Gone Wild at Camp Wild

Gone Wild at Camp Wild

“It is summer time right now, let’s plan it during winters.” “Let us try to go there around his birthday; it will be a nice surprise.” “There are hardly ten people in our circle of friends; we won’t get a good deal for such a small group.” “Other teams are not so interested in such an activity, let’s drop the idea.” “It’s too cold these days; I doubt people would get up so early.” “She is not in town this weekend; once she is back, she will be gone for two weeks.” “Winters are about to end, it’s going to be hot again. I don’t think we will ever be able to go to this camp. Sigh!”

After months of figuring out the best place, best price and best time, I was on the verge of giving up on the idea of going to an adventure camp in the outskirts of Delhi-NCR. It seemed harder than planning a usual weekend trip. But, thanks to Guneet’s relentless efforts, we successfully went to Camp Wild in Dhauj yesterday. She managed the entire show from end to end – managing communication with all stakeholders, getting confirmation from the different teams, negotiating the price with the camp personnel, arranging for transportation and getting final approvals from me and Vishal. For once, I was relaxed and did not have much to worry before an office event. However, it was unfortunate that she could not make it to the trip owing to a family emergency. 

This was my third adventure camp in the last 4 years. Earlier, I had been to Pratapgarh Farms and Botanix with two different groups. Pratapgarh Farms provides a village experience with village culture and social life built into its features and activities. It is a perfect day outing option for school kids and for families. They had activities like balloon shooting, dart board, camel ride, bullock cart ride, etc. There were no adventure activities or obstacle paths. Hence, I found it to be less fun. Nevertheless because it was my first such outing and I had good company of friends, it turned out to be a memorable one. Some interesting memories that I recall are finishing the sack race after multiple falls, dirtying our hands on the potter’s wheel, playing cricket and of course, laughing our hearts out while hitting each other with the softball in the game of Pithoo Garam. Botanix was a different experience all together. It was an adventure camp and hence more physically challenging. But the activities were few in number and soon we ran out of options that we ended up playing Chain – Chain till we fell tired and exhausted. The food was also okay.

Camp Wild was a perfect experience and by far the best of the three outings. The camp is set up in Dhauj, near Faridabad-Gurgaon border on a rocky landscape with hills and farms surrounding the campsite. There was absolutely no noise or pollution in this area and we were far away from the bustling city life. It is an hour’s journey from Iffco Chowk and on the way, we crossed the huge Hanuman statue which has just been built. The bus journey was uneventful with most of the time spent on navigation and yet we managed to get lost. The event was planned from 9 AM to 6 PM but we reached an hour late. The day at Camp Wild started with breakfast to fuel ourselves for the power-packed day. We had sandwiches, puri-sabzi, boiled eggs, bananas and lemonade. Meanwhile, Suraj, our group‘s adventure trainer/guide was making necessary arrangements to get us started. For the next 7 hours, we were at his command.

We were 30 people from across four teams – Content, Research, Software Development and SME Sales. An ice-breaker session was definitely needed as none of us knew all the other members of the group. Forget others, this time even I was clueless about the names of half of the people around me. Suraj did a great job in getting us acquainted with each other through a series of fun exercises and subsequent fun punishments to the defaulters. I defaulted twice and ended up performing duck-walk and Nagin dance on two different occasions. At the end of an hour’s drill, people started talking freely and engaged in good-natured banter with others whom they did not know until this morning. I was eagerly waiting for the adventure activities to begin but next in plan was a short hike outside the camp. Usually, such activities act a filler to kill time and they take you through artificially created paths. However, this experience was good as it was a steep climb on a natural course filled with rocks and boulders. There were cliffs where you could enjoy the view of the surrounding area and click pictures standing on the edge. While it was a cakewalk for me and my friends who have been on multiple hard treks, for first-timers and beginner level trekkers, it was a challenging trail draining them out on the uphill climb. Thankfully the weather was not too hot and the cool breeze saved them from exhaustion.

