A Dip To Scale The WALL
After a long break, I am back with another one of my travelogues. Mercifully (for you), it was just a weekend trip and hence there is strong possibility that this travelogue would be small. For quite some time now, I had been considering going for a Bhagirathi rafting expedition and a Kaudiyala Rishiskeh rafting trip seemed to be an apt practise for it. So, after vacillating between the options of Tehri (for the Bhagirathi expedition) and Kaudiyala, we finally settled at Kaudiyala.
So, the plain and simple, bland facts are
a) there were 10 members in the team, a record of sorts. From IRL, we had nity (nitendra), upi (upendra), rahul (gupta), ajay gupta, chinmoy, mohit and of course me. Three of Mohit's friends; Prateek, Mudit and Gaurav joined us.
b) We hired a Sumo and an ambassador and left Delhi around 10:30 p.m
c) We reached Kaudiyala at 5 in the morning.
d) Nity puked a total of 4 times in the journey.
The plan was also quite simple or so we thought. We would cover the three stretches from Kaudiyala to Rishikesh by 1 p.m and then Mohit and company would go back to Delhi and the IRL group would march towards Chamba (Tehri-Garhwal). As it turned out, because of the cold conditions, rafting would begin only after 10 a.m. and so, some of the planning started to fall apart. To make matters worse, the rafting captain at GMVN camp made it clear that there was a distinct possibility of the raft flipping over at the Wall, the most difficult rapid in the Ganges. For the uninititated, though rapids do come in different shapes or sizes they are known by their grades that span from 1-6. To put things into perspective, a waterfall falls in the grade 6 category and is not to be tried even by professionals. Grade 5 is what professionals should aspire to conquer. Now, this grading is done by professionals and they also come in all shapes and sizes. So, grade 3 for a cool captain maybe grade 4 for somebody else and The Infimum Theory for heights, distances and grades says that the minimum of all the reported values has the highest probability to be the closest approximation.
What is universally accepted is the following order (from tough to easy) of the major rapids in Ganges: The Wall, Golf Course, Daniel's Dip, Rollercoaster, Three Blind Mice. What is also universally accepted is that Fall is atleast a tough 4th grader and Daniel Dip is atleast a tough 3rd grader and so the rest can fall in place. Various sources of information may place Wall at Grade 5 and D. Dip at Grade 4, though it violates the Infimum Theory and hence less probable. Another universally accepted fact is that the Wall is a cut above the rest and the rafting captain made it amply clear. He suggested that we cover the 2nd and 3rd stretch, thus avoiding the Wall and Daniel's Dip. (Again for the uninitiated, Kaudiyala to Rishikesh is divided into 3 stretches, with D Dip and Wall in 1st stretch, 3 blind mice in the 2nd stretch and Golf Course and roller coaster in 3rd stretch.) My response was that I had come all the way only to do the Wall, which was correct because in the Bhariathi expedition there are a few walls to climb and we desperately needed some practise. In fact I even remember saying that "mai to yahan wall hi karne aaya hoon aur aap aise bol rahe ho". The discussion with others left me with the impression that some of us were not too keen on taking the chance (of the raft flipping). However, the Bhagirathi talk probably led to enhancing our standing in the captain's eyes and he proposed that we take an oar-boat as a rescue raft, along with the paddle-boat. Now, what a tank is to a tough terrain, an oar-boat is to the river. The river will make the oar-boat rock and roll, and tilt and dance, but there is not much chance of it throwing it upside down. So, after some hesitation on the part of some of us, we settled on doing all the 3 stretches. Since, we had some time to kill, we spent some time rolling over in the sand followed by a game of beach-volley, which was a lot of fun.
Before the start, one of the chambers of our paddle-boat was punctured and the repair and consequent delay meant that we started around 12:15. One incidence, the irony of which will be evident later, was the opinion that a lot of us had about D Dip. D Dip is visible from Kaudiyala and when I told everybody that it was a 3+ rapid, the most common opinion (Nity's being the loudest voice) was that it was a cake-walk. So, when we proceeded towards D Dip I simply reminded Nity and some others to keep in mind what they just said when we crossed D Dip. Before proceeding any further, let me specify the position of people in the paddle boat. I was the high-sider (that meant I was in front center, my job being only to hold the front of the raft when ordered so that the weight of the raft shifts forward. How much my weight would help is an altogether different matter.) Nity and Upi were to my left and right. Mudit, Mohit and Prateek were behind Upi whereas Gaurav, Rahul and second guide were behind Nity. The captain was on the back side.
