Here we go, we are three friends and this was our first trip together ever. In-fact this was very first trip of mine & Etika as a whole, individually too. i can very well say after this trip only, we fell in love with traveling insanely. Travel makes you more confident, mature, wise and what not. After this travel i realized travel gives you a whole new perspective to see the world when you come out from your day to day regular life. it opens up a brand new world of learning.
Planning the trip
Background behind this travel was, two of us ( me & Etika ) are office colleagues, working in same company but different locations and our third super girl Kiran is from a different company. so work brought us together and eventually we became friends. we usually used to talk on phone calls. one fine day all three of us were talking on phone and realized that we all were pissed of and much stressed for different different reasons at respective workplaces. Hence planning an outing came to my mind as i really wanted a break from office. and the trip planning begins :)
Deciding the Destination - where to go
we started looking for the destination to explore as this was our very first independent travel so there were so many fears in mind as how its going to be, what about safety measures, what if got stuck somewhere and much more. so we thought to visit a place which is in north itself as i belong to Ludhiana, Etika from Delhi & Kiran from Chandigarh. "Rishikesh" came in picture after so much of brain work and internet surfing. now our place was decided but the problem was managing leaves ;) from office.
so finally we were able to manage a leave for Two days from office and it became a "Two" days travel. we had to manage our travel time & Rishikesh stay in two days itself. This way i booked a Two days camping in Rishikesh and planned to travel by train in night & for that Etika Traveled to Ludhiana from Delhi & so Kiran traveled from Chandigarh to Ludhiana. Bang we boarded our train to Rishikesh at 1:30 am in the night as it was late that day for some reason and reached Rishikesh at 8:00 am in the morning the next day.
Invalid Train Tickets
Hows it possible that it was our first travel and "Kuch gadbad na ho ;) " so what happened i booked train tickets from IRCTC website but since i was doing it all for the first time... i booked a waiting ticket which was not confirmed till the travel date... Gosh and i was really not aware that if online ticket doesn't get confirmed by the travel date it is not considered valid...
Exactly now you will be thinking that if the tickets were not confirmed then how we boarded train & managed to reach.. lol..
i came to know that our tickets are not valid on the way to station midnight when our friend was driving us to Ludhiana railway station and he asked about tickets, platform number and coach & seat number and Shock unvield when he checked the tickets and all three of us were thinking what to do now ... Now when i look back and remember those days i just laugh my heart out as how dumbo i was .. but now i plan awesome travels and travel effortlessly smooth.. this is the first learning from my travels.
Reaching Rishikesh without confirmed Train Tickets
Three of us were equally willing to not drop the Rishikesh plan just for tickets and Bang Indian jugadu dimag came in picture and we managed to board the train and huge excitement for our first train travel together and Rishikesh .. while on board too many interesting things happened..let me know in comments if you want to know about it too , dropping to share for now as the blog will go endlessly big ..
This is how we reached Rishikesh at 8 am in the morning ..
While capturing the sunrise i was totally lost in the world of my thoughts, how magical is this nature, how beautifully it plays around with colours sunrise turns the whole sky into fire red & golden shades, while a clear sunny day gives you a beautiful view of sky blue colour and night ... night brings a dark sky with beautiful stars, how blessed we are that we have got alot to witness and feel around us. i was totally spellbound by the beauty of nature.
Rishikesh Camp Day - 1
Since it was my first Independent trip, i was so excited that i wanted to capture everything in my camera and to save that feeling with me for lifetime. Though i was not good at photography, still i was capturing each & everything. Never realized that time that in future photography will become my hobby and will fall in love with it.
Here after reaching, we had our breakfast & we were so excited that we got ready for our day activities ... Plan was to visit a waterfall nearby .. it was a 2 km trek from our camp site.. but we got indulged into photo session :) as we figured out a river just next to our camp.
After a good photo session, we indulged ourselves into the sunbath and river, and it was an in-explainable experience..
We made it to the waterfall in the evening around 4pm after a trek of 2km.
After spending a beautiful day doing nothing, just chilling and enjoying the vicinity of surreal mountains we came back to our camp and evening time when it was all dark , it started drizzling, beautiful cold breeze, mild rain drops and the river just next to our camp gave us the best ever experience we could ever ask for from the life. this way Day -1 comes to an end.
Rishikesh camp Day - 2
River rafting was in plan for Day-2, and there we got ready for it ...
While we were going for rafting we again had so many fears in our minds, specially for me it was very scary thing as i don't know swimming and i was constantly thinking what if i fall down in river or any rapid, no ..no ..no i cant afford .. i have to go back and see my mom dad ;) but i wanted to do it equally, i wanted to feel that adrenaline rush. bang after gearing up for Rafting -- i gave myself some courage saying - renu "chakk de fatte dekhi jayegi" & there we did it.
But while rafting someone else fell into the biggest rapids, opposite to my thoughts what i was thinking about me. It was Etika who fell and i still get goosebumps when i recall that moment i was so horrified that now what?? but luckily she was pulled back in the raft safely
Thanks to Kiran, i always wanted to float in water but had no gutts to go away from the raft even though i was wearing a life jacket. Thanks to Kiran , she took me away from the raft in river, helped me get that floating feeling and then got me back to raft.. it was sooo amazing for a person like me who does not know swimming, but still i experienced it.
and this way we said good bye to Rishikesh with lifetime memories, feelings and experiences.