Forty Eight Wonderful Hours: Part II

[You can read Part I here].

The Journey or Gala Fadana 101

Kaisa ajab ye safar hai..
Socho to har ek hi bekhabar hai..
Usako jana kidhar hai..
Jo waqt aaye, jane kya dikhaye..

Amit, Lalit and me rode with Manish. We decided to go via Khopoli as Tamhini ghat was deemed insecure. I had a USB loaded with fundoo songs (fundoo=chosen by me), but Manish insisted on playing a Marathi song at a particular offset of 92 in a particular CD. It's a good song, but after hearning it for what seemed like a bazillion times we finally convinced him to change. Then began the singing shouting. Fortunately there are quite a few songs that we all like and we had them, so no conflicts there. And shouting we did! Top songs: Dooba Dooba, Dhipadi Dhipang, Duniya, Na tum jano na hum. Was hearing some of these after a long long gap, that added to the effect. The best moment was when everybody was quiet and listening and Manish shouts "Sing!!" and everybody starts singing a different song!! It was so spontaneous and we laughed like mad after that. The IndiPop-2 CD was suddenly back in demand!! And you know how scenic the Konkan roads are, some amazing snaps were clicked, but Blogger is too slow today. I'll upload them sometime later.

Campfire or The hidden side of everything (stolen from Freakanomics)

Jali ko aag kahte hai and so on..

We reached the resort of Mr. Puri sometime around 10PM. The rooms were better than I expected and it was very close to the sea, which I liked. We could hear the roaring sea and accepted the invitation and the next thing on the plan (after dinner) was Campfire. Once it was lighted, I just could not let it die. I kept putting in wood, single mindedly, just wanted to keep it burning. I guess other people were similarly possessed, laughing uncontrollably or running with burning stems in their hands. That was fun. I did something extremely stupid meanwhile, wanted to break a stem in two, did not realize that one end was inside the fire, took it, grabbed the cooler end in the right hand, not so cooler end in the left and tried to break it. Burned like Hell, left marks at least in 6 different places, but no major injuries. Sky was dazzling above and it felt nice to sync up with it. And it feels amazing to walk in complete darkness into the sea. For the first time in trip I guess, I was quiet (people thanked me for that ;-). Some guys wanted to keep it burning over the whole night, but majority decided to take a quick nap and return to the beach in the early morning. Thus ended the first day of the trip.