Camping at the Beach, Part 1 | Travelogue

by - March 12, 2017

I've camped by the lakeside, and I'd thought camping at the beach would be merry too, but the fate had something else in the store for us. As much as I disfavour impromptu changes in plans, I cannot lie how much I love the adventure it brings.


For my 23rd birthday, I thought of spending the midnight of 10th March outdoors with my friends, rather than by receiving calls from them indoors. I had planned it with other set of friends, but they cancelled because of several reasons. So I asked other set of friends and they agreed in just one go. I was overwhelmed. I want to mention about how the plan got almost-altered, almost-cancelled, leaving me awfully angry, because that's a big part of this travelogue. You know I always write about my travel expedition right from the planning stage.


For the revised plan, there were three best friends--Amrita, Rutuja, and Anurag--and I was trying hard to get my cousin Pratik in the plan. Pratik had cancelled two days before, but in the morning of 9th March (the day we were leaving for the beach), he tagged on. I was exceedingly happy as the group was perfect now--three girls and two boys.

However, the plan was almost gonna get cancelled. My college's colloquium dates were 6-7-8 March, but later they postponed to 9-10-11 March. We were gonna leave on the 9th, so the revised dates pissed me too badly. But, God knows how, it was announced that the colloquium would be on 11th March (we were coming back on 10th March). This wonderful surprise cheered me and for once, the plan was really on.

I had lied to my parents saying I was going with Amrita, Pratik, Rutuja, and Rutuja's three others friends. I lied to them because I knew they wouldn't feel as safe with a group of five only. Also, according to the initial plan, we were to go for a trek and then camp by lakeside. So, telling them that now we were going on a beach was difficult, because my parents, especially my mom, detest beaches (perhaps because of the sea's power of sucking things in).

But after telling them that we were going to Kelwa beach, I was relieved and started packing my bag. You know how particular I am when it comes to packing. Accordingly, I packed, making sure I had everything I thought I would need.



We had hired a Ford Figo from Zoomcar. Pratik had come at my place and then from there Anurag picked us up. We further picked up Amrita and Rutuja. We purchased a big bottle of water worth 100 rupees on our way.



After all the pickups, you can say we left at 3:00 pm for the actual trip. Amrita declared that she would play songs right before she got in the car. Everybody was too excited. Anurag was driving and I sat next to him. (Luckily it was my birthday plan!)

Vomit-cum-toilet break in the empty fields



Amrita was not keeping well since two previous days and so when we were almost reaching, we had to halt for her to vomit. She was down with fever and was vomiting for the past two days.

We reached the beach at 5:00 pm. I had already been there with Anurag and his family, so for me it was just revisiting the beach. Whereas, for the remaining three it was a moment of "wow". It was a love at first sight for them as the clean, secluded beach put them in awe. We parked the car and I started directing them as to where we can get what and how we had had star fruits the last time we were there and how there's a huge washroom towards the right hand side from where we'd parked the car.

We started walking towards the beach. The natives were looking at us as if we were some foreigners. We started discussing where to pitch the tents and if we should carry our luggage immediately or after deciding the place. But it was settled that we carry our luggage along as the place we'd finalized for camping was too far from where we'd parked our car.

It was a struggle to carry the luggage. We had two tents, one humongous water bottle, food and drinks bag, and our individual bags. Anurag and Pratik tied my leopard printed scarf on the bottle's cap and dragged it till our camping site. It was a ten-minute walk.



Me and Rutuja "looking for" stones to help the tents combat the winds


We saw that there was vegetation growing and so we pitched the tents nearby. We read a board saying that the water was deep there and that it was advised to not go there. However, as it was low tide, there was no water. We got a little dubious as to whether to camp there or not, but eventually we decided to camp there...


---

Part 2 coming soon...
xoxo


You May Also Like

0 comments

google-site-verification: google76c9097fcbb9ae5f.html