Guhagar.....

Thanks to all my friends...........Amruta, Anchal, Gari, Lalitha, VD, Nimesh, Madhur, Paaji, Anuj, Akshay, and Nikhil ! This trip was not cancelled at the end moment and it went through fine and safe :D

It all started off with a planning of four weeks in advance :P I wonder if we planned our work and life so much...........how settled, tension-free and cool our life would be :P Ne ways....

Garima the chief designer and architect started off along with Akshay the main tourist places guide. They came up with this place called Guhagar...which some of us couldn't even pronounce properly even after the trip was over :P (Nimesh can still you do it ? :P)

Guhagar is a small village on the coasts....around 40-45 kms from Chiplun by road. Specialties being Surmayee fish, Rice, the Mango, SolKadi/SoulCurry, some Modak, Kokam Sharbat etc !

Many of us also did not inform our parents about the place....all of us gave weird/vague locations like :

We are going to a place near Chiplun, We are going to a place near Ratnagiri, We are goin out for an outing nearby for 2 days, We are going to some coastal area in South Maharashtra !

Woow and our parents allowed...I cant believe it !

After a lot of cancellations due to bad health, other priorities and PPI (Parent Permissioning Issues) we were 12 of us (including Dhawal)

The final reservations were about to be made in a few days by Tatkal, I faced an urgent family problem because of which my plan got almost cancelled. My mom and dad took care of the problem but I had to stay back home with my grandparents. The date of booking tickets was nearing and I was finding someone (Uncle, Aunt or someone) who could be at my place with my grandparents for two nights when I was out.

"All's well that ends well" : In the End, everything fell into place and I had all the arrangements in place and so the permission to go for the trip.

We had started packing some snacks that we would carry from Mumbai...I and Gari got it from HyperCity..of which some is still remaining on Gari's desk. :P

We had booked tatkal tickets to board Konkan Kanya Express at 11:18 PM from Dadar on 13th Nov 2009.

On the eve of 13th, around 5:10pm I was getting ready and was wrapping up the remaining check ins and some amount of testing so that I could leave at around 6pm for home.
At the same time, many of us (like Garima :P) were free and almost ready to leave for home as they had wrapped up things quite early in the excitement of the trip.
Also, some others like Anuj, Nimesh, Dhawal and VD were very tensed as they had a lot to complete before leaving for the day.
There was Akshay, who was on leave because he had fever.
And then there were others like Amruta, Paaji, Lalitha, Nikhil who were excited and ready to get set and go on time !

Then came the devils call...it was Akshay calling Garima to let her know that the House, Car and the Food arrangements had been cancelled.
He mentioned that the owner had called him to inform that there was no Electricity and Water in the entire Guhagar because of the destruction caused by Cyclonic winds near the coast.

"Smart Garima" walked up to my desk and gave me the cellphone and said Akshay is on the line and wants to speak to you !

Akshay narrated the same thing to me....it felt like "Pairo ke neeche se zameen nikal gayi" ! I mean wtf.... !
I had finally got permission to join the trip, I was so excited and desperate for a break and over all this I was awake till 2.30 am in the morning the previous day, packing my bag :D

I and Garima, were smiling at each other, and neither of us knew what to do :(

In the meantime, Anuj sitting just diagonally opposite to me had started to get a feel that something went wrong.
We started searching for other backup house owner(s), car owner(s) in Guhagar and tried to call them.
We had all landline numbers and no one was picking up the landline phone. It seemed like the telephone lines in the Village had been hit.


We started searching the internet for Hotels/Cottages/Cars in Chiplun and Guhagar. We were so desperate to go and dint want to cancel the trip.
This was all happening at my desk in office and it was loud enough for my teammates to hear, but we hardly bothered.

We were trying for MTDC hotels, any agents, or the direct house owners. 30-35 minutes of effort got us to this house 'Nilambari Beach Resort' on the website www.mygreatstay.com

We called up the operator on www.mygreatstay.com. We asked her(Manjiri ) about what were the conditions in Guhagar ? and What options for the house did we have ?

She enquired and came back saying the road transport had recovered, water was available for there was no 24 hour electricity.
But, this place called the 'Nilambari Beach Resort' was ready to provide generator for 2 hours in the afternoon and for around 10 hours in night which sounded good to us.
This place was little expensive as compared to previous one and would shoot up our budget by approximately Rs.250 per/person.
Also, the food and car arrangements had to be made again and I thought that these arrangements would also shoot up the budget by around Rs 200 per/person more as they could not be bargained at the end moment.
To add to all this, it was difficult to get an agreement from all the 12 of us on the increasing budget.
We decide to meet in the cafeteria to have an Urgent Meeting to decide what to do, it was already 5:45 pm (time to leave for home and then get ready to catch the train !)

