It all begins with some phone calls to our friends, endless meetings at different cafes, and finally shortlisting and finalizing a place and a budget to travel. But we all know, all these planning somewhere don't workout and something or the other goes wrong. So, my idea is always to just decide a place and head towards it without planning anything, it may sound absurd but trust me it gives you a lifetime experience. You create memories, memories that you cherish all your life, meeting new people, visiting some new places or even exploring some places that you never thought of. All of us entered into our respective rooms and changed to dive into the pool .
Here, I would like to share one of my travelling experiences that gave me very good memories and also some bad ones. Yes, some bad ones too. But don't think much and spare ten minutes and read all about my trip to the Jim Corbett National Park , Ramnagar, Uttrakhand, India.
A long weekend 12th aug - 15th aug,2016 was about to come and we were all thinking to go to some exotic place and finally decided to visit Jim Corbett. It took three days for us to confirm the bookings and people who all were going on this trip, many denied due to rainfalls and other risks but I and my friends decided to make it happen.
In total we were eight who confirmed to go on this trip. We thought it would be better if we take our own car as then we don't have to rely on anyone to take us anywhere, so we finalized to take a SUV and a Hatchback. One of my friend owns a THAR and other one a swift, well we dint have to think much upon the vehicle then.
We planned everything, we made up our budget but as I said above the more you plan the more it goes wrong.
We planned to start our journey on 13th August at 4:30 am but there were many arguments on who would sit in which car, but eventually everyone settled and we started at 6:30. The roads were pretty smooth as we were travelling from Delhi so there were many areas like sonipat where the roads were not well maintained and it was little tiring to drive on those kinds of roads. But as we all were driving turn by turn, so no one was too tired.
We stopped at many locations to have some food and also to enjoy beauty of nature.
After 6 hours of drive we reach the place at 12:30 and the resort was really amazing(please refer to the photos), there were different kinds of plants and trees grown all over the place, a decent sized pool and many sports like table tennis, badminton,etc. to keep the guests entertained.
We did many activities in the pool, also played volley ball and stayed for two hours straight in the pool. All the three course meal were served in the buffet area and all the meals were delicious. Well moving on, at the first night we popped up some beers and some more drinks and sat beside the pool. All of us were having a lot of fun and talking to each other dancing, suddenly while dancing a friend of mine stepped on sunglasses which belonged to one of us and broke ''em. And as we were all drunk we dint realize that we have incurred a loss of 12,000 INR and this was just the first day of the trip.
In the morning, while some of us were having breakfast down stairs, we here a scream and yes, it was of the girl who lost her Mk sunglasses last night :P. We calmed her down and told her that we all would buy her a new one (of course we dint ). After all of us had a bath and changed we decided to go off-roading on the river side and on the rocky terrains. Well, if we have a THAR with us, why would we not flaunt it. Five of us hopped in the car while the rest three wanted to play cards in the room.
Well, I must say THAR is just amazing as how it performs on every terrain be it rough or huge rocks or crossing a shallow river, it just goes on smoothly. We saw an area with river and some huge mountains, so we decided to go in and explore the terrain. As our car was a 4*4 so we didn't have to worry much but there were some pits which we did not realize how deep they were and our car got stuck for a little while, but some turns and throttle made it through those pits. While the car was running through all terrains we did not realize that we were going deep into the jungle, at a point we saw back and were not able to see the road we came in from. A wave of goose bums ran from our legs to our arms. Before taking a U-turn, I said to everyone wait, lets get down and take a picture together as a memory. We got down and I placed my friend's phone on the ground to take a picture and set it on self timer so that even I could be in the picture. One picture was clicked, I urged for another with a different pose, as soon as I walked away from the phone pressing the shutter button again, I heard a noise behind my back, PISSSS -PISSSS , before turning back I glanced at my friend's faces who were posing with the car and watching their smiling faces going straight and eyes wide open my heart beat pumped up and I dared to turn around and the first thing that came in my mind was GOD HELP ME. A grey colored snake was sitting right on our phone and staring at me, I am a DISCOVERY channel fan and watch a lot of shows on wildlife, but did not think that one day I would experience something like this. well We stayed calm and did not move, after a minute the snake went in the other direction and the next second I grabbed the phone we rushed back to the road following our own tyre marks. What we got out of this off-roading were many new unexplored places, and amazing pictured with some mesmerizing back drops and of course a moment of fear in our hearts.
Again it was time to change and go into the pool, this time I was stupid enough to carry my phone near the pool thinking to connect it with our bluetooth speaker JBL PULSE and play songs. So, while I was busy cleaning some leaves out of the pool with the pool cleaning net and a friend of mine pushed me into the pool, DAMN! (video attached) the moment I entered into the pool I took the phone out of the pocket and handed over to him to shut it down immediately and as read on the internet we kept it into a sack of rice hoping the rice to absorb the moisture. Yeah a loss of another 25,000INR and we planned it as a budget trip and hey! this was just the middle of the second day.
Well, I did not worry about the phone anymore and enjoyed the trip. As on the first day, even on the second day we opened up our bottles beside the pool but today we were not the only ones, looking at us on the first day many other families came beside the pool and opened up their drinks too, cheaters. But we were ahead of them, yes, today we had a barbecue and a hukkah too which we set up beside the pool and started to make our food there itself. Many hours passed we did not realize and it was dinner time but we didn't bother as we had our own snacks today.
Well it was an end to our second day and we were already in much loss but it was okay, we were enjoying. So the third day begins with a hangover, and I go to the kitchen to check my phone, I did not switch it on and thought to keep it in rice for 24 hours again after reaching home (keeping the hope alive). We had to checkout today and we all were packing our stuff. All of us were almost packed and I was settling all the bills of rooms and food, suddenly another friend said he couldn't find his Jbl pulse, at that moment I just sat down with my forehead resting on my hands. We searched a lot in our rooms around the pool and in the whole resort but there was no sign of it . Unfortunately there were no cctvs near the pool area so we couldn't get any help from the resort staff, then we realized, yes another loss of 9,000INR. But atlast we made many good memories and got a lot of experience from this trip.
So remember the first line I said.. Don't plan, don't worry just go where ever you want and don't travel but EXPLORE.
P.S- It was not meant to be a budget trip :P
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