Raving Rafters - Part II

hi...this is the second part of our little raftin adventure... so if u r vistin dis page for the first time kindly scroll down ,read my first post nd come back....Thnk u... happy readin :)


We started moving quite gracefully (yea I think I ve used de rite adjective) over the river. To my surprise, the paddling wasn’t as difficult as I thought it would be. But just as we were getting comfortable, I noticed that there were quite a number of rocks in the course of the river. All of a sudden, a new fear crept upon me. “What will happen if we hit a rock and puncture the raft?” Well I thought, “There is ought to be some sort of a steering mechanism, otherwise we would not have any control of the direction.” Just as I was thinking this, we were effectively negotiating around a little boulder. I looked back and noticed that the captain and his assistant who had taken their positions at the back of the raft were paddling to control the direction. So effectively they were acting like the steering wheel and we were like the V2 engine (now i don wanna get too technical abt this engine stuff… :D) powering the raft.

The captain had asked us to stop paddling after some time and we were just gliding along quite smoothly. I just looked around and was awed by the sheer beauty of nature around me. The mountains on both sides extended like huge walls and we were floating deep inside a canyon. (Not as deep as the Grand Canyon though, but quite deep nevertheless. :D)

Just as we were enjoying the nature, the captain announced that we were approaching our first rapid. “Yeh hai pehla rapid. Iska naam “Lord Robert”* rapid. Yeh bahut chotta rapid hai aur simple b hai”. (Thank God, I was getting used to his hindi lol). He also said that if we were to enjoy the rapid fully we would have to paddle really fast. "Fast Forward" he commanded. (Only later, while we were pursuing the rapid we did realize that his command was almost impossible to obey. With the raft shaking violently we were struggling even to dip our paddles in the water, leave alone paddling quickly.)

(* The name of the rapid has been changed since the author doesn’t remember the original name. lol :D. Deepak had told us that all the rapids had been named after the British Lords who visited these places. So I generated a British name myself jus to keep the paragraph flowin :D)

As we entered the rapid, a huge splash of water hit us. “Oh my gosh!” The water was soooo cold. It should have been only a couple of degrees above the freezing point. I found it very hard to believe it since the sun was scorching and the air temperature should have been around forty degrees and yet the water was so cold “Unlike Kaveri this river was melting from a glacier so it is ought to be cold” I realized.

By this time, we were right in the middle of the rapid, our raft was shaking uncontrollably, and we had a tough time even to keep our asses in position. At one point of time, the raft tilted almost thirty degrees, and Dhanss almost fell overboard. But somehow, miraculously he kept his balance and didn’t fall over. When we were coming out of the rapid, we just felt that we had completed a ride in a natural roller coaster.

After successfully negotiating two more rapids (the xperiences were pretty much de same as de 1st rapid. only de names were different. Infact there were some 8 rapids in our course. Readers r given de liberty to name all de rapids themselves except de last one :D coz thts de only name I managed to remember) we were asked to pull the raft aside on the bank of the river. To our surprise, we learnt that four other people were joining our adventure (3 from England and 1 from France). We soon came to know that they were on a 15-month long tour across the world. “15 months! hmmm that’s quite long. What about your jobs? I mean you possibly couldn’t have taken leave for 15 months from your employer” I asked. “We have actually resigned our jobs to make this world tour. We have been saving the money for quite some time to make this happen. We will have to go back find ourselves a new job and start all over again”.

It was quite interesting to talk to them because they had already visited a dozen countries and were sharing their experiences. Then Deepak decided to break in our conversation and announced, “Folks you can now jump overboard and swim now if you want.” I have got to admit that I was actually a little bit nervous to jump out like that on a swiftly flowing river. But I didn’t have to worry. “Life jacket hai na. There was no chance of drowning”. I thought (hmmm…btw I ve gotto mention tht sara chickened out from this particular dare…). It was awesome time for us out there in the water. Infact I was enjoying it so much and was actually reluctant to get back to the raft. (I was the las person to climb back to de raft).

Just as I was catching up my breath, Deepak broke out yet another news. “We will be rowing a little further to reach a spot where we can do Cliff Jumping.” OMG! That was quite a scary terminology. Jesse and Sara called it quits as soon as they heard this word.