We met in the cafeteria to explain the situation and all of us present there had no objections to the increasing budget.
Amruta ne dialogue maara 'As long as it is safe, money is not a problem' :P
We were still not sure where we would eat and who would arrange for the vehicle.

We talked to the owner of the house to confirm that the generator would be available as per promised timings and then gave a confirmation to book the place. He also assured us that there were some restaurants where we would get food.

Finally, all of us agreed and we were again getting in that mood to go for the trip :) :) :)

We were all set to leave from office, I had to still test some stuff and check in my code as I had taken a leave on Monday and that code needed to be pushed to UAT urgently.
I decided to do the work from home and left with Nimesh.

In the meantime, Akshay also talked to a person who would arrange for the cars, that too at same rates as before.

It took me a lot of time to test and check in the code, it was 8:30 PM and I had to leave at 9 PM from home.
I still had to do some small packing, eat food and go to Mandir. Even I don't know how I managed to do all this in 30 mins :D, all I knew is I was going on an outing and I dint want to be late.

I and Nimesh were leaving from Borivali at around 9:20 PM and rest all would join us from Goregaon in the same local train till Dadar.

I was talking to Anuj to ask them if all of them had reached Goregaon, he told me that Dhawal had cancelled out because he had some Work/PROD issue and all except VD had reached.

I and Nimesh boarded the train, Nimesh told me that he was upset because:


1. He had to pay a fine of around Rs. 1500 because he would pay the credit card bill late.
2. Dhawal (his dear teammate) had cancelled out. :-P (let you brains do the thinking)
3. Even he had a lot of work left but he decided to drop the work and came for the trip. If he knew dhawal was cancelling he would also drop out. [Thank God that Dhawal informed us late else we would be 10 and not 11. Also, how would Paaji find his love ;-)]

But, we were ditched :( :(, all others took a local train earlier and we met at dadar. Poor me and Nimesh had sacrificed our Window seats.

Nevertheless, we met @ dadar. We reached there 35 mins in advance.

Anuj, Nikhil and Paaji were hungry and decided to have a bite at a nearby restaurant. I and Nimesh ran out to try and pay the credit card bill.

We came out and asked a college group for a CITI-BANK ATM. They guided us the way.
We were not sure as to how far it was and so were walking down but at the same time looking for a taxi so that we could save some time.
We walked a few minutes and then got the taxi. He took us to the ATM, it was hardly 150 meters from the place where we took the taxi.
But, he was adamant on charging the minimal fare of Rs. 15, we had no option and so we agreed. We gave him 20 bucks and he did not have the change, now I became adamant on taking the change back.
I told Nimesh to proceed to ATM and pay his credit-card bill and I would take back the change and join him in a minute.
The Taxi wala took the taxi to the opposite corner of the road near a shop so that he could get change.
As he walked out of the taxi to get change, he told me to wait near the taxi, but I couldn't because we had to reach back station asap, to catch the train, so I followed him.
He tried one-two shops but no one had change :-(. I was @ a few meters distance from him and he had not noticed that I was following him.

Then came this shopkeeper who had just one five rupee note that too a little torn, which he waved towards the taxi wala to tell him that he too had no change but just one semi-torn 5 rupee note.
The taxi wala, readily accepted the note and abused me saying that the passenger is crying and abused me again.
WTF, did I do ? I just asked him to give me the 5 rupees back.
I was just furious and angry till now, I mean he was charging 15 bucks for a journey not even worth 5 rupees, for a reason stating "Ye to meter se chalta hai sahab". And over all that he was not returning the 5 rupees and abusing me.
I went near and patted him on the back, to ask him why the fuck was he abusing me ? He tried to change the topic saying he was just saying that the note is not torn and should work.
But I insisted to ask him, why did he abuse me...he turned his face and started to talk to the shopkeeper..this further added to my anger and frustration and I abused him...!@#$%^&* Sorry cant write it here ;-).... !

I finally snatched the note from his hand and started walking towards the CITIBANK ATM, and a final loud shout to tell him..."Kaminey saale...narak mein jaayega aur kutte noch noch ke khaayenge tujhe" :-D felt so happy after that...but one wish that I could not fulfill..just wanted to slap him hard and tell him that think of me before you do this again to anyone else.

