The desire to see the pristine beauty of the Ganges forced me to come out of the bed early in the morning, as early as 6 AM in the morning. Started my day with tea on the banks of Ganges…it was one the best tea I have ever had…not because of the taste but because of the ambiance of the surroundings!
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| Morning Tea!! |
By then most of my friends (read colleagues) were awake and we were ready with our gears to play beach volley ball. Good fun but alas I injured my wrist a bit. Well what you can expect from a software engineer (read girl) who spends most of the day and even nights in office . We had to stop at 7.30 am as we scheduled to go for rafting that morning. So we had a wonderful breakfast in the camp and we were off to rafting.
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| The Ganges |
It was supposed to be an easy day with small rapids. We started off our journey by crossing the river to reach the road and then we were off downstream where the rafting begins. Well that was the first time in my life that I was doing anything known as an “Adventure sport”. We were to be accompanied by a friendly Guide “Karan”. He gave us a comprehensive safety briefing about rafting. Thereafter we packed our bags (camera and essentials) in the raft and we were ready to gooooo! I was super excited. We had to raft from Kaudiyala – Shivpuri . It was supposed to be an easy day with small rapids.
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| The rafting begins |
The adrenaline rush came when our friendly (well not really!) guide overturned the raft intentionally (off course in still Ganges) and we all suddenly were screaming …well not because we were drowning (it was not possible because of the life jackets) but the water was too cold and we didn’t expect that he will unexpectedly overturn the raft. Well, believe me this was important to remove the inhibitions/ fear we had for the rafting! It was almost like the feeling we have during holi…if someone colours us black and blue and drowns us in water, then we don’t care any further and go full stream without fear to colour other people!! Also this made us enjoy the body surfing in the small rapids. Believe me the water was very clean, unlike what it is in Haridwar. It was a Great day to relax, soak in the sun, and bodysurf and bird-watch (the real one J). This stretch of Rafting is quite safe and even families can go in for this stretch. The raft time was approximately 22 kms from Kaudiyala to Shivpuri. Well we retuned by afternoon back to our camp. After having lunch, we decided to go to Devprayag by road. That’s the place where the Ganages originates. It is one of the Panch Prayag (five confluences) of Alaknanda River where Alaknanda and Bhagirathi river meet and take the name Ganga or Ganges river. We returned back and spend a relaxed night at our camp with born fire, Antakshari and office gossips ! Offcourse not to forget the sumptuous chicken gravy for dinner! We were awake till 12 am on the pristine white sand, beside the Ganges - with zillions of stars in the beautiful black night.
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