Our Weekend Trip to Mt. Abu...

Yes. I finally went on the Abu trip with family and had a great time.

The day before the trip, we were supposed to collect our bags from Devalmama's house. When we collected the bags, we saw that there was 1 bag for each of us - a small bag just to have the bare necesssities of life. In all there were 23 of us - all age groups the youngest one was 2 year old and the eldest 60.

We reached Abu in 3 seperate cars - one for the moms, dads and kids. on reaching Abu we had a sumptuous meal and dinot unpack our bags and started off for the camping. After about 45 minutes of a trek - which was a bit difficult for the novices and the kids we reached a lovely place. We had five tents with us and pitched all of them. The weather was also excellent with a lot of fog that you could not even see at an arms length. We then went for a walk and sat by the Kodra dam reservoir and sang songs - since i do not have an ear for music we were just listening and enjoying the nature. When we went back to the camp site, we set-up a camp fire and had dinner. The kids then went of to sleep and we were sitting by the camp fire. Suddenly one of us saw two eyes in the darkness and a black animal. Scared, a few of them ran to their tent, zipped it open got in and closed the tent - all just in a few seconds. All of us also started running having thought that it was a wild bear. The bravehearts took a torch and were checking for the animal and........ it was a buffalo. We then went off to sleep. It was raining and very windy and at 2.00, we started having calls from the kids tent that our kids were not sleeping - kai and another boy came to the parents tent. None of us slept till 3.00 in the night.

We woke up in the morning and opened up our tents. the weather was very foggy and we could see the fog coming in our tent. The group than went for caving. We went into a small cave which was pitch dark and we had to literally lie down to cross the cave. All of us managed it and then we had our tea and breakfast there. It was the perfect spot and the perfiect weather to have your morning cuppa.

Back to the campsite, the boys (fathers, actually) went for aswim in the reservoir... and the mothers were literlally shivering seeing them swim in the cold water and weather. We then unpacked and started our trek down with our bags and tents on our backs. (This was when we realised how important it was to have a small bag...)

Having reached home (mama's house in Abu) we had lunch and did river crossing...yes they had set-up all this there. After dinner all of us relaxed, had a chat and befiore sleeping went for a drive to search Leopards and Bears - which we did not find.

The next morning we went for rock climbing and rappelling. The kids were then given Rs. 10 each and hey had to buy whatever they wanted from this. The kids had a great (and tough) time finding stuff for them in Rs. 10. Everyone ended up buying some chocolates/ candies. We then started our journey back home with a resolution to make such trips an yearly affair.