The very first sight of everyone on the pre camp made me feel a bit nervous, dunno why! After all it was my very first camp all alone!

During the pre camp meeting the instructors introduced themselves and also told us bout Kanha in general and what all things are to be seen once we go there! WE were served a nice cold glass of Kokam sarbat… My packing actually took no more than two hours but I was thoughtful enough to have washed the clothes well in advance!

As the time of departure approached I became so damn nervous to go alone, that too in a jungle!…and many stupid scary things began to creep in my mind!

We reached Pune Central station on time and mom dropped me n left soon! I was still not really had got well acquainted with these people. We were allotted different bogies with our respective seat nos. Mine was Bogie no S9/36. We were 7of us in that bogie, Rudrani, Shweta, Radhika Tai, Pratik, Omkar and Keyur(who later moved into other bogie!) We 6 of us had a read great time in the train! Played cards, talked to the glory! And yea…how can I forget looking out of the window! I did manage to miss the sunset that eve…but was in time to get the glimpse of the red hot sun the next morning! Mind you Sun is a real beauty!

I really love those red-orange shades! I also enjoyed gulping down my throat the WATERY tea, which was sold! Rdhika tai is Rahul dada’s wife..and this was her very first camp as an instructor! She had been to Corbett before…so we had ample topics to talk on!

Later I brunched on salad!

Our excitement grew as we approached Gondia station! The TC (who was the 4th one,as many of them wished to see our tickets!)told us to come to the door a bit later, but we didn’t really pay any heed to him!… we were again made to carry our luggage and then realized that I shouldn’t have got many things which made my bag quite heavy! Gosh my hand ached!

I couldn’t help myself then, and feel as if my bag was full-o-feathers and carried it along! Haha! WE were again put into different SUVs and I was into a Qualis… We were then taken to a restaurant where we had a wonderful meal… and I had 2 bowls of curd!!! Yummy!

What I liked most bout the restaurant was that… it was COOL, unlike the temperature outside…

After our lunch (which I didn’t actually eat well!) we got into our respective SUVs and made ourselves comfy!

We left for Kanha at last! Only in the half way I got to know that the motion sickness idiots occupied the very last seats, where the car made sure they experienced every minute pot hole on the road!

ha-ha…After like a nice thick coat of the mud on our face, we reached to our Resort, The Mogli Resort! I desperately wanted to get a nice bath!

The sight of our campsite actually awed me!

It was simply AMAZING! I mean all earthen cottages… a main building which had a nice huge staircase going up to our dining place! And yeah how can I miss out the swimming pool, which looked simple great with that cool shade of blue with Mogli written on its base!

We were then given a glass of Kokam, and it was even better that the one served at the pre camp!

I actually gulped it down as I was damn thirsty! We were soon allotted our rooms, and our room-mates… my room was numbered 303! And soon I was also made the room in-charge! Lolz! The room was one of the cottages, which were quite sophisticated from inside! I mean something you might not expect in the middle of the forest!

Bathroom was altogether another room! I was the first one to get ready followed by my fellow roomies Poonam, Madhura(Shivani’s sis) and Neha! I tried going around the campus which was quite silent than our room which had the most noisy FAN which hovered on top of our heads! It only worked on 5 or got off!!! Man it irritated me a lot!

We were called for Tea/Coffee at 6:30pm sharp we were told! We had the hot cup-o-tea and proceeded with the introduction game! We were given one card each with something related to the environment written on it! Some were environmental issues others were simply facts n stuff like that! We had to search for our partners and then introduce one another to the whole group! I got the card named Salman Khan! My very first reaction to this was….what on earth has Salman Khan to do with the environment! But then it struck me that he was caught shooting some deer (black bucks to be specific I was told later…) My partner Rutuja Lele was the Black buck! She boasted of being the youngest one at the camp, but never forgot to put the eye liner every single day!

We were then made to stand together and then were randomly told to hold hands…and in a way to get tangled, and were told to get into a circle! Man it was quite hard to get out of that tangle thingy! You won’t imagine but I tried to de-tangle few people and then I was the one kinda “in charge” of de-tangling the group! It was kinda fun to let people know you so well on the very first day…and everyone called to me to help then get free! Hehe…I had a lion’s share in making that huge circle, though I later came to know that I was caught into another small circle and the BIG circle didn’t exactly get executed (without a small tiny-winy cheating!

Later we were told to face outside without leaving our hands and at that time it was someone else who took the initiative, which worked perfectly well! WE also had a “Wonderful” power cut during the de-tangling thingy! It was beautiful just because we were lucky enough to experience complete darkness! And the STARS came to notice! They looked like small diamonds spilled on a black saree!

Wow! What a sight that was! Man stars ARE beautiful!

Later we were given an hour free, mebbe to get comfortable to the new campus, and get to know the fellow campers well! We had to get together for dinner at 8:30pm. The dinner was delicious with Rajma bhat n phulka! I loved it! It was as if eating at some hotel… How I wish we were given similar food in Kashmir too!!! Haha!

Before dinner we also had this program to get the bugs n frogs out of rooms! It was actually fun seeing girls scream on the top of their lungs! Their faces too were worth seeing! We got “HOME” (our room) and before we knew, we were fast asleep!