With the decision of celebrating the “Deerwalk Outing” in a non-conventional way, the journey towards Dhading – our final destination, started from the Deerwalk premise early in the morning at around 6 AM. The van journey became quite interesting and joyful because of the gossips, jokes, Lava dai’s childhood stories and “WOW WOW”s :D.
The Chinese Restaurant that we went to was the first Karaoke bar that I had been to where they actually charged extra for using the Karaoke machine. Some of the team members negotiated for a quite length of time to get the price down to within our budget. But in the end we ended up not using it anyway because the only Karaoke songs they carried were all in Mandarin language.
So it’s early in the morning and I am about to write a blog for the very first time about our trip to Nagarkot. As the trip was last Saturday, my memory of it is already a bit hazy. But I am sure for most people who have been on an outing with their fellow colleagues from Deerwalk, saying ‘we went on an outing’ is pretty self-explanatory. But of course, being the new guy here and having only been on one of such a trip, I have drawn this conclusion only from the fun loving fellas from Benecore, Hedis and Makalu; and hence readers from other sections of the office might not find it ‘self-explanatory’. So, I’ll try and cover the very gist of it as I continue.
At around 11:00 AM, we reached Tatopani, a religious place situated at Sindhupalchowk district. As soon we got there, team members were very much in hurry to have hot shower since the weather was quite chilly. Without wasting a minute, we rushed Khasa Bazar. The security there was quite rigid. A Nepali citizenship card is compulsory to cross the China border. Most importantly the communication in the border line can be done efficiently through hand signals.
The outing was on Friday, and we had to return back on Saturday. So, we had to finish our work by 3 pm. We finished our work and were ready to set off by 3 pm. But due to the arrival of the organizers at the office a bit late from the market, we set off from the office only at 3:30pm. We were enjoying the ride to the destination while cracking jokes and singing songs. On the way we reached the Shivapuri Wildlife Reserve check post where we had to stop while the check was going on, and again we continued with the enjoyment.
We were heading for a two days outing, away from the comfort of our home and predictable daily routine of the office life. The purpose of it was team bonding while refreshing both body and mind. Although we spend a lot of time together with our fellow QA team members, we rarely get an opportunity to know each other in a more personal level. Initially, I thought I knew QA members well enough, as I work with them day to day, until the team building outing, which changed it all.
On the early morning of 12th January, we started off for our team building trip to Sauraha with a sip of tea at Kalanki. The joy and excitement never ceased from the get go. After having breakfast nearby Naubise, we headed towards our destination. The journey became more and more interesting with jokes and music. We had our lunch at Dasdhunga, and had some photos clicked at the bank of the Narayani River before continuing our journey.
On Saturday, Dec 29, 2012, Thirty four of the Deerwalk employees that make up the Product Team went to Nagarkot for a team outing. Some of the guys were on their bikes. Sawan, our coordinator for the outing, had made reservation at a resort there. We were supposed to leave Deerwalk office at 11:30 am but due to some late comers we ended up leaving at 12:00 pm. I was so excited because that was my first trip since having joined the company. Some of the guy had prepared their own collection of songs for the journey, and we crossed Nagarkot while playing and singing them.
On the way to our destination, we could see musical talents of our mates. Singing songs, playing guitar on the van itself made us reach our destination in no time and of course the organic banana lassi was a double treat. As soon as we reached there, the excitement saw no boundary and instantly the crew ran to the river bank to get their feet wet, play the swing; guys enjoyed playing beach volleyball and all. Everyone was busy doing one or the other recreational activities. Since we had reached to our destination much earlier than the scheduled snack time, everyone was starving so much so that when the food was served the plates would get empty in no time.
It was a fine sunny morning when we gathered for the outing. Everyone was in their best mood, primed for the trip. We set off picking up the crew as we went on. The trip started with hearty laughs courtesy Manish and Pratik, songs played on Bipul’s Jukebox, wise cracks by Ashay, sweet smiles by the girls. The pit stop at ‘Keraghari’ for the chilled lassi was so refreshing. On the way, we bellowed along to the Jukebox, and would scramble for silence as soon as we reached check-posts.
