WOW celebration Trek - Ramadevara Betta

A year’s journey with BTC-WOW

It's unbelieavable to think that we are a year Younger now! Even more astounding is to think 'how' it all happened. Well, before my trail of thoughts put me into a different world, I collect myself to pen down the memories in as plausible way as I can - splitting this post into 2 parts. 

One: About the Actual Bday event: Trip to Ramadevara Betta
Two: A brief on how WOW took its journey to a year: A year’s journey through BTC-WOW: straight-from-the-heart!

Read on...

Trip to Ramadevara Betta:

It was a huge group – of 39  BTCians aka Wowbies ;). Many first-timers, and a dozen 'highly nostalgic souls' who have had been with BTC-WOW since its early days. Boarded the bus at Shantala Silk House. It felt nothing less than a school picnic. Everyone was looking forward to see how was the day gonna be like!

Enter the bus – and we find our ‘first’ surprise : Shree – the WOW storyteller {and the SRK of WOW :P - another 'nostalgic' soul who had joined all the way from Chennai to be a part of this event} After a loud drama over her presence, some hugs with known faces and random ‘hi’s and hellos’ with the new ones, we settled down in the Big 45 seater – all set to take our road towards WOW’s first Birthday celebration.

The journey started with a lively introduction round. With mother-daughter pairs, same-name pairs, the mysterious-girl Mukul (that broke Monu and many others’ hearts), Martial arts expert – every participant was interesting in her own way! Considering the huge count, we spent almost the entire commute time in the introduction round, some leg-pulling sessions here and there.

Highlight of the Introduction round:

Well, well – I still maintain that no matter how adventurous or outgoing a woman can get, her life ultimately revolves around just 2 things – Family & Foooodd!! Living upto this (while many wondered about who started WOW, who is Ajita etc etc..)  – our Captain Ajju – very lovingly gave her Introduction with the lines – “He is into Social Events. He is also a trekker. We met through friends. He works in …and so on and so forth..” ;). Some of the Wowbies got really curious about ‘Him’, well, and the rest of us wondered ‘watta-change-over-mama’ and had to remind our Captain to introduce herself as the Founder of BTC-WOW :P [they are thaaaat down-to-earth, you see :P]

Somewhere in the Bidadi highway, we had a stopover for breakfast. Despite the crowd at the tiffin center, Ajju-Kriba duo managed to get food for the 39 of us within no time! Kudos to their tactics! After breakfast, we landed the base where we were divided into groups and started climbing at around 10.00 am

About the trek path: Ramnagara:

Well, Ramnagara (Ramgadh of Sholay), makes a good trek-place for beginners (more of a treknic spot). Half of the way (till the temple) is steppy, and the rest of the way till the peak is rocky. The last stretch (of a bit of rock-climbing) serves a good challenge for trekkers, thanks to the railings! Various smaller peaks here and there, make a good view point (and break-points too:P)

The climb till the peak was very smooth sailing – making masti, having sufficient breaks at various viewpoints, taking hilarious pics, cracking corrupted versions of the famous ‘Sholay’ dialogs, exploring more fellow-trekkers – and we reached the top within just 2 hours!

Peak: 

It was quite sunny when we reached the top. The big team of 39 dispersed into groups at various spots - some under the cactii shade, some under their umbrellas, and few of us feeling the real blaze of sun out in the open! As the sun was really scorching; after half an hour, we chose to descend down to a little shady peak for some activities

Fun and another ‘Surpriseeeee’!!!

Once we were at a little shady spot, we started out with the games that Capt Ajju had planned for us. The first one was purely a child-like fun, where we were given stickers of Alphabets and had to pose according to words - ‘Trekking’, ‘cycling’, ‘mountains’, ‘running’ and ‘wow-rocks’ [reminded me of ‘fire-in-the-mountain-run-run-run :P]. Somehow, this photo session turned out to be funny [the ‘mountains’ girls still make me guffaw at them, for no particular reason:D]

After this, we played the game of ‘kalla-police’. And our Winking specialist – Jayashree – brought in full enthusiasm in the first round of the game itself, with her ‘killer-winks’ as the murderer! We started wanting for more rounds :P The game turned out to be lively and hilarious, with the girls randomly walking around and getting killed by winks :P All the rounds further turned out to be equally hilarious, not to forget, bashing up Ritz for finding the murderer pretty early:P. The last round - the most memorable one - with only the Murderer and Detective left out in the end!