So we approached D Dip and what happened after that is still not very clear. When the first wave hit us, there was a mad scramble and is was like "Everybody for Himself" with everybody practising The Self-Survival and Hope Theory that says that In a tough situation, take cover, close your eyes and pray that everything will be fine. Translated in this scenario, it means simply duck, stop paddling, hold the rope and hope that the others will take the raft out of the rapid. The only problem was everybody else was practising the same theory and, as a result, something like this happened. We approached the rapid from a right direction and we were climbing over it but since the paddling stopped, we never crossed it. The rapid simply tilted the raft on the left side and threw it down as we entered the hole. What must have happened was that raft tilted to an angle close to 80' with the front end down more than the back. However, before the angle could cross 90', thankfully the reverse wave threw it to the back and the right side and the raft did not flip over. So, this is what (probably) happened to the raft and even though it may sound interesting, what happened to the rafters is much more interesting.
I would assume Nity was the first to fall off the raft followed closely by Rahul and our sub-guide. Nity (and possibly others on the left) hung on to the lifeline of the raft while the left side was down but when the raft was thrown back and right, they could not hold on to the lifeline and were swept away. The captain was also thrown out when the raft was thrown back but since he was thrown on the back of the raft he was not swept away. As for me, I was holding the rope attached to the front side and was (most probably) thrown on the left side of the raft when it went head and left side down. When the raft was thrown back and right, I was under the boat and then I was going in some kinds of circles, my motion being a combination of the direction in which the rapid was throwing my body and the direction in which it was throwing the raft. And then the intensity decreased and I saw myself going in the direction of a rock that I avoided. Looking up I saw the raft still there with 4 people (out of 10) still on the raft. Nity, Rahul and sub-guide were collected by the rescue raft (200 m ahead of us) whereas the rest of us were pulled up on our raft. Upi and I could not find Nity and were shouting for him (Upi's being the dominant voice) when we realised that they had been swept away and had reached the rescue boat in no time.
So, in the final score card, 6 out of 10 people fell (more like swept) out of the raft, of which 3 had to use the rescue raft. So we do not lose any men and miraclously, we did not even lose any paddles. The last paddle was, in fact, collected a bit downstream when we had written it off as lost. Those were the facts and now for the analysis. Thankfully nobody panicked and floated around avoiding the rocks that came their way. For me, initially it was a feeling of disbelief (as I never ever thought that I would fall out of the raft; my last rafting experience never raised those fears) followed by realisation that I would be fine if I do not panic. Even though all of us made it back without any injury, falling out of the raft could have been dangerous as some of us were finally thrown towards the rocks. Chances are you would avoid them, but I would rather not take that kind of chance.
One dip and it was clear that the only way we could scale the wall was to paddle and paddle hard at that. The self-survival theory does not work in rapids, more so when everybody else also practises it. A bit of reorganisation was also needed and so Prateek and Mohit took the front seats. I took one of the paddles and took a seat that was unoccupied and, as a consequence, Rahul had to go to the high-side. And so, at the WALL, it was a case of perfect team-work with nobody stopping his paddling even when the roaring wall tried to throw us off its back and then we heard the most welcome sound of "Stop" and "Thank You" indicating we had crossed the wall. The dip had actually steeled us and helped us scale the wall with an ease that even surprised us.
After that nothing much happened, at least nothing that would excite you. Scaling the wall had raised the confidence levels and anything else that would come next was literally beaten by the paddlers. Some people shout to raise their adrenaline level but in the case of our team, it was the war-cry of "maar, maar, ek aur wave aaya, maar" that propelled people into action. So, other than a small mishap at Rollercoaster where some people misinterpreted "get back" as "get down" and promptly ducked and stopped pedalling, it was a cruise, the only difference being that this cruise left us with a lot of sore throats and tired bones.
After reaching Rishikesh at 5:30 p.m., I did not broach the subject of going to Chamba knowing fully well what the reaction would be. The next day when I presented the two choices of travelling to Chamba and having a game of beach-volley at Shivpuri, volley won and we had another 3 games of immensely tiring volley (that our team lost 2-1) followed by a bath in one of the streams that flows into the Ganges. The only incidence of note that happened in the return journey was Nity making a record of sorts and not puking in the entire journey and so the dip and wall party finally came back to Delhi around 10 p.m.
As for what happens to the walls in Bhagirathi, I suppose we will just have to wait and watch.
P.S. There is something called THE FALL in Bhagirathi. Do I hear some "Oh! No"s? Home page for travelogues