Team Outing, Ramnagara, Jan 2022
2021 has been a difficult time for the whole world, and it was not different for us @Beneathatree. We had teammates who braved through COVID, who met with an accident and recovered. We grieved the loss of dear ones, and we were also in an absolute panic because we were about to lose someone very near to all of us.
2021 had something good too. Our clients reached a lot of their milestones in their journey. Some raised good early-stage fundings, and some made amazing breakthroughs with their customer numbers, and we were happy to be part of that journey with them. We successfully trained and onboarded one more of our teammates into our consultancy wing, and we also added one more full-time teammate to our team.
To celebrate these small wins, we decided to take a day off to spend some time in nature.
Early morning of 7th January 2022, we left for a small nature resort near SRS Hills, Ramnagara.
We had chosen a weekday to avoid the crowd (Which worked! we had the whole place to ourselves!) and had called earlier to make sure all the staff at the facility were vaccinated.
We reached our destination by 11 am and, had a quick and delicious breakfast.
While waiting for everyone to finish their breakfast, some of us decided to play with the dogs. We enjoyed spending time with these dogs before we got ready for the day. Each of these little cuties are amazing to play with. Full of excitement and energy, they would zoom through the lawn. They love playing fetch. The biggest of these, Maggie, loves racing us and then tackling us down if she can.
Our first activity for the day was to trek through and reach the summit of a rocky hill and then climb down the other way visiting a cave on our way back.
Seeing us clueless folks, a local guardian spirit in the form of a stray dog decided to join us. We readily named them Firefox.
There was a small water stream that we had to cross through, which I enjoyed.
Soon we began climbing through the rocks, and I was already losing my breath. Thankfully the climb was short, and we were already at the summit. We spent some time there relaxing and enjoying the view around and then continued our journey sideways.
We reached a cave that looked spacious and also had a small stream of water flowing from inside. We explored this for a while. Anil and I decided to go back ahead, and the rest of the team was adventurous enough to climb a bit further.
On our way back, guided by our guide and Firefox, we saw a pond, probably a local watering hole for the wildlife around here.
After walking through the paddy fields and hearing worker women sing while working in the sun, we met with the team back at the resort.
Firefox decided to part ways before we took the fork to the resort.
Post our lunch, the rest of the team decided to try Ziplining. But I decided that I had enough adventure for the day.
We went Kayaking in the lake later when the sun decided to hide behind the clouds. I was shocked by the amount of energy needed and the pain Kayaking can cause. Thankfully I endured with some help. I enjoyed the calmness and silence in the middle of the lake and being able to watch the sky lying down.
We then tried our hands at Archery and mud volleyball. Although we had no intention to, we ended up washing ourselves in the “Rain dance” (for which the water is pumped from the lake and released back after a small filtration step).
I don’t enjoy dancing in public, mainly because of my body image issues. But this time, I felt safe enough to dance, and it looks like I did enjoy it :)
Some of my teammates even tried climbing the mango tree, for which I had no energy left.
After drinking some hot tea facing the lake, we were ready to say our goodbyes to the dogs.
On our way back home, We listened to a true-crime podcast that made me slip into sleep efficiently.
(Image credits: Team Beneathatree, I found them from our common image share pool)