Bhivpuri Camping :)

Reason to Smile: I read some beautiful lines somewhere floating on my inbox one morning -
Don’t allow the negative things in your life to discount the positive ones. Don’t let a bad day or month or year make you feel like you have a bad life. Instead of focusing on everything that’s going wrong, start holding onto all of the things that are going right. You may be struggling, but there is still so much to keep fighting for — there is still so much more to life than this pain. And if you keep picking yourself back up and pushing forward, no matter how difficult things are, you will discover it. Maybe not tomorrow or next week or a year from now, but someday soon, things will get better. Someday soon, you will find freedom from this darkness. And when you do, you’ll look back on these days and wonder how you could have doubted your resilience. You’ll look back and marvel at how something as small as refusing to give up could transform your life in such a substantial way.

With the current situation that I am in, I was pretty much moved by this and felt it was apt on what I should choose to feel and combat. There is always room for hope, negotiations and much more. There is always light at the end of the tunnel. If it was yesterday, it is going to be another tomorrow of the same nature, just a different approach may be. There is surely much more to this life than the struggles. 

What transpired out of this is a call from a friend to gear up for the weekend and I surely gave in. Some of us decided to camp out at Bhivpuri near Karjat. We confirmed on the whats app group at 12 pm on Saturday for being ready and before even we could realize what awaited us, we had boarded the 3 pm train to Karjat already ! :) That's how spontaneous our crazy event makers are :P

We did not plan anything on the food, the perfect spot, or any material to carry as such. We just knew that some of us have tents and that's it :P Camping is an activity which does require much more for sure :P We aligned at Bhivpuri station at about 5 pm and started walking towards the lakeside area where we could fit the tent. We reached there by 6.30 ! It was almost dark and we were yet to 'create' our accommodation. While some got busy with that, the girls got busy collecting and learning to make a kitchen. We finally lit the fire with some help on the woods and stones and placed our utensils for the so called Lavish Biryani of the year ! Courtesy - Ritu Singh, our master chef for the event, cooked up a recipe all of us were so skeptical about :P I was so sure with the narration of the recipe that I would rather survive on Maggie but not the rice fiasco. But to utmost surprise, her confidence bowled me over. She made an all time delicious Biryani with ingredients like curd, cauliflower, and potato for god sake ! Indeed, it was awesome and super yummy ;) 

As the night grew darker, Rajjo came with all the surprise stuff required to party hard :P Naaa.. no booze but some cold drinks, chips and chilled water. LOL :D 

Some music, dinner, songs and we were all set to do star gazing with night photography. While we totally failed at the attempts, we enjoyed the mess by running around to light the tents with torches, making those heart shapes with torches again to help light photography and what not :P Nothing clicked well it seems except the laughter and fun :) Just that the running around for the set up got Manish tweak his leg :( He was in severe pain and his anklet was swollen before he went off to sleep.  
The breakfast, next morning, went on to be further more lavish. Maggie, Coffee, Bread and Sandwhich spread, the leftover rice biryani with a twist of Ghee (to make it sober) made it all perfect to dine with lakeside, friends and sunshine ! :) We feared if we would miss the last train as we had a lot to wind up and Manish's swollen anklet making a slow walk but we conquerer it all to reach the station on time ! Needless to mention because the locals were running late due to the mega block on the railway tracks for maintainance :P Phew ! 
So, that's all I have from the event we enjoyed over the weekend and for more updates, keep reading this blog ;) 

With our chef Ritu, our wood cutter Sandeep, our audiences - Manish & his wife, Rajith, and Thomas; this is me - reporter Neha signing off to gear up hopefully for another exciting event. 

Till then Keep Smiling :)









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