Hail Sinhagad!!!!
29 Jul 2007 5 Comments
in Blogroll, The adventurous side of me!, Trudging down the memory lane
Inspite of living in Pune, a city with several picnic spots in its vicinity, we end up going places only once in say half a year!! One such trip happened last saturday, and needless to say, we had real fun!! (U can see that on the happy faces in the accompanying photograph, can’t u!!).
We started for Sinhagad, 12 of us, in a chakachak tempo-traveller at around 5:30 p.m. Passing through Chandni Chowk, Khadakvasla “chowpatty”, and numerous stories, fables and fairy tales about us, them, and Tanaji Malusare(The Marathi stalwart who became a martyr while capturing this fort from the Mughals), we finally reached the foot of Sinhagad. As our car inched forward via the very narrow road up Sinhagad, history came back to us in form of Tanaji, Kondhana, and the monitor lizard. Each of us tried to show off our historical knowledge!
Over time, we reached to the last point upto where vehicles could go. As we alighted from our car, we were instantly greeted with cries of “Jai Bhavani!! Jai Shivaji!!” from enthusiastic tourists. We started climbing, stopping only for posing for photographs, with the big beautiful valley as the backdrop or, standing on arches of gates as if ”Yippee!!! We conquered it!!” hehe! 
It was the perfect kind of weather: cool, windy, cloudy, but sans the drizzle. After we reached atop Sinhgad, there was another round of photographs, with different poses, (and slips, there was a lot of muck up there…).
And then, it was snacks time!! All of us hungry picnic-ers hogged on the yummmy Pithla-Bhakri-Kharda, Dahi and garam-garam Kanda Bhaji. While we were gourmeting on the spread, we completely forgot, that it was getting dark, and all though it was almost full moon, the full moon would be shadowed by the thick monsoon clouds. When this fact finally dawned upon us(dawned is such an ironical phrase in this situation, right!! hehehe!), we started off, assuring and scaring each other at the same time.
There were some really hilarious incidents on our way down, like we signalling our mobile lights to some unknown persons thinking that they were from our group, like some guys calling out to our group by saying “Aye Ganpat!!!” and our extra-enthu guys replying with “Daru La!!!”(for those uninformed, This is a famous line from a song in the bollywood flick ‘Shootout at Lokhandwala’), like Diya* (* – names changed to protect privacy…LOL!!!) stepping into a puddle of water and everybody running towards her thinking she fell in there, like Rahul* crouching in the darkness and pouncing on Panna* and Kshama* and scaring them to the end of their wits, leaving them shaking and shivering till the end of the journey!!!!
And all in all, as u can clearly see from my post, we had a gala time!!! Enjoying the beautiful weather, and surrounded by your friends, what more can you ask for??
Row row row ur boat,FIERCELY down the stream……And have the best time of your life! :-)
13 Mar 2007 1 Comment
in Blogroll, The adventurous side of me!
Have any of you tried White Water Rafting?? If you havent, then plz plz plz do it, and soon!! Coz seriously folks, it is an absolutely fantastic experience, to those who have a quest for adventure, AND to those who dont, too!!
Let me start from the start. Last Saturday I, alongwith 12 friends, set out to try some white water rafting…. After a picturesque journey(We passed from Mulshi Dam, Tamhini Ghaat, and the view of the lake and the valley was supperb!!) we reached the place Vile, where we met the instructors, who ushered us quickly to the place where we were supposed to begin rafting.(Quickly, because we were only 2 n 1/2 hours late! LOL!).
So quickly we went down to the Kundalika river, got into our life jackets, put on our helmets(the girls got blue ones, and the guys..pink!!) Then we had a quick round of introduction with our instructors, and “if-need-be” saviour life guards, and with quite a few tips in our ears, but only excitement in our heads, we got into the rafts. We were looking like the modern versions of Adivasis(natives), with our funny jackets, helmets, and the oars(the instructors preferred to call them pedals) in our hands. Once in the raft(and the raft in water, ofcourse), we learnt the basic pedaling techniques, and gave each other a high-five with our oars. “Jai Kundalika!!”, we roared, and there!! We were all set to enjoy the totally unexplored territory of white-water rafting!!!
After pedaling for a while,we came across our first rapid. As instructed, we were supposed to lock our legs firmly into the tubes of the raft, and hold up our oars from water. Most of us did that pretty well, I repeat, MOST of us…. Zapp came the wave…n thud!! Before we even realised it, let alone doing something to stop it, one of our co-rafters got knocked off hte raft and straight into the water! She was confused, we were confused….She held on to the raft, we clutched onto our oars….and there was a general state of pandemonium….Except in the minds of the life guards. One of the life guards rose, gave a tug at the “lucky-girl-in-water”(yeah we all were jealous..we too wanted to experience the fall..heheh) and she was back in the raft again. bubbling with excitement, we continued our journey. We traversed through the many bends, crevices and rapids of the river, with screams, oars, and lots of fun! At places where the rapids were too huge and deep, we were told to get into the rafts, crrouch and hold the rope on the outer surface of the raft tight. Then the raft would enter the rapid, and we would be in it, we water gushing over us!! It was an absolutely amazing experience!!
later when the speed of the water reduced a bit, the life guards allowed us to jump into the water. And weren’t we glad!! We floated, swam, played, held upstream swimming competitions, what not!! after a loooong time in water, the instructors finally coerced us back into the rafts. Then we pedaled our way through singing, cracking jokes, chit-chatting. We also passed from below a smal bridge, where we had to struggle to keep our heads from hitting it, even after crouching hardest!
Then came another twist. We wanted to experience the over-turning of the raft(To give you a small background, the guides were telling us that during monsoons, the current in the river is so strong that rafts just dont shake and bobble, they actually overturn!! Whoa!!!). So we were all made to stand on one edge of the raft, and they pulled some string, and splash!! At the next moment we were all in water, with the raft on our heads, and water down our nose!! Coughing, spluttering, and yet yelling with ecstacy, we popped to the surface of water!! My my!! didn’t we have a time of our life!!!
All happy and content, we began the last lap of our white-water journey, and only to realise, that this was the toughest part of it! The water was very still now, so we actually had to pedal our oars hard to make it move, and the banks were like 500 meters away!! Huffing and puffing, we finally got the raft to the banks….and not only that, we carried it up the mountain!! Phew!! You people should have seen us then!! We were the perfect blend of exhaustion and coontentment! To the core!! Seriously!!
