Tides of Naukuchiyatal I


Naukuchiyatal is a still, pristine natural lake stolen from the hustle and bustle of daily life. I had some doubts whether this was the ideal destination for an office trip. I was pleasantly surprised to find it to be otherwise.

Why is it just after the moment is over you don’t want to talk about it any more. Probably you feel words won’t be sufficient to describe the beauty of the moment. The beauty of Naukuchiyatal something like that.

It was an excellent trip. 10 hours of journey. 10 hours of going. 10 hours of coming. In all, we just had a day in our hand. And I am glad I made the most of it. No regrets at all. The theme of the trip was Pirates of the Carribean. The names of the teams were Jack Sparrow, Captain Rake, Boot Strap, Red Beard and Davy Jones. Not having seen any movies of the series I had to use a lot of my imagination for the activities.

I woke up around 8.30 am when I heard voices of some of my colleagues outside my room. Though I was dead tired after the journey, I couldn’t stay in bed for too long. The reason was the lovely place, not to mention the rooms. The girls had the special liberty to occupy the spacious lake facing rooms. Once again I was glad I am girl.

Coming back to the morning, I freshened up and rushed to the lawn where everyone was having tea. It was quite cold, much colder than Delhi. I lied down on a hammock, a fantasy come true. Soon photo sessions began, our organisation has quite a number of photographers. Prarthana made all the models really pleased with themselves. None of us had had our bath yet, we were not even dressed properly and hence were quite happy with the snaps.

Photo session was followed by breakfast. And what a spread the breakfast was. It had toast, butter, cutlets, upama, cornflakes, fruits, tea / coffee, juice, omlette…Considering my no breakfast or milk and skip lunch working days this was heavenly. After breakfast, we sat under the shy sun with little gossips and giggles for company. Some of us then set out for a trek. The trek was beautiful, everyone went mad taking snaps. But when I thought about it, I felt almost 70% of Assam is like this. There we don’t have to go out for a holiday. Our life is a holiday.

Anyways we soon reached a dead end and realized that we had taken the wrong way. We retraced our way back to the resort. On the way back there was this particular Brigadier’s home, a very pretty bungalow with yellow and red roofs with lots of flowers in the lawn. Reminded me of lost times. They also had two big dogs, observed desi dogs in the hills have furry coats.

I broke off from the party at the resort for a quick bath. Kishore came knocking on my door afterwards. The smiling lake had beckoned for boating. I hadn’t expected to enjoy boating all that much, boating turned out to be a really soothing experience. Absolutely beautiful nine edged lake embraced us in its lap. Sleepy, hazy, sun kissed, legs in the air, with the infant gurgles inside the ear, and a deep warmth inside the mind we got off on the other side of the lake.

Now it was time for horse riding. Pawan and Sikandar were two of the handsome horses. Pawan was extremely well behaved. As far as I can remember I have ridden horses only once or twice before. To get up on the horse was quite a task, horses being tall and me being short. The first time I got up I thought I had torn something in my thigh. But thankfully it wasn’t anything I remembered after 10 mins. I realized I quite liked horse riding and I didn’t feel like getting off once I was up. We went to a height from where we could see the entire lake. As we laced the treacherous edges of hills, I learnt the difference between a trot and a gallop.

We crossed a big Hanuman mandir, I didn’t make the effort of getting off the horse. Around 12.45 pm we reached the resort. The headache of group activities was still on my head. I had to collect all the truant team members to practice the item number for the first and the last time. It was not even 1.10 pm when we had to split for lunch. Lunch was again amazing, with everything one could wish for. I didn’t know what to have and what not and ended up having soup after the lunch.
...contd.

4 comments:

Sparkling said...

This post is a welcome change in blogville these days :)

Hey, pray tell me where exactly this place 'Naukuchiyatal' is? That was a mouthful. And what was the trip all about? An incentive trip or s'thing?

Reading the post makes me feel calm :D

D Writer said...

Naukuchiyatal is a small town with a lake of the same name near Nainital...

Yearly office trip....no incentive other than the prizes....:)

I have deliberately not written anything about the blasts...simply becaoz i don't know what to write
lol..

Arpit said...

we frnds r also planning a trip to nainital but i didnt want to go coz i have already been thr.

But i guess i'll go now to see this lake since its close to nainital..

sure sounds like u ppl had loads of masti...upload some pics...a trip with frnds is always fun.

"in assam..... life is a holiday" ----nice :)
i wish we had sumthing like tht in delhi too....so tht we wudnt have to drive 10 hrs to reach such beautitful place

D Writer said...

Hey arpit, pliz do go...m not sure how close the place is to nainital, as we had just one day to ourself which all of us spent at the resort itself...

yes we did have loads of fun...i still have to seive through the pics, since there are too many of them...

me too wish there were more places to go to near delhi...but sometimes road journeys are really fun