Making fun out of the game, we took a short 'chill-madi' break. Post this, Captain Ajju announced ‘Time for cake-cuttaaiiinngg’ – the Celebration moment of the event! The youngest of the lot – Chandana, a 12 year old, did the honors and with a loud ‘Happy Birthday to us’ song,  we enjoyed the Plum cakes that Captain had got for us (the leftovers were, needles to mention, grabbed by us WOW bhukkads, ahem, Ritu n myself :P)

The cake-cutting session was just making us a tad emotional, when Ajju threw another surprise at us with a speech on how WOW took its journey of one year, followed by a very humbling award-ceremony for some of us – Joe, Ritz, Vini and myself. The entire surprise got us speechless, and post this humbling experience, Ritz and I, chose to silently focus on the leftovers of plum cakes – rather than making the scene more emotional with our speeches:P

Descend, Lunch and Return:

The descend was far quicker and less straineous – considering that the clouds had started to show up, and weather was slightly pleasant than that at the peak. We stopped over again for lunch – had nice sharing-n-caring food at a restaurant, and boarded the bus for the return. The return bus journey was now a cool dance performance by our Sheila, Yogi, Neha2 and few others. Once the dancers settled, we had a hilarious feedback session – with Shree and Kriba as the ‘orators’ to ensure that everyone heard everyone’s feedback (and that no one slept):D. the feedback session was almost over, when we reached Bangalore [at around 4.30pm], much earlier than the planned time!

The Big group hug:

Offlate, trek events have become a look out for that one particular experience that even pictures cannot capture, but only felt! [mean no offense to photographers :P]. And we had that one moment towards the end of our trip.

Just when the group (that alighted at Majestic) was about to disperse; Joe suddenly cried out – ‘we missed a group hug’. And, nopes! We hadn’t. Instantly, we started connecting hands and called out the other wowbies, who were just leaving; leading to a huge circle of a Big-WOW-Hug, right outside the majestic bus-stand [yeah..did invite few onlookers who watched us in awe, and confusion, but then – who cares!]. This was a lovely moment, feeling of it undescribable. There was a silence for a few seconds, everyone felt! After this feeling, Ajju broke the silence kidding out – ‘hum log koi cricket team lag rahen hain’ – and with the hilarious dialog, we broke the circle and walked towards the main Bus stand, to reach out to our home-sweet-home – Yayyy! We are One Year Younger now! WOW!! :) :)

A feather added to the cap of WOW - this was the first ever BTC Trek event with the maximum count of participants - 39!  Thanks to every participant for the helping each other, and making the event fun-filled and successful. Hats off!

___________________________________________________________________________________

A year’s journey through BTC-WOW: straight-from-the-heart!

Well, for any 'good' thing to substantiate – the right set of attitudes, the right support and a huge amount of patience is required. If you question our Ajju Madam, you will learn that the idea of starting BTC -WOW was incepted sometime in the month of April, 2013 [when BTC itself was just in its nascent phases]. And WOW opened up its first event in June, 2013 – with just 6 women making it to the top of the Ramadevara betta. {u can imagine the amount of planning, mental make-up and hard work gone into substantiating it!}

We met as strangers in the subsequent events, and from the kind of experience we have had from WOW and BTC – we kept meeting again and again; participating in events; watching WOW grow in terms of organizers, participants and events count - and unbelievably reaching to a milestone of a year’s Birthday! 

Personally, the most beautiful thing about Wowbies has been that  – these are no people born with silver spoons! In fact, these are just among those ordinary women juggling between family, work, academics and various other commitments – and yet dared to take that extra step to make a difference – personally as well as socially. ‘Fun’ doesn’t discriminate people, after all ;)

Kudos to Ajita Madan – the Big brain behind this group, for the wonderful Initiative; and the ones who supported in its inception - Joe, Vini, Swetha and Kiruba. A year, is just the beginning.... Wishing many more such milestones to come.

Thanks to all those who turned ‘nostalgic’ on WOW’s Bday event!! ;) - it was your help and support as well! Thanks to the extended BTC Team, who supported the idea on starting WOW!

Cheers!

Swatz

P.C: WOW Photographer : Ritz 

Proud that my 10th Blog contribution for BTC turned out to be a special one! :) [just the way my 10th trek was (first as an organizer!) :P]

Written By       : Swathi Iyer

Main Blog        : Out of the Box

Organized By   : Ajita Madan

Date of event   : 1st June, 2014

Members Count:39

Place               : Ramanagara