Rishikesh – A trip to lap of nature

When I recall about my trip to rishikesh, the words which comes first into my mind is most unplanned, unorganized, adventurous enjoyable and unforgetful trip of my life.

It all started when some of my friends from Nextag were planning to go for some outing. As the planning was in the offing for the past one year, so I thought this time also it wont be materialized, but I was game for it. But due to rainy season during 15-16th July 2006 weekend, we were not able to finalize a place and everything was going into doldrums. Then suddenly I got a call from one of the friend on Friday evening and finally we 5 friends left.

It all started at 2am in the morning on Saturday night from my home. All 4 of them (Animesh, Deepak, Prateek, Parul) came to pick me up in the hired quails. Till that moment we weren’t sure where are we going? We thought to decide on runtime. And firstly we are going to shivpuri, around 15kms from rishikesh and then may be somewhere else like Mussorie. We were well equipped with every possible thing to enjoy the weekend (like laptop, football, cards, drinks and not to forget my favorite camera). We kept on gossiping, listening to music, playing games on laptop whole night apart from taking a short nap. After taking a short break near Haridwar, we reached Shivpuri around 9am. We decided to trek down river side of Ganges. The white sand beaches were awesome. The scenic beauty of the nature was really mid-blowing. The ice cold water of Ganges flowing curvaceously between the Himalayas was creating a spell- bound effect on us. As we were alone on that beach, we were having good fun. We started playing football then we entered into a small stream of water, which was merging perpendicularly in Ganges. The fast flowing stream of water was around 2-3 feet depth, but was such clear that we can see the stones lying at the bottom. We took many dips in that water, and then played there. Had some fun by trying fishing too, but it was our bad luck no fish got struck. Then we played volleyball in the water of ice-cold Ganges. That was the amazing part till now. We didn’t wanted to get out from there and we decided that we will hire and set up a tent there on the beach of Ganges and will have camp fire in night. After taking breakfast, we went back to rishikesh to get the hired tent from tourist office. It was all because of enthusiastic guy, Deepak who took us all the way to Rishikesh just to hire the tents. Due to technical difficulty, we weren’t able to get tents. Then we decided to stay in huts of Uttranchal tourism in Kodiayal, around 39 kms from Rishikesh, located on the mountain just over the Ganges. While going there we weren’t sure whether it would be worth living or not. We took it as another adventure and started over odyssey. After reaching there, we were spellbound by the scenic beauty where the huts were located. The Ganga was making a U-turn between the mountains and our huts were located at the bottom of U, right on top of that mountain, creating a breath taking view from our huts. We sat there in Garden for 1 hr chatting and making plans for evening. Then we went on trekking spree and to explore the near-by area. It became more adventurous as darkness was taking over the mild daylight left and we didn’t had any torches. We trek down the mountain to the riverbed and started having fun there. Light was almost negligible and also it was not a starry night. We could barely see any light flashing whenever any vehicle moved from the highway above. We started having juices, chips and other eatables, which we got with us. And Deepak too got his dream fulfilled by having a drink on the banks of ice-cold water. Our adventures were just getting better and better as the time was progressing. We didn’t know what was stored next for us. After finishing everything we moved back to our huts and had dinner. Then we played cards for half an hour before everyone got asleep, as we were very much tired. We planned to get up at 4am and see the sunrise.

Next day on Sunday, we got up at 8am. Then we went on search mission to find Parul who was sitting on the edge of wall just above Ganga and practicing yoga. At first sight we thought she is going to jump inside, thank God she didn’t jumped. Very soon animesh too got into the act of Yoga. Then everyone tried their hands on photography and we had a breakfast at a Dhaba. We started packing our bags for our return. That one night in hut was looking like we are in our dreams and didn’t wanted to come out. The place was so serene and beautiful away from hustle and bustle of daily life. I wish I could come every month there for a holiday.

