Why should bunking stop at College?

Breakfast at Road side dhabba

I have always wondered how my seniors or classmates managed to become overnight professionals just after getting out of college. In most situations, I struggle to get that ‘midas’ touch and since it seems so challenging, these days I just don’t care. Even in the most simulating work environments, the very routine nature of events happening in office (yes the meeting-coding-facebooking-tweeting cycle) creates a craving for some kind of adventure.

Yes, it din’t take long for me too.. With new year on the cards where few people are already fearing destruction of world, me and my NCG friends at Texas Instruments wanted to add some color to this new year celeb.  We chose to adventure in a silly way.. ‘bunk’ office on a fine Wednesday and disappear somewhere. It all started as usual at a coffee table discussion where all of us wanted to spend some sick leaves. The plot was clear from the moment of inception – to travel somewhere.

Miss Anvi with her elaborate knowledge about the outskirts of Bangalore, came up with two ‘cool’ trip plans:

• Hokkenagal
• Shivanasamudram

Both places are almost equally far and well known for their super natural waterfalls. After a quick research by all participants we decided to choose Shivanasamudram falls since it seemed to have less restrictions and time constraints. Then we booked a cab and packed our bags hoping for a nice adventurous trip next morning.

The schedule for the cab driver was to pick me up first and then go to all others houses, finally leaving by 8am. But the driver managed to delay the schedule by around 40 mins. We started from my place around 7 40 am and managed to pick Saurabh, Lokesh by 8 10 am. Then we proceeded to pick Anviksha near Pizza hut and managed to spot her after some initial struggle. The cab driver began to wonder if this was some kind of call center pick up trip when we said that Shivraj has to join us en-route at Koramangala.

Shivraj partly frustrated by the delay managed to get sleep off at his house and finally reached after being waked up by our calls on reaching his pick up spot. Everything except the driving seemed to be near perfect. At moments I had to stick to my seats and close eyes when he tried some weird movie type overtakes. Before the worse started, we reached a breakfast dhabba and managed to grab some dosa-vadas. After clicking few snaps we decided to continue over trip to reach as soon as possible.

Now I decided to grab back seat to prevent a cardiac arrest owing to the cab driver’s adrenaline thirst. Lokesh who was left without an option to take the front seat managed to doze off avoiding the thrill. 😀 Finally, after all the commotion we reached the Gaganachukki falls. Though the way was not so seemingly beautifully to lead to a waterfall, I must say we were quite impressed with the very sight of this mighty falls even from a far off view point.  Without hesitation we popped out our digi cams and started clicking each other in front of a portion of the scenery.  It dint take long for us to realize that we had in fact reached a wrong place thinking it to be the view point. We could locate the proper viewpoint to be diagonally opposite to the place were we chose to snap.

@ Gaganachukki (wrong viewpoint :p )

We could not delay further from getting drenched in the falls and hence proceeded straight to Barachukki falls where we could get into the waters. After reaching the point beyond which the cab can’t take us, we took our bags and started with high hopes of fun and excitement. The falls is situated in such a manner that in order to get to the bottom of it, we need to climb down around 200 steps that are raised higher than usual. We managed to reach the bottom soon after capturing the beauty of the falls in our digi cams.

To our delight there were traditional round boats taking us on a small trip around the water falls region. It was my first round boat ride and I was undoubtedly excited about it. The boat man was very kind and balanced the boat well for all of us with overflowing excitement to get in and stay put.  The water was cold and we played for sometime until we were awestruck by the intensity of the falls. It was cold and small water droplets carried by air managed to reach us and occupy notable spots in our snaps. The boat man agreed to rotate the boat and place each us in a position so that we could click snaps with the mighty falls in the background. Then he did a fast rotations continuously like they do placing heroines in round boat. Anyways it was a unique enjoyable experience.

