Summer camp

During my Summer holidays, the best place to go to is someplace cold. One of the best places to go to in India, during the Summer is a hill station. This Summer, I am going to Kodaikanal! But let us just call Kodaikanal, Kodai.

The cool and misty weather, the scenic beauty of the rolling hills and the wooded forest of Kodaikanal and its surroundings will mesmerise any visitor throughout the year.

This time in Kodai, I will not be going there to chill. I am going to a fitness camp. The gym hosts it we go to, SimpleSTRONG. They hosted this camp just for kids from May 9th to 12th. The camp consisted of 4 fun filled days where we learned new skills and alongside that had fun.

The camp was situated near The Fairyfalls. We were staying at a huge white house, rimmed with red. There was a lot of greenery, flowers and trees. There was a big lawn as well. There was a long ramp that seemed never ending. We used to run up and down the steep ramp during our warm up sessions.

On the first day we did a lot of activities. But it was mostly about getting to know each other.

First, we had some Ice Breaker activities like playing Jenga , Uno , Codenames , Drawing , and Painting. There were a lot of materials for drawing and painting. They were stocked up with paints , pencils , highlighters , and all kinds of stationary.

We all did many activities together, until we knew each other really well . After that we had lunch. The lunch , had a lot of protein and was scrumptious. I loved it.

They let us play games like throw ball and cricket outside for a while . It was fun playing with other kids of different age groups. After that we went to the lake . They had planned to get us some delicious ice cream. But unfortunately, the only flavours were chikkoo, watermelon and orange. Very few kids were brave enough to try it , but they weren’t a big fan of it. So much for their bravery!

Then, we strolled around the lake, chattering around, until we reached the boat house, where we could go for boat rides. We rented a paddle boat. As children , we wanted some action. So we were a teensy bit bored… Seeing that our coaches engaged us with a logic puzzle, namely The Green Glass door. He gave us a bucketload of examples, that confused us more. Here are some examples:

The moon can go in but the sun can’t.

A kitten can go in but a cat can’t.

Food can go in but a burger can’t.

I can give you countless more examples , because there is no limit to the examples of the question. The goal of this question is to find the logic of why some things can go in but others can’t go through the door. Has this question stumped you?

Well let me tell you the answer. Look closely at the letters of the word Green Glass Door. Do you see something common in all the words? All the words have double letters in a row. So any word like that can go through the door and the rest can’t. Now do you understand?

Similar to this the coaches taught us two other games called Umbrella and Darkmagic.

The boat ride was cool. At that time the fountain wasn’t on, so we couldn’t get splashed by the water. But we didn’t mind because we could see all the hidden parts of a fountain.

After the boat ride, we went back to the camp. There we munched on a little snack, and we learned some new skills and perfected our handstands. I am familiar with doing handstands but I was a little worried that I wouldn’t be able to do it well. But surprisingly, after some wall walks, and wall support, I was able to do it without any support.

After all that, we ended our day with that. I feel like they had planned some fun activity for the night but everyone was too tired, to do it. So we didn’t do anything that night.

The next day we woke up bright and early. We were very excited! Do you know why? We were going for a trek!! We had our breakfast really fast and eagerly waited. We went to the gates of one of the best resorts in Kodai, Tamara to start our trek. We went through what we thought looked like the Secret Garden.

Laden with a vast number of trees, of different kinds. Colourful, unique flowers which I have never seen before. The guide, explained the difference and pointed out some interesting plants, trees and flowers. After that he took us to the place where the trek was supposed to happen. For the first few seconds, we were freaked out. But, we just couldn’t help but be excited too! What is more fun than an adventure?? We had to trek from Altaf cafe to the Dolphin’s nose.

We hopped around the rocky terrain, trying not to slip. The guide was pretty fast he reached the viewpoint way before us. After a while we got the hang of it. We found out which rock to step on and which was the right pace was.

Once we reached the view point, the coaches got us juices like lemonade and orangeade. It was delicious. They refuelled us up and asked us whether we wanted to go to the dolphin nose view point. We were given a choice because it was going to be a hard way down. Three other kids and I stayed back because we felt like we would prefer to save up our energy for the way back up. A coach stayed with us and played some games with us.

