Friday, September 14, 2007

A Fiasco called the MA Team River-Rafting program


Well, well, John proposed and we accepted, but God disposed our plans peremptorily.
Date of trip: 8th Sept 2007
Place Kolad Village, Kundalika River
Offer: River Rafting, kayaking, Rappelling, and many more mountain water sports
Opted for : River rafting
Result: no River rafting
People: Employees of SAS - John, Deepak & Deepak, Navin & his BIL to be and of course yours truly.

Whats the story!
As Marco Polo would say, "What more can I tell you??"

The day started with The pick-up service coming up to my place (John and me are neighbors) and John comes 15 mins late.

Off we go to Navin's place to pick up his pair and the day starts on an Ominous note:Cannot reach him on phone. So cannot tell him we are on our way. Reach his place and wake him up. (Khadoos!!! He should have been awake and ready) the time 7:25 AM By the time we leave the place we, it is almost 7:45 AM and on the way, we stop for fuel and we notice we were driving with a flat tyre. What more can I tell you? A cigarette stop was in the offing. We lookup towards heaven and ask father above, "Is that all you got, bring them on?" and this was the beginning of the end of all our rafting - plans. We are behind schedule and finally near the edge of Pune we all are assembled in a rickety Jeep which had many undesirable features -
  1. Auto-Honking (Every time we hit a ditch, it honks baaaank baaaanak)
  2. Low-battery (Push start the goddamned vehicle)
  3. Auto-radio on off (Same story, hit a ditch and it starts blaring, cannot stop it)
  4. And a Homilies Non-comprehende of a driver we hired - he was all the time thinking we are on our way to boozeland - GOA
What more shall I tell you?

The drive was very scenic. You cannot complain of everything though and up whipped by camera-phone and shot this very nice picture. The moment I click, the jeep enters another hole in the road and you can see the effect.
The edge of the window peeps into the shot. But still it came out good. You can see more pictures in picasa.

Well we move on towards our destination and we see a host of cloud kissed mountains. At one point we had to stop to see the scenary, a cloud moving down a valley. We stopped here to have some breakfast and we lingered for sometime as the view was breath taking. City dwellers do miss out on the beauty of nature.
after breakfast we start again towards our goal. Along the way we the river meandering alongside our road and we had to stop yet again. This was something we will be missing for a long time to come. For posterity sake I needed some pictures. Forced the driver to stop (BY now he was confused and in a hurry to reach the end). The river is part of the TATA group's hydel project owning. Took some pictures with my phone from the moving cab before I decided enough, I need to get down. The pictures can be viewed here - picasa. by now everyone was in a trance - the effect of nature at it's virgin best.
got down and started clicking photos and here we found we have more to face. John's cam wouldn't work, Batter down a la' jeep.


And here i decided we need more pictures and we took our first people picture at this point with the river in the back drop.


We moved on and reach the destination just before lunch time. Our guide leaves us to inquire about our rafting program and we settle down for some chow. Post lunch we move and we acquire another Flat tyre. The jinx is still there. we top up the tyre with lots of air as the guide tells us we need to go only a short distance. We reach the starting point on a FLAT TYRE. and learn that the water levels are low and we need to go a bit up hill to enjoy the rafting. Yes the JINX is still with us. So we shift to another rickety JEEP and go uphill and enjoy the vision of a DRY RIVER BED. The jokes were on us now. Our driver, nice chap sounding incredulous asks us, You came all the way 100 KM (About 150 miles) to watch some mountains, trees and have lunch? Snigger!!!!

So we settle down for something second best - a dip inside a water fall. The road was littered with a host of waterfalls and we pick one which we liked


We pull up on the side and settle down in the water. Getting in was tricky, velvety smooth rocks did the trick on us, So gingerly we go in and then nobody wants to come out.



What did we do?,
Nothing just sit there. And I quote Anon
Doing nothing, but sitting and enjoying the bounty of nature's beauty is I suppose the best thing in the world

Spent a few hours under another fall before starting for home and I did not want to lose this so from the back of the moving jeep I clicked a few more. We saw two Rainbows parallel to each other and I wishfully thought, when can I go back to the stay in the lap of mother-nature?? Sniff!! Sniff!! Note: You will have to peer to see the second rainbow. It is faint.