Juguja at Savandurga

Have you ever imagined, sitting atop a hill and doing a relaxation exercise? How does it feel to do Savasana (a corpse pose) and enjoy the perfect ambience? Birds chirping, wind gushing through your ears, beautiful sky and the moon visible at around 5pm. We did all this and much more at Savandurga on Friday, March 10, 2006.

A bunch of folks from the YESI group went on a team outing to Savandurga organised by KWEC. We started at around 7:15 AM, 30 minutes behind schedule. By the time we reached Savandurga it must have been around 9. Ramesh introduced Rahul, KWEC's founder and chief trainer and he in turn introduced his team. We started off with an ice breaker session where we had to shake hands and introduce ourself to everyone in 120 secs. Then came passing the loop. We were made to form a circle joining hands. We had to move a loop through the entire circle without breaking hands, not using the finger to move the loop, without the loop touching the ground. Next, was to form a line, holding a balloon between the previous person's back and your stomach. With hands on your hips, you were to walk a certain distance. Oh! Boy, was it fun. And those who had a potbelly made better use of it.

Then we split into two teams. One went for rafting, while we went for rappelling. Though initially everyone had their own fears, the way Krishna, Prani, aka Pranesh and Shanthi handled it, they made everything look easy and simple. We had to climb a little hill and drop down the rope tied to a tree. The team was again split into two. While one did the rappelling, the others tried to create a logo (flag) for Yahoo! with whatever material lying around. The entire team finished their turns by around 1 PM and we came down to the rafting point. The goal was to build a raft with bamboo / rubber tubes, raft for about 100 odd meters, touch a rock on the middle of the lake and return and dismantle the raft. There were eight members in the team and had to raft twice, 4 members each and once back had to completely dismantle the raft. The earlier two teams had done it in around 47 minutes. We did it the same in 40 minutes. Gautham / Abhinav's team did the same in 29 minutes. Rahul said that they were the best ever so far he had seen. While one team were busy building the raft, the other team was assigned a task of building a missile launcher with file clips, rubber bands, elastic etc. The mission was to launch the missile farthest.

We assembled for lunch at around 2:30 PM. After lunch, some played cricket while others relaxed. We then assembled to launch our missiles. Gautham / Abhinav's team again won here while our team gave a walkover after our missile did not take off. Another team's missile back fired. Then we showcased our flags. Ankit's team won the best flag award. It depicted two faces of Yahoo!, one about its engineering principles and another about YEFI. Yahoo! Bangalore rocks flag was another interesting creativity.

We then started the rock climbing. It was a huge monolithic rock and there is a fort and a temple built by Kempe Gowda on top of the hill. It was a steep climb and we had estimated that the climb would take about 45 minutes to an hour. But by the time we reached about 3/4th the height, everyone was completely exhausted. We decided that we will relax there for sometime and start our climb down. Rahul made us do some relaxation exercises. It was a fantastic view from the top to see the small village at the foothill, a nearby reservoir.

We then climbed down, had some tea / snacks and started our trip back to Bangalore. On the way back, our "Gana thalaivar" Alex sang a Ghana song for every song sung by the other tem. This guys Gana collection is amazing. Rahul also announced the trophy for the best team player of the day. This was shared by yours truly along with Gautham. Praveen came a close third. We reached our office back at around 9PM.

It was one day very well spent. Interestingly, though I had worked every inch of my body on that day, I woke up the next morning without any pain.

Oh! And about this funky word called "Juguja". Prani used that while doing a warmup exercise prior to the rock climbing.