Rafting trip to Shivpuri.

After my last year's exhilarating rafting experience, I was eager to make the next one soon. First opportunity came when the young blood group planned, but :(.. i could not go due to some personal work.

Trip Planned
Few weeks later, while chatting to vikas and manik we planned a trip, destination choices being Manali or Shivpuri. I was given the task to find out a rafting organizer group. I talked to a couple but they had closed their camps and I was told this was not the right season. But then, probably we were destined to have fun. Nimesh talked to some group who had their camps on and bookings were made. Travel arrangements were also made by him, hiring a Toyota innova.

People who agreed for the trip : Manik aka jaat, Vikas aka lala, Nimesh aka nimi, Nitin aka Chopra aka "bada ladka", Nikhil aka nicky, Deepali aka deepali (will soon have to find something for her) and Prachi aka manju and ofcourse your's truly aka addy.

All set to leave delhi on 6th "early" morning. Early being as early as 4AM.... (ha ha ha ha)

The Night Before
All of us had decided, we were staying at nimi and jaat's place so that we can leave "early" the next day. We planned for a movie in the evening "36 china town". Nimi and jaat could not go for they were preparing their house for our welcome... Lala and deepali were to arrange the tickets.... Lala called deepali and asked her to buy a ticket for me as well as i had decided to join for the movie later. Deepali did just that and bought a "single" ticket. Then they realized they had not purchased tickets for anyone eles either... Ha Ha.. Deepali bought 4 more tickets which ofcourse were far away from that single seat. Fortunately hall was not that full and we could manage sitting together.... :). After the movie we headed for jaat's place. Nikhil was not for the movie and came directly there. All the people except for me and prachi had a "few" rounds of drinks and after much hullabaloo, we went to sleep at around 3:30.... ha ha ha.. remember we had decided to leave by 4.

The morning...
Somehow we managed to get up by 6:30. Thanks to deepali we got a cup of bed tea as well. By 7:30 we were all ready, picked up our bags, loaded the innova and started..... Innova is not meant for 8+1 people. People on the back seat were cramped for leg space. But then i believe our enthu was much higher to be bogged down by such small issues..

So we moved on and reached Cheetal grand restaurant (exactly halfway between delhi and hardwar). Took wholesome breakfast there and continued our journey. By around 1pm we reached hardwar. Nimesh's dad had arranged rooms for us in a guest house and lunch as well. Nimesh thank your dad for the wonderful arrangement overthere. After having our lunch and taking a nap, we left for our camps at around 3:30.

Reaching the camps
The camps were far far up the hills. While the journey to them was tiring, the weather there was great. We reached the camps at arnd 7 in the evening. The camps were quite luxurious compared to what I had when i went last year. After freshening up, we came out for a camp fire. For the next few hours people drank.. and .. drank.... and.. well drank again. For non drinkers like me.. it was fun watching them behave like total nuts. I am sure nobody remembers what they did or said... So i wont open their secrets here. After having a nice dinner, we went inside our camps at around 12 for a good night's sleep.

The next morning we all got up, took our breakfast and left for rafting at around 8:30. We reached the starting point at arnd 11 and started our rafting expedition at arnd 11:30. Our raft guide gave all of us some instructions which none of us could really understand coz of his accent and lingua which was 1/4 hindi, 1/4 englist and 1/2 God knows what... :).

Rafting...
For the next three hours we were on the raft (and sometimes in the water). Some of the rapids like roller Coaster and Golf Course provided for an unforgettable experience. For some reason related somehow to prachi... we were left inside the water floating(for we didnt know to swim) for quite some time by our guide and that was frightening for most of us as we had gone far off from our raft. Thank goodness we all were picked up safe and sound on the raft again. Towards the end we did a dive into the water from a 20ft cliff which was an experience of a lifetime.

We completed our rafting at around 3. The camp organizers had arranged for lunch at a local restaurant which was horrible.

And we return... :(
After changing our wet clothers at the restaurant, we left for Delhi at around 4:30. On reaching roorkee, our cab was stopped by a thulla(traffic inspector). At the start of our journey, our cabby had told us that if we get into such a situation, tell that the cab belongs to one of our friends named chetan (coz the cab didnt have a tourist permit). Nimesh got down and told exactly that to the thulla. But then, as is with all of them, the thulla had to have something (and of course he knew we were fudging....). After some brilliant negotiations and pretending as if he was the poorest being on earth Nimesh got us away by paying just Rs 160(remember actual fine would have ran into thousands). Kudos to nimesh again.
On our way back we did a halt at Cheetal grand again for some munching, and reached noida at around 11.

Yet another succesful trip....

Highlights of the trip :-
- Nimesh's taking over the responsibility of arrangements which were quite good (except for the choice of innova).
- The chaos at jaat's place the night before which included a few broken glasses and bottles of beer.
- Deepali serving us brilliant bed tea saturday morning.
- Arrangements by Nimi's dad at hardwaar.
- Tuli's mimicary of Asian Sky shop advertisements.
- Manik, tuli and nimesh acting cricketers like mohinder amarnaath, madan lal, maninder singh, sidhu and commentating. New sidhhuisms like "apni gali mein to har koi koota hota hai" were invented.
- Saturday night when everybody got drunk badly.
- Of course, the rafting and diving experience.
- Nimesh getting the thulla to leave us for just Rs160.
- Tuli disclosing the pranks he had played on others during college time.

And the big one..... BHAIIIIISAAAAB... PREM...... BHAISAAAAAB... Our slogan for the whole trip.

But then, every single moment of the trip was a highlight..... Looking forward to our next trip.