Industrial Tour as a student of Industrial & Production Engineering (1987 - 1991), BMS College of Engineering, Bangalore. I cannot recall the exact dates but it was sometime late 1989 or early 1990.
Reached Kudremukh early morning, could not find accommodation nor permission to visit mines. We took a ride in the bus up a hill and back down, we got a good view of ore processing plants. A massive tipper passed by us while we were going down hill, the engine noise was deafening.
Reached Shimoga evening and we checked into a lodge. A small fight between Bhayankara and Masale, nothing serious. Usual stuff with a bunch of rowdy guys. We had dinner at Kavi's home -that's according to Ravi.
Day 5
At Pune. Bus 1 gang moved into a choultry, while Bus 2 gang moved into hotels. We were supposed to visit Kirloskar Cummins because of bad communication we ended up going towards Kirloskar Oil Company. Three fourth way down we realized our mistake and we had to change our course. Kirloskar Cummins was on opposite side of the city... Finally we did reach the factory. We got to see the air-conditioned machine shop, latest CNC machines (I was blown away seeing at the number of tool posts one of the machines had... 72!), engine testing room, staff canteen, and a prototype Neoplan, a hi-tech bus with custom controls for every seat.
Places visited-
- Kuduremukh Iron Ore Mines
- Badravathi-Shimoga - VISL
- Gajnur Dam
- Jog Falls - Mahatma Gandhi Hydel Power Plant
- Pune - Kirloskar Cummins
- Karla Caves
- Mumbai - Premier Automobiles Limited
- Goa
- Mr. Jagannath Rao
- Ms. Shylaja
- Sateesh Kavi
- Shetty Rajesh
- Siddeshwar Prasad
- Sudhin S Kumta
- Swarna K
- __________
- __________
- Abdulwahab Kataraki
- Ajay Lalchandani
- Amrutha
- Anand K
- Anil Rayappa
- Anju
- Aruna H
- Arvind Shekar
- Dharamendra
- Gagandeep Singh
- Harikeshavan G
- Harish
- Jamunabai
- Kannan
- Manjunath Urs
- Nadim Alam
- Nagendra Kumar L K
- Naveen Singhania
- Nazath
- Padmini
- Prasad C H S
- Raghu Varma Sagi
- Rajesh Shetty
- Rakesh
- Rakesh
- Ramesh Sundaram
- Ravi K L
- Raviprakash
- Reena Gupta
- Sandeep Lodha
- Sanjay Dugar
- Sanjay R Shastry
- Saravanan B
- Sateesh Kavi
- Satish (Jandu)
- Saurabh Shukla
- Seshadri C B
- Shankar G R
- Shankarnarayan M K
- Sharad C
- Shuaib Khan
- Sheshadri Raman
- Shivakumar K R
- Siddeshwar Prasad
- Sindhu
- Srinivas Reddy
- Sridevi Desai
- Sudha
- Sudhin S Kumta
- Suneel Gandham
- Sunil Muthuswamy
- Sunil Rathi
- Swarna K
- Varma
- Venkatesh (we never saw this guy again after the tour)
- Vijayasimha
- Vinay B
- Vishnuchittan S
- Vishwanath Reddy B T
- Andy (not real name)
- __________
- __________
- __________
- __________
- __________
- __________
- __________
- __________
- __________
- __________
Reached Kudremukh early morning, could not find accommodation nor permission to visit mines. We took a ride in the bus up a hill and back down, we got a good view of ore processing plants. A massive tipper passed by us while we were going down hill, the engine noise was deafening.
Day 2
Visit to Visvesvaraya Iron and Steel Limited, Bhadravathi. We got an opportunity to see a blast furnace and molten steel. Apart from that I do not recall much about this visit. The small between Bus1 and Bus2 problem has grown bigger, lot of rumblings and threats. Off goes Bus2 to a garage for some minor repair. We had nothing else to do so we took off to Gajanur. It was dusk when we reached, no playing in water. Back to Shimoga, we had dinner at Jewel Rock, hosted by Kavi's father.
Visit to Visvesvaraya Iron and Steel Limited, Bhadravathi. We got an opportunity to see a blast furnace and molten steel. Apart from that I do not recall much about this visit. The small between Bus1 and Bus2 problem has grown bigger, lot of rumblings and threats. Off goes Bus2 to a garage for some minor repair. We had nothing else to do so we took off to Gajanur. It was dusk when we reached, no playing in water. Back to Shimoga, we had dinner at Jewel Rock, hosted by Kavi's father.
Day 3
Jog waterfalls was the destination for the day. Some of us traveled roof-top, got whacked by low hanging branches. We visited Mahatma Gandhi Hydel Power Plant - I do not remember much about this place. In the bus, trouble started between Shetty and Raghu & Anand, punches were exchanged and tension prevailed till the end of the day. The gap between Bus1 and Bus2 widened. We had a good time playing in a lake created by the head-stream. Our senior guide Mr.Jagganath Rao joined us in the water and someone shot a picture of him from the back... Absolutely no respect for teachers!
Day 4
Morning we stopped at a highway hotel on the outskirts of Belgaum. While we waited for some of the slower guys to get ready... Someone stole one coconut from the hotel's trees. More people joined and more cocnuts found their way into our hands. The bus roof-top coconut party came to an abrupt end when one of the managers/owners gave us a tongue lashing. We resumed our journey towards Poona.
