South Asian Group Explore the great outdoors.

If you love the great outdoors in almost any form, here is a tip for all those looking for adventure. Click on this link http://groups.yahoo.com/group/outdoorsyconquistadors/ and meet the Outdoorsy conquistadors!

Whether it is Kayaking/canoeing; biking; sailing; or a road/adventure trip, this one-of-a-kind fun group’s sole idea is to have to a guaranteed good time by participating in a variety of outdoor activity. Most of the 217 members are South Asian professionals or graduate students between the ages of 21 and 35. Many of the group members are single and a few married couple also participates.

Sonal Mukhi, the person behind this idea started this group in June 2002. Her motive “I love the outdoors and I wanted to meet others like me, make new friends and look for social networking opportunities. So I organized the first event that was a hiking trip in Mt Monodonock in Jaffrey, NH where we hiked up to see a view that stretched for 100miles overlooking all the six states”. That was the beginning and since then more than 50 activities have been organized, including beach trips, hikes, ski trips, indoor rock climbing, and more. The activities that are organized mostly in the weekends include visits to the Franconia Falls in White Mountain, the Wachusetts Mountain in Princeton, Mount Everett and Bash Bill falls at Mt Washington, a visit to Lake Winnipesauke, Six Flags, a Balloon Festival in Weymouth and Apple picking. An overnight camping event to Lake Sebeka in Maine was another fun event. Says Sonal “There were around 15 of us. It was great fun, we put our tents, ate food, walked into the State Park, sang songs, played games etc.

Sonal Mukhi is ready for a break though and hopes that other outdoor enthusiasts will get involved. “Many people hate to organize and I can understand that”, she says. “First you have to find the right information. It was my hobby to browse through various online sites like Boston.com etc and if I liked something I would call up the place and get all the information. Then I would send a mail to everybody after establishing a meeting base. People who would like to join me send me back a mail through the yahoo group. Although I am not connected with NETSAP, I have used them as advertising too along with Sulekha.com. Most of us also get information from word of mouth. Our largest successful event was back in July at Rhode Island where we had around 46 people. It was a biking and beach trip to Block Island, located 12 miles off the coast of RI.

The spin-off of this effort has been the setting up of a few tennis groups at Marlboro, Nashua and in Boston as well as the one in Burlington. Baiju Gajjar, another active enthusiast organized the most recent networking event at Cambridge that had a social networking event at Sweet Chilli followed by a comedy show called Improvboston, with an elite cast of Boston's best improvisers.

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