I met Nimesh @ the ATM, he mentioned that he had withdrawn the money but this branch did not have a facility to deposit money and we had to go to different branch near-by.
We did not think much and took a taxi to a branch which was closer to that Dadar Railway Station.

Our eyes were constantly on the watch..which was moving fast. We finally, reached the ATM, Nimesh ran into the ATM to fill up the form and deposit cash, I guided the taxi wala to take a U-Turn and wait near the ATM.
I then joined Nimesh to help him fill the form and we were done in 2 minutes. We rushed back to the station in the taxi. We reached safe 10 minutes before time It was 11:07PM

We clicked a few pictures on the platform and made a lot of noise ;-)

The train arrived and we finally boarded it. We had reservations in two compartments, one in which Nikhil and Akshay waited and the other where all of the rest of US were there.
We had a strict warning for all people who wanted to take a nap in the night that they had to go to the other compartment to take a nap and so for obvious reasons all were ready to be awake :-P

The train started and Me, Akshay, Gari and Anuj started the fight to find bakra's to exchange seats with us. With a final 30-40 minutes battle, we won the fight to find bakra's to exchange seats and we got seats close to each other.
We also gave away a seat to an old aunty who needed it more than anyone :-).

We played some antakshari followed by a lot of dumb-charades, and always finding a chance to pull each others legs. But it was fun.

It was almost 2 am, we decided to take a small nap..."Kamar seedhi karne ke liye" so that our back doesn't ache.
Btw....by this time, Amruta was asleep...she look really tired and so no one woke her up.

I, Anuj and Akshay decided to stay awake. Others lied down to take a nap.
Gari was also awake and we were listening to some good old Kishor-da songs, soon Paaji joined us. Here, came the idea of forming a Band (don't know when this will be formed :P) and we distributed roles.

Vocals - Maddy and Paaji
Keyboard - Gari
Drums - Akshay
Base Guitar - Maddy
Guitar - Amruta

Woow...it felt like we were ready to perform :P

Amruta, was awake and couldn't sleep more :-). We all exchanged seats and forced each other to take a nap of 10-15 minutes. :D
The train was an hour and 15 minutes late.

We reached Chiplun Station by 5:15 am I guess. We took autos to nearby Bus Stand.
It was an hour for the bus to come and so most of us decided to brush and those dint (Maddy, Akshay, Amruta, Anchal) got Tasty Poha as a treat :P Though Nikhil and Gari....snatched a bite.

We had tea, vadapav and the not so tasty poha in bus stand canteen.
We came out @ 6:20 am for the 6:30 am....but it was already full. We had to wait for the 7'O clock bus.
For the first and last time , all looked sleepy and tired.

We decided that Maddy, VD, Anuj and Akshay will jump into the bus to grab seats.
We did that quite well when our bus arrived.
But, it was all in vain....this bus unlike the previous one was empty and we settled down quickly.
We were tired and wanted to reach Guhagar asap. The bus started after a long 15-20 minute wait.
We could the the after effects of the storm on our way to Guhagar....several giant coconut and other trees were uprooted like we remove wrapper from a chocolate.

If some one would see me sleeping in the bus he easily figure out "A balloon filled with air tied to a thread and let to flow freely" :P.
Though, I had a small 15 minute stress busting nap.

We reached the place, it was quite and calm. The houses were surrounded by Coconut trees all around....it was beautiful.

We got fresh and ready to leave for the Guhagar Darshan...Paaji took the time equivalent to 10 people, to get ready :D.

The first place we visited was Velneshwar ....a Shiv temple, it was a colorful big mandir.
Maddy, Gari and Akshay went to make arrangements for the lunch. There was a well, which had lots of creepers running over it.

There was a beach behind the temple. We saw some little crabs in the flowing water and managed to get some snaps of the cute and dangerous creature.
We went to a hut besides the beach to have coconut water. There was a pet hen and lots of small chicks which followed the mother to learning how to eat food.
I wondered if we could teach them to eat....how we eat VD's idli, Maddy's bread roll, Anuj's dhokla, Gari's Rajma Chawal, and Lalli's Dosa :P
There was a pet cat too...but it seemed scared to see all of us there and it maintained a safe distance.
Muscles/cuts of Nariyal Pani wale uncle..were awesome , though not many people noticed this !

It all started here, Mr.Nimesh and Mr. Paaji ( yes you read it right the two Mr.'s)....both were feeling drowsy I guess ..so were holding hands and standing by the sea-shore, how romantic ;-). They way they walked, the way they looked at each other....aah ha ha ...mazaa aa gay...errrr.... gaya :P !
We teased them all through out the trip and continue to do so even now ;-).
These two have been really sporty to take it in a good spirit...three cheers to both of them... Hip Hip Hurray..Hip Hip Hurray..Hip Hip Hurray !

