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So how do you prepare yourself before playing at the music festival of your dreams? Certainly not by sitting packed in a van in heavy traffic on the Motorway!

But thats how the gig of our dreams started! After much confusion about the travel and having to drop one member from the travelling party at the last minute because there wasn’t enough place in the van, we set off from London in a rented van and to our horror found that the traffic on the Motorway was unbelievably crazy! But Sareata was on top of things and managed to squeeze her way in and out of lanes and get some ‘Indian Style’ driving done to speed things up!

But it was a HUGE sigh of relief we breathed as we pulled into the artist registration area at the festival and collected our artist kits and then made our way to the Saddlespan stage just 40 minutes before we were supposed to go on stage!

It was then that we found out that the engineers had gone off for a dinner break since we hadn’t arrived yet and were planning to land up only half an hour before our show, so we had just 15 minutes to quickly check if all was in place and then headed back to the green room to get changed! Looking back and things, I am quite pleased things went this way coz we were all full of energy and there was no chance or time for nervousness or any such thing! it was all plug and play!

The people who come to WOMAD are really special and they come there for a fun happy experience, the place itself is out of a fairy tale and the music is the most diverse you will ever find at festivals! So it was a great vibe from the first moment we got on stage! people were already fully kicked about our band and ready to have a great time!

We also spotted in the crowd, a familiar face, Mr. Derek Sivers himself and quite a few attendees from TED Global that had just finished in Oxford earlier that day! It was a first for me, playing in front of my “boss”!! But he seemed to like it so its all good I think

The set was quite fantastic, the band was tight, the sound was brilliant, the crowd was beautiful, the setting was perfect, there was nothing more we could ask for! But … and you know how in our case, there is always a big BUT

Rajeev, who was our Road Manager cum Photographer cum Roadie cum Guitar Tech cum Merchandise Sales Manager cum guide cum everything else assumed that the band’s slot was from 8PM to 9PM and so when there were 10 mins to go, he told us to wrap up the set and so at 9 PM on the dot, we ended our performance with a bang!

The organizers however came running and told us that we had half an hour more to go! so it was time for our triple encore!!

The crowd loved the fact that we had more time and it was all good and the best part of it being that we had enough time to set up a small stall on the left side of the stage where we could sell our CDs. And boy did we sell CDs! we ran out of every single CD we managed to get from India and still ended up not having enough!

By this time, it was getting really cold (atleast for us!) and then it was time to check some of the rest of the festival, go out and eat from the wide variety of cuisines on display and head to The Hilton in Swindon where we were to stay for the night!

And that is how it all went down, there are so many more stories to tell, but this is the basic draft I had to get out ASAP! More shall follow!

Pictures from the gig available at – http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=285799&id=522175007&l=64b11f6ff6