Phew!! I am tired of documenting all the memories of our “legendary”
trek! My loyal readers may have noticed that I have always wrapped up the
previous Belgaum trek blogs with the second meal of the day! Now the time has come
when I shall reveal what happened after the second meal of the day! The time
has also come to tell you what happened on the last day of this trip…!
Well, on the last day, we
had some more adventure through water sports!! We did river crossing… we crossed
“through” an aggressively flowing and deep river and on the rope through the
air. I am sure you might be wondering, who were the brave ones to cross the
turbulent river first and tie the rope on the other side. Well they were our
experienced guides and organizers who knew swimming and battling the currents. We
transported ourselves on the other side safely anchored to a rope… and came
back through the water again holding safely to a rope. For more information on
how river crossing is done please Google.
The main aim of this
write-up is to tell my readers, who were not lucky enough to be with us, our
activities during evenings after the second meal of the day! We had a campfire
on both days. The first evening was spent mainly playing card games like uno.
Seventeen people sitting around a table and playing uno! Well, it always seemed
like an eternity before your turn came! Then there was the dinner and then
sound sleep…!
The second evening, each
one one of us was dead tired. Sitting around the campfire, we played “Mafia”
(for those who don’t know this game…kindly google!) while having lots of hot
pakodas!
This was followed by
games which, almost grown-ups, like us would never even dream of playing…The
tiredness seemed to vanish in the laughter that followed these games!
We were divided into
teams of two.
The first game was
“monkey and the bone” where the bone was a 15cm long log which the player had
to pass on the bone to his team mate after completing an entire round around
the circular courtyard with the bone between his/her knees, so that the team
mate manages to take it between his knees. The two people are not allowed to
touch each other at any time… I think u can very well imagine 2 people trying
to exchange a finger long log between themusing their knees…now that was the
fun part!!The first team to have all its members jump around the courtyard
following all the rules,wins!
The next game was to
balancea foot long stick – all team member had to use only their index fingers
to do this… the catch was that we were not allowed to tilt the stick in any
way…
And the last game was
called “fruit salad”. In this game all the players take up one of four fruits
decided between them. All players sit on chairs in a big circle… all except
one.. Who doesn’t know which player is what fruit… A moderator not a part of
the players calls out a fruit and players who are those fruits have to exchange
their seats… In this interval the seeker has to get himself seated on one of
the chairs… the person who doesn’t get a chair becomes the next seeker..!
Sounds Childish yeah…We
had a lot of fun!
Last day evening, after
the second meal of the day, we started again towards our return journey to
Belgaum and therefrom to Mangalore. That evening, of the 20th of August,
was another eventful evening.
It so happened that we
had to book tickets in two different buses by the same travels due to
unavailability…thus four of us had to leave at 7p.m. and the rest at 8.30p.m.
We reached Belgaum before
5p.m. Smitha had made arrangements for us to wait in a hotel during the
interval. As agreed four of us went ahead by the 7p.m. bus…
Half an hour later, Nitin
receives a call from Ram-one of those four who went ahead saying that “they are
having trouble”…and the call disconnects.
We called them up again
and were told that there are some issues with the bus. That’s all. At 8:30p.m.
we board the bus for our return journey.
Since our pick up point
was supposed to be the first stop for our bus, we got in and started putting
our luggage on the upper berth. The lower berth beneath us was already occupied
and the curtains were drawn.
Suddenly the curtains
open and out come the four Gypsies who had left earlier screaming and scaring us… I nearly jumped and
screamed myself..!! A sweet surprise…and shock and questions followed !! We
soon realized that we had booked tickets on the same bus which started at 7p.m.
(first pick up point), took a tour of Belgaum, and landed at our pickup point
at 8:30p.m. !! What a fiasco!
Well, all’s well that
ends well… We were pleased to be travelling together… Soon, 12 people were
playing uno in the bus… 7 grownups crammed up in a 2-seater lower sleeper
berth, 3 squatting in the passageway and 2 more hanging upside down from the
top!
The end!!
River Crossing at Belgaum
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