For Day 1 of our Off-site Trip, please click here to read.
After a relaxing sleep inside my cozy tent surrounded by the sounds of crickets chirping away in the dead of the night and what I swore were the splashing sounds of mermaids frolicking in the lake under the bright full moon, I woke up to welcome the beautiful dawn.
Nothing seemed more blissful than waking up next to a large peaceful lake that was slowly starting to reflect the shimmering glow of the first rays of the morning sun.
Beautiful, innit?
There is always something mysterious and fascinating about a large lake, be it stories of quests and romance from days of yore to mythical creatures that dwell undisturbed deep inside, to even poignant reminders of tragedies like Virginia Woolf who filled her pockets with stones and slowly waddled inside the water to sleep for eternity…
Just look at these photos while listening to "What The Water Gave Me" by Florence & The Machine and you will be overwhelmed with an outpouring sensation of peace and tranquility.
Other than the few who woke up early to catch the sunrise, our sleepy little campsite wore a deserted look…
Some of the early risers :)
Breakfast was soon served. Alu paratha and Veg mayonnaise sandwich. I went straight for the strong black coffee.
Once all of us were up, washed up and eaten breakfast, the next workshop started.
Yeah, a lot of hungover faces indeed, lolzzz.
Some of the honorary mentions I want to make here, without whom this trip wouldn't have been a grand success. Anubhav, our gaming division head and President.
Roopak, VP Product and Marketing.
Amitabh, VP Production.
Scott, VP Business Development.
Raj, SVP Operations.
And how can I not mention Sunil, our L&D (Learning and Development) Professional and Behavioral & Team Building Trainer, who organized and managed our entire workshop sessions.
Meanwhile, there's this guy :P
Just kidding, he's a super duper awesome guy, Abhishek, my brother from another mother. If you had seen him the previous night, you wouldn't be surprised why he slept off during this session. :D
Sumeet needs to be mentioned too, but most of these awesome photos were taken by him, and you know what they say about photographers – they're never there in the pictures because they're the ones clicking. I really like some of these photos Sumeet took of me which have a really nice tilt-motion effect on the focus…
Our morning session continued, and as always, it was extremely productive. We shared many laughter too, as everybody got up to speak in front of everyone.
Our session was briefly interrupted when a snake entered our area. The caretakers of the Resort quickly caught the snake.
Since we were discussing about game concepts among other things, I guess the snake was interested in our discussion and wanted to know what the hell ever happened to his very popular game back when we were all using Nokia handsets :D
Anybody remembers this game? God I miss this game so much, haha.
Once we were done with the final workshop session, we headed down to the open ground because it was time for some physical activities, lolz. Let's get physical, physical… I wanna get physical…
The first game we played was circle dodgeball.
We were divided into two teams and we had to take out the other team members standing inside the circle. Good fun indeed. And funny too because it was then that you come to realize how clumsy some of your colleagues you have known for a long time really are. A real eye-opener, lolz.
After that, our two teams again competed with each other in a zig-zag relay, where we all stood in a long line, standing apart from each other at double arm's distance, and each of us had to run through our teammates in a zig-zag fashion and then pass the baton to the next person.
Our team eventually came last SECOND. :D (yeah see, think positive. One of the outcomes of our workshop :P )
We took a couple of team photos after this event…
We headed back to the resort for lunch… A few more pics here and there as we walked back…
Puja posing for her shaadi.com and bharatmatrimonial profile pic. Hopefully, this will do the trick this time :D
As promised, there was this utterly awesome and delicious butter chicken waiting for us at lunch. Yummmmm. I ate so much that day!
Before heading out, some of us took a walk down by the lake so as to digest the awesome food we just had. It was a great place to take photos as well…
Beautiful lake indeed.
Time to head back to camp and pack up…
But of course, a few more poses before that :D
Water from the lake splashed on Zubin's feet, so we had to bandage it up. He's a very delicate fella, you gotta understand that. :D
Me whiling away the time while waiting for our SUV to pick us up…
Finally, on our way… Thank you Lohgad Resort and Boating Club and Adventure Battalion for such a memorable time.
We stopped at Tiger Point on our way back for the usual cutting chai.
On our way to the Rappelling location, organized by Hike 'n' Fly…
We had to sign an Indemnity bond first, in case we met an accident on our way down the cliff.
Finally, it is time to rappel!
And thus ended our two days Off-site camping trip. A truly amazing experience indeed. We gained so much not just in terms of having fun and bonding with our colleagues but also had so many work related productive discussions and brainstorming sessions.
Thank you Jetsynthesys, from the HR and admin staff who planned all this, to our Gaming division heads for giving us an opportunity to experience this awesome outing. And last but not the least, thank you Shekhar from "Hike 'n' Fly" for organizing the whole event on-site and catering to our every needs from water bottles to mosquito repellant, especially when we were late for most of the scheduled programme and he still managed to keep his cool.
Do visit his Facebook page Hike 'n' Fly to book such an adventures group outing with your colleagues or friends.
So until my next blog update then, see you all peeps. Cheers.
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