After finishing  the boat ride, we din’t want to waste a second outside water. Immediately changing, we crossed a water stream to get close to the falls. After placing our bags in line of sight, we slowly started walking into the waters. Every step we took, the chillness of the waters cut through our skin deeper and deeper. LOL 😀 we decided to neutralize the feeling by drenching ourselves completely into water. Yes this did work! 😀 Then, we approached the bottom of the falls quickly. The rocks en route where quiet sharp and Lokesh in fact managed to get his feet cut (luckily on the surface)

Boat ride

Water was forceful enough to create a massaging effect on our body. We enjoyed standing under the falls and taking the falls intensity directly on our head and back. We din;t mind interruptions from other groups who wanted to enjoy our privileged spots for some time. Inspite of the water being shallow we saw few people jumping into it. After spending good time under the falls we decided to take a break. We all walked from one end to other end of the waters and played few games. We also tried floating on the waters. All of us started shivering in a while as it too cold outside the waters. Despite, we again rushed below the falls and continued to enjoy. It was my first close encounter with waterfall and I loved it completely. All this time, my visit to falls was surrounded by warnings every minute from my parents and restrictions all around. But this was completely different and adventurous.

After clicking few snaps colored with energy, we decided to leave. There was a pretty decent place to change and we grabbed few samosas to quench our hunger. Then, we realized that we had to climb back all the 236 high raised steps to reach the cab. We felt so tired after coming out from the waters and this was too demanding for our stamina levels. We started and slowly managed to reach the top. Immediately rushed into our cab and grabbed the snacks inside to console our tired souls.

En route to falls

We had no energy left but wanted to visit the view point that we missed. The driver found the right way to the view point and managed to take us there. We had tender coconut water and some masala pori at the place. We could also see the huge hydro electric project constructed based on this falls from the view point. Some of us even wondered the fate of doing a sky dive or bungee at this place. 😀 😀 Finally after filling our hearts with the beauty of this mighty falls, we started our way back home. 🙂

Posing amidst shivers

Adieu 2011 outing from TI

I joined Texas Instruments in August and I must admit that it appeared too serious to enjoy until December :p

Then began the end of 2011 celebrations and the much hyped Team outing for our business unit. Thanks to Mohan Vamshi, our HR head who planned the venue and made reservations just in time.

We decided to celebrate 2011 achievements (though I dint contribute a dust! :p) at Xtremezone, Manchinbele. The exaggerated pics in the website only managed to create more excitement about the place.

We were instructed to be at office by 7am and it appeared only the NCGs took it serious! Finally people started arriving at around 8am and we kick started the outing in 2 buses (1 led by Vamshi and other by Satya) 🙂

On the way 🙂

Waiting for people to come outside TI 😀

All NCGs got into the bus led by Satya expecting lesser damage but later found that there were quite lot of people in our bus also to create enough trouble ragging.

In bus - complaining about supervisors! :p

I had already overheard Satya and Vamshi planning for fun games during the journey since it was anticipated to take a painfully long time to reach the venue given the traffic situation in Bangalore.

Moments after the bus started, discussions began on how could NCGs possible be ragged during the travel. But seniors seemed not to be in their cruel best and they settled with some light stuff. They asked us to complain about our supervisors which went quite good credit to our dry time at office :p We all managed to blast our supervisors after getting a non disclosure agreement by word from the enthusiasts listening.

Then we started playing truth and dare. Credits to Satya & Vamshi for spending enough time selecting quite a huge number exciting truths and dares to ask.

It was weird and thrilling to play with our senior managers and business unit heads but nobody seemed to bother much as we were too much immersed into the fun and excitement.

Finally after few participants gave flying kisses to passers on the road and sang rhymes to random strangers we managed to reach the venue for outing.

The buses could not take us further near to the venue and hence we had to cover the rest of the distance by walk. The place looked dry and sunny. Given the weather situation in Bangalore it was quite amicable scenario.

