Jacky

A wonderful blog written by my niece about Jacky. Those who know me since 1987 and visited our house would remember him
http://pulsatinglibretto.blogspot.com/2009/09/my-first-best-friend-jacky.html

River Rafting at Kolad

Pooja's Resort at Kolad

Lift your own Rafts

All set to go

Fitting the Life Savers

The route via Tamhini Ghat

Our last team outing at the misty Mahabaleshwar was in November last year. This time around, we thought of adventure sports instead of the regular outing with a booze party. The entire team was game for White Water Rafting, Kayaking & swimming in the river although, most of the team cannot swim. After many schedule changes to suit everybody, we decided to take off on 18th morning from Pune thru the Tamhini Ghat to Kolad. The Kundalika river in Raigad district near Kolad is the only place in Maharashtra where you can do river rafting on a 12KM stretch. It depends on the schedule of water release from the upstream Bhira Dam. I was more excited with this as Kundalika river runs thru my native place (Roha) and have heard stories of my father regularly swimming & diving into it when it used to be in full spate in monsoon (he used to also swim from the SeaRock point, Bandra to Dadar Chowpaty during his college days).

The drive thru picturesque Tamhini was luring with misty hills and backwaters of the Mulshi dam and we did take few breaks to enjoy the waterfalls & scenery and yummy Kanda bhajjies & Chai at the Quick Bite Resort at Dhokalwadi. The monsoon magic was everywhere to be seen with a green carpet and raindrops from leaves soothing the eyes and the fog draping the hill tops.

As expected, we had a dressing down from the Wild River Rafting guy saying that we were 45mts behind schedule and the water release from the dam should be getting over. We rushed in to find out fitting Life Jackets & Helmets and were ready with the Oars. After a 10mts briefing session on commands and what to & what not to do in the raft, we took out first plunge. We were in 2 rafts, 6 to each, with the Wild River Rafting guys as our captains and there was a third guy in a canoe who was to help us. The first 3 KM run was mildly exciting and we were exhorting our captain to change directions and take us thru the gushing water flow. Then there came a big george (actually a rapid of Class 2+) with all of us excitedly looking towards it as our raft was slightly in inclined direction. Wooooooooooosh ! there I was in gushing water, tumbling up and down. I looked around and saw that two of my colleagues were also in water. Our raft was up in the water and 3 of the guys were inside and the captain trying to help us. The other raft was far ahead and the canoe guy was returning to help us. I struggled to catch hold of the raft's rope but withing seconds, I was thrown away about 15ft by the current. Still struggling to get my bearing, I saw one of my mates about a feet from me desperately struggling to keep his head with fear of death writ on his face. By the time I yelled to him that nothing would happen to us and we were safe with the Life Jackets, he caught hold of me from behind and hugged me tightly. For a moment, I remembered my swimming rescue lessons not letting the drowning guy to let you catch from behind and started struggling to get him off my back. In the struggle that ensued I lost one of my sandals and both of us were deep in the water. Suddenly, I felt my feet scraping the rocks at the bottom of the river. I pushed hard and on my way up, got myself free and came up. These were the longest moments with all my will power & yoga practise deployed (I guess, it would have been 15/20ft deep there), I was trying to hold my breath and not drink any water. When I got my head above the water level, I saw my team members looking desperately for us and scared to the hilt. Within moments, my mate also came up about 10ft away from me. After some time, the Canoe guy reached the mate and helped him to the raft to be pulled up. Next, he came to me and rescued me. Once in the raft, I found out that my mate had a deep gash on his heel with blood draining as he had lost both his sandals and scraped the rocks at the bottom and had drunk lots of water. He also had few bruises on his body and was badly shaken. He confided later that he had actually lived thru the feeling of death with thoughts of his family and their well being after him. Well, as I remember now, I never had a feeling of death. My first thought was of surviving by getting myself free from his clutches as I was well aware that both of us would survive due to the life jackets if we were independent, in view of my earlier experience in River Crossing. Once in the raft, the captains took the rafts to a particular site and strangely enough, one by one, the Oars & Helmets came floating by and I saw one sandal going past us. In the end, we had lost an Oar, a sandal of mine and both of my mate's. After some cooling down, we were again in water and as the flow became quiter, the captains allowed us to jump in the water. Except my mate, the entire team was in water, floating by and swimming. Even the non swimmers were floating and enjoying and thats when they realised that the Life Jackets wouldnt have allowed us to drown anyways. Once out of the water, I checked with the team and all had enjoyed this activity tremendously and were game for a repeat in near future. Later on, I had a chat with the Wild River Rafting chief and he said that in the last 2 yrs that they were conducting this activity, they have never had any casualties and the last time the raft was toppled, was about 6/7 months ago.

All in all, I can now say that if we had'nt had that accident, our river rafting expedetion would have been very tame and we may have not have enjoyed it to that extent. This experience added the real thrill to make it a once in a lifetime adventure & experience.

Unfortunately, we didnt take camera's inside the raft not click many snaps of the rafts as we had rushed in for the training.

Willing to experience the thrill ? Call me for details.

Purpose of life

Most people do not know the raison d'etre of their life. Their ship of life sails thru the waters of the world wandering as per the direction of the winds. People think of doing something but don't know what to do and where to start. Similarly, people want to go but don't know where to go. I repeat an analogy I have used in numerous training and coaching sessions. You reach VT (now CST) station wanting to go somewhere. Not knowing where to go, you board the first train which comes. After a while, it reaches the fork, Dadar station, i.e. one train going to Borivali (WR) and the other train going to Kalyan (CR). You board the first train and reach Kalyan. There again comes a fork, one going to Nashik and the other to Pune. You take the Pune train by chance and end up at the Pune fork. There you see one train going to Solapur and the other to Kolhapur. You continue your journey this way and end up after many days at, say, Kolkata. So, you end up at an unknown and undecided destination, by chance within a timeframe, which was not under your control. Instead of this, when you reached VT station, if you were clear that you wanted to go to Bangalore, you would have explored all the options of reaching there; by Train in 24hrs, by Volvo bus in 18hrs and by flight in 3hrs. You would have reached your desired destination with optimal resources, i.e. money & time, in a specific timeframe. It is important to learn from this analogy and work out your vision and mission for your life. This will help you achieve something (could be anything you define) in life and when you do lie on your final resting bed (the last 24hrs or the final 1 hr of your life) and introspectng, you may have less remorse and could leave this world in a happy and satisfied state of mind. Exploit this beautiful world & live life fully.