Thol trip

As far as trips are concerned, this is the second trip I am writing about. This one was completely different, of course the last one being official. Where the last one went into the “ALRITE” category, this one was “SIMPLY MARVELLOUS”.

I ask: What is a good recipe for a successful trip? A group of friends whose mantra is “Enjoy and include everyone in that enjoyment”, people who are in a peppy, upbeat, happy mood, a mode of transportation, articles for sports in place, lotsa food and finally a good destination. And what you have in hand is a real delicacy. Ours was exactly the same.

We, a group of friends from office decided to have fun, the time incidentally being the occasion of one of us (namely Siddharth) leaving the office for greener pastures.
The place is called Thol which is a bird sanctuary on the outskirts of Ahmedabad. Due to some reason, two of our members weren’t able to make it. The night before, I just hoped that the complete plan would get implemented, as making plans is a really easy task, implementation takes effort. (Pun definitely intended, hahaha)

Two people in different cars (Gaurang and Utpal) had to collect every one of us at 6 o’ clock in the morning. By the way, there were total 9 people in effect. J Though the road was bumpy we enjoyed the ride and didn’t even know when the time passed because of our animated (so called for the mimicking and exact dialogue deliveries by Pooja and Rajesh – the rest of us: Margi, me and Gaurang were audiences, just chipping in sentences to refresh actor’s memories) discussion about - of course our day before’s “Big Picture” meeting. About the other car, I would have to ask them to write about their ride.

I was thinking of skipping some small things but then decided otherwise – our morning nashta at a nukkad and pooja’s pics with the buffalo (worth seeing) and of course the time when we stopped to admire lotuses. Pal literally thought that the fields on the other side were better to look at than the lotuses, in which case he was somewhat right. (deadly na!)

The place looked nice on the outside but Utpal (who had already visited the place once) assured us that there was more to come. Well, we were able to see a few exotic birds, complete thanks to Malhar and his keen eyesight. Otherwise I think we would have just seen some sparrows, thought them to be exotic and moved on.
As we kept on walking, we found a very beautiful and a perfect place to settle down. It was our imagination of ‘the meadow’ ;). It was completely covered with trees not a single sun’s ray penetrating the shade, with the water from the lake adding to the beauty. The place was serene, exquisite and peaceful. There, we played badminton, only a little bit of cricket for the fear of the ball getting lost in the water, that too by the guys only, ate, chattered a lot, discussed and basically had fun. At that moment of time I felt contented with what was happening.

The time for leaving drew close and while walking back to the car, we made plans to come back in a season when there would be less heat. Though we were leaving, our day was far from finished yet, plans were made to watch a movie and off we went to a nearby multiplex. The drastic difference between the nature’s world we had left and the concrete world we had entered seemed huge. Yet, I was happy that we had time to spend together, away from the hustle and bustle of city.

(This seems like a huge blog but I couldn’t help myself and I let my thoughts and words run riot)