December is a called as a holiday month as a year comes to an end while we still wait for another one to begin! it’s that time of the year where the weather is perfect for a vacation with family and friends. Like every year this time too we were planning to visit a nice place for a 2-3 day vacation with friends. And as always there were multiple places running through each of our minds daily with long-running debates with each other.

Until a day when we got a call from Rotary club of Panchgani inviting us to be a part of their “I love Panchgani” festival in the 1st week of December. What could have we asked for more it was a bumper offer for us as we were already planning to have a small vacation during that time and what could be better to visit a lovely hill station like Panchgani and flying kite. This awesome place is famous for its serene calm hills, and natural scenic beauty and its best to visit it during winters.

The Rotary Club of Panchgani got in touch with us through our website  asking us to collaborate with them and do something special for the I love Panchgani festival. We were glad to grab this opportunity of getting to work with them so we started to work on it. Apart from day flying, we decided to do some Aerial photography this time. Our idea of Aerial photography would elevate their Panchgani festival. Our focus area was to make sure that people who come to the event are enjoying the festival in high spirits. Also, we were to make sure that they witness a different experience this time than the usual stuff. Once the deal was finalized we began preparing our kites by making few modifications to them so that they are all set to roar the sky.

The event was scheduled on 2nd December 2017 but we were invited a day before the event to Panchgani for site seeing and other activities.On the 1st early morning, we reached Panchgani where we were provided 2 rooms in a luxury hotel by the organizers. We freshened up quickly and then set out for sightseeing throughout the day. By afternoon we were able to cover Kate’s Point, Parsi Point and Dhoom dam where we enjoyed the scenic beauty of the hills and did some boating, in afternoon we stopped by at a dhabha for lunch where we hogged on to the authentic Parsi food.

The quality of food and taste was just yummm! Post lunch we did some shopping in Panchgani market where we bought some delicious strawberries, raspberries, figs and freshly baked fruity biscuits from a popular bakery in the market. After that to view the beautiful sunset we went to Sydney point and called off the day after dinner at our hotel.

Next day morning we set out to the “Table land” which is again a popular tourist spot and also the venue of our event. The place was all decorated with simple yet colorful paper arts etc. The organizers of the event had planned special events for kids and elders. The kids had a cycle-a-thon and for adults, it was a small marathon which kicked started of in the early hours of the morning. There was huge crowd present with localities and tourists flocking the place. We started flying kites from around 9 AM as the climate was just superb to miss the opportunity. One after the other we set out our gigantic kites up into the sky which pulled in crowds attention as we had expected.

People gathered around us and began to click pictures with our kites.Some of them even tried their hands at flying those huge kites under our guidance. We were obliged by the compliments we got from the organizers and event attendees. Apart from these activities, there were stalls put up by the localities selling fresh fruit specialties like jams, crushes, fresh juices, handicrafts and Kolhapuri stalls etc. We bought for us some handicrafts and fruit crushes as a sweet memory from the event. Post the event closure we had a final dinner with the organizing team along with lovely pictures and memories to take back.

As we packed our stuff to go back home. Organizers came to us to give us a small token of appreciation from the event. The organizing team was all praises for our kite showcase which we did throughout the event and were keenly looking forward to doing other events with us. This was a very happy moment for our team as our hard work had paid off well. We drove back by car to Mumbai taking with us a fresh bunch of memories and fun which will stay with us forever.