A TREK TO LOHAGAD.
Hey you .. yeah you .. do you feel that your routine office life is getting into your head ?? Do you feel that you desperately need a break ??? Do you feel like banging your head on the keyboard ??? Don’t worry it’s normal :D And I am going to help you get out of the zone .. What u need is a trek .. like the one my colleagues and me had last week .. and now I am going to tell all you what all ingredients make up a splendid trek ..
A Sponsor: First and foremost what is needed is a sponsor. The trip can be arranged by equal contribution, but why go through so much calculation when you can take along an Aashutosh and have the trek fully sponsored!!! Also this sponsor works as a makeshift cameraman during the trek (He owns a very high resolution camera). A package you can’t miss, at least we won’t. On this account I would like to thank him for putting in all the finance for our trek, which also means you’re not getting our contributions. Thank you very much for that.
An Organizer: This is again an important ingredient of a trek, cause most of us are very clumsy at organizing and maybe if it wasn’t for Amey, our organizer and leader, we would have starved, missed the train or probably even lost ourselves in the jungles J. If you go to the supermarket hunting for this ingredient I bet it won’t slip from your sight considering the fact that it comes in a bright blue track pant. No more sarcasm as he’ll be organizing our next trek too, unless I really piss him off by this blog. So that’s it for him.
A Motivator: Treks can be hectic and at some stage can take the most out of you. It is at this time your team needs some motivation and who else can take up the role better than our very own Amruta. She had some genuine motivation going, by walking right at the lead of the pack and yelling out loud “Keep Moving or else I’ll slap you” .. That was more than enough for KP who moved from second-last place to the second place in a matter of nano-seconds. And if matters would have gotten worse I would have expected an even more motivating chant of “Please move or else I’ll cry !!” but thankfully that time did not arrive.
An Animal Relations expert: There are some times along the trek when you have some genuine queries regarding the wildlife, that is when you need an animal relations expert, Denila in our case. She was the one who enlightened us with the family history of two stray dogs and a puppy who wouldn’t let us eat nor would eat themselves. It turned out that one of the stray dogs was the puppy’s mamma .. and the other dog was the mamma’s friend. So finally when we split them up into two teams .. one with the puppy and the mamma and the other with only the mamma’s friend .. then only did the dogs eat in peace and let us do the same ..
She also introduced us to the monkeys who blessed us with their company. It turned out that their parents too were great fans of the serial FRIENDS considering they had named the monkeys as Monica and
As a matter of fact the only creatures that Denila is not comfortable with .. are flies .. however at this point Krishnan took over admitting that he was once a proud owner of a fly collection and shares an inadvertent love for the creatures.
An Animal Cupid: Giving back something to the nature is as important as taking something from it. When we went to Lohagad we got great company and refreshment from the nature so we decided to play our part in giving back to nature by taking with us the animal cupid … Krishnapratap (KP in short).. to give the wildlife the gift of love. And the effect was immediate .. he managed to get some goats love-struck on the way up and got some monkeys give some rather obscene gestures on the way back. We do not know how much they were touched by him .. but he is pretty sure that he had touched every one of them personally.
A Gym Instructor: You may also meet some obstacles when you are trekking. These may include climbing down rocks where some people (including me) might chicken out. That’s the time when our bellied gym instructor Kunal came in handy. He was the one who climbed down and then started chanting “Arre aa naa .. main hun na” so many times that people like me who wouldn’t climb down .. finally went down to stop him from uttering his irritating war-cry.
A Path Finder: Nishant was very efficient in his role of a path finder. He kept moving ahead of the group and finding places where we could rest or eat. Sometimes he moved so much ahead that we had to call him up on his cell to get to know his whereabouts J. But the role got to him so much that he finally managed to find a way out of our project team as well and now he’s working peacefully in a land far far away.
Entertainers: A trek can get very boring if there is no entertainment. Entertainers encompass a wide range of people from people who crack very bad PJ’s at the wrong places at the wrong times (You guesses it right .. that’s Nishikant) to people who talk very sensible stuff at very appropriate places at the right times .. only in such a Mallu accent that will swipe you off your feet and leave you gasping for breath (this phenomenon can be observed more towards the top of the fort as you are already short of breath) .. but that’s Rajesh and no one would want to argue on this point at least. A gem in his vocabulary would be the way he pronounces the word Vinchu Kata (which means the sting of a scorpion) after infinite attempts he has stabilized on “winzoo gada”. More entertainment came in the form of arguments in Marathi between Kunal and Rajesh .. ( Both of them suck at marathi .. but we try to make them think they are great .. which definitely is a rich source of very fresh entertainment as no word is pronounced the same by them on two different occasions) ..
The Equilibrium Maintainer: The nature has it’s own way of maintaining balance .. everyone will agree upon that .. but what happens when a group of blabbermouths enter the forests ? It gets polluted with the noise of these people (That’s us). But we did our part in maintaining the balance. We had Reva with us. The more we talked the less she did .. and thus maintaining the volume equilibrium. Keep the good work up Reva. No wonder nowadays the other teams in our development centre don’t complain about the loud noise levels in our team.
Trek Coach : A coach is again an important ingredient without which any trek would be incomplete .. Shekhar Anna was responsible of taking the team in one piece and getting it back in one J .. but he carried out his job flawlessly. It was he who rang out our team anthem on his cell-phone when we were tired and down.
NOTE: For people who are unaware of our team anthem .. it’s a ringtone that Shekhar Anna has on his mobile where a kid is singing a song and then some more kids join in for chorus. The lyrics go like this :
(The Kid)
na na nana naaa .. na na nanana ..
na na nah na na naa naaaaa ...
(Chorus)
naaa na nanana naa .. nana nana naaa ..
naaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa naaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
And Finally
Some Aam Janata (General Crowd): The Aam Janata is again very important .. or else who else will appreciate the effort of all the people enlisted above ? In our trek the Aam Janata involved Krishnan who kept talking and talking as if the topic was of minimum concern .. one moment he’s talking about bikes .. the next moment I hear him talking about princess Diana ..then he comes up to Salman Khan .. it was as if his trustworthy follower Ketan was switching channels on him. Another person who must be mentioned in this section is Kshitij .. he was doing a great duty to us by listening ( or probably pretending to listen) to all the crap talk and theories put forth by Kunal. Sagar was responsible for directions .. who said men don’t ask for directions ?? .. Sagar was asking for them at every turn on the way … And finally Me ( That’s Veerendra ) I was responsible for chickening out at the rocks .. and getting some more people chickened out too . and getting to you a very larger than life image of the trek that we had.J
These are all the essential ingredients which will make your trek a tasty delicacy. Just don’t forget water, food and Glucon-D or else you are screwed. So I will end this recipe on a note that get your ass out of you chair and go for a trek. Why should we be the only one’s to suffer a week of cramps after the trek???????