After a long walk and being left behind once by the rest of the team, we managed to reach the happening place of Xtremezone with few wooden huts and chambers. They served breakfast and we dint mind since we were overwhelmed by hunger (though anviksha managed to engulf few Idlis before starting! argh!!). After, all managers starting pulling out their expensive coolers and posing for photos lightly. It was quite amusing to discover people talking about optimizing execution of activities all the time,  can indeed have fun. Finally after photoshoot and costume change, we decided to start the ‘adventure’ activities.

We were split into two groups and taken to different activities. We started with “Zapping” – wow exciting :p The activity seemed absolutely simple and I began to wonder why it is tagged “adventurous”. But after Rajesh crashed  foot first on tree it managed to jerk enough adrenaline. After the event, we discovered that our fate is completely in the hands of a person top who should pull the brake wire to stop us before we crash with the tree. 🙂

After zapping, we moved to Rappelling zone where we had to descend a rock (small cliff to exaggerate! :p) while we are tied to a rope. This one seemed quite adventurous inspite of the rock being small since balancing with a rope seemed to be a lot challenging. But since the first sport din’t quite manage to drain our excitement, we queued up quickly to try this one out! 😀

As soon as I got ready with my gear (again exaggeration! just a helmet and hip belt! :p ) I climbed to the top of the rock using the arrangement available. It looked easier as breathing to see others doing it. Just before I took my turn, the person who started descending lost grip on his foot and ended up hanging with the support on his gear! Then he had to manage again pushing himself perpendicular to rocks in order to continue his descent down the rock.

I managed to clarify and suck out enough details on how I should descend from the guys helping us out. Then, I started out slowly and within few steps I  understood the physics on how this thing works. Then I even managed to take few peeps below to see how much I have descended by then. It was a thrilling experience to balance our weight perpendicular to the rocks partially cheating gravity and descending down! Smooth as cream it was and we moved on to the more familiar next activity! “Paint ball”

Paintball - Gearing up!

Paintball was very familiar but the place seemed to neither have proper space or gear for playing ! The idea of playing paintball in open space was inviting until we started testing it. Again NCGs managed to group in one team against few seniors in other team. We had few rocks to provide cover but clearly not enough. I was forced to take a tree as my cover as the referee blew the whistle. The opposition was clearly strong as they managed to attack while we din’t get to move from our positions. I got shot once since my cover was not really doing its job. Then I few people from the opposition before I exhausted my bullets. I hate those helmets used for paintball. They literally blind us.. How do they expect us to aim and shoot! 😦

After all the dry activities we had a nice lunch (chicken!! :p ) and rested for sometime. Then we could not resist the water in the lake beside the venue. So, within minutes we were all swimming in water with jackets on. The water so cold and it was wonderful to swim after nearly a year. But not for long. I began getting cramp in one leg. When I tried swimming back, I managed to cramp my other leg too. I understood that I have not swam for a long time and this fact is taking toll in the middle of the water now.

After resting for sometime with Shivraj’s support I managed to reach the shallow portions and walk some distance. Then when the situation improved I swam back. It was shit ridiculous when few guys got struck in the currents and we had to take rescue boats (its just a kayak boat) to pull them back :p As soon as we came out of water, we started to shiver. Followed by a costume change, we climbed up to volleyball court and played for sometime until everyone were ready.

Then we played some serious team building activities and used some revolutionary team communication skills (patented by Gokul and Penda :p can;t reveal details here) to emerge as winner in that activity! thanks to Gokul and Penda 😀 😀 ‘n Vamshi!!

With not much energy left we headed back to our buses thinking that the day was done. But soon as our return journey started, we understood that Vamshi and Satya ended up in the same bus, Hence making it impossible to rest now. 🙂 Vamshi started imitating people around in the bus to a very good extent. And Satya, Sarthak started Dumb C ‘n Guess who. We had some fine personalities thought by Naren which was literally impossible to find.

In the end, we finally reached back at around 8 pm tired and lazy filled with happiness and satisfaction. 😀 People generally cherished their achievements in 2011. Though we did not having anything to celebrate, we NCGs thoroughly enjoyed getting to know our managers and seniors better. Thanks for such a memorable outing !! 😀