It was an afternoon of 25th October,2019 and we were headed towards Rishikesh from Haridwar.
We reached @2pm and booked a river rafting expedition from one of their offices.
Meanwhile their Bolero came and we 7 were standing in front of the river Ganges for a fun, adventurous river rafting.
The guides told us about the safety measures, the right way of paddling and what to do when you fall? “Fall? So, we can actually fall from the raft”, some mumbled xD . It scared me a bit but I didn’t show; I was acting brave.
Wait let me first tell you about 7 of us. We planned this amazing tour of treaking to Tungnath and Chandrashila peak in Diwali from College and we also planned to stop @Rishikesh for an adventure before we head to Chopta(base camp of Tungnath).
The speciality of this trip was we 7 belong from different states of India(Rajasthan, Jharkhand, Bihar, West Bengal, Odissa, Telengana and Chennai ) .
With life jackets on and paddles in our hands, we were ready for the rendezvous with dangerous rapids. I was seated at the first place on the right side of the raft. The breeze were chillin as Sun started to head towards West slowly and our guide adjusted gopro on his helmet.
The guide on our raft instructed us to sail forward and we started rowing our raft. Paddling looked easy until we came across the first rapid. We could see the rapid from the distance, the violent waves, the roar of water and the stones in between. It seemed that those things together were threatening us to go back. But our adventurer’s spirits took us right in the middle of the rapid, and soon we found ourselves combating the strong current by rowing in sync and paddling as hard as we could. The spine chilling water had drenched us all and we were shivering badly. But we didn’t stop to paddle. Before we could know, we were out of that rapid and out of the breath too.
The guide patted our back for the good work and told us “You can jump into the water if you want to but keep holding the rope that drapes the raft.” I was the first to jump out; unfortunately I had underestimated the chillness in the water. The water was so cold that I was not able to breathe for a few seconds; I was not able to speak even,my body felt numb then i got used to that chilliness. I saw others were also in the water so i went on their side to enjoy company . After some time the guide and one of our friends pulled us up one by one using the same technique that our guide had used to bring me up.
We looked at each other and silently agreed upon not jumping into the water again.
But the adrenaline rush of our adventure made us to jump again from our boat later and swim across the river a bit.
“Sail forward”, the guide said. Another rapid was approaching. We firmed the grips on our paddles and started making our way to the rapid. “Stand up with one foot on the edge and another inside the raft”, the guide yelled. At first I thought I heard him wrong. But no, we had to stand like this and after a couple of seconds we were standing like that.
The rapid came and the raft began to wobble. We held each other, we held each other tightly. I am glad that no one among us panicked and we smoothly crossed that rapid. We took our positions again and as instructed by the guide, we were not paddling. The raft was effortlessly going forward and we were soaking up the lovely views put forth by green hills on one flank and sandy beaches on the other.
Meanwhile our guide continued to record our experience in gopro ❤️✌️
“Look in the front”, I uttered. “The next rapid is going to be tough”. And from the first look, the rapid indeed looked ‘tough’. The water roar was louder than usual and the waves looked untamable. Nevertheless, we entered the rapid and guess what? The raft almost stood on its nose. Drenching all of us, oodles of water came in and the sudden adrenaline hit made us paddle harder and harder and harder. From UP to Down to LEFT to RIGHT, the raft was going out of control and there seemed no way out of the rapid. We were on the verge of falling, waiting for our guide to give some instruction. “Sail forward and paddle in sync”, he said. We did exactly the same and it worked. We came out of the rapid. Yes, yes, we came out of it and shouted hard with our paddles in the air. That was the best feeling ever.
“Save your energy, we still have to cross the last rapid”, all shouted. But the last one was easy. We just paddled forward and we were out of there. Those four rapids gave us enough memories and stories to take back and share with our friends. We came in Rishikesh to have few bites of adventure, but that rafting expedition gave us much more than that.
We left our rafts on reaching the nearby beach, soaked ourselves, changed clothes and drank tea to warm ourselves.
#TravelAdventure2019
In the end i just want to say like kr do yaar 😍♥️👍
