My unexpected IIT KGP Spring Fest 23 tour.

My brother was leaving for Pune on 27th Jan after working for a year in online mode. So I come home to bid him farewell. In the evening he left for the airport and I planned to return to the hostel the next day. In the evening I was walking with Kshitiz (he studies in B.I.T mesra and also lives here) He said he is going to SF and asked me if I would like to join them. He was going there with his 5 other classmates whom I didn't know. their train was on the 28th at 7 am and they had already booked tickets. ultimately he convinced me to go with them and also I thought it's once in a lifetime opportunity I mean who knows what will happen next year. So I agreed and my parents also gave permission on such short notice (which I didn't expect).

DAY 1
we left for the station at 5:30 am and reached the station at 6:45. Now I didn't have a ticket so I went to the counter. There was a long queue at the counter and fortunately, I saw two of my batchmates at the very front of the queue so I asked them to buy me a ticket. It was at this moment I realised it was going to be an epic trip. one of my batchmates was going on the same train Howrah-Ranchi Intercity express. He accompanied us to Jamshedpur.

(Me and Ravi)

The Ranchi to Howrah route is so amazing with fields, mountains, forests and steel, iron and aluminium plants (yes, as a metallurgy student plants fascinate us).

Finally reached Kharagpur at 1:20 pm, took 2 toto to IIT. we had some friends over there who were happy to host us. IIT KGP was not very far from the station, we got there by 1:35 pm.

So everyone contacted their friends to settle down. My friend Raghu was in the Vidyasagar hall. I and Krsitiz dropped our bags at Raghu's room and went with others to their hostel. After resting for an hour we went out for lunch at around 4 pm. The main show was at 7:00 pm. The restaurants In front of Vidyasagar hall were too expensive and we didn't know where else we could find a little budget-friendly food.

The vibe there was so cheerful, people playing the guitar in the streets, groups rehearsing for Nukkad, Ramp walks and saw a lot of bicycles. The Kharagpur campus is so beautiful each one of us had the same thought "should have studied more 😅". Anyways it was Nucleya that night the 3rd night of spring fest. Before going to the main ground where the program was from 7 pm we headed up to the arena.

They were so many things going on in so many places like more than 4 to 5 events was of organised at the same time at 4 to 5 different places.

we went to the ground at 8. which was so far from the hostels that we had to take an auto. KGP students went there with their Cycle. About the star of that night, I never heard of Nucleya until that night. I had very high expectations from him as it was King the previous day and boy he was way above our expectations. It was crazy there, 15k-20k people dancing to the crazy beats.

The show was really amazing and I was screaming at the top of my lungs which I did after a very long time and also danced for more than an hour, by dancing I mean jumping with my hand held straight up and screaming. Also, found some more of my friends from my JEE preparation days there.

The shows went on till 11:00 Pm after which we choose to walk to our halls the streets were filled with people, people singing, clicking pictures, and hundreds of bicycles it was like a Carnival. Around the clock tower found a group singing Doremon theme, we sat there and sang with them for a while Shin Chan, Ninja Hattori and ben 10 songs. After vibing with them for some time we went to eat dinner at 12. Fortunately, we found stalls of food which were very affordable. we ate Dosa there and finally went to our halls to prepare for Sunidhi Chauhan's night the next day 😍.

(Tikka)

DAY 2
Even after such an exhausting day I woke up at 7 because we two were sleeping in the same bed and not comfortable at all. so I got out and took a morning walk outside to Azad hall as I had 1 more friend there who I wanted to meet the previous day but couldn't. He showed me around and told me about campus life at KGP, its rituals, culture etc. The campus was very quiet probably everyone was still asleep. went back to the hostel and I was sitting on the roof when I found this guy there and we quickly became best friends.

(His name is Lulu)

My roommate then woke up and we took our breakfast at tikka again. An art workshop was organised that day which I wanted to attend. It was at Raman auditorium. So I went to the workshop at 12:30 pm and kshitiz went to see a magic show in a different auditorium. I'll talk about the workshop some other day. Here is the result though.

( try to guess mine 😉)

After the workshop, I went to the open-air theatre as a band was performing there, and saw a couple of bands there. I think it was a band competition. Anyways the performances were very enjoyable. also, their open-air theatre was huge, have a look.

(There were about 6,7 rows behind me)

I came to my room after having lunch to get some sleep which was due and get ready for the biggest evening. It was Sunidhi Chauhan's night and I didn't want to miss any second of it. When I got to the room I saw some guests there. Harsh bhaiya and karan bhaiya, harsh bhaiya is a beatboxer and he came there to perform that night in the arena. you can find him on insta as Void_throb. you guys might have seen him in a couple of ads for realme phones. They were also Raghu's childhood school friends. His show was scheduled at 6 just an hour before the main show in the arena. So, we went out to see other performances at SF cafe and I didn't got the sleep which I needed so badly but the atmosphere was so energetic I wasn't feeling that sleepy. There was also an E-sport event organised there sponsored by NSG gaming for valorant. We stayed there for a bit and then headed to the SF arena.

( void_throb performing)
I liked his performance but for some reason, he wasn't happy about it. Some issues with the mic and sound testing. It was 7 and we waited for an auto but every auto was full so we started walking to the ground. It took us a good 20-25 minutes to get to the place and bam we were in Sunidhi Chauhan concert 😍. It was perfect, I think the crowd was doubled that night then the Nucleya. It was an amazing concert, she engaged the audience so much and sang so beautifully as always. Listening to her singing Allah duhai and beede jaliyle was something.

She performed like a literal goddess of art for almost 2 hrs after that I got so tired that I hurriedly went to sleep at the hostel even though we had planned to stay awake all night because I didn't even sleep in the evening which I wanted so badly.

DAY 3
Our train was in the afternoon at 2:30. woke up at 10, and took breakfast at tikka, puri sabzi. After that me, kshitiz, harsh bhaiya, karan bhaiya and Raghu discussed the fest and many other things, harsh bhaiya shared about his shoots and how he started beatboxing. And finally came the time when we had to say goodbye to KGP. So many memories in these 2 days, made some friends, learned few things, and enjoyed soooo much.