River rafting and Overnight Camping

The planning took sometime but finally we managed to get thru the obstacle and the journey began. It started with Omkar(Sachin look alike), Meena, Anant(aka Anni), Natasha(The planner) leaving in a brand new Swift Dzire (all you girls looking for someone rich...the car belonged to Omkar).Their journey started from Dadar station at 10:30 am IST. I dont know what happend after that coz i wasnt there...at 10:30 in the morning i was sleeping in my bed in Pune.Now lets fast forward time to 12:30 when i decided to start my engine and get going. My black Zen estilo was all clean and shining..jus like it was telling me "You are late i have been waiting".Neways..i started the journey at 12:30...changed the CD in my car to play some Road trip songs and i was on my way down 'Chandini Chowk'. The road was simple..."just keep going straight" and straight it was i drove for 100 kms and turned only once. The road was bad but the scenery around was breath taking. The sky had a damp look to it and the clouds were jus getting darker..it was like a kid going red jus before the first tear starts rolling down his cheek. Well twisting and turning, sometimes over taking from the wrong side i reached the end of the Ghats. The road down was much better but i still thinking this country needs to get its roads right before they get on the road to glory...well neways, i reached a place called Vile..jus a few more kilometers to go....i drove towards Sutarwadi...the road is still better...I see the sign that says <---- Empower camps. Well i looked at the road and i wondered if this is the road that takes me there...infact there was no road....jus a long mud trail with tyre marks on it....NOWAYS...i wasnt driving my car on this road....but i guess there was no turning back now....after a stretch of this roller coster ride i finally saw a small gate and tiny man standing there...he saluted me the moment i entered the gate..(i later learned that he didnt do that to everyone).Finally the Dzire met the Estilo!

It was after long that i met my friends...i was happy to see them..dunno if they were...;). The place looked like a setting from the Moghul era....this was the first time i was staying in a tent...walking into it felt like the moghul emperor Akbar...it was like the drums beating and the people bowing down in awe...all this was suddenly broken when a tiny frog jumped on my feet and i jumped higher than he did. Well the next thing to do was try and get to doing some fun activities.the first one lined up was Raft Building. When we set out for this herculean task we were joined by two more people..a newly married couple...Ketan and Vigyata...Ketan works as a HR guy in company and Vigyata is a successful business woman. Very nice people...we had a good time with them..hope they had a blast too!

Neways back to raft building now, The task was simple when put in words..."You have to build a raft".We were provided with 4 long bamboos and 12 short ones, 3 tubes and lots of ropes. The architecture was explained and people got to work.Take the smaller bamboos and tie the perpendicular to the long ones and maintain enough distance so that you could place the tubes between them...Nahi samje!...well i guess u need to try it out yourself. The raft was ready...well i thought thats it! done! ho gaya!but...as usual.....now we had to sit on the joints and take the raft into the lake and paddle away....As we all differ in weights the problem was BALANCE!...there were times when we almost toppled.After paddling the raft for sometime we realized that it would be fun to jump into the lake and have a good time and A good time is what we had! After all the fun in the lake we were hungry and were served with nice warm pakodas....after the pakoda eating, the next activity was lined up....God knows what they called it but i called it..Bloody difficult.It involved balancing a ball on a tiny ring which had ropes attached to it. The ring was at the bottom of a pipe and the ball balancing on the pipe's head. The task was to hold the rope attached to the ring and pull it up to the tip where the ball was placed..lift the ball up, balance it on the ring..move in a synchronized manner and place it on a similar set about 100 mts away..after loads and loads of try we managed to achieve this feat as well...more activities like Foot cricket, climbing wiered structures etc were done before we eventually retired to our rooms...sorry...tents! Naha Dhoke..Saaf hoke....we came back out to enjoy a lovely camp fire with the DJ playing Hindi pop and bhangda numbers..well i m not much of a dancer but i m much of a drinker...like someone once asked "aap coffee peete ho" and i said.."Nahi mein kafi peeta hoon"..well for those who didnt appreciate this joke...keep it to urself!..neways the drink and dancing went on for a long time and Meena and Vigyata looked to be possesed by Prabhu deva's soul...While Omkar looked like a 40 year old uncle trying to groove with the ladies...Anni soon realised his potential and was clicking away...Natasha was dancing and at the same time filling up her tanker with alcohol....Ketan was busy having busy-ness talks with people While i was dancing..drinking..dancing..drinking...drinking..drinking..it started to rain and it stopped but the spirits were still high! Finally the music stopped and the fire went off...Hunger Strikes!....Dinner was served...food was good...though some boring conversations took place at the dinner table...cant mention more..lots of people might read this and understand.

