To good times and beyond..

It all started in the beginning of July 2019. My team mates were planning an outing as a part of team building activity. I've recently switched my job and my socially awkward self was confused whether or not I should make it to the trip. But, even before my mind could convince me to not go, I decided to give it a shot and voted a 'yes' for the trip. After all I would also get to spend time with my crush during the trip - not a bad deal at all I thought to myself 😉

Next thing up was to decide a destination for the outing. Long story short, Kolad was decided as the destination.

A little background about Kolad - it is a small village in Raigad, Maharashtra, India. It is a beautiful weekend destination for people in and around two major cities of Maharashtra i.e. Mumbai & Pune.

I was super excited because I had never made it to a trip with my office colleagues before where I was staying over night, I had been to one day trips before though. The plan was to stay at a resort and do river rafting the next morning, hence a 2 day trip.

Finally came the day - 13th July 2019 when we were supposed to leave for Kolad. Me along with 5 others were the first to board the bus. We picked up all of the guys and then began our journey.

All of us in the bus

I had a lot of fun in the journey itself - that's the time I was getting to know my team mates because I hadn't been a part of the team for a long time now. A few of my colleague's friends had also joined us, so it was fun meeting new people and getting along. The observer in me was highly active as usual.

After all of us got comfortable with each other's personalities is when fun started. We started clicking pictures, crack jokes, sing songs, dance like crazy monkeys in the bus, etc.

A beautiful candid

The weather was unexpectedly hot though. After almost an hour, we stopped for lunch at some hotel on the way.

That's us - during lunch..

Had lunch, put on my lipstick, and I was back in the bus heading towards our destination. Our masti was still on.

Just when we were about to reach the resort, the tyre of the bus went flat (got punctured). Not sure but maybe 10 crazy maniacs dancing all along contributed to this 😁

We then started walking towards our resort - I guess we walked for a kilometer approximately, some of them puffing and panting 😉

That's us - walking towards the resort..

As we reached our resort, another colleague of ours joined us who was supposed to reach on his own driving all the way to Kolad, bike-ride lover you see.

We checked in to the resort, got into our rooms. All 6 of us girls were in the same room.

My energy was as usual high and I started interacting with all these ladies (2 of which were friends of friends), to make myself and them comfortable. We gossiped a little, cracked lame jokes and got used to each other.

We then got freshened up, and headed to have tea. I was anyways missing tea so much because I rarely go hours without consuming tea, lol 😅

All of us having tea..

The resort had a few games we could play like volley ball, foot ball, badminton, etc. 

Few among us started playing cricket, dodge ball and the rest of us including me played badminton.

At around 8pm in the evening when it was too dark outside to play, we decided to just sit and chill.

Obviously, it followed with drinks. Everybody was tired to play any other games plus the weather had improved by the evening.

We talked, talked and talked  - cracking jokes, sharing funny experiences, gibbering, having a gala time basically until around 11pm when it was dinner time. Also, you get to know people even better after a few drinks 😉

We then had dinner and gathered again at the same place. Some of them had gone to their respective rooms/tents to sleep by now.

All of this continued and we went to our room at around 1am, but I wasn't in a mood to sleep. Luckily I had another friend who wasn't sleepy and we talked till around 2.30am and then slept.

I usually stay up late in the night and when it comes to sleeping at some new place, I rarely get a sound sleep. As expected, I woke up at around 5am in the morning - I skipped out of my room. It was still dark outside. I was just craving for a cup of hot tea in that beautiful, cold weather.

At around 7am, I woke up all of these girls to get ready as we had to go for river rafting.

And this is when I was a little nervous - well not little, a lot.

We then boarded our bus and started for the rafting point - yes the tyre had been repaired.

It didn't take us much time to reach to the rafting point, 20 minutes approximately. And I was quiet all along. Well, I was super nervous plus all of these guys were in a mood for singing Marathi songs which I was clueless about.

Anyways, we reached there, completed all the formalities and headed towards our raft. We were split into 2 groups as we were 17 people in total. We got a few instructions and lessons which I listened to very carefully so that I could save my life just in case anything happens, Lol. Yes, I was that nervous.

Initially I was scared but eventually got comfortable with rafting. I was happy that I had overcome one of my biggest fears.

That's group 1 while rafting, including me..

Group 2, my colleagues..

That's Mukesh, our raft driver..

But, an even bigger fear to overcome was still ahead - those who know me well also know I am a big time aqua-phobic. Getting out of our rafts and diving into the water was a tough task for me. I still decided to go for it. As soon as I jumped into the water, chills ran down my spine. I was so nervous and terrified, I instantly asked our raft driver to pull me back into the raft. My colleagues tried convincing me a lot to not panic and calm down but the horrified me wasn't ready to listen.

I then got back into the raft while these guys were enjoying in the water for another 30 minutes roughly.

Me jumping in the water..

Me praying, 'Bhagwan bacha lo'

My colleague convincing me to leave the rope and swim along

Everybody then got back into the rafts and we headed towards the end point.

My raft reached first, we had a light snack and were waiting for the other group of ours.

That's us at the end point..

We then headed towards the resort, had a nice shower and gathered for lunch as we were supposed to leave the same afternoon.

We left at around 3.30pm for Pune - again having a great time in the bus. It was more of singing songs and talking to each other this time in the bus. I built a good rapport with a lot of them and got to know them better. Many opinions which I had formed about some of these guys changed a little.

Here are a few more pictures from the trip:

In all, It was a pleasurable and joyous trip.