Morning we stopped at a highway hotel on the outskirts of Belgaum. While we waited for some of the slower guys to get ready... Someone stole one coconut from the hotel's trees. More people joined and more cocnuts found their way into our hands. The bus roof-top coconut party came to an abrupt end when one of the managers/owners gave us a tongue lashing. We resumed our journey towards Poona.
At Pune. Bus 1 gang moved into a choultry, while Bus 2 gang moved into hotels. We were supposed to visit Kirloskar Cummins because of bad communication we ended up going towards Kirloskar Oil Company. Three fourth way down we realized our mistake and we had to change our course. Kirloskar Cummins was on opposite side of the city... Finally we did reach the factory. We got to see the air-conditioned machine shop, latest CNC machines (I was blown away seeing at the number of tool posts one of the machines had... 72!), engine testing room, staff canteen, and a prototype Neoplan, a hi-tech bus with custom controls for every seat.
Day6
Enroute Bombay our bus driver (one of the drivers names was Rodrigues and one of the bus numbers was NLQ 7) mentioned Karla Caves. We stopped at a dhaba for lunch, some of us had beer and some got drunk. We had do a bit of climbing to do... we had some major photo shooting sessions and finally we got down back to the bus. Exhausted. We reached Bombay evening and moved into a choultry.
Day7
We visited Premier Automobiles Limited better known as PAL. We saw Premier Padmini assembly line. We also got to see how new cars were tested. Test drivers would pickup speed and brake hard!! That was testing. So much for our educational tour. We went sight seeing and our some of our boys went on adventure trip in special parts of Bombay with Sudhin leading the pack and dealing with... Sunil and Shetty were our guides. We saw Gateway of India, VT, shopped cheap shirts, sun glasses, music cassettes, got zapped at food prices in restaurants, amazed at the number of Kannada speaking guys in restaurants. Ravi, Shetty, Raman, Anil and me went to watch Tridev. We slept through the movie and later on the way back to the choultry we had pav-bhaji.
Day8
More sight-seeing and fooling around. We left to Goa. The highway was full of pot holes and our bus bounced like crazy tossing us from up and down never letting us sleep.
Day 9
The highway got even worse. We stopped for a short break. This is one of the few groups pictures. We reached one of the beaches, I cannot remember which one. Could be Calangute. We checked into a resort right next to the beach. Bus 2 people decided to head Panjim. Night we went disco dancing... Suneel went little wild with his camera and one of the locals started a row over it. Somehow we managed to settle matters and our drinking and dancing went on late into the night. We- Sudhin, Sateesah, Sunil, me -sang Kishore Kumar numbers all the way back to the resort.
Day 10 (must be a Sunday)
More time on beaches. Some of those Bus 2 guys ran out of dough. Neither did we have extra cash but we did have banker's cheques. Bad luck, it was weekend. We moved to Panjim and reqrouped. Manju had got permission to visit MRF factory but some how we were not in a mood for anything educative and the visit got cancelled. Booze was lot cheaper in Goa, most of us kept guzzling and many of us bought bottles of wine, including me. We ere also supposed to buy permits for booze abut none of us did. Later in the night, at Karnataka-Goa border at the excise check-post, we tried to hide our bottles but most got fished out and we had to cough up fines. So much for cheap booze.
Day 11
We stopped at Davangere to freshen up and breakfast. Our guide Ms.Shylaja happened to have relatives there and visited them, with few of us in tow. That's where I learnt that our HoD Dr.K G Chandrappa was related to me. On with our journey back home... we reached Bangalore by 4PM. The next few days we ran around preparing a report of our tour. It consisted mostly of photo-copied brochures.
My arms and fingers are tired of typing this blog post. I expect my lazy friends to fill in gaps or make corrections if any.
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Sidha - Awesome work. I dont even know where my pictures ended up or even if I had a camera to take pictures those days. This did make me remember a lot of things.
ReplyDeleteYou know Swarna was an orgonizer as well - add her in when you get a chance.
We did a bang up job coinsidering that none of us had any management training. Cost estimation, budget management, vendor selection, delegation of sub projects (visits to different locations), logistics management (hotels, chowltries, etc.), events management, conflict resolution, risk management, Public relations, change management, extremely flexible and lean operations, adhoc leaders appointment and delegation, human resources or people management, etc. Man if we listed all that in our resume out the gate of passing from BE we would all end up as General Managers LOL.
Sateesh
Thanks for the input Kavi. I've added Swarna to the organizers list. Also my thanks to all those who gave inputs to this post. It was literally 'hani hani koodidare honda'.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you, it was one mess of a job. We were not prepared for any type of medical emergency. We did not even bother get everyone vaccinated - i learnt that from our immediate juniors (1988 batch) who did a much much better job. The lead organizer was a sensible guy (I cannot recall his name, he was connected to Electrex-Hitachi) whom I knew and he met me asking for tips about organizing. We of all people! We were nut cases compared to our junior batch!!
sidda, this is just awesome and i happen to just stumble upon it. how do you remember so much man? i dont remember much...and how the hell do you remember who all went???? great job!
ReplyDeletehey Sanjay, thank you. yes i do remember quite a bit about our tour ...i was one of the organizers. it's difficult to forget a badly done job (of organizing the tour). couple of months before i wrote this post, we had regular discussions via email about our trip which brought back memories. thanks to everyone.
ReplyDeleteKeep on working, great job!
ReplyDelete