AneStory

After the disappointment of food, group was back in business of running around the roads, rather on bikes and seeing scenes. At each stop, Hera would end up noticing the girl who got away, and feel remorse. Saw her for last time, as the sun went down, and this time, dinner was done in middle of town, in a well recognized hotel.

Some time was spent in shopping nothing, and then a walk in to lodge for an early sleep. No noise, no late night antakshari, nothing, but just few snores. Nice sound sleep is what was required.

At 1:00 AM, Hera wakes up. Starts boiler, brushes teeth, takes a bath, and gets ready. When he was done with all, looks around to find everyone still asleep. But instead of waking up others, for once Hera looks at a watch, and its only 2:30 AM. Thinks it’s too early to wake anyone up, so searches around for Monk's cell phone, to play game.

At first he checks all pants that had been hung, dropping all to floor, and then looks around and in bags, on shelves, unpacking everything, and packing everything haphazardly. It was time to check beds, and there it was, near Monk's head. And at end of all this exercise it was 3:30, only 30 minutes of gaming: Snake, was what he got.

As quietly as Hera had carried out search operation, within 3 minutes of playing game, had woken up all others. 3 minutes meant 3 deaths in the game, which meant 3 shrieks. And once everyone woke up, saw watch and asked Hera to go out. And Hera did.

At about 4:00, Hera was roaming around the main road, and there he learned about a place, which served Strawberry, milk shakes and fresh strawberries also. Hence it was mission strawberries now.

So back to lodge and he found all ready, repacked, ready to go for strawberries and then back to home. Picnic was fast coming to an end. So back on bike at about 8:00 in morning, after a short walk around the main road, and a stint of window shopping, checking out raspberry and some other unconventional fruits, buying a pack of each. After that it was last stop at strawberry farm.

At strawberry farm, everyone forgot about calories, all of them had two or more servings of milkshakes and many bites of strawberries, and many boxes packed, and lots of fun, as time passed it was decided to have lunch there itself, and as more time passed it was evening 6:00 PM, and now it was too urgent to get moving, for girls had deadline of 8:00 PM, to meet.

Hence, it was decided that it’s going to be 2 hours to make it back, 120 KMs of ghat to be crossed in 120 minutes. Teep carried the bags, while Hera was accompanied by Duds, and as they got back on to road, Hera stayed with the pack at start, but Duds got uneasy about time, and Hera speeded up a notch, and for once all followed suit.

A notch, a notch more, a notch furthermore, and they were flying at 100 KMs per hour. And after an hour they were well ahead of half way mark, and it was decided to have some tea, for it had suddenly become cold. And in a somewhat odd way, Taklya started off early, and because he did, so did Vee. And because of that Hera had to get going, for Duds lived at same place as Vee, and both were supposed to make it at same time. But for once Hera found it very difficult to catch up, and also found out that others had been left behind.