#FlipkartOutdoors: My first Indiblogger meet



Saturdays are usually days of rest for me. But this Saturday was different. I was excited, curious to know what the day would hold for me. I was happy looking at the agenda for the day. Want to know why? Read on.
Ever since I’ve been living in Bangalore, I’ve always wanted to attend one and I did get that opportunity- #FlipkartOutdoors. This was a meet organized by Indi Blogger in association with Flipkart.
The journey began from the pickup points. The Indi buses were arranged for all of us bloggers from two different places. I reached my pickup point a lot earlier than the scheduled time and it was nice to see few people already there. Biscuits and water and a lot of hellos marked the journey. After a little adventure of travelling in the bus through the narrow roads, we finally reached the Mango Mist resort. And there I saw many of the bloggers whom I’ve always wanted to meet. After a brief introduction about the meet from Anoop, we headed to have some breakfast.
After breakfast we were asked to assemble for a brief overview of Flipkart and the products that we were to try that day. But wait, before that we also had this fun warm up exercises. Mr. Prahlad from Flipkart spoke about the boom in Electronic products and how Internet of things was making its way in different fields. There were 7 brands displaying their products and hence we were divided into 7 teams. My team was headed by Rajiv and it had Ajay (My blog buddy), Rekha, Sneha, Vinay, Deepesh, Farooq, Darpan, Reyhan and Ankit. Meeting new people is always fun especially meeting fellow bloggers and I was lucky to make so many new friends. So as a team we ventured out to know about the different brands and their products that were on display that day. 
Team 7

Being an outdoor meet, the focus was more on products that we could use for sporting activities. With the fitness fad catching up these days, we were given demonstrations of how to keep track of the calories burned the number of steps that we’ve walked and such details using the Samsung Gear 2 and the range of products from Garmin. Our next stop was to visit the stall with the various products for camping from Coleman. We also tried pitching a tent ourselves. We then got view the products from Altec Lansing- waterproof speakers, headphones, earphones and the like. It was interesting to see the water just bounce out of the speakers as the music was played. We viewed the shoes from Red Chief some of which were biodegradable. We then got to know about the Polaroid cube and learned how to take fun videos on the go. The various cameras from Sony, especially the activity cameras that we were all waiting to try out awaited us at another stall. With the knowledge that we had gained about the products, we were now all excited to try them.
Bloggers trying to know about the products
Mango Mist has a lot of fun and adventure activities like rock climbing, archery, bamboo walking, land zorbing, water zorbing, zip lining and the likes. We were given a few coupons to try the various activities. I first tried the Bamboo walking activity. I have a slight fear of heights which I badly wanted to conquer. The moment I stepped on the first bamboo stick, it shook and I started panicking and when it was time to step from one stick to the other, I almost fell! But I managed to get back on and continued walking. I completed the activity! I tried the zip lining and it was fun to slide down holding on to that rope- a mowgli like feeling! The next activity that I tried on Vinay’s suggestion was water zorbing. With the Sony activity cam on my head, running around in the zorb was fun. It made me feel like a kid again and yes it made me increase my step count. Oh wait, did I tell you that I was wearing the Samsung Gear? And in between the activities we were also shooting videos with the Polaroid cube.  
Bamboo walking

All dressed up for Paint ball :P
After all these activities we settled down for sumptuous lunch. Post lunch was going to be fun because we were going to play Paintball. Before we headed to the Paintball arena, it was time for a few prizes; prizes for the tweets that we were tweeting during the event. I was one of the lucky ones and I got a water bottle from Coleman. Paintball was played in teams of 7-8 people and the earlier team of us was broken into two. After putting on the gear for paintball, we were all set to defend our Joker. I was out of the game in some time with paint splattered on my helmet. The game ended in a draw. Yes we were speaking of having peace talks before the game, but then we didn’t. It was funny because the team that we played against was a half of our initial team. After drinking a refreshing mocktail, we were back in the Indi buses to drop us back to our respective drop off points.
My first blogger meet was fun. I enjoyed every bit of it. I got to meet Soumya, Ajay, Sid, Vinay Ravindranath, Sachin, Pariknitha and a lot of other blogger friends. From getting to try cool gadgets to trying out some adventure activities, from meeting new bloggers and making friends with them to actually meeting the people whose blogs I’ve been following for some time now, it was a wonderful experience. The arrangements were perfect. The buses were on time, the activities happened on time, the place was good. Thank you Indi blogger and Flipkart for such a wonderful experience. I’m glad I made it to this meet. Looking forward to attend a lot more meets like this.

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