Behind The Scenes - River Rafting Experiences

In this blog I'll be writing about my first and the last rafting trip experience. I'll start from my recent trip in Rishikesh. This was my last trip before the pandemic in Feb 2020. My office organised a trip to Phoolchatti, Rishikesh for around 150 to 200 people. Particularly in my team there are around 16 crazy, intelligent and polite people and we are not just colleagues but we are good friends as well. This colleague-friendship bonding got stronger in this trip because we just came back from Udaipur trip and I never thought the trip with this big group of 16 people could be that fun as I generally prefer to travel in small groups of four or five people max..

So, the day we did river rafting was our second day in Rishikesh. The day was pleasant but pretty cold, there was a cold breeze but the shining sun was a cherry on the cake. For river rafting, there are mostly two variations that I am aware of, 12kms/16kms and 24kms/26kms. We decided to go for a 16kms rafting trip. Generally the duration to complete the rafting trip is around 2-4 hours for 16kms. We paid Rs.1000 per head for rafting and they charged extra Rs 1500 for our pictures and video of rafting trip.

Before starting any rafting trip your guide will train you for the expected and unexpected situations like how to handle a situation if you fall out of your raft and you are flowing away from the raft with the current of the river and how to handle if your raft flips and you are underneath your raft. I was listening to our guide and was very confident that I can handle such situations as I had already done rafting before that. But my fear was still the same dying due to drowning like people in the titanic movie 😀.

Related to my raft buddies, we were 9 people in a single raft that included us and one is our guide. During our rafting trip there were around 4 to 5 rapids and as soon as one rapid was about to come our guide explained the name of the rapid and instructed us to be active and whether we had to paddle in the front side or in the backward side. Rapid is basically a section where the water velocity and turbulence increases. Few rapids were very dangerous but the best experience of the rafting trips (kyunki darr ke aage jeet h 😎). We all were very happy and terrified at the same time. And when the river flow was smooth, we were continuously talking and cracking jokes on each other in between. I had a smile on my face but inner me was continuously praying to God to save me from this stupidity that I invited myself, but at the same time we were excited and shouting “Jai Ganga Maiya ki” or “Har Har Gange” 🙂 which was suggested by our guide as we did rafting in the holy river Ganga.

So here comes a point when your guide asked you to jump into the river by holding the rope that is around your raft so that you can’t go far from the raft. So our guide did the same thing, and when I jumped from my raft there was some water flow and turbulence at that place, though before jumping I hold my breath that I have learnt from my mistake in my first rafting trip (explain this later) but as soon as I jumped I lose my breath because water was so cold. And I went below my raft only my hands were outside holding the rope. I was panicked and breathless for a few seconds. As soon as my guide saw me he came for the rescue and pulled me up so that I could breath. After a few minutes I was completely able to handle myself and was enjoying being in the river and posing for the photos.

There is one maggi point in between the rafting trip where people enjoy the maggi and tea. This point is also famous because there is a small cliff from where people generally jump into the river. I tried this jumping adventure in my earlier trip that didn't go well so I only enjoyed my maggi and tea time there. And after all this adventure we headed towards the end of this amazing rafting trip.

So this was our happy ending rafting trip as all my buddies were alive and safe.

Oh yes I remembered after rafting adventure we had one little life adventure. There were two different office buses for 16kms and 24kms rafting groups and the pickup points were different for both the groups. Due to some mismanagement our bus in which we kept our dry clothes for changing was not at our pickup point. And then we waited for almost 1.30 hour in our wet clothes during winters. That was again fun in itself.

In Tattapani, we did 24kms rafting trip. It took the whole day. I did it a long time ago so I don't remember the exact rafting price.

I went on this trip with my colleagues from my first office. Everything was the same, the guide gave instructions and then they clicked this pic like we were going on a war 😂 (the expressions of my friend wearing a yellow helmet is something like that).

This rafting trip was very calm and peaceful. When we did rafting, the river was very calm and there were no major rapids as compared to my last rafting trip. The complete route has huge mountains at both sides of the river which makes the rafting trip more beautiful. I basically enjoyed this whole rafting experience except one point when our guide asked us to jump into the river. Most of my raft buddies are swimmers. So they were making dives in the river. I thought I should also try this. So I stood straight on my raft and jumped into the river. And as I jumped, I went straight under water, my eyes were open and I could see the green water for a few distances and then dark beyond that.

And I was so stupid that I jumped without holding my breath and then tried breathing under water and I simply inhaled water 😒. As I was wearing a life jacket so I wasn't going to die, this is what our instructor mentioned earlier. Then my friends helped me to calm down. I came back to my senses and then we clicked pictures with big smiles on our faces.

I like reading travel stories so I thought to share mine too because "Happiness is only real when shared" - Christopher McCandless.