This year we, me and my wife – along with some of my best friends, welcomed 2014 in the most unique manner. We celebrated New Year’s at Tarkarli – which is some 500 kms away from Pune. Tarkarli is famous adventure water sports – one of the few places in India where you can do scuba diving, and snorkeling. We had already finished doing the water sports and decided on the spur of the moment to hire a boat and celebrate New Year’s eve on a secluded island. Initially, I was a bit apprehensive about doing this as I had never done something like this earlier and was not sure how it would turn out. However, Saurav and my wife, convinced me otherwise and we decided to go ahead with the plan. We got our food and drinks packed, got wood for the bonfire and also got firecrackers. With our stuff all packed, we headed out to accomplish our plan.
As it turned out, the skies were clear- and we got to see plenty of stars something which is a luxury in a city like Mumbai where we have way too much pollution. Under the starry sky, we were in the boat in the middle of the Karli river and not a soul was around us. This was just too good to be true. As we reached our destination, we found that due to high tide the whole island was submerged and it would take atleast another 30-45 mins for the low tide to occur for our island to appear. The same island is used for water sports during the day and we could see the bamboo stands in the middle of the water. It seemed like, we would not able to celebrate on the island after all. The boatman who had accompanied us told us that we can use one of the stands to get the fire going and wait for the low tide. It was around 11:30pm by then. We were in two minds – whether we head back or celebrate in the boat or get down here and wait for the low tide. This is where Saurav and I got down to evaluate the depth of the water and found it to be about knee high. We decided that it was good enough for us to celebrate and decided to get the fire going on one of the stands.
With the fire going, the spirits started flowing and soaring. Come 12am, we started bursting firecrackers and welcomed 2014. This was very different compared to the way I have been celebrating the New Year’s eve. I couldn’t have imagined a better way to bring in the New Year. Thanks to Saurav, Geeta, Tushar and family for making it an awesome evening.
My thoughts...My story 