return journey wasn't much eventful, as all of us were too bummed out to notice anything.
Even though we had the pleasant experience of going to 2 good spots, having wonderful meals, nice lodging, and everything else, the bad memories still stand out, making this one of the worst tours I had taken in my life.

There's only so much you can learn by watching, listening, etc. Some things need to be learnt first hand. We had the worst luck in experiencing a life lesson in this trip; that even when the thought of unplanned trips sound exciting, we need to have a back-up plan, for when our 'unplannedness' goes haywire. We learnt to make the best out of worse situations.
To think back, and realise that "Oh yeah. I learnt something from that too" is also a great experience.