My last trip was a trek to the Lohgarh Fort. On the top of a hill in a place about 15 kms from Lonavala, this beautiful fort was built by Shivaji and was considered to be impregnable in its time. Now I know why.
The trip was organized by Soni, the head instrutor at the gym my friend Shashank goes to. Shashank and I have been going on such treks for about 3-4 months now. Our first trip together was a night trek to the hill which looked like a thumb. The view from the top of the hill was amazing in the early morning sun. Sadly we did not have a camera to capture the beauty. Anyways, this time we were prepared. Shashank's new moto razr can take really good pics.
We had to reach the gym early morning at 6:15 on Sunday. I stayed over at Shashank's place saturday night so that we could reach the gym early. Even with our best efforts we could manage to reach the place at around 6:40. But to our surprise only half the people had come till then. I met 3 gym instructors. Soni, the main instructor, with a pefectly built body was very stylish. He had his wife and cute little daughter coming in as well. Deepak was a dark bull kind of a guy. He came with another lady (forgot her name) say lady of deepak. She had a different kind of a face but was very bubbly and street smart. The third instructor was lanky and had a girl friend stowed in as well which I came to find out later. His girl friend was small and dark, but with a deadly figure and walk.
Other than these people there were 3 more guys and 2 more girls. One was a fatty (motu) who had a car of his own, which was used along with the Tavera for transportation. Motu had a huge bag of his own stowed away in his car which had almost everything, including a huge umbrella. Then there was one guy who is doing hotel management somewhere in cochin and is here in Mumbai on a training. Dont know much about the third guy, because he was hardly noticeable. But found out towards mid of the journey that he also could be charming. So lets call him Mr Charming. Now out of the two remaining ladies one was a perfect match for motu (Moti) except for her colour which was atleast 4 shades darker than motu. But later we find out that dark or light doesn't matter much when you have comparable weights. The last lady was a slim girl who kept giving glances to me. I found out towards the end of the journey that she has been doing this with Shashank as well. Lets call her Miss Glance.
So we started on our journey in the Tavera and the Zen, after a long wait and a cup of tea, at around 8:30. There were just one too many people to fit into these two vehicles,
but somehow we managed. Moti, Deepak and Lady of Deepak cramped into the back cabin, with Moti occupying one full seat and Deepak and his lady sharing what was meant for only two buttocks by somehow keeping three. As the journey started, Moti who was later rechristened as Radio Mirchi started abusing our ears using her mouth. And slowly everyone joined in in the masti. Looking at the enthusiasm in the crowd and the way they all mixed up, it was difficult for me to grasp the limit of dearthness of my societal skills. Shashank probably would come in a close second after me if we were to be ranked according to our pathetic societal skills inside the Tavera.So after much hullabaloo we finally managed to reach a place midway where we were allowed to rest our lower abdomens and give some work to the upper abdomens. I mean we halted at a petrol pump cum food court. Took some snaps, talked to near and dear ones and then restarted on our journey.