We then had the best food of our Guhagar trip. It was home made lunch by a very sweet aunty. She served us lots and lots as and when we finished eating.
The food was awesome but some people found it "Not that bad". I wonder how people can manage to say that :-(

We left for out next spot....man how could I forget this....the Sales Manager of Pepsi...who worked day and night from Andheri to Virar...he did not stop speaking like the ever running local trains in Mumbai..his talks were as boring as the crowd in a Virar local.
He was saying two contradictory things at the same time, he said.."he loves animals more than humans" At the same time, "He ate animals because his friends ate" When Maddy asked him How these two things go together ?...he gave an explanation which neither Maddy, Anuj, Amruta, Anchal , Paaji and I can bet even he did not understand.
More importantly, the explanation was too long and Amruta gave Maddy a scary look for asking anything to that man. But, he was a good person, his name was Naval i suppose !

Next, we went to Hedvi....a Ganpati temple....the Murti was really beautiful..simple and cute :-).
We chatted there for sometime. This place had a very photographic view of trees and mountains around us.
It felt very relaxed even in the hot sun overhead.

The last spot, we went was Brahmangad....the place was named so because a Brahmin's leg slipped over the mountains and he fell on the rocks..and because of his powers the rock cracked from between..and so a huge crack is developed between the rock. You can believe this if you trust Naval ;-).
We had to cross over the fallen..uprooted trees to reach there..!
There was another clean beach and a small Shiva mandir on the way to that spot. The beach had a lot of rocks and we also saw a dead snake/seal fish on the beach.

We reached home and had cold-drinks and tea. I and Akshay went to hunt for dinner. The plan was to sleep for One and a half hour and then have a night out at the beach-side but nature had something else planned for us.

The house-owner mentioned that if we visit the beach we should not play in water as many families had lost fishermen and they might get offended.
Our plans seemed to be washed with the flowing water, but we kept an open plan to have bonfire on beach/near the house.

After a long discussion, we all finally agreed to have Veg food so Maddy and Akshay ordered dinner at a Veg place. We came back to our rooms to take rest. There was no electricity till 7 pm, so all were advised to go and take a walk and come back at 7 pm to take rest.
But, Amruta and Akshay went to bed without fans :-O ....Maddy, Anchal, Anuj and Paaji were chit-chatting. Nimesh was on a call and so was Lalitha.
Gari, VD, and Nikhil went out for a walk and to search the way to beach.

At around 6:35 pm .....The simple beautiful rooms seemed to shaken by the wind(As Anuj said), but it was not too late when we realised that it was an Earthquake and we ran out of the rooms to search for an open place.
Akshay came out running, from the other room as he felt the same. Lalitha, Nimesh, Gari, VD and Nikhil did not experience it all.

But, later we confirmed with the news that it was a Quake :-D.
Now, the atmosphere amongst us seemed nervous because we were fine but our parents would panic because of the news.
None of parents called as Ratnagiri ws the epicenter.

The night out at beach was cancelled because it seemed awkward and scary. We thought we would not get permission to lite bonfire near the houses.
There was juss one question.."What do we do now ? "

Mafia, the game, came to the rescue and changed all our moods. We started at around 7.30 pm and played till 1:00 am. It certainly helped us pass time with great fun.
We took a break to go and have dinner. We tried SourlCurry (Special Drink of Konkan..which was not that great as judged by Amruta and Akshay...the experts).
We went to the scary bus-stand to look for bus timings for Chiplun for next day aftnun. We got the timings as 3:45 pm and 4pm, in the aftnun next day.
Then started the LoveStory telling competition and no one won it. Many people went to sleep and from the ones who were awake, very few participated whole-heartedly ;-).

Lets keep the stories a secret to all those who were awake ! (Maddy, Gari, Amruta, VD, Paaji, Akshay).
I heard that some people pretended to be asleep and heard everything because they didn't want to share their part :P.

I was a little sleepy but did not want to sleep. I was forced to sleep by the two usual demons. Any one wants to take a guess...??
We slept with a thought of getting up early and going to watch the sun-rise at 5 am...lol.

All of us woke up at 9.00-9.30-10.00 am I guess...but we could still the sun rise.... ;-) [Hope most of you get this bad joke on the first attempt.]

