It had been a year since me and my friends went for an outing together. The last trip was to Manali ... when I was thin ... which makes it a long time back. Anyways we had started planning ages ago for an outing. In fact, it used to be the only topic of discussion during lunch breaks, beer time and anytime we all were together.
One fine day, my friend CP, gave us the news of his marriage in Kotdwara (pronounced as Kotdwar). Since it was on a Saturday, and for once, everyone was free...we decided this could be it. Hence, the planning began. Subhash...our quintessential travel guy...was in charge of the itinerary..the travel booking..the booze, basically everything. After some last minute back outs by ppl, travel agents,
EYL ppl..and loads of shouting at them over the phone for our advance money, me and Subhash finally contacted the HCL cab vendor for a tempo traveler. We were to start on Friday night, reach Kotdwar at around 6:00 a.m, roam about at Lansdowne - a hill station about 40kms away, attend CP's marriage in the evening, come back to Delhi via Rishikesh. It was a hectic schedule but it had to be done. The bus driver gave us some nervous moments when he arrived an hour late than he had to. He finally reached Mayur Vihar which was our assembling point. The journey began with all of us opening our beers...and some really loud music thanks to Viral's
portable Bose speakers. Although I couldn't play much of metal on it...but the beer kinda made it easy to enjoy the bollywood playlist. We were all high in no time..and after our dinner at a roadside dhaba...we found 3 more bottles of beer in the box to our utter surprise. We thought we had finished the entire thing. I swear nothing was more blissful than when Amaresh uttered those 5 sweet sweet words "Abhi 3 aur baaki hai!!" After finishing up...things went crazy and fuzzy. All I could remember was there was a lot of dancing...loads of crazy laughter..and loads of "gay"ish activities by some of my friends which really creeped me out! We all fell asleep by 4 am...I think.
We reached the venue at 6 in the morning..with our body still in the sleep mode. We checked-in to our hotel and slept for an hour or so before being woken up for breakfast. We cleaned up..and I swear we were all a bit high even at7:30 in the morning. After breakfast, we headed towards Lansdowne. The drive was pretty cool...the view was excellent and gradually the temperature became cooler and cooler. Lansdowne is the home of the Garhwal Rifles and they pretty much maintain everything there. Its a nice clean place, very peaceful and quiet. We reached a place called Tip-in-top which is one of the tourist attractions there. Frankly, there's nothing much to see there..just a place called Suicide point from where you can see the entire town. However, the experience the place provides is awesome. You can totally chill out, spend time with friends..chatting up and relaxing under the deodar trees..just soaking up the moment. We did just that. As it is we were pretty tired from the journey. We just sat and joked around the entire time. Lunch was simply awesome at a restaurant called Holiday. The waiter however was an angry young man. Maybe it was because we ordered huge quantities of food or something, the guy somehow dint like it when we ordered our seconds..and thirds and our fourths.
Finally, with our stomachs full, we rested for a while, sipped tea and headed to an artifical lake (dont remember the name). The lake sucked big time. It was nothing much to see. It was a waste of time really. The lake was very small. In fact the Sanjay Lake in Mayur Vihar Ph 2 was better than that.
Next up, we headed towards the Siddh Bali temple in Kotdwar. Its a famous temple at Kotdwar and being high up, it offered a nice view of the town as well.
It was soon time to head back and attend the marriage. We checked in to a different hotel, had a shower and 4 quick pegs of Vodka. We wanted to be high since there was dancing involved and our feet dont move unless we are high. We danced the night away at his marriage. CP was very nervous and tense. He was like a stick. He dint talk or smile or anything. I have never seen someone this scared in my life. We dint get much time to talk and stuff...we just danced, had our dinner..wished him and went back.
Tired as hell, we all went to sleep at 12:00-12:30 am. We had to reach Rishikesh by 10:00 and hence had to start early, at about 6 am from Kotdwar. We eventually started at 6:30 the next day for Rishikesh. We stopped for breakfast at 8:45 and were pretty confident that we would reach Rishikesh before time. However, the restaurant guy had other plans. We were in this restaurant called Anuradha Palace which looked pretty decent but it sucked big time. They took almost 45 minutes to serve us. And the food was sooo bad and overpriced. It cost us time and money. We had to reach Rishikesh at 10...and it was 9:45 already. We were stuck in a jam and finally reached Rishikesh at about 11:00. We had to go for Rafting and the rafting guys escorted us to the starting point.
Rafting was sooo f*cking awesome. It was a 26 km course and stretched up to 3-3.5 hours. The rapids were named by Edmund Hillary and sounded pretty cool too. The first one was called Black Money where our instructor made us stand on our raft. It was sooo cool. Then there was "3 blind mice" which is a set of 3 rapids one after the other, "Roller Coaster" which literally throws the raft in the air and back down again, "Golf course" and many others. Each one was fun. There are some rapids which are called "Bodysurfing" rapids, where we can get down from our rafts and swim in them. That was really fun. Our instructor, impressed with the way we were handling the entire thing, let us body surf on 2 of the rapids. It was scary and loads of fun. In between the rapids, when the currents aren't that strong, we can float on the river. Floating on the river Ganga was a peaceful experience. The calm waters and the awesome scenery made it a blissful affair. I almost spent an hour and a half in the water just floating and soaking up the sun. The excitement of the rapids and the peaceful experience of floating in the river made the entire episode memorable. In between there's cliff jumping. We had to jump from a decent height into the river. It was an exhilarating experience. You experience almost 2 seconds of free fall..which literally scares the sh*t out of you...but the adrenaline rush that you get makes up for everything. After a short break we continued our rafting adventures and ended the course at 4:00 pm. We waited for a while to dry ourselves and headed back to Delhi.
The return journey was pretty hectic. We had the vodka for company though. After dinner however, the roads were pretty bad and we were stuck in traffic jams constantly. We reached back at 2:00 in the morning and I went to sleep right away with my body aching mostly due to the posture that I was sitting in. I woke up at 12:00 in the afternoon today!! I had to take the day off...I don't remember anyone waking me up! I slept like a log.
It was an awesome journey, very hectic but an awesome experience. The Rafting episode made this trip the best one among all my trips. Hope I get to do it again soon.
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