As we were moving back through the treacherous roads back to rishikesh, we decided to stop in between, as we saw a lonely white sand beach on the other side of Ganga. This was the most awesome piece of land we saw in 2 days. We trek down from mountain and crossed the Ganga through a small bridge. The view of Ganga from that bridge was breath taking. We again trek down on the other side of mountain to reach the beach. And it was indeed the most beautiful part of our trip and we all went crazy. Animesh, Prateek and Deepak went inside water and me and Parul decided not to enter inside water. But they finally started playing with wet sand and made us all also wet. We played a lot with football in water and on sand. As the water was very deep and flowing with high speed, we took precaution of not going deep inside water. We made sand balls and started hitting each other. Then while playing football our football went along with the fast flowing waters of Ganga. Then played every possible game we can think off like Kho – kho, kabbadi, wrestling, wish-amrit, rolling off from small sand dunes into water and many more. Those 3hrs were the best time we had on the trip. It started drizzling in the end and we decided to trek back to our quails. In the way, we saw a cave being drilled and we went inside just to have some feel and took many photos there. Finally we reached back to the qualis. During this whole trekking and playing, one black mountain dog was following us, we were feared first but then he was partner of our adventure and became someone’s sweetheart.

We started our journey back to Delhi and stop once for lunch. Then we started playing Dumb charades in the qualis. We were enjoying every single moment of our trip. Then after 2 hrs every one was very tired and fell asleep and got up when we reached Delhi. The trip was such an amazing that I alone took around 225 photos out of which more than 125 were nature photography only. And truly that trip was to the lap of nature.

Never Die Attitude

Life, life, life sometimes I keep thinking what is the best way to lead a happy life? Will lots of money, cars, gadgets, beautiful life partner, and luxurious life style make life happy? These are just an illusion created by our own selves or may be just a sign to show off our status, but I think the real way to live happy is to make other’s happy around you i.e. your family and beloved ones then only you will get to know the real meaning of happiness. When you will see just a single smile on their face you will also feel much more calm or composed, sometimes that might come on the expense of your smile but just try out just once, it will be a great satisfying experience. Just take an example of a mother who tries to fulfill each and every desire of her child at the cost of her happiness.

One other hindrance in leading a happy life is fear of failure. I believe failure is a stepping stone to success. Whenever you are feeling lowly and deject and want to give up, don’t leave it there because you never know that your destination might be near by. There is one example of Thomas Edison. When he was in late sixty’s his factory went into fire and all his hardwork of his life went into ashes, but he didn’t breakdown, instead he just said “I am thankful to God that he burnt up all my mistakes so that I can startup afresh with new ideas.” Never think its too late to startup and never give up when you think you had tried a lot and everything is getting out of your control.
Just give a break for some time and start thinking out of box, keep trying new ideas and you will definitely get success and can change this whole world.

Another pillar to lead a good life is determination and hard work to achieve anything in life. Life is useless without them. When you are determined to achieve something, success will definitely come your way, the only thing you need is hard work. There is one famous story of an athlete Wilma Rudolph. She got a polio attack and became paralytic in her childhood. She can’t even stand on her legs without braces. Doctors had said she can walk properly throughout her life. But she had a dream to become the fastest person on this earth. Her mother removed those braces and made her walk without them. She fell down, crawled without them, but didn’t left hope and started walking on her legs one day and then started taking part in races. But she was coming way back in leagues races. Again she didn’t breakdown, kept her morale up to make her way to win 4 gold medals in 1967 Olympics and became the fastest women on earth. She won because she dared to dream and had great courage and determination in herself.

I think Life is a garden of roses, which appears to be very pleasant from outside but has worst thorns attached to it, You only need to have a great mind, attitude to pick out the rose out of bushes of thorns and great spirit of achieving success, so that even you get injured while picking those roses, don’t leave the good work in between but try to learn from mistakes to make to your life a bed full of roses.

One of my good friend has only told me “Nothing is Impossible in this world as word Impossible itself says I m possible”. At one point of time, that friend gave me inspiration in life. Life is just like a roller coaster ride which goes through various phases of happiness and sadness, ups and downs, crests and troughs, but the real winner is one who never lets his morale down and keeps continuing to fight till the eternity (because there is no end). Life is not always fair to everyone and if there are no hardships, sadness or bad times in one’s life, he will forget the meaning of happiness or success in life. So that’s the golden rule for happiness/success. At last I want to say, Keep the spirit up and fight like a gladiator in the arena of life!!!!!!!!!!!!