Got a call from Rajnish that the Risk team is going for a team outing to Udaipur and there will be couple of days of HR sessions along with some team building activities. Although I dread those HR sessions, this time I decided to confirm immediately. As the newest member of the team this was an opportunity to not only make myself familiar with the team but also understand the culture and get into context.

Day 1 – The Journey

So, on the morning of 5th September, I packed my bag and came to office. Our train was at 7PM the same day and we all reached station timely without much goof ups. As usual our food coordinator Avani managed to bully her father to bring us some dinner. Train started timely which was as timely as possible in India. It was only 15 minutes late. Immediately afterward all started with their own plans which were made in last few days or few hours. There were groups for playing cards, pokers, some people just gathered around and chat, gossip, some started playing word games and a few of us who were so lazy or probably so busy that we couldn’t make any plan, tried to figure out how to spend the rest of the 12 hours.

So, after contemplating for 10-15 minutes during which I thought of reading a book, sleeping, just chatting with people who were seating around – I decided to get up and see what other people had been doing with an ulterior motive of harassing and paining a few people and lough at their misery.

In the next bunk I saw Apoorv Bajpai was the center of attention where his peers were probably playing one of their favourite games – paining Approve (not a spelling mistake). Given that already someone had taken care of the responsibility of harassing people, I thought of moving to the next one. Looked like most of the crowd flocked around there, probably because they were getting ready to start poker, but most likely because almost all the girls were around there. Due to my apathy toward any kind of card games, I thought of moving forward and later coming back to harass them. Rest of our people were in the next compartment including the head of food coordinator group Avani, the big boss Vikash, ever so sarcastic Nishant, the leader of the girl’s group Deepali, poor Heera who was trying to figure out a way to join the poker group but looked like he was unable to do that as Vikash was sitting there and asking him some questions and Ayushi who was not lucky enough to get her seat with anyone else and just joined this group instead of getting bored sitting alone.

Overall the train journey was event less with most of the people played card games and I spent times cutting some poor jokes and harassing the poor people like Neeraj, Punia, Paras, Apoorv (not Approve), Rajjuda, Surabhi, Priyanshi and probably some more who happened to be sitting there and were unable to escape my loud voice. Just to finish the day on a good note I and Sathish played the longest game of chess anyone has ever played in Global. There were multiple audiences but to their utter dismay the game ended in a draw after nearly 4 hours.

Day 2 – The Planning

Early morning next day we reached Chirwa. People were already in a lot of doubt as Chirwa was 20 kilometers away from the city Udaipur. However, our frustration reduced immediately after reaching hotel as it looked like a beautiful hotel with nice view, less crowd and to top it up food was also good. We were already late for the HR session. So, we all got fresh and went to join the session which was supposed to happen from 11 PM to 5 PM. I am sure at some point we all were waiting for it to be over including the HRs.

Some people did not want to waste any time and went to city to spend the rest of the evening as soon as the session was over while some people like myself, Vikash Sr., Rajjuda, Heera, Ajaykumar, Surabhi, Kethan, Sathish and Nithya thought of going out to explore some local food. To our frustration we could only find a shop which provided pakora and tea. However, the taste was so good we doubled our order and spent the large part of the evening just sitting on a roadside shop and chatting about what could we do for next few days.

After dinner it was time for our favourite game for any team outing – Mafia. This time there were some new people, so some explanation was necessary. The game had a big starting problem – as Nithya left the game after just one round but not before Mafia mercilessly killed Sreedhar in the first night and I who was healer chose not to resurrect him. We found Avani to replace Nithya, however, this created some bias in the game and it had to be restarted. The next attempt was failed too and finally I took the mantle of becoming God as Saurabh who was the God until then wanted to participate. But to his utter disappointment in the very first night Mafias killed him and our healer Surabhi though sitting next to him followed my footsteps from the cancelled match and chose not to resurrect him. This might have triggered a shift in allegiance and Saurabh never played Mafia for rest of the trip after that day. Surprisingly, our Mafia venture was without much controversy and most of the games were well fought except a few instances where Sreedhar was thinking too much and made simple game so complex that Mafia won hands down.

By the time we were finished and went to sleep it was already well past midnight and we were already dreading about another HR session the next day.

Day 3 – The Activities

Next morning I woke up right before the HR session to realize that I had a room partner (Vikash Jr.) who somehow had been missing until the time I went to sleep. Apparently, he was spending his time getting high and came to sleep only in dawn. In any case, he became my first victim for the day when I pained him to ensure he got up in time. After all, as one of the future managers of this team I needed to set examples of good practice.

There was not much time before the session so I quickly had some breakfast. The session started slowly. This time, however, there were quite a few activities planned through out the day, like solving jigsaw puzzles which I and my team was miserable at, playing some tangle solving which we won easily and even taught all our competitors how to do it. But the highlight of the entire session was the last activity where we were divided in 4 different teams and one member from each team would require to cross some obstacles blind-folded with help from the team while other teams would distract him reaching the goal. Suraj Kumar who was our representative was fabulous and we won it. Everyone participated and enjoyed it a lot. Avani and I were instructing Suraj and our loud voices ensured other teams didn’t get much success confusing him. Vikash, Heera and even Kethan who was mostly silent all the times had created enough chaos to confuse the other teams. The forum ended with a photo session and the time which we were dreading the other day ended with a positive mood.

Now that the session was over, we have all the times to ourselves. Some of the highly enthusiasts went to city like the last day. I thought of having some sleep to energize myself. Every moment was so happening that I managed to miss a few interesting events during an hour of power nap during which Avani manged to injured herself in the swimming pool, Prakarsh did a back flip which could have brought India medal in Asiad if not Olympic, Nishant managed to write an email to negotiate a deal with GB group while most others had a great time in the pool.

