Crossings

I DON'T know how Rishikesh looks like on weekdays, but I am pretty sure it doesn't look like it does on weekends. If you take a handful of Delhi and a pinch of Goa and pound them in a pestle-and-mortar and mix in half a glass of any rundown, dusty, ramshackle town of north India along the Ganga minus the meat and alcohol shops, what you will get is Rishikesh on a weekend.

It's a temple town, but doesn't look like one. Not on a weekend. There's more that people come for than just a tryst with the gods. Adventure sports shops dotting the narrow roads just a few hundred meters from the Ganga are full of life. Adventure seekers mill about looking for the best deals. These shops sell just about anything, from beach slippers and sunglasses to swimwear and colourful T-shirts.

We are in a jeep, with a raft on top of it, headed to Shivpuri, about 16 kilometres upstream, from where we plan to zip down ending our little expedition at the Lakshman Jhula, a hanging rope-bridge that spans the Ganga at Rishikesh.

With yellow life vests and matching helmets and brandishing paddles in our hands, we are ready to take the plunge. Cohesion and trust among teammates is a must in any adventure sport. That's true for rafting too, our guide and captain of the raft, Bhandari, tells us. Somebody points out that he speaks like Kapil Dev. It is difficult to understand his Hindi, English or his accent. But we get some words like "paddle" and "stop".

The chill of the river can leave you numb for a while. But no doubting the Ganga's pavitrata here. She would flow a few more kilometres to Haridwar and then its turquoise would change dramatically as she starts to bear the sins of its devotees and, of course, all the muck that cities and towns along her course deposit into her.

Every rapid or swift current in some parts of the river has a name and a grade assigned. Grades are marked based on the difficulty, but how the names originated is often hard to fathom. Some names are self-explanatory, others not so. These include the relatively easy Grade 1 rapids called Body Surfing and Sweet Sixteen, Grade 2 rapids are called Hilton and Double Trouble. But the ones that scare the hell out, the Grade 3 ones, are rather appropriately named Roller Coaster, Return to Sender and Golf Course.

The roar of the waves and the sudden speed the raft swings into are scary. But thankfully, the rapids come too fast and are gone even sooner for us to begin wondering if it was a wise decision to take the plunge. One that has our hearts in our mouths is the Grade 3 rapid, Return to Sender. The raft leaps in the air after hitting a surge and then almost stands vertical sending some of us tumbling before stabilising.

It's not a great feeling when you are caught up in this stormy hubbub of froth and water, but the gush of emotions after this is something that can only be felt, not explained. There's screaming and cursing, involuntary roaring out of thrill and fear, extravagant cursing, whoops of victory.

A group of young women ahead of us is chanting, " Saare bole Jai Mata Di" after negotiating a monstrous rapid. Some others are letting off that other victory cry you hear all too often now: "Bharat Mata ki Jai!" We are missing "Pakistan murdabad!", something we are even used to hearing off the stands in an India-Zimbabwe encounter.

As we disembark, our wet and tired bodies are cracking with strain and fatigue. But our minds are in a different state. The most exhilarating parts of our adventure probably lasted forty-odd seconds in all. But these are the seconds we shall recall until our next rafting voyage.

My boss disdainfully calls rafting "a cold water bucket splash you have to pay for" and dismisses it as a "waste of time and energy". I hope one day he will be talked into, or gets tossed into, a raft ride and will be able to feel the "splash" of thrill and energy first hand. He may then change his opinion about rafting.

V. Kumara Swamy