Offsite event- Snowlion Estate, Pontasahib, 50 km from Dehradun

Friday, November 5 2004-
22 of us reached New Delhi Railway station at 6 am and boarded the Dehradun Shatabdi. We breezed through with Antakshari and then got onto a bus which took us to Major Uban's farmhouse. After we settled in our rooms which were named after Rudyard Kipling's characters like Mowgli and Bhalu, Destination Outdoors conducted team building games which would alert us on alternative, out-of-the-box
thinking.
Starting to introduce ourselves, we were clubbed in pairs and each would tell the other a little about themselves, what they would change if they were the CEO of the
company, an inanimate object one would relate with and the most embarassing moment of their lives. This would then be shared with the entire group.

The games that made up the experiential learning were-
1. Blind Intent- Giving instructions to team-mates to set up a tent. The team mates are blind-folded.
2. Moving blind folder team members into a 'pen' by working out calls and sounds for movement.
3. Australian planks- Moving from point a to b in the shortest possible time with given resources- two logs tied together and four strings. Constraint-Feet shouldn't touch the ground
4. Valley Cross- Totally physical. Moving up a rope from point a to b with the help of a pulley system.
5. All team members line up on one side of a triangle and then move upmarked steps towards the corner by taking a step each together.
6. Tag hunt in the night in a 7 sq km area.
7. Rescue Search- team leaders and sub leaders would be given walkie-talkies to direct their team mates to search for numbered polythene bags; metaphors for 'injured and critically injured people' Other activities-
Bonfire, archery, volleyball, rappling, kayaking and wadding through the river.

Key Learnings: Communicate the objective as clearly and as much as possible to the team; get back to basics once in a while; keep busting assumptions; when the objective is common for the team, split the job in half; learn to carry simple instructions!

From Destination Outdoors: Ashish, Sashi, Tipu, Tony