After dinner we retreated back to our Tents...Played cards for sometime...Ketan and Vigyata being the newly weds wanted to get back to thier room(they were staying in a AC cottage..after marriage things get Hot(Heated)). Well we continued to talk...went back into the tent. The topic switched to Horror experiences and scary stories....Omkar kept saying "I m not scared"..."guys cant we discuss something else".."i m not scared"..."kuch milega kya yeh saab discuss karke"...After sometime he went off to sleep with the bedsheet over his face. The moon outside was beautiful and the soft slow drizzle made the night wonderful...We spoke for some more time and then dozed off as well....Next day morning we were woken up by a attendant yelling "Good morning..good morning" i felt like picking up something and throwing it at him so hard that he never again wakes up someone drunk and sleepy like that.

Now the Main event of the trip "River Rafting"..All set to go...

There was small pick up van waiting for us..ready to take us to the Kundalika river....the ride there was fun as well since i was standing on the back of the van and enjoying the view. Well once we reached there we were made to sign documents which said "if i die its coz of my own doings"....not exactly that but well thats wat they meant. We were all dressed up just like kids are before performing on the annual day. Life vests, helmets and paddles in your hands....After all this formality was done we were intorduced to our only hope..our instructor..Raju...Raju was from Nepal and spoke good english..he explained to us about the raft and the commands that he was going to give us...1. Team Fooowaard(forward)..we had to row forward..2. Team Backward...Obivious aint it..3. Stop..4. Get down....this means hold the rope which is at the side of the raft and lean inside into the raft....while practicing this commands when he said "get down"..i being the most obidient..got off the raft and then i realised that sometimes its good to practice...well we lifted the raft which i guess is about 300+ kgs and walked 500 mts to the river..The damn water was already flowing and we could see the Rapids being formed in the river. Got the raft into the water..got myself onto the raft and there began a host of commands flowing..we started of at the side initially just for some more practice. we were also waiting for the other rafts to get into the groove.. Once all was set "Team fooorwaard" was the command and the team started to row..straight into the path of the flowing river...Sitting on the edge of the raft in such situations is not very pleasing...We had to raft for around 14 Kms...the first sense of thrill came when there was a rapid called Key waves...the raft swirling its way through it...but more was yet to come...after a few more kms of forward and backward we reached a rapid called John carry....this was the biggest of them all....The raft went straight through and the command was "get down' and the indtructor happend to do the same thing that i did during practice..but just that he was thrown of the raft and so was little natasha...Raju was quick to get back in and pull natasha back up....a wonderful but scary experience...then rowed some more and it was time now to jump into the river and swim for as long as you can...we all jumped in and floated our way to glory....never imagined i would do something like this in life...i think we swam for about 1 km and then got back into the raft....no more energy left to paddle luckily Raju could and he paddled us away to the shore...now the task was to lif that raft over you head ans climb a small hill.....did that...and managed to stay alive. Back to the tents...no energy left....cleaned our selves up and it was time for lunch....had lunch..went back to the tent..slept for a while and were on our way back home in the hope that we shall meet again and do something adventurous again!

I would like to thank everyone mentioned in the blog above for helping me have a wonderful time!
यह क़ाफ़िले यादों के कहीं खो गये होते,
इक पल भी अगर भूल से हम सो गये होते
हर बार पलटते हुए घर को यही सोचा,
ऐ काश किसी लम्बे सफ़र को गए होते