Dinner was as usual awesome with one of the best mutton dishes I had in last few years. After dinner we got divided in multiple groups based on the preferences. Some went for poker as always, some just wanted to chill out, a few people like Sahil and Santosh did not want to waste a single minute and went back to study to finish assignments and rest of us made group to play Mafia. While we were finding people for Mafia, I introduced a new board game to people who were enthusiastic enough. Among the enthusiasts are Vikash, Rajnish, Nithya, Surabhi, Ayushi and Priyanshi. It took me probably an hour of effort or more to explain the game and finally we played one. Nithya who played the game for the first time beat others by huge margin. The game was so addictive that next day we only played this game and didn’t play Mafia at all.

By the time we went to sleep after playing couple of rounds of board games and a few more rounds of Mafia it was nearly 4AM in the morning. We all had plan to go to city the next day. Surprisingly, this time I found my roommate Vikash Jr. as well. He too wanted to join us for the trip the next day and thought of going to bed early for a change.

Day 4 – Udaipur

The next day I woke up a bit late but before the breakfast was over. Was in a good mood so didn’t pain to wake up my roommate Vikash Jr. However, this resulted in he waking up very late and missed the cab to city. What an irony!!

After having breakfast we started planning for the trip to the city Udaipur. There were multiple places to be visited but given the constraint of time we decided to focus on city palace, adjacent Jagmandir and shopping. Another group of people planned to go around in bikes although it was drizzling the whole day. Heera, who was very hungry as he had missed breakfast made us had lunch before we start. It was not a bad idea though as some of us were already started feeling a bit hungry.

It took us around half an hour to reach city palace. The tickets were pretty costly. We got the cheapest one which was just the entry fee to the palace. Additional tickets were required for palace museum and boating to Jagmandir. To my disappointment the walk to palace was no less than climbing up for around 2 kilometers. By the time we reached the gate of the palace I was nearly exhausted even though the weather was awesome.

A few of us didn’t waste any time and directly went for boating. They did the right thing which we realized pretty late. The girls in our group found their paradise – an apparently “authentic” shop of Rajput clothing and accessories. I and few others realized very quickly that this was going to be a not so short affair, so sneaked out and went to explore the palace museum. The palace museum had some pictures and information about past kings, their weaponry, armors, information on their conquests, defeats. To be frank being an ever indifferent student of history I didn’t enjoy that much. I am sure others did and in any case it was better than shopping.

To our surprise, by the time we were finished with museum tour, shopping was also over but not before people bought so many items that we could probably open a shop ourselves (probably a bit exaggeration, but trust me it was not by much). So, boating was only activity left and some of our shoppers were not even close to content. They wanted to go to city market. We finally decided that we would go for shopping but only after a boat ride to Jagmandir. This was probably the best decision we had taken that day.

Boat ride was awesome. A delightful weather added a poetic touch to it. We were a bit hungry, so had some snacks while posed for multiple photos in a stunning background. Girls were up for it of course, even all the gentlemen of the group were not far behind in posing for pictures. I usually considered myself prosaic and lacking much of aesthetic sense, however, even I was quite taken by the charming weather and elegant surroundings. Just to clarify, Jagmandir was not actually a mandir (mandir in Hindi means Temple), it was a private garden in the middle of a lake. We went around taking pictures and enjoying the beautiful weather and by the time we were done the last boat to the city was about to leave.

Some of us were really exhausted and thought of going back to hotel. But I had enough energy left to join the shoppers. Everyone bought a few things or else – I got myself some mementos and a pair of slippers, Rajnish bought some toys and clothes for the twins, Vikash bought a few toys  for his little one, Surabhi went to multiple shops to find out some items requested by Nithya who left early, Ajay bought some souvenirs. But all our shoppings were overshadowed by Deepali who given a chance could have probably bought the whole market itself. To my shock, she wasn’t done yet.

We finally reached hotel just before the dinner counter was closed. After dinner as I told before we played seven wonders instead of mafia. I was amazed to see some of the players started playing really well really quick, although I beat them with my years of experience. Especially, Vikash Sr. and Ayushi played it like a pro. Deepali learnt it very fast. Surabhi, Priyanshi and Rajnish had improved a lot. To my surprise, my roommate Vikash Jr. joined us later in the game and he too picked up very quickly. We slept pretty late as we were in no hurry to wake up the next day.

Day 5 – Adieu

People from Chennai were leaving early. People from Noida had train in the evening. After bidding goodbye to Rajnish and Co. I thought of spending the rest of the day in the hotel while others went for last round of trip and Deepali for final round of shopping. There was not much to add here as most of us were pretty tired by the time we boarded the train and were trying to be ready so that Monday blues didn’t take us over as a few critical meetings were waiting for us in the office the next day.

Epilogue

So ended the beautiful team outing to Udaipur away from all the hassles and bustles of every day,  started with some uncertainty about how good or bad it would be and ended nearly perfect.

I am sure that I have missed to mention quite a few moments like when we got confused and got up in another cab while starting from office, Leo won two blind calls in a row in poker (may be three but I was not so sure), Kethan whom we kept forgetting about as he was so silent, Leo again who put a lot of effort and hired a bike but finally gave it away to Neeraj as he was unwilling to ride it in the rain which had been there the whole of day 4, the stories of other groups who went to some other nice places, Ruparna who went alone to city palace, fielding of Paras, studiousness of Santosh and Sahil who spent most of the time in their respective rooms away from all the chaos to finish assignments, Avani who despite her injury was lively enough to ran around in one leg to have dinner or probably injury didn’t matter to her when food was so good, a few rare moments in HR sessions which most of us enjoyed and many more.

Hope I will be writing something as beautiful about us again. Until then adios amigos.