The Eye Of The Tiger – Team Travels in Tadoba

A company’s success is incomplete unless shared and celebrated with its employees. Like most, I too believe that it’s the employees that make a company, especially a startup.

It’s been a special start to our journey as Crestere and to celebrate that, it was absolutely fitting that we shared a special few days together as a team.

A retreat to the national park Tadoba, near Chandrapur, Maharashtra, was planned. The motive of the outing was not just to celebrate but also to socialize and build a bond outside the confines of the office.

Socializing outside the office environment helps nurture the bond between colleagues and I was glad to see my team bonding out in the wild.

I feel that when you are outside the office, you tend to open up and that’s exactly what happened with our team. People opened up about various aspects of their lives.

Some even went on to share their deepest thoughts that would have never come forth in the official setting. Everybody had some interesting stories to share.

The candid conversations helped in knowing each other better and it is essential to know whom you are working with. Knowing your team member’s values, motivations and likes or dislikes plays a vital role in working together as a successful team.

This was the first occasion when the team traveled out for four days. The contented faces and endless fun clearly showed how fruitful the outing had been.

There were team members who were visiting a wildlife sanctuary for the first time and they couldn’t have had a better first experience.

We sighted eight tigers during our four safaris and this made the trip a definite success.

The most interesting sighting happened in the restricted area of the safari where we spotted Matkasur, a celebrity tiger, enjoying itself in a pond.

Later in the evening, we learned that ours was the only group to sight Matkasur that day.

The trip wasn’t just fun. Each of us returned with new learning experiences especially about patience bearing sweet fruit in due course of time.

The team experienced this while chasing the footprints of a tiger. The long tracking drive eventually led us to the sighting of a beautiful and ferocious tigress – Hirdi.

During our second safari, we roamed for about four hours without any spotting. Crestfallen, we were returning to our resort with sad faces when suddenly a streak of tigers was sighted walking on the road in front of our vehicle.

Our happiness knew no bounds. The cutest part of that streak was the cubs trailing along with their mother.

We spent days roaming in the safari spotting animals, capturing them in our cameras and nights playing card games and sharing life experiences.

Seeing my team letting their hair down and enjoying themselves gave me immense pleasure.

The motive of the trip was completely achieved. The team bonded over tiger sightings, food, games and jokes.

All in all, the first-year celebrations began and ended with a memorable blast.

With good memories of the last year, we plan to move forward to even bigger and better goals in the coming year. And then it may well be off to more tigers!