Temptation Crossing [Part 2 of the Part 2 of the Goa Mini Series]

I sit down to write this after lunch. It has not been a good day till now. Maid didn’t come last night so had to order food. Woke up at 5:45 to realize all plates and glasses were used so had to wash some. Made my usual double egg fry only to realise no Bai meant no Paratha to eat it with. Gah! Had it with bacon and ham. Decided to carry dinner leftover for lunch instead of my usual super sandwich. Got out and it was raining hard. Had to wait for 20 minutes in the rain for the bus. Got the seat opposite the door so every time I tried to doze off a spray of water on my face would wake me up. Got done with gym only to realise I was walking like someone who just got hip replacement done. Lunch wasn’t too bad except I am still hungry after lunch and ice-cream. End of rant.

Now stop wondering WTF all that had to do with Goa as the answer is in your head, nothing at all. Moving on, I had left you guys a carrot called Temptation Crossing dangling in my last post. Well its time you had your carrot and ate it too. Don’t get too happy Bunny Singh. So post the train travel, workshops, projects and the food breaks in between our body, mind and soul all were in mutual agreement that it was time to hit the bed and get some sweet sweet sleep that we hadn’t seen in almost 2 days.

Apparently the P******m management thought it was more fun to torture us a bit more. And from that idea was born the Temptation Crossing. Initially when we heard about TC all of us came up with our own variations of what TC could be. I was too fucking tired and brain refused to bother itself with WTF TC was. Turned out TC was a weird game. A very very weird game.

TC consisted of 3 stages. First and foremost the ground was not ground, it was lava. Yes that red hot thing that earth sneezes out once in a while. So basically you couldn’t touch the ground or you were instantly dead. In the first stage every team had to cover the distance between 2 checkpoints, traveling through the lava, using 8 pieces of plywood about the size of Shaq O’Neill’s right shoe each. Our vice captain went first and died as expected. Next up was a guy whose initial rhyme with WHY so Ill call him WHY. So WHY, who is a well built man, managed to cross the first part. Now the thing is once you make it to a checkpoint and back then you can walk through lava to help your team mates. Another one of those WTF rules that this game was full of. So WHY decided why waste time in getting people to cross over with the planks and shit. He simply carried all remaining 6 of us, one by one, on his back of course to the check point one. Yes he carried me too, obviously his least burden of us all. I am used to being taken for a ride so why not in the game too. Till then all teams were struggling badly but after they saw this, most teams employed the same strategy to save time.

The second stage involved 3 bricks and 2 planks probably 3 feet long and 6 inches wide. And yes you guessed it, you had to reach the next check point using them. Oh boy it was fun watching all teams struggle with this one. But WHY continued his superhuman, bordering on super zealous, effort and defied the odds, for a man of his size, and finished the part 2 albeit with a lot of labor, pain, sweat and water. But now he was charged up he went straight to part three where you had to walk over a 3 inch wide plank perched over small wall of bricks at each end, then jump in to a box drawn on the floor, then jump in to another box and then hop over the line to finish. WTF? Yes, WTF indeed.

So he finished it and carried us all, shamelessly yours truly too, over the line and we were the first team to finish the temptation crossing. I must say temptation crossing didn’t tempt me at all. It was really stupid. I mean why the hell would I go through all that? I mean if I had go and sit in a bar for 2 hours and not drink, yea that would have been temptation crossing. This was nothing more than Torturous Crossing if you ask me. Poor WHY was in pain for rest of the trip.

After TC I waited for Bunny Singh and Jhayu to get done with their part of TC so we could go out. Finally after ages they got done and I left with them for this place who name is almost a Burrito. Once there we were joined by C and another new joinee L. We gorged on Calamari, Seafood platter, fries, Sorpotel and Beef chilly fry. It was amazing food! C had beer, I and Jhayu sipped on rum’n’coke and Bunny Singh had a glass of very nice vodka with sprite. Later on a lot of P*******mers came there too. We finished food and strolled on the B-E-A-C-H! Hell yea! We found the beach and the sea. Although it was too dark to see much of it but at last we found the proof that we were in Goa indeed.

We reached our camp at 2 am only to find people being tossed in to the pool. The first victim was PTG. When my TL, whom we call Yogi and reminds me of Yogi too, came to throw me in to the pool I chose to carefully remove my watch and wallet and gracefully walk to the pool and jump in voluntarily, in my tshirt and jeans. Soon there were like 8 people and one cell phone in the pool. Around 4 the hotel security came and asked up to leave when I had to walk all the way to my cell dripping with water. I hit the bed at 4:30 knowing I had to be out at 6:30 again.