‘Vacanza’ — Greatest Saleshandy Adventure of 2022❤️️

That’s how we roll!

The Saleshandy family spent four days at Udaipur, Rajasthan, chilling at The Hunting Lodge Resort, located at the outskirts of the city and near to the scenery amassing Aravallis.

The Planning Phase

It took us literally 10 minutes to finalize the destination of our Vacation. The big question is how? — Nope! It wasn’t pre planned to be honest but one thing was pretty much clear to us which was the purpose of the Vacation — Strengthening the team bonding by having fun.

Hence the decision to keep the destination near to our HQ was based on the following 3 points:

1. We wanted to save more time as the journey was only of 6 hours
2. Were able to call all the folks to our HQ for 3 days, hence working together just before the big trip resulted in great discussion and even greater outcomes
3. The whole team traveled together from our HQ at Ahmedabad, hence adding the cherry on top of the cake

The Squad

Out of 48 folks working at that time, 41 turned up to join for the Vacation. The most challenging part “was that many of our members work remotely hence everyone belongs to a different city.” with “was ensuring we could bring all of our remote team members (a huge chunk of our squad works remotely…” This is when Sayujya, our happiness hero, stepped in and managed it like a piece of cake.

The Get-to-gather at Ikigai HQ

For the first time since the Covid pandemic Ikigai saw more than 20+ folks working from the office. This was too a part of the Vacanza, folks working with each other for the initial 3 days (October 11th to October 13th 2022). However we didn’t stick only to work we took time out to have one minute games resulting in endless laughter & folks showing their hidden talents.

The Destination

Even though it took us 10 minutes to decide the City, it took more than 20 days to decide the Resort. After exploring 18 different options, reading 200+ reviews, consulting with 5+ guides we finally decided to go with The Hunting Lodge. The decision to go with the resort turned out to be a master stroke as the 16 room resort was fully booked for Ikigai folks, this gave us a sense of privacy, ownership and freedom to be at our most natural form without thinking about anything else.

The Activities

Over the span of next 4 days, the People team conducted numerous activities and all the Ikigians went full leisure mode. Here’s what we did during the stay.

• Started with an ice breaker wherein the team sat in a circular form and each member had to introduce the person sitting right next to them, this was something which helped people know what they didn’t!
• Team Building — There were a couple of activities which we called as ‘Picharade’ which was a fusion of 2 famous games — Dumb Charades & Pictionary
• Pool Rugby — The wildest sport invented by the Ikigians
• Indoor games such table tennis, snooker, chess
• Outdoor games such as cricket, football & archery
• We had a special session on ‘Curiosity at work place’
• We then had an award ceremony with special awards were given to top performers across different teams
• The much awaited Gala Night! — The night where each member danced their hearts out to the fullest extent!

Our Learnings

From the conception of the plan to the conclusion of it, we hustled, hassled and hurried a lot. For those 4 days of vacation we planned for over 40 days and here are some of our key learnings from that:

1. The place really isn’t the most important thing — Doesn’t matter if it’s a beach or a hill, plain or a plateau the core of deciding the place must be kept with the team size and the objective in mind. It really doesn’t have to always be Goa or Shimla, choose a spot and make it yours.
2. Planning needs to be done from atleast 40 days prior to the trip, doesn’t matter if it’s a team of 10 or a 100, times flies at lighting speed!
3. The main focus should be ‘team cohesion’ and everything else will fall into place
4. Keep in mind the mirco and the smallest of stuff such as the weather at the time of the trip, the food choice of all members, allergies, type of medicines to keep etc.
5. Visualize the place, the team, the activities and do a virtual reiki if not physical.
6. In the end what matters is ‘creating memories for a lifetime’, the way Ikigai did!

Special Thanks To 🥂

Trip Organizers — Dhruv, Piyush, Vidhi & Arpan ‍🫡

Support System — Sayujya & Sunny 🤝

The Hosts — The Hunting Lodge 💥

The Family — Ikigai ❤️

Have a sneak peek of the Vacanza here 👀