All 75 of them were on a treasure hunt on Saturday. But it was not merely about cracking clues and finding destinations. It was much more. They got to travel more than 70 km, answer questions about Coimbatore, solve brain teasers, and buy products that were available in select outlets that were located on the hunt route.
On the whole it was about knowing Coimbatore and it was consciously designed so by faculty and students of PSG Institute of Management to go with the flavour of the Coimbatore Vizha.
Though 24 teams – 13 cars and 11 two-wheelers – began the hunt, only 12 teams made it to the final destination.
According to R. Jagajeevan, Knowledge Facilitator of the institute, the faculty and students got together and came out with the four phase format after much deliberation.
The theme of the hunt was ‘temples.’ Though it did not sound too difficult, the uniqueness about it was that none of the temples was within the city limits.
The four destinations that had to be ‘found’ in four phases were located nearly 15 km to 20 km away from one another.
The first one was at Kovilpalayam, the second at Karuvalur, third at Vagarampalayam, and the last one was a different kind of a temple – it was a temple of learning where Rabindranath Tagore sung the national anthem – the PSG Sarvajana School.
Once the team reached the first phase destination, it was given clues to find the destination of the second phase.
Likewise, it was designed for the third and fourth phase.
Though the fill-in-the-blanks and brain teasers could be answered using internet, participants had to be enterprising to solve the clues for finding the destination and the things that had to be bought. The winners were judged based on the points they got in all these and not from merely having reached the destination.
R. Nandagopal, director of the institute, said that they had travelled the treasure hunt route to spot certain select shops from which the participants could buy the things. That the hunt was not easy could be seen from the fact that only half the number of teams made it to the final destination.
At the end of it, some of them had to agree that they did not know Coimbatore well.
Winners
With 74 points, two teams shared the first place in the four-wheeler category.
Kunal Valecha and his team, and Danur Venkatesh Devarajan and his team, will receive purses of Rs. 4,000 each.
The team of Mukthar Ahmed and V.R. Karthikeyan with 66 points will receive a purse of Rs. 5,000 as first prize in the two-wheeler category, at a function to be held next week.