We had tea and breakfast.....and were ready to go to the beach. But we were warned by the house owner to not to play in water, as we might hurt sentiments of people in Guhagar and they might become violent.
We got to the beach by around 11 am. Akshay and Maddy went to arrange for Lunch.
We had a rugby ball, with which we hardly played.
VD and Lalli were busy making a Home Sweet Home types house which turned out to be really beautiful when it was complete.
Paaji, Nikhil and Nimesh was building a structure which was multipurpose and user friendly.
And to make it very clear....read this... It is a toilet....which has following features :
1. It is Open Air.
2. Large amount of water available very closely to toilet and its free.
3. On the sea-side..one of the attractions !
4. Various levels of seating arrangement. :P
5. It was initially designed for Raja-Maharajas but now is open to all
6. Easy to use
Amruta and Maddy were busy collecting shells for most of the time, but later they joined in too.
Woow....what a variety of shells we have :-).

Aaah forgot to mention, Nimesh later on converted his multipurpose toilet to a Quila/Fort, but most of us dint notice or I would stay dint want to notice...off course the first one looked great! :P
We had to leave from the beach by around 12:30-12:45 pm to go and have lunch.
We had lunch, it was decent enough....and we had a good SoulCurry this time (as Akshay judged it).
I remember Amruta kept on mentioning, "Guys please don't judge the Soul Curry by this taste..it is awesome..we will try it later sometime...somewhere".

We went back to out rooms and had a very quick bath...this time even Paaji did not take much time :P
We had enough time to have a game of Mafia going.. :-) In fact we played almost 1.8 games (yea 1.8 we could not complete the second game)

We packed our bags and settled the bill with the house owner...even the owner was a good person and gave us some good advice throughout our stay.
We came to bus-stand to get a bus for Chiplun, we got one easily and fairly quickly.
The bus stopped at various Stops in between and had started to become fully loaded with passengers.
We started singing songs in the bus at the highest pitch that we could scream at. :P
It was fun and we sang all the way to Chiplun, the journey back home seemed to pass quickly. Our throats were already jammed.
We had snacks and tea at the bus stand at Chiplun. We took an auto to get to the Chiplun railway station.
The auto dropped us near the subway which took us to the platform. We got down here at around 6:30 pm and the weather was pleasant.

It was an orange and yellowish sky and there was cool breeze bowing around. We noticed that it started raining.
We quickly took a few pictures and then started running towards the platform for shelter. The sky was getting darker, cooler and better.
It looked awesome. We took a few snaps at the Platform.
The train was 30 minutes late and we reached 30 mins early, so it was nearly an hour for the train to arrive.

Here, Nimesh came up with the idea of playing 'Number One calling Number two...I know it sounds horrible...but it was fun".
Every person is assigned a number. One starts the game saying Number One calling Number Seven.
Seven continues to call to say Number Seven calling Number Three and so on. This has to happen quickly.
The one who calls the wrong number becomes a fool and a person who is fool three consecutive times is called a SuperFool
Paaji, Amruta, and Anuj were the three SuperHeroes ..I mean the SuperFools.

Time passed quickly and the train arrived soon. We adjusted the luggage and because of some arrogant idiots we had to sit quite away from each other.

Nevertheless, we continued our chit chatting in small groups.
Maddy, Amruta and Anchal talking about every possible thing in the world.
Paaji, listening to songs and sleeping
Nikhil, VD and Lalli sleeping
Anuj and Nimesh in a discussion on Web Technologies.
And Akshay bechara playing Truth and Truth (It used to Truth and Dare originally) with Gari. I pity Akshay for this :P

After some time, all of us decided to sing songs at the highest pitch possible as we did in the bus.
We started off with, "Pyaar Hamein kis mod pe...", Maddy almost scared a Chinese lady.
She was soo scared and even moved a few inches back on her seat.

We continued the same shouting till 9:30 pm as we thought after that people would want to have some peace.
Maddy and VD screamed at the loudest of their voices from two sides of Amruta...bechari...poor girl. :P

We soon reached Dadar....and waived a goodbye and good night to Anuj. ( Anuj took a Virar train)

We continued to speak about and re-collect our good and bad moments of the trip and soon we reached Goregaon...where all except Maddy and Nimesh got down.

I and Nimesh on our way from Goregaon to Borivali...were re-calling all the memories of the trip and the game Mafia.
Here, came the idea to plan a night out at Nimesh's place this weekend as his parents were out and we could play Mafia all night.

Finally, the boards at the Railway Station read..."BORIVALI" ! We reached home in another 10-15 mins.

The MAFIA plan got executed.......with lots of exciting stuff.... :P