On Sunday, we watched Hangover - the Las Vegas flick which has the box-offices ringing and the the crowds hollering.

The movie is utterly hilarious, is stupid but witty, stars Heather Graham (since when was that a bad thing?), introduces a ridiculously cute baby and is slickly edited to ensure the pace never slackens. It is also a movie about a bachelor party, a tradition which was unique to the western world till it found it’s way to India a few years back. Bachelor parties are the epitome of comedy movies, everything that can go wrong will go wrong in a place full of drunk guys trying to be at their most immature selves with no care for tomorrow. At its peak, a good slapstick comedy or a good bachelor party will have a moment of sheer brilliance, a joke that leaves you snorting or a conversation about life and its loss to marriage that leaves everyone silent for a moment. Both are unnecessary, completely bacchanalian in nature, possibly dangerous to your health (imagine snorting while eating a slice of hot spicy pizza), best enjoyed with a good group of close guy friends, pure unadulterated fun and lead to unerasable memories.

Going up!

We also drove up to Tiger Hill, Kamshet in the Cedia Sports (a.k.a Blackhawk). The hill (we are not totally sure of its name, but who cares?) is a hang-gliding point set high above the NH4 and the Mumbai-Pune Expressway. On the way to the hill, we stopped at Rangoli Restaurant for a hot cuppa chai and ended up having ice-cream instead (yes, we’re guys!), we drove past a totally smashed Corolla Altis (thankfully both the passengers were safe), got lost twice and finally ended up meeting our other group of friends in their White Merc E220.

The way upto the peak of the hill is an exercise in madness for someone driving a sports sedan. The path is 2-2.5 metres wide at its widest, it is built with gravel, slush and some remnants of tar thrown in for the mix, shrubs line up on both sides impinging on the path threatening to leave your car with a million scratches and the angles of incline cross 45 degrees at some points. There are times when you feel you are driving into nothing more than a wall of trees until you see the 90-degree-inclined turn hidden at the last moment. By the time we made it to the halfway point for a pit-stop, the Merc’s wiper had completely given up. So we all piled on into one car - 6 of us - and braved the worst.

Which happened. The worst thing that we could do was screw up the clutch. Which we did. Around 300 metres from the top, we ran into a 60deg incline and with 6 of us onboard, the Cedia gave up hope. The clutch started burning, the atmosphere started smelling burnt rubber-y and all of were cursing the other guy about how much weight they’d put on. So 3 of us got down, while 3 of us drove up for the rest. Slowly.

The Sahyadris

When heaven and earth collide

300 metres later the moment of sheer brilliance hit us, just like in slapstick comedies and bachelor parties. Hard. The peak of the hill overlooks the the curves of the expressway and the cloud-kissing peaks of the Sahyadris; in the monsoons, the view is breathtaking with the dark ominous clouds flying by rapidly driven by the immense wind at the high altitudes. Your breath is taken away both by the sheer brilliance of the view in front of you as well as the crazy wind-speed which literally blasts you in the face. We forgot the rains and ignored the safety of our cameras while we pitched camp to take some shots. In a while, we forgot our cameras as well and just lived the moment. Being up on that hill in that weather is like hitting the sweet spot in a perfectly done roast-lamb or coming across your favorite sitcom moment. In other words, it is awesome and simply cannot be explained using proper metaphors!

Foggy lights

As the light faded, we realized that just like good slapstick comedies and great bachelor parties this too was completely pointless if it wasn’t ended quickly enough. So we got angry at each other for not having started earlier, some of us cribbed about having eaten too much for lunch, gaining weight and hence burning the clutch, while others cribbed about not being able to spend more time on the hill and I just sat back and drove the Cedia.

Driving up Tiger Hill then, is nothing like Hangover or bachelor parties. It is real and pulse-pounding, it is highly involving and conjures up many a heart-in-the-mouth moment, it gives you a sense of belonging with nature after reaching the peak and leaves you with a sense of accomplishment when coming down…but at the end of the evening, it is pure unadulterated fun and leads to some unerasable memories; just like moronic slapstick humor and mindless bachelor parties.

And they all leave you with one great hangover.

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More shots>>

What an ending!

Spoiled silly

Wet dreams

Anything for Mitsubishi Cedia

PS: I know all of the photos are of the car and not the place itself, but you cannot hold that against a guy’s first long drive in his new car!