Family vacation in Khandala…short.. sweet trip….looking back I realized that it just lasted 24 hours…..reached the Khandala Bunglow at 5 in the evening Saturday and left at 5 in the evening…but those 24 hours were action packed and a whole lot of fun…..we barely slept 3 hours so it was 21 hours of Dhamal….:-)
And what did this Dhammal include…..! Read on…Don’t have picture to make people jealous ( Yeah…I like to put up snaps to show off on all the fun I have had in various trips!) so you’ll will have to make do with only text on this one!
Gossip!! now this is always the best part of any family trip and we had our share of that….with some non family surprise eye candy material added to our house party list the gossip and the giggles were galore!
Lazy stroll in Khandala gali’s : J A must have ingredient for all ‘hill station trips’…extended gossip session in different venues!
Games Games Games! : We are the GAME family…every time we meet we have to PLAY something…..afterall there is only so much you can gossip and enjoy…playing brings out the child in you and it is a whole lot of fun….if you don’t play when you meet family and friends…..trust me you are loosing out on a lot lot of fun…..(try to bribe me to invite you to one of my extended family outing… and you will see!!
Game 1: Guessing : Two Teams…unlimited Guessing cards…. limited time…leads to total chaos!! Basically You have to make your team guess words from cards without using the ‘Taboo’ words on the card. Words cannot do justice to amount of fun fighting and involvement this game evoke from people of all ages groups ( our youngest member was 21 an the oldest would be about 65!)
Game 2: DumbSharades: Now I am sure I don’t need to explain what this is ….yeah it was the usual….with acting and guessing and chaos and cheating and made up movies etc … ‘Shambnam Mausi’…now that cant really be the name of an actual movie can it!??
Game 3: I LOVE YOU : This was my internet discovery some years back ( yeah I do sometimes scout for party games on the internet! One of my potential career switches is to be a party planner!) and not it has become one of our standard family party games…everybody sits on chairs in a circle with one person standing in the middle of the circle is the denner. The denner walks up to anyone in the circle and asks them Aunty/Uncle/Do you love me and they have to answer in a YES or a NO. If the answer is YES the denner asks them why and they have to give a concrete reason like because you are wearing watch ! 
….and everyone in the circle wearing the watch has to get up and move places and the denner had to catch a seat! If the person says NO then every body in the circle has to RUN and change places!
This game is super good fun…..people would fight to get a seat…push… fall…..we even ended up breaking a chair while playing ‘I love you’….yeah it can get rough and seem like a war to someone who is sitting down listing to the commotion we were causing….but trust me it make you laugh…makes you happy….and make you love each other even more!!
Terrace party with good food and drink…The normal party stuff…..won’t give u the name of all the dishes but will leave it to your imagination…..all I will say was that it was good stuff and food and drink always add a cheer to the party…it’s a pity some parties have only food and drink to cheer people up!
MIDNIGHT TREK : Yeah Yeah you read it right….MID NIGHT TREK….not stroll….with Family ( just to remind you aged 21 years to 65 years!) We Started out 12 in the night….10 of us squeezed into the Innova… drove 20 kms from where we stayed..walked/climbed/trekked 2 and a half hours though the rocks, the grass the trees… under the moonlight to reach the top of an old ruined dilapidate fort…
Despite a lot of protests and threats of let us turn back we actually managed to reach the top at 3 in the morning….the breeze was amazing….the view was fantabulous….a birds-eye view of Amby Valley …and the icing in the cake was the our discovery of an abandoned temple perched on a serene lake right there in the middle of nowhere on the top! We sat there in the still of the night at the temple by the lake in the moonlight in had chai…( Yeah we carried chai in the thermos with little plastic glasses!)
Thank GOD we managed to reach down safely … It was really quite crazy….with a group of parents/uncles/ aunties/non sporty cousins to attempt trekking in the middle of the night….Indeed an experience of lifetime!
Reached home and crashed out by 6 in the morning!
Game 4: Lagori I am sure everyone has played this as kids…..make two teams…stack up 7 stones….hit the stack and break it with a rubber ball and the team has to rebuilt it while the opposite team trys to hit them below the waist with the ball!
Not one of our usual games…but then our usual parties don’t last 24 hours and are not in intesting places like khandala….:-) this was indeed fun…people were actually playing in their night clothes with rubber chapples….too much trouble to get up and have a bath and get ready in the morning….we are on vacation plz!
Game 5: Spoons : Card game…..whats the fun without some card games….:-) really simple but too much trouble to explain in details….basically when someone screams spoons because their cards are right…everyone has to grab spoons from the middle of the circle…there is one spoon less then person and the person who does not get a spoon is out…..if you ever play this game….be carful that the people around the circle don’t have long nails or you will end up with scratches like the poor boys round the circle had to endure….
Game 6: Name Game: Another all time favorite family card game..this is about concentration …speed….alertness….tests how loud you can scream and of-course luck!
Bottom Line…What a trip!!…..Yeah believe it or not we did ALL of this and some more stuff….all in jus 24 hours!!
Thank you god for such a wonderful extended family…..Hope we can plan many more such outings!!