It felt like a billion years had passed when they came back up. We decided to go back up faster, so that we can go back to rest. On the way back, we did balloon shooting, some kids were really good at it. But me on the other hand, not so much. We also saw one very interesting thing while coming back! We saw a rainbow circle around the sun. How rare is that? My mom has seen it only once is her life! After all that fun we went back home and played some games. After lunch we played throw ball and cricket, until it started raining. So we came back in. We soon learnt that we were going to have a treasure hunt!

After the rain stopped, the treasure hunt started. There were three teams. Pink, blue and yellow. They had wristbands in the colour of the team we were in. I was in the pink team. All teams were equal and fair so there was no complaining. All the clues were fun and not only required logic and smartness but also skills. In the end, my team’s handwork paid off! We won the treasure hunt!

We took a little snack break, having bread and jam. After that we reported to the lawn for a session of Silambam. We were only going to learn the basics of course. Turns out that one of our coaches was a pro at Silambam. It was a little hard at first, but I got it after some practice. That goes to say “ Practice makes Perfect”.

That day, after Silambam, we freshened up and eagerly went and sat on the couch. Know why? Know why? Because it was, drumroll please! DUM DUM DUM! Movie night! Maximum votes were for the movie Home Alone. The coaches got popcorn, Pringles, and ice cream from Baskin Robins this time, so that there will be better flavours and more. It was delicious. Just perfect.

We binge watched till 11: 30pm. But I slept pretty late because, I am a big CSK fan. So I was watching the IPL match, CSK vs GT with the other coaches who followed IPL.

The next day we went to the Kodaikanal Solar Observatory. Their main focus was the sun and they have been researching it for more than 125 years. They have over 100 years data of the sun. It was in this Observatory, the Evershed Effect was found by Evershed. He discovered that there is movement of gases around the blackspot of the sun that forms the ever shed effect. We saw the 4th and 5th layer of the sun through the telescopes.It was really cool.

After one point it got too hot. We got cranky and tired. So we left the observatory and came back to the house. We got some rest and then played a small cricket TEST Match. Afterwards, we were going to be having a Kids Olympics! We had a large healthy meal and rested for a bit. We took every rain opportunity to take rest. So that we could be more fresh and agile for the Kids Olympics.

After about a century or so, the Kids Olympics commenced! There were 2 teams. Blue and White. I was in White team! The activities were nothing like we expected. They were fun yet challenging activities. There was a, frisbee competition, a dead hang competition, a running competition where we ran up the slope, a volleyball championship, a tug of war championship and a fun game to end it. We played a game no one knows about. It was called Straw Your Head. We had to choose one players hair where we will stick as many straws that we can. Blue team got 45 straws and my team, the white team got 56 straws. Both teams were on tie. But thankfully we had individual championships to win. Each individual championship won, would give 2 extra points to your team. I got the individual championship for volleyball. At the end, Blue team won by 5 points. White team had 25 points but Blue team had 30 points. Anyways all that matters is that we have to have fun and that we have to try our best. The Kids Olympics was immense fun, and I am really glad that the coaches hosted it.

That night we had a BARBECUE NIGHT! Some kids helped out with the barbecue. I helped them out with the smores. There was a bonfire that lit up the lawn really well. The smores were amazing except we forgot one important thing, crackers. But we managed without it. We used chocolate as crackers instead. More the chocolate, the better anyways!

That night we stayed up late.. we played games and were snacking. We also pranked each other and had fun.

The next day was the last and final day and the coaches had something special planned for us as a surprise. They were taking us to The Wild Warrior Off Road Race! Since we were part of the Juniors camp, they had a special race just for us kids. It was 2 miles run. It took a lot of energy and it was tough but at the end it all paid off as we had a drink and some candy. Some delicious breakfast too!

After that was the fun part. After some pictures and rest we left from there. As a surprise, the coaches took us to a waterfall. They let us wade into the water. At first it was calm and composed. But that soon changed! Soon there was a wild racket in the water and everyone splashing water on each other and yelling. But it ended all too soon as it started raining. We left all drenched and shivering as we went back to the house, for a lovely hot shower.

We played cricket for a while but all too soon we had to go home. This was the end of camp. My parents came to pick me up. I will never forget this experience ever and I have made a bunch of new friends!