Hrishikesh Trip - Day 1

The entire KritiKal family went for a trip to Hrishikesh for rafting/camping/trekking last weekend (5th and 6th April). We had a great time and therez so much to write. I will try to summarize it as briefly as possible yet covering the entire trip :)

Boarding the bus
The bus was to start at 4:00 am "SHARP" as mentioned in the mail to us. The assembly point was KSPL office. And what was surprising to see was that none of the KSPL junta was there at 4:00 am while all the people from KSS were dot on time. By 4:30 am, everyone from KSS was there while I could see only 3-4 people from KSPL. Anyway, the bus finally started at around 5:30am from the office. We were in total 49 people and we had a bus and an innova with us. 7 people got into Innova and from there on they stayed in Innova for the entire trip. In the bus we were 42 people and a lot of mastee was in store for us :)

The journey till Hrishikesh
Everyone was bubbling with energy in the bus. As always, I preferred being a back bencher. There was Nehul, Panthri, Prayas(g), Vaibhav, Joy, Charu, Neha, Pam, Jignes, Rana, Phani and me. We kept cracking jokes and narrating funny incidents to each other. Nt and Apoorva were seated somewhere in the middle of the bus but the energy that was being transmitted from our gang at the back forced them to join us too :D And then suddenly we started remembering the most "Thakele" (idiotic/crappy) songs of bollywood and it was real fun to sing those songs. The winning song (crappiest of them all) was "Tu mera superman, Main teri Lady...Ho gaya hai apna pyaar already" .. lol. Still we were missing one person greatly there in our sabha. It was our beloved CHACHAJI who was busy listening to songs on his mp3 player. But soon enough he joined us too. And as is famous for chachaji (petrol khatam hi nahin honda hai), we did a lot more bakar, a lot more tp and a lot more singing of crappy songs. Infact chachaji came up with a "war of the DJ's" performance with his "Gutar Gutar" feat songs. lol. Every song we sang was remixed by chachaji on the fly in real time. After producing enough noise (sort of music), we switched to some solo performances. Joy's sister had a lovely voice so we started with her. Then it was my turn. Pam volunteered on her own after my song and boy she sings really well. That was a surprise element for me. She sang "Lambi Judai" and it was very close to the original. Then we requested for another song from her. I requested Wasim bhai also to sing a song and he sang a very melodious old number and he sang it too well. But the star performer for that hour was our own "funny" .. errrr .. Phani. We first asked him to sing a song. When he agreed, we made him sit in the center so that he was surrounded by all of us. And just when he had finished deciding upon a song, all of us started chanting the Hanuman Chalisa (Now you have to meet two basic requirements to understand the connection between Phani and Hanuman Chalisa and only then can you actually enjoy this incident. One, you have to be a KSPLite and two, you have to be one among our gossip gang which I cannot reveal since its an undercover group which is active all the time). Anyway, so Rana, Apoorva and Nehul sang the entire 7-8 minutes hanuman chalisa that too looking straight into Phani's face. And the look on Phani's face was worth watching :D And in between he tried joining everyone in singing the chalisa but whenever he tried that, he saw everyone was staring at him and he used to stop. The whole episode was too much fun and i was literally on the floor laughing.

We stopped at a restaurant named "Cheetal" in between which was a beautiful place but very crowded since it had self service. Except for the eating area, the entire place was beautiful filled with flowers all around. Had our breakfast there, clicked some snaps and then moved on. All this while it kept raining very slowly and it was certain that our trekking is almost canceled in this rain. I was a little disappointed to see the clouds and so much raining all along. I just prayed that soon the skies are cleared. We had lunch at Madhuban (Iskon temple's restaurant in Hrishikesh). Our bus stopped at the bus station and from there we headed towards the camp in Tata Sumos.

Reaching the Camp
We reached the camp around 3:30pm. It was still drizzling. But the scene was amazing. There were mountains all around, and ganga was flowing in the valley. And on the banks of ganga was our camp. The sound of flowing river was very exciting. There were 26 tents, each having two beds. We were in total 51 (including Ashwani and his wife who had come by their own car). There was a shaded sitting area with some 10-15 chairs, a dining area, a kitchen and 3 toilets. Toilets were dry toilets with pits. I had already heard so much about these toilets that I did not even go near them. I wonder if anyone used those toilets. For ladies there was an arrangement at a Hotel in the city for getting fresh. We were briefed about the general rules of the camp and about the plan for the remaining day and the next day. After the introduction, Nehul and I had to do a little searching for a tent for ourselves since we were the last to arrive at the camp. Nehul had volunteered to be the event manager and I had volunteered to help him :) We took the last cab for the camp after ensuring that no one was left behind. Lokesh, Sandeep, Ashwani and his wife were the last ones whom we picked and then left for the camp. We got a tent in no time and I quickly put on my floaters. We then played volleyball for a long time. Playing volleyball in sand was fun and a first time experience for me. I over heard someone saying that he was going to the beach. I was very excited to hear that there was a beach too near by. Also, I realized that chachaji had been missing for quite some time now. I also headed towards the beach and there he was, inside the river screaming. I also jumped into the water. The river was chilled. For the first few moments, I felt like a thousand needles pricking my body. But once I got accustomed to the cold water, I stopped feeling anything. We played for a very long time in water. Had a long photo session and then returned to the camp.

Bon fire and Dinner
I dried myself and changed clothes and headed towards the bon fire area. It had become very cold but the positive part as that the sky was staring to clear, there were more and more stars appearing in the sky as the night progressed. We played dumb charades but I don't remember anything interesting happening in the game worth mentioning. I felt we could have planned a little more games for the bon fire. Anyway, dinner was served around 9pm. And a very common discussion at the dinner was what's it gonna be tomorrow morning when every one would have to attend to the nature's call. No one was going to use the dry toilets provided to us which meant we would have to do it in the open air somewhere. lol. And there were plannings and suggestions for the same. I had a heavy dinner not thinking much about the morning. But yes i did think about it. And I kept an alarm of 5am in the morning when I thought I would get over with everything while everyone would be asleep. After dinner Nehul, Phani, Karthik, Rana and I retired to my tent and we shared our childhood experiences which we thought were embarrassing or disgusting. But our conversation did not last long as everyone of us was too tired and we really wanted a good sleep. So we all wished each other a good night and slept by 11pm. I was very happy with how the day had gone. My first time in a camp, playing in the beach, bathing in the river ganga. And I was also excited about rafting which was the highlight of the entire trip.