Our trip to Vizag

I am here talking of a journey of relatively short duration organized by Kenexa India for all its managerial level employees to visit the port city of Vishakhapatnam popularly known as Vizag. Little did we know when we set out for a journey to our next possible work destination (our new office location) in Vizag that we will be having such a wonderful blast filled with a lot to learn and understand. The entire trip was a great experience for each one of us and I will like to thank the organizers for helping us go through such a wonderful experience. We had a whole weekend lined up to spend in Vizag. To start with Kenexa had got permission to get a dedicated train compartment only for its employees. This was rechristened the “Kenexa Vizag” compartment. The port city of Vizag is roughly 700 kms North East of Hyderabad and has strategic importance to India with a considerable presence of Indian Navy, boasts of one of the best ports in India, has a steel plant (in fact the only steel plant owned directly by Govt. of India). Vizag is known more as a tourist destination and has a good representation of the basic infrastructure capabilities.

The train journey was fun by itself with the journey time lasting 14 hours. We had the train departing Hyderabad by early evening and ensured all the travelling entourage in the train well in time. Kenexa had ensured all travel related niggles and stuff was well taken care of and the journey was perfectly set. The train departed Hyderabad on time and everyone had a sense of feeling that something good was happening with this trip. The train journey was indeed a blast. The one good thing that I can vividly recount myself is the level of interaction and it was very good amongst us. The Kenexa camaraderie was not found lacking as the trip progressed. As the train ambled towards its destination and the night set in, the mood inside the compartment was one of expectation of the things to unfold in Vizag the next couple of days. People in the train indulged in some fun activities amongst themselves and thus the atmosphere became light and lively. We all were fed with a sumptuous platter of Hyderabadi biriyani specialties as dinner. The next day we reached Vizag and went straight to the hotel, The Park.

The Park is right besides the beach in Vizag and has a breathtaking view to the Bay of Bengal. One can see a slew of ships lined up far across the sea waiting for their turn to dock into the Vizag port. It is really worth watching. After a quick bit of break where all got freshened up for the day, we all met at the breakfast table and regrouped ourselves into our respective groups who were assigned some tasks to explore the city more and help in general to understand the city better, teams formed to explore the Vizag city on real estate, shopping, entertainment, schooling, emergency facilities like hospitals etc. Post our breakfast we all went with our respective teams to explore more on the above areas in and around Vizag and also got to see for the first time the Kenexa building atop Hill Number 3. It was indeed good to see our building from as far across the Vizag International cricket stadium. One has to go there or see the photo close ups to know the distance between the two. All the assigned teams worked enthusiastically till late in the afternoon to collect some valuable data on the city. This data is going to help the company to understand the city and its environs better on the above mentioned parameters. Once back to our hotel rooms, we had a wonderful evening party awaiting us. We did have a press briefing on the new facility also. The party setting was just perfect with sea as a backdrop and non stop DJ music, all of us did unwind in the dance floor to some peppy numbers. The day ended with the dinner being served alongside the party.

The next day morning all were scheduled to visit the Kenexa site post our breakfast. The arrangements where done for the same. We all visited the kenexa location at Hill Number 3 in the morning. We were told that quite a bit of work had been done of late and one could see lot of labourers going through their act. The facility looks good and one could see lot of open space (Planned for greenery and will help the facility become an environment neutral facility) right in front and surrounding areas of the kenexa building. The people at the kenexa site did brief us through the construction activities and other key attributes related to the site. I just stood there to watch my fellow journeymen as all were listening quite eagerly to the conversation by the so called experts there at the location. It showed how much all of us desired this location to come good. We were at the location for more than couple of hours and people did take a lot of pictures and stood for a lot of group photo ups. Some were seen enquiring about the surrounding construction activities and other general conversations were seen happening amongst the groups. We were all reasonably confident of the construction activities there and thought the deadlines for the building completion to be fairly achievable. Once the location was fully surveyed by us to our satisfaction, all were taken back to our hotels for our lunch and the journey back to Hyderabad. We had the return train to catch early evening the same day. All of us boarded the bus to the station and later took to our respective seats in the train. On the train leaving the Vizag station, one could feel that all had a good enjoyable trip to our new location and more or less made up their decision on Vizag.