Now, it was time for some competition. We were divided into three teams and I tried to trick Suraj by asking him to let us make our own teams so that all Awesome Blossom folks could be together. But he chose random allocation by assigning numbers. I was still lucky to have Vishal and Jassi in the same group as mine but Adi and Piyush had to be in another team. We named our team – ‘The Pheonix’ with a corny slogan – ‘Oh Yeah’ which could mean many different things. We competed against ‘The Sinners’ and ‘The Alps’, both of whom had cleaner and meaningful slogans than ours. But we were proud with our choice as we like to be different. There were seven activities in all – Tarzan Swing, Burma Bridge, Commando Net, Balance Walk, Tunnel Walk, Monkey Crawl, and Cat Walk.

What followed in the next two hours of adventure was totally different from what I had expected. It was not about competition any longer, it was about collaboration. It was not about booing and sledging opponents, it was about lending a helping hand, a steady shoulder or even a head at times to your friends. It was not about letting physically unfit people to opt out of an activity but cheering them and pushing them to break their mental barriers. It was not about lowering the bar for girls, it was about proving their equality to boys in the true spirit. And lastly, it was not about condescending smirks at others’ expense but about having a hearty laugh together to cherish the funny acts of imbalance. Eventually who won, became inconsequential. Different teams won different rounds but ‘The Alps’ clearly dominated in all activities as they had the maximum  number of physically-fit team members. One of their team members, Shipra needs a special mention owing to her clean performance in each and every obstacle path.

It was time for a late lunch. We rushed to the cafeteria and hot lunch was awaiting us. The food was quite delicious and there was a variety of dishes – dal makhani, shahi paneer, mix veg, rice, breads, chicken curry, raita, and my favourite dessert – custard. The evening was meant for team building activities and other recreational sports. We chose to skip the sports activities as those can be played on a regular weekend as well. Suraj was more than happy to organize as many team games as possible until 6 PM. I was quite glad that everything was running smooth and I was in a peppy mood today all throughout. I think my own thoughts jinxed me when I picked up a trivial fight with Suraj on a rule of the first game. While it was not about losing the game but what put me off was the lack of clarity in the game rules. But as Vishal rightly said, we had got our chance to understand the nitty-gritty of the game during the trial round and hence Suraj was not at fault. I immediately realized that I was wrong but I stood by my stance like an adamant kid.

Even now, if I reflect on the incident, I could not think of one good reason for me to throw tantrums and walk out of the game on this trivial matter. I had a problem with the rule and that’s what I was stuck to. On deep reflection, I figured it was probably God’s message for me to look at my own mistakes before pointing a finger at others. It was earlier in the day when I was mocking about another guy in the group recalling his childish act during the Sports Day and now coming to think of it, I feel I was even worse off. I wonder what impression I would have given to the rest of my team and my colleagues. Being the senior-most member, I ought to have acted more responsibly. But as a saving grace, I did not have it my way at the end of the fight. Else, it would have been totally unfair giving people a reason to complain that the trainer had to give in owing to my clout.  I would have regretted that more as it would have gone against the overall spirit of the team and the activity. 

At such times, friends come to your rescue and so did my friends but not by supporting me and fighting with the trainer on my behalf. They knew I was wrong and they did not hesitate to express their opinion about the same. Good friends are not those who stand by your side even when you are grossly wrong just to reinforce wrong values and beliefs in you. Good friends are those who try to calm you down when you get angry unreasonably. Good friends are those who stop you and reprimand you to set you right. Good friends are those who reason out with you to show the other person’s perspective and try to put sense into your head. Good friends are those who make fun of you in light-hearted humour to ease the tension between you and the other person. And if you still don’t listen, your best friends would go a step ahead and beat you up till you understand because ‘Laathon ke bhoot baton se nahi maante.’ 

The rest of the evening was quiet for me as I was reflecting on my childish act, partly in anger and partly in shame. Giving due respect to my friends, I chose to participate in the rest of the events with the team spirit even if I was not proactive and vocally involved. The day ended with the Tug-of-War. It was six in the evening and all of us were totally exhausted. We quickly drank coffee/tea and ate our evening snacks before heading back to Gurgaon. At the end of the day, as a HR person, I was quite satisfied organizing this event as everyone was happy and cheerful. Smiling faces, happy hearts, worked-out bodies - that summarizes the final state of the team from Aspiring Minds.