My intern was starting from 23rd May, my days at Hyderabad(home) were about to end, I had a flight on 22nd Morning at 5:50am(such an odd-time maybe coz Pune airport doesn’t handle a lot of traffic, is pretty small and very few hyd-pune flights exist). The week was mostly spent at my relative’s places, whom I had visited after a long time. We(Hyderabad interns from IITB and me) had planned for a trip to rfc the previous week.
I had to look after my travel to and from rfc, since it operates buses that run through city, it wasn’t an issue, I had to catch one from Koti near Gokul chat at 8:25am. All my friends were based out of Gachibowli, a group of 12 started off from there at about 7am. They reached rfc at 9:20 and I came in 10mins later.
There were two options in the tickets the standard one was at INR 1100, but an adventure rides added pack was worth INR 1600, we chose the latter. Rfc is huge, about 1666 acres as per one Guinness book record declaration that I saw inside, to go from one place to another we had to catch buses. We started off with a bus tour, then went to a ramayan themed set, then to a generic railway station set. Then came in parks, he said there we 22 of them, well I could see only one.
Then they were different shows/places that we attended as follows:-
- Wild west(which we could see only the last 5mins) it’s looked like a good one..don’t miss this if you go to rfc.
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A beautiful bird, the colors on it’s beak at first looked artificial Butterfly park then Bird park…in the former maybe 4-5 species of them, I expected a lot more. The latter felt like visiting a zoo, I felt like I was at the Mysore counterpart which too had a good collection of birds.
- Spirit of Ramoji(a dance/magic show.. honestly speaking IITB’s dance shows like AIDS were much better than these performances by “professionals”)
- Space Yatra
A flamingo sleeping on one leg ..The only thing that I felt worth spending my time on. First time experience on “higher” dimensional movies..in here seating which gave the experience(in parts) of the movie which was a spaceship’s journey through well…space.
- Movie making…We waited in line for about 20-25mins. This showed the green screen shooting(live), sound mixing(live) and editing stages of a movie. Not worth the hype created, got to learn how they fake sounds for rain, wind etc.
- Toy Train through landscapes…The train was too slow, kids would have found it cool but not us, my roomie almost slept. The wait was not worth it as above.
Till now I didn’t find anything worth INR 1100 that we paid for,most of above things didn’t appeal to us. It was hot, we were tired and I was thinking that staying at home would have been much better, it wouldn’t have made a big hole in my pocket for one. At 4pm we decided to go for the adventure part that we had paid for. As it turned out this 500 that we paid was much more than “fun” what an rfc standard ticket had to offer.
We had chosen the following 3 activities, all were first-timers for me.
1.Zip line
We were into our gears, it was a 120m ride. The height of the rope was about 5-6 floors, it was scary at first. A fall would be fatal, you wouldn’t die but could break a lot of bones. I attached my rollers to the line, told the instructor that I would take a minute, took 2-3 deep breaths, sat on the strap-gear, tightly held my rope connecting the rollers and off he pushed, it was a 30-40 second ride, the fear was only in the first 5, you get the guts to set you hands free after 5s.
2. High rope course
A course with 11 obstacles, ie 11 different types of rope-ways/pathways that you had to walk on, the first one was a thin rope, the second one was a wobbly woollen block, these were the only scary ones, maybe coz they were the starting points, then it was all business as usual. Since I was wearing shorts and I am quite heavy, the net tunnel part hurt my knees to the point of bleeding.
3.Net course
A 21 obstacle course, a few of which I couldn’t do(esp rock climbing). I went in first on this one, only one person was able to be in an “obstacle path” and 2 at platforms in between, so I happened to be the bottleneck. Some people were yelling and telling me to drop it off and walk on the net, well it’s easy to cross some paths if you know the knack, for example in the log path, I didn’t know that you should keep one foot on a log at a time, if you put two, you keep on swinging, while which it’s difficult to step on the next one. No one showed enthu(siasm) or wanted to get in first, if “they” were so bothered about me being “slow” why send me in first.
All in all, it was a great experience, to try out new activities that initially send a shiver down your spine.
We had a few thrill rides after, the ranger ride that we took twice and reminded me of a similar one at Essel world. It was 7pm by now and everyone was enervated. Some of us slept the benches, whilst other were making dinner plans. No one had enthu left to explore, we simply wanted to go home and sleep.
At 730pm we
caught the bus that would take us back to the entrance, in the first 10 mins of the ride we realised that the main showcase of rfc is the night decorations, it was alluring. It looked like the whole area was dressed up for a marriage, the fountations, the parks and the palaces looked poles apart from their day-time counterparts. An on-foot tour would be worth but our bodies had limits which we had to accept.
I bid farewell to all friends, a few hugs, let’s meet after 8 weeks(and “if you are alive” clause was added by some to this). I was tired and drowsy but couldn’t sleep in the bus, as the driver said that he would only call the stop’s name once. I finally reached Koti at 930pm where in my dad picked me up, and by 10pm, it was home sweet home.
iamonlyhuman 