#FlipkartOutdoors Indibloggers meet @ MangoMist, Bengaluru!

Indiblogger events are always fun- you can meet lots of fellow bloggers, take part in various activities and most of the time take home some goodies too. My previous event was BNLF and Sarath Babu informed me about an Indiblogger meet scheduled to happen in Bengaluru and I immediately signed up. This time mail sponsor was flipkart and theme was outdoor activities.

Reached Bengaluru by overnight bus, freshed up and headed to designated pickup point from where Indiblogger had arranged transportation. Met Rajesh first- he had just got engaged. We walked to Shoppers Stop where I met Shailaja V and many other bloggers. We reached resort on time, got our wrist band that recognizes us as resort guests. Met Rajiv Verma, Payaniga, Indrani, Dhiru (Team G Cube), Sarath and Mahesh from Chennai

We had our breakfast and then assembled for a briefing. Anoop gave overview of day's plan- which involved us forming teams, going to each brand's stall and understanding their products, collecting a sample product, indulging in some outdoor activities while using these products and fulfilling some challenges, have lunch and assemble back by 2 PM for paintball. I spoke for a few mins about my Skydiving experience. (Check this post for 11 adventure activities you can try in Karnataka)

Vinit Rajan showed us some warm up exercises and flipkart executives spoke about the emerging action camera/adventure/outdoor accessories market.

Then we were formed into groups. My team had a group of wonderful ladies- Vidya Sury, Shailaja, Indrani, Ami Bhat, Deepa, Soumya Prasad, Mayuri, Sreesha and of course Sid Balachandran. We even managed to hijack Swati into our team later. Either because I had a GoPro or because I spoke about Skydiving, team unanimously voted for me to be the captain.

We first went to Altec Lansing counter.

Altec Lansing rugged, waterproof speakers and audio accessories
Traditional speakers that needed power supply and had to be connected to computer via 35mm jack are getting out of fashion- no one wants those messy speakers now. Portable speakers are new craze-they come with built in battery, connect to mobiles/laptops via WiFi/Blutooth and are thus highly portable, making them ideal companions during outdoor activities/road trips. Folks at Altec Lansing have taken portable speakers to next level by making them water proof and shock proof. So you can literally throw them around, float in water and keep it around wherever you go, whatever you do. It can even be mounted on tripod/camera mounts. We got to try these speakers and have fun with them- throwing water and playing music results in water droplets sprinkling out of speakers like a fountain- what a cool way to have your own musical fountain! They also have locking earphones and high quality headphones.

Watch this video shot in Sony Action camera, Team 1 having fun with Altec speakers

Similar post- Protronics Pure Sound Pro 2 soundbar. Next stop was at Polaroid counter- they had on display the Cube- an ice cube sized action camera. As I have written about them in an earlier post, I will skip further details in this post.

Our next stop was at the Red Chief Shoes.

Red Chief Shoes- These guys had on exhibit their all purpose shoes, priced around Rs 2800. The most interesting concept from Red Chief was the self destructing (bio-degradable) shoes. If these shoes are not used for 3 months, they will start degrading themselves and will soon be gone!


That sounded cool, but after I came back from resort, following questions struck me:
Imagine a shoe shop owner who has bought 1000 pairs of these shoes- assume only 300 could be sold in first 3 months... Remaining 700 will start killing themselves from fourth month and customers who buy subsequently will be getting shoes which are like half dead? I am just thinking aloud- I am sure the makers would have thought of these scenarios and have a way around the same. Most of my team members were a bit disappointed that Red Chief Shoes do not have collection for women yet.

Samsung S2 Smartwatches- Unfortunately these folks were not well prepared. They had very few watches to be given out on trial and those were not charged enough, so the time to sign up and collect our trial watch was postponed from 11 to 11.30 AM to 12 to 12.30...We couldn't register and come back to collect later, nor they would ensure each team gets at least one. So we had to decide to skip trying these and move on.


Garmin Garmin had a range of smart watches equipped with GPS, fitness tracker and a range of health monitoring features. I got to try one of them but because I was focusing more on action cameras and because the interface was not that self intuitive, couldn't make the most of Garmin wristwatch. Ideally I would like smart watches NOT to expect that user should keep inputting what he/she is doing and what is expected from the device- it should just have start and stop function and everything in-between, it should ideally figure out itself.

Sony Action camera- reviewed separately in this post, hence skipping details here. Besides action cam, they also showcased how Alpha range of cameras are better than DSLRs.

Coleman Camping gears
Coleman have a range of outdoor accessories such as tents, portable toilets, compass, lunch boxes etc. One of our activities were to setup the Coleman tent, but the staff asked us to wait, which was difficult to do as there were more exciting activities waiting for us.

All these products are available for sale on Flipkart.com

Once done with all stalls we were given activity coupons using which we could take part in various games- rope walk, zipline, zorbing, archery, shooting and so on. However, the coupons were limited and not enough to try all activities once- we had to chose where to spend our coupons. I tried ladder climbing, zipline, walking on wooden log (Below pic courtesy Sid) and archery. Rest of the team took part in activities that appealed to them.

One of the coupon was worth Rs 200 but was supposed to be used for mock-tail only- I literally begged ground staff to let me have 4 coupons of Rs 50 each that can be used for some other activities instead of the stupid overpriced drink coupon, but no luck.

Met Manasa, Bijoy, Ekta, Srinidhi TG and many others in between the activities.

We had great fun but at some point we lost focus on the challenges- we didn't do rock climbing, tent and Samsung activity. If I had kept a tab on it, our team could have possibly won a few prizes. Some of us did win for our tweets, but we didn't win any team prize. I take ownership for that. We did rope ladder, which was one of the activities, but no prizes were given.

Post lunch we had paintball game- that was my first paintball game ever. This time we were led by Mahesh and teams were slightly re-shuffled- we made our strategies and took position. We had 10 minutes and 30 bullets- before I got a hang of the game it was over. But I can play this better next time.

A word about the Mango Mist Resort

This was my first time at this resort, but it seems very popular among corporate for their team outings- many friends said they were here recently. Resort has almost every possible indoor and outdoor activity and overall decent facilities. I didn't like them forcing a Rs 200 mock-tail coupon- could have given four 50 Rs coupons which we could have spent on other activities. Food was good, approach road was bit narrow and our bus had difficulty whenever another big vehicle came in opposite direction. Staff were friendly. No major problems/concerns sighted during our day visit.

After our game, I got to meet Sam (Sam and Swati are couple travel bloggers who runs TalesofTraveler.com) Had fruitful interaction with other bloggers at the event. Day well spent and all thanks to Flipkart and Indiblogger for providing the opportunity. By 5 PM we were done and boarded Indibus back to city, taking home wonderful memories and two memory card full of action videos! Unfortunately while getting down the bus I left the flag inside :(

Also check: Sony Action Camera vs GoPro vs Polaroid Cube *