Ten Degrees of Bliss-A Work-cation in the Hills
A BTS sneak-peak of the Zeta Design team’s work-vacation in late 2021.
WFH 2.0
In September 2021, a bunch of us in the Zeta Design team decided that it was time for a new adventure. Thirteen of us decided to pack our bags, carry our laptops, and head over to the hills for a change of scene. After having spent hours on video calls chit-chatting with one another, this was the first time many of us would actually meet in person.
In the design team, we have folks from all over the country. So we split into 2 groups for the travel: Travellers from southern India and those from the north. For myself, and many others I presume, this idea of meeting each other in a chilly hill station, away from home seemed like a truly fanciful experience.
I was so excited before the trip, and thus began my 1-week long saga of packing and repacking for the trip 😂. Side note: Despite carrying multiple layers of woolens, the cold weather made me fall sick multiple times, while some people were comfortable wearing T-shirts 😑!
At the back of my mind, this extreme excitement was also backed by a sliver of anxiety, since this was a large group of new folks. But I can say with conviction that this thought quickly faded away, as soon as the dad jokes and punny-humour started unfolding before me 😂.
Morning rituals
The hunt for good chai
Shortly after we moved into our hostel, it was becoming increasingly clear who all were bitten by the perpetual I’m on vacation FOMO bug. You know, the ones who wake up super early, even after a previous night of parties, and in turn wake up others to further fuel their FOMO. (Side note: If you resonate with that sentence, chances are you are that person 😛. )
Those of us who did fall in this category would take it upon ourselves to go on a ritualistic morning walks for tea and coffee. Since our hostel was in a fairly secluded area, devoid of places to eat, we were perpetually hungry and would scour the area for eateries. That’s when we stumbled upon a small restaurant, with disappointing food but a fantastic view, and with something I had rarely seen in restaurants: A giant trampoline!
Despite the strong views on their tea, dosa and even their fruit bowls 😛, and even though the long walk to the restaurant wasn’t a piece of cake, we would continue eating there for several more days 👻!
The need to be touristy
Aside from the daily food debacle 😛, another striking memory was when we wanted to prove to ourselves how physically fit we really were. So we took a very long detour before returning to the hostel and stumbled onto an abandoned field. Instead of taking in the beauty of the view, in true influencer fashion, we recorded Instagram reels 😂!
Check it out here:
https://www.instagram.com/reel/CUZLArOFmND/
PS- This only took us about 6 attempts to nail, while some of you would call it a fail. 👻
The ‘work’ in workation
Our morning sync-up calls were like no other: With a view overlooking an entire valley. This was also pretty much the only time of the day when there was warm sunlight! So we would ensure that at least a few hours were spent working outside. This momentary enthusiasm slowly faded away when we had to start attending meetings with low internet connectivity. The solution? Huddling in one other’s rooms to hoard on mobile hotspot connections 😛.
Turning into nocturnal Owls
The foodie expeditions
With Swiggy and Zomato being unpopular options in the hill station, we spent the first couple of days eating like college students would: By gorging on dangerous amounts of Maggi on a daily basis 😛. To curb this incessant Maggi eating, we began visiting Mall road every evening to have a more balanced dinner 😂. Here, we came across some amazing north-Indian food and tons of street food options as well. A restaurant called ‘Urban Turban’ turned out to be a personal favorite.
The game nights
Dinner time was when we would all usually gather together. This was when the infamous segregation of vegetarians and non-vegetarians would happen, which was usually accompanied by spirited debates on why each food type was better.
From playing snakes and ladders on giant table-sized boards to chess, one of the all-time favorites was a card game called Would you rather? If anyone chose not to answer a question, they had to do a dare that was decided on by the group. We used this as a golden opportunity to make folks do bizarre things, like giving them full-blown makeovers 😛.
The all-night-life story
Card games would slowly turn into post-dinner chit-chatting, which would eventually turn into 7 hour-long talks 😄. Every night we would nominate someone to take the floor and spend the next few hours sharing random tit-bits about their life. Similar to a student-teacher setup, the non-speakers would take a seat and ask insightful questions, most of which were unrelated to the plot of the story 👻. This became a nightly ritual where we would nag one another to spill the tea 😛!
Best moments happen when they’re unplanned
Before the trip, I had made a lot of plans on things I wanted to do during the trip: Running, trekking, doing yoga and riding bikes were some of the many activities on the list. I can confidently say, that none of this were accomplished by us 😂.
( But hey, some of us did end up meditating and feeling like Monks in the mountains. 😛 ) The day we decided to collectively work as a production team for 3 hours, just to shoot 5 seconds of a slow-mo reel was another incredible day 😂, and totally not a waste of time 😛.
The most fun happened when spur-of-the-moment plans were made. From celebrating our youngest teammate’s birthday and giving each other manicures and facials, to cooking experiments that went south, the trip was easily one of my favorite memories from 2021.
Living together really opened the doors (literally, because we’d open our doors and see each other’s faces first thing in the morning 😂) for us to bond, travel, and understand each other’s personality quirks and bizarre habits. All of this is now used as insider data which we use to pull each other’s legs with!
This trip was transformative and was easily one of the most fun experiences I had encountered all year long. As a newbie in the team, who had never gone on a work trip with colleagues before, I’m so glad I stepped out of my comfort zone and went on this trip with these incredibly fun folks.
A big thank you to Ramakrishna V, Kshitij Pandey & Aakansha Menon for the feedback and illustrations for the blog!
