Lets play --the second innings

Vacation ----yes a much needed luxury in the hectic life schedule we follow these days .

But vacations need transportation---tickets -----and that needs PLANNING  --which again is something very difficult specially if you have a family where everyone is employed in different professions and where their are two kids studying in different schools because no two people have an off together everyone has his/her own time table .

So when a sudden weekend saw that everyone had holidays coinciding with each other we decided to make use of this sudden good luck and go for a vacation ---BUT where ???? this sudden good luck wouldn't procure tickets for us nor would it get us bookings at a resort at such short notice --had we become members of Club Mahindra  some of our problems would have been solved but the fact was that we hadn't taken a membership when the offer had come our way.

 We want to go somewhere which will let us relax in the lap of nature ---more so because the children  are  with us and these modern kids are so unlucky when it comes to watching and  feeling and enjoying the bounties of mother nature ----all they get to see are pictures on TV or images on google so we want  to make them spend sometime among the beauties of natural surroundings .

So now the question is  ---Jaye toh jaye kahaan ? '

 I am suddenly reminded  of my brother --he has  always been asking us to visit his holiday home/ farm house in the outskirts of Pench National Park now a tiger reserve too  where  we used to go so often in our young days  and I am also reminded of a vacation we had with him at this  farm house when my kids were small.  I am uploading some pictures here which belong to that vacation. He had accompanied us on this particular holiday and we had had lots of fun the kids had simply loved it all -- there were two cars and an assortment of 10 people ranging from 3 years to 66 years --and mind you all young and no oldies, all absolutely fit every one of us used to go for early morning jogs  do  Pranayam and then used to take  nimbu pani --so that should make you all understand how fit we all must have been my family , my brother's family and my parents  .

Well then two cars and 10  people had  started  early in the morning --had had  breakfast of kachori , samosa and chai at a roadside dhaba ,reached the  destination in about 2 hours My brother had christened the farm house   SECOND INNINGS meaning Life's second innings and  had dedicated it to my parents  ---that time we were still playing our first innings but this time . We have entered the second innings so I want to replay the previous  innings and enjoy before life takes a fast forward and the cassette gets over .

 second innings

The above photographs remind us of the lovely time we gave the kids they learnt and saw so many things spent two full days in the lap of mother nature ---seeing mangoes growing on trees and eating them too , seeing farms , and the herd of cows ,  a real bird house   , a pair of crows .It was a real experience and many many times better and more exciting than a visit to a garden or park which is closest to nature that children in cities can  get to . Seeing monkeys sitting under a tree or dears roaming in the open is so different from  watching them in a  zoo . Why ? even the exhilarating experience of getting up in the morning is so different from the one we have in our air conditioned bedrooms .

Here are a few more photographs --which make me want to go back and spend at least a week and the next generation kids are eager too.

                               
                           
       



                                            



The kids are so excited about the holidays  they haven't stopped talking about it --These old photographs have given them so much to look forward to. What with the cows and the crows and the dears and the monkey and the lovely makeshift barbecue on the terrace. They are so busy showing off to their friends that they will be going to a Jungle Safari  ( the older one has a lesson about Pench Reserve forest in his curriculum so .....)  .

We too feel  exonerated of the guilt of  taking the kids to shopping malls , and multiplexes .And we know it will be   an absolutely novel experience for the children to see dears and monkeys and tigers out in the open and not inside the bars of a cage in  a  Zoo.--just as it was for my kids . My grandchildren will now relish and enjoy what their parents had and we, my hubby and I and my brother and his wife will experience the same pleasures that my parents had enjoyed as grandparents .

This I know would  be  a lovely  vacation and it will provide us with a "breath of fresh" air both literally and metaphorically .




this is my entry for the Teddy Travelogues contest on indiblogger

the link being
http://membership.clubmahindra.com/TeddyTravelogues/index.html.

All pictures taken are from my personal collection and the people shown are my family members.