Cliff Jumping sent shivers down my spine too. Nine out of 10 times I wouldn’t have taken the jump. But then I asked myself this question “Just how many times in your life would you be given an opportunity to jump into the Ganges from a cliff?” And moreover I thought I could boast to my friends back home “You know what? I did cliff jumping in the Ganges”.

But all that dilemma evaporated as soon as I saw the cliff. It wasn’t as tall as I imagined it would be. It should have been only around 15-20 ft. (now I ve gotto mention tht I ve jumped from these heights in de local swimming pool evn w/o a life jacket). We pulled up the raft near the cliff. “Now who is gonna jump first?” I asked. (I certainly didn’t want go first. Tht terminology still haunted me). Arun and Dhanss who were least bothered about the so-called “scary terminology” were the first persons to take the jump.

There weren’t any hitches in their jumps and that gave me some confidence. It was now my turn. I climbed on the cliff, (actually slipped a little bit on my way up….fortunately kept my balance… no damage done), looked down, waved my hands to the people down in the raft, took a deep breath and jumped(actually wanted to keep my eyes open durin the flight … but my eyes refused to obey… they closed involuntarily).

I fell down with a big splash. I quickly made my recovery and then with some effort climbed back onto the raft. At this point of time, even though the sun was scorching away I was shivering coz of the cold water all over me. But then the Captain gave is orders “Paddle forward”. (Who am I disobey a captain of a ship/raft lol :D)

We had reached Rishikesh now and were sailing beneath the Raman Jhuhlla and Lakshman Jhuhlla bridges (Now dere were a lotta ppl lookin @ our raft from dese bridges. We jus waved @ them as if we had won de Gold medal @ Beijing games :D). The waters were quite calm in Rishikesh. That just gave us the opportunity to relax and have a chat with our European friends. (We actually talked ovr a wide range of topics ranging from hindu mythology to de Mumbai traffic).

Then Deepak announced “Before we reach our destination there is still one last rapid to cross. Yeh rapid ka naam bye bye rapid”.(dis is de only name which I remembered rite) Now this was the rapid, which I hated the most. By this time, we were all and were completely dry. We had actually forgotten how cold the water was. (I had jus stopped shiverin and was in no mood to get wet again). But as soon as we hit the rapid, a huge wave splashed across us making us wet and cold all over again.(Damm Bye Bye rapid)

We pulled up as soon as we came out of the rapid. Yea! Our adventure had finally come to an end. It was hard to believe that around four hours had passed since we began rafting. We were completely exhausted and it found it difficult even to walk down the road. Me, still being wary of my stomach decided to skip lunch. I had just about enough energy to make it our room and fall over the bed (fell asleep almost immediately and I was Kumbakarna’s personification for the nxt 10 hours :D)


The End.

Raving Rafters - Part I

The following blog is an excerpt from a book titled “Discovery India ’07 ” authored by me. (The book hasn’t been written yet though :D).


I choked and vomited all the stuff right after the last drops of tea went inside my tummy. Blame it on all those rotis, dum aloos, panner butter masalas etc. etc… which I had the previous day and the chai which I had just now acted like a catalyst in bringing the stuff inside my stomach out :-( … Looks like my stomach went on strike for some reason. It simply hadn’t secreted any digestive juices. (How mean?????)

Well the positive side of my vomiting is that all my room mates woke up from their deep slumber. They were still sleeping even after repeated snoozes from their mobiles. There were 5 of us (sara, jesse, arun, dhanss n me) and we were staying @ a hotel in Haridwar (or Hardwar that’s how the people of haridwar choose to spell their town’s name …..hmmm how strange Hard War). It was only 4:30 AM but we had planned to be up by four o clock itself. We had decided to do some rafting in the Ganges that day and that rafting wala had asked us to report @ his office in Rishikesh by 7 AM.

So we got ready and finally reached Rishikesh @ around 7:15 after traveling for about 1 hour in a rickety Uttaranchal govt. bus. We met our rafting wala and he said that a jeep will be coming to pick us up and in the meantime he asked us to have breakfast. (well I decided to give in to my little tummy's demands and didn’t take any food…. jus a glass of milk bus!).

