Monday 14 October 2013

All the excitement during our trip to India

I count days to my trip to India every year as I get to see my parents, sister and rest of the family in Delhi. I crave home cooked Indian food and all the amazing mithai (Indian dessert). Its a trip during which I feel completely relaxed, blissful and at home! I love my family and miss them tremendously when Im in Canada.

This trip as every other visit to India was full of great food, meeting relatives and chilling out with my sister's friends (not my own friends lol!). But there were also some other non-usual events.

The biggest news of all, after dating for about 6 years, Parichit and I got engaged!!
People reactions: Finally! 
Family reaction: Its official!
Our reaction: Ah crap. It's official!

The great part about the engagement was that it was the day before my birthday (so a great bday gift). My birthday was celebrated with another event - Parichit and I participated in our first obstacle race- Devil's Circuit. Now as someone who is a runner and regularly goes to the gym for strengthening and conditioning, I expected the race to be difficult but doable. Little did I know what sort of hurt was in store for me.
The race was a 5 km run with around 15 obstacles in between. And these obstacles were extremely hard. It included some pretty long jumps over ditches, climbing up and down 8 ft walls, climbing up hanging ropes etc. The sheer number of people trying to complete an obstacle itself made the obstacle harder. Plus I was glad to be able to keep down all the food we ate during last night's engagement party.


Note to self: doing an obstacle race without any sort of preparation, the morning after an engagement party on 4 hours of sleep isn't the best idea we've had.


 Nevertheless we had a great time, lots of fun, my parents and Parichit's brother and sister-in-law were cheering for us and were a great support. I definitely tested our grit and toughness. The race ended with third place for both of us and we won our families a TV as a prize!!



 And of course there was some fame involved as well! (Got my name mentioned in the national newpaper!!)


Apart from the engagement, I also had my Indian racing debut in a Breast Cancer awareness running race - Pinkathon. I was pleased to see such a well organized event in Delhi, and got to meet my childhood crush Milind Soman (Bollywood actor, model) and the beautiful Gul Panag ( Bollywood actress, former Miss India). It was great to see celebrities become part of such great charity event/race.
I was expecting to do well in the 5 km race but given the fact that my racing season was technically over and I was eating/slacking off like a pig, I did very well - I came first! During the entire run through Delhi roads, I saw people either cheering for me or staring with the with expression thinking: "What is this girl doing running in the middle of the road?!". A lot of them didn't know about this race and it seemed like some of the traffic didn't know about it either! A bus was literally chasing behind me honking at me to get off the road and my dad (spectator) yelling at me to watch out and yelling curses at the bus driver. And when I did get scared and move towards the pedestrian path, to my bad luck it turned out to be the bus stop with me stuck between the bus and people getting on it. I think it must have made an extremely funny sight.
Now in most other races when you get a podium spot you mostly get a medal, congratulations and maybe a modest prize. But here in India, things are done big - so not only did I get my medal, congratulations from celebrities, I also received a giant trophy, Adidas running shoes, VLCC health and beauty package, a Suunto GPS multisport watch, a hotel gift voucher along with 15 seconds of fame on TV (via an interview) and several newspaper articles.




I felt like a famous person!!!


But the best part of the race is that my mom, sister, Parichit's mom and sister-in-law also participated in this event. It was great to see the ladies in the family become a part of this and do something they had never done before! Kudos to them!



Apart from all the fame, engagement celebration and birthday bash, the trip also had some usual funny and touching moments with the family.




I miss my parents and sister! Can't wait to see them again .

2 comments:

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    1. Thanks for your kind words and visiting our blog!

      We've been silent for a while but really busy with other stuff. We'll post a catch up note soon!

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