Water Rafting

After having done with some adventures in forest, mountains, sand and snow this time around I decided to take something new and the option left was water rafting. This word by itself thrills… because of the ferocity and thrill involved in this. We decided to have our new year bash on the banks of river ganga followed by an adventure sport.

We planned for the trip just a day or two before new year and this time our team had good strength it was around 14 people Mayank, Avinash, Anajali, Sanjoyth, Anil Chang, Soni, Amith, Hari and Ramya, Ratnakar and Pallavi, Snehal and Shwetha .. at last myself Poorna Prajna. We planned to go for river rafting near Rishikesh and hence continued with the plan on 31/12/2005 the last day of year 2005..

We had 3 Cars.. Ford (Anil), Swift (Soni ), Getz (Sanjoyth). We started from Delhi around 11am, We all met near a petrol bunk, here I need to mention a point myself and anil left to Sri’s place for getting the music system but every one was waiting for us for almost 30min… well well the best thing was myself and anil had a wonderful breakfast in Sri’s place. A point to mention in this trip we all missed Sri and Summi a lot more over the whole trip was planned and channelized by Sri..

After a wonderful breakfast we all started moving toward Rishikesh, the distance is around 260kms, however nothing was interesting neither the road nor the traffic both of these factors tested our F1 driver’s skills a lot. Nothing much to mention about our journey just a small break for lunch. At last we made it to Rishikesh at around 6.45pm from there we need to move about 20km to ShivPuri. We had all the arrangements made ready at this place, hence we parked our vehicle at this place.

The journey from shivpuri to marine drive had some thrill involved in it as all 14 members of our team along with our luggage traveled to the destination on a single jeep can u believe it 14+2 with luggage on a single jeep but it was fun anil and shoordeep was sitting on top of the jeep and myself,baba(avinash),snehal were standing on the footbar outside the jeep it was fun moving on the curved roads hanging like this in that chilled weather.

Once we reached our start point we had to move down from the road to the banks of ganga in the dark, it was totally dark and also a bit slippery but all together it was fun moving through the flora along the banks of ganga. Once we reached to the banks of ganga we could see our tents across the river and boats were waiting for us to take us on the other side of the river. This was pretty risky but loved taking it, because we were traveling across the hard river without any life jackets.

Once we reached the tents we started dumping our luggage and then everyone assembled across the campfire. We freshened up ourselves and then we were provided with some snacks. Everyone was very hungry and everything disappeared with in minutes.

Then started our new year bash with lots of drinks and antakshari…. However our main attraction was DJ Anil for all the remix we got to hear for the first time. One thing we missed a lot was the music system which we carried all the way did not work for us. That was very unfortunate and would have added lots of fun if it had worked. Any way it was fun sitting in front of fire in that cold weather on the banks of ganga. After welcoming new year with lots of cheer and smile we had dinner with another team who had come from IIT delhi, at around 1 we went to bed in our respective tents.

Well I felt like I spent the first day of year 2006 in the best possible way right from the beginning…When I came out of the tent the weather was simply superb. High oxygen levels, chilled weather and the pleasant river in front of you teasing you to jump into it well simply out of words to explain the beauty of nature over here. Few of our team members went for a pleasant morning walk I think they enjoyed a lot looking at the beauty over this place.

After freshening ourselves by around 7.30 and after having some tea we started playing volley ball.. you can say beach volley ball on the sand it was fun for the amount of pain we had hitting the ball in that cold weather. We played around four matches and after that no one had any energy left to do anything everyone were completely drained so had to stop the game forcibly. We had our breakfast and then the team split into individual group of 4-5 people in different directions to enjoy nature and its beauty. I had some fun taking some wonderful snaps all along the way.

The time we waited for the most anyway came at around 12.30 we finished our lunch and everyone was ready to raft on the ferocious ganga with highest energy levels. After hearing to the instructor about the safety tips and once we were done with the safety gadgets like helmet and life jackets we jumped into 2 different rafts.

One unfortunate thing in this journey was we were unable to capture the most fascinating and thrilling moments on water in our camera, as it was very risky to carry our camera in these conditions. However we enjoyed every moment of rafting splashing water at each other teams, racing each other and of course teasing each other all the way.

I did Rafting for the first time and it was really fun for the amount of risk involved in it. I personally felt like anything can definitely happen if things don’t go in your way. The depth of water, the chillness of water and the force of water every thing is, in itself a potent energy to take out the life from our body. Tides were so powerful that our raft started jumping to almost 90 degrees but it was fun competing against the high tides with your willingness to achieve it. In between everyone jumped into water just to have fun but no one could remain in water for more than 3-4 minutes as the water was very cold, it was like you will freeze to death if you remain in water for about 15 minutes. After around 3 hrs of rafting we reached a point for cliff jumping. Well I will definitely remember this place for the fun, thrill and scare it gave me over here. Everyone stopped to do cliff jumping, Cliff jumping is something like you need to climb a huge rock about 25feet and then need to jump from there to the river which is around 50-100feet dept. No one from the team was ready to take it up since it was very cold and every individual was shivering, anyway I was in no mood to let this opportunity go out of my hands. To be frank when everyone backed up even I was a bit scared for the amount of risk I was taking, risk factor over here was like while jumping we need to be careful about the rocks around and then also the chillness of the water beneath…. Anyway I had made my mind to give it a try and I am happy that I did it…

A few thrilling moments in my life, my instructor gave all the instructions regarding how to jump and how to swim back. Well I did not know swimming but I had life jackets, any way I ran a few metes and then took a deep breath and jumped from the rock…. It was moments of my life I got scared and I closed my eyes and when I hit the water with great force and as and more I was going inside the water I could feel the pain in my bones because of the pressure and cold deep inside. I panicked a bit and drank some water because of which when I came to surface I was unable to breath properly for few moments and I was not even able to think what I should do, all my teammates got a bit tensed sensing some injury to me anyway nothing happened to me and I was in fine condition and slowly I started moving towards the boat. But all in all this was a wonderful experience for me something new and fascinating. After this we reached laxman julla where we were suppose to end our journey and move towards our car. We covered ourselves with some warm clothes and then after having wonderful snacks we started our return journey towards noida.

All in all a wonderful way to welcome the new year ( 2006 ) and a wonderful weekend, thanks to the entire team.. special mention to sri, snehal, baba, anil, soni, hari for making it a gr8 success.