The jeep, which he mentioned, was waiting for us, outside the restaurant to take us to a place called Shivpuri further up the mountain along the Ganges. We had planned to raft from Shivpuri to Rishikesh covering some 17 kilometers in the river. I was absolutely thrilled about this, but it lasted only for a moment. When I opened the jeep door I saw the life jackets, helmets paddles etc. etc… The raft in which we were about to travel was deflated and tied over the jeep. dunno y but the thought that I was going to cover 17 kms in the Ganges with the help of these accessories sent shivers down my spine.

As the jeep moved up the hill my fears only worsened. We were moving along the Ganges and we could see the river raging down the mountains with tremendous speed. I looked @ sara.. "man how r we going to raft in that… It looks very very fearsome and dangerous???? " i didn’t get any reply from him. Ever since we started talking about rafting, he has been saying this "enaku thannilla kandam" (he had somehow convinced himself that venturing out in the water isn’t very safe for him). Looks like my question had only increased his fears and I could clearly see that in his face. I said, “Well don’t worry man. Even if you die today the Ganges will take u to heaven straight.” He jus glared at me. (Damn y dont i hold my tongue).

We finally reached our destination Shivpuri. As we were getting down the jeep, Jesse asked, "dude u remember the movie final destination?” “yup why are u asking??” I asked. “i m afraid that some freak accident similar to the 1 in that movie can happen to us”. I said not to worry about it because there weren’t any rafting related accidents in that movie trilogy so far. I just asked him to relax. Then suddenly arun quipped “maybe they ll put our accident in final destination IV”.

I was trying my best not to show my fears off to them. However, it was getting increasingly difficult for me to control my fears especially with so much pessimism around. So I decided to walk away from that conversation and moved towards to the bank of the river. Dhanss also joined me. We stood there took a deep breath. "My god the view is sooo beautiful feels like heaven da” I said. The ever philosophical Dhanss decided to put one of his philosophies on to me "machan azaghu eppovumay aabhathu" (means all tht s beautiful is dangerous) unfortunately @ the wrong time for me.

So on the whole, no one was very comfortable with the idea of rafting at least for the time being. Suddenly we were a group of extremely pessimistic thinkers. We could see our raft was being inflated and we were asked to put on the life jackets and helmets. A man named Deepak came over to us and introduced himself as the captain of the raft. (hmmm i thought only ships had captains)

Another problem with our group was, except Jesse no one knew hindi and unfortunately for us our captain didn’t know english. So we had to depend entirely on Jesse for the translations. The captain said that he was going to give us some vital instructions and asked us to listen carefully. Well Jesse had a habit of skipping some points while translating so we were not at all comfortable with the idea of him translating to us. But we had no other choice. :-( .We had to depend on him.

(The blanks in this paragraph are all hindi sentences and since I do not know hindi I couldn’t type it out lol)

So our captain began "yeh life jacket 150 kilos weight .......................”. The fact that most of the northies mix a lotta english words in their hindi certainly helped me. I decided to guess the translations myself with my “thoda thoda hindi” knowledge. Jesse translated it for us "He was saying that this life jacket could bear upto 150 Kg of weight. (Hurray! I had guessed that correctly. I quietly congratulated myself). I was listening to him with all my attention, catching every word from his mouth. (hmmm if only i had given this much attention to my collg lectures atleast my GPA wud have been higher .hmmmm anyway no use thinkin of it now). He was continuing "....rapids hai..... raft capsize b ho gaya......."Wait wait did he jus say "Capsize"???? Oh my goodness"

“There are chances that the raft can get capsized while wading through a rapid. But there is nothing to worry” Jesse translated it for us. Deepak continued “Life jacket hai naa ?? No problem. Important thing is enjoyment. So no worries guys!!”

Then he continued teaching us some basic commands, which he would be giving to us while we paddle.(Looks like the captain of a raft is no different from a captain of the ship). “Paddle Forward” meant that we had to move the paddle from front to back in the water to move forward. “Paddle Backward” meant the vice-versa. In addition to this there was one more command “Fast Forward” meaning that we had to paddle forward rapidly. So with these basic lessons we finally climbed on the raft and took our positions. By this time the fear component in us was slowly evaporating and was being replaced by the thrill component

The captain gave out his first command “Paddle forward”


To be continued…