At the camp, the dinner preps were on full swing. The pitt crew was responsible for the food situation. Many of them were vegetarians. Vegetarian Barbecue is what we did for the next hour or so. Burgers with vegetable patties was the dinner. Well I am a non-vegetarian, but I love veg food, unfortunately I do not like veg patties, what is veg patty by the way? its made of soy. Isn't it a good idea to call them soy patties? Not my type of food anyway, I was honest when somebody asked me how the food was, should not have to but was, I guess I disappointed some, when I said it was OK. I guess I should have to be more appreciative of the effort people put in this and just lie to them. But I was afraid if I had to eat one more. I should take that chance. I liked the coffee before the patty, it was awesome, but disappointed with how much I got. I love food. Well I need to learn to adjust.
I was feeling real bad about what I said about the food, and then suddenly something happened, enter Subhodh. I will tell you what, this guy is going to do some amazing things in his life. He turned out to be a fellow non-vegetarian and put on a barbecue show for the vegetarians. I experienced a feeling, where you do not feel the odd man out anymore. I spent some time talking to subhodh and then had to go play cards. I love playing cards. Learned a new game called "Ruk my partner". Well just when I was getting better at the game, rain spoiled the show. Later on we had a Barbecue-II, paneer, capsicum and onions. Good idea, but the paneer was salty, once again I could not stop myself and when asked I said, it is too salty. After the paneer session, there was burned potato session. I learned something new. The potato's were great. I will try this the next time I am camping. The highlight of the barbecue-II was suri, if it is not for him, we would not have had fun during that particular stretch.
We tried to play some antakshiri during barbecue-II but were making too much noise, so had to call it a night. We went to bed, just before that had another session of cards play, this time inside the tent.
In the morning, after al-natural activities, we gathered for the breakfast. I was hungry and eat what was available to me. Hash browns, bread peanut butter, rice patty, corn and banana. We played antakshiri and this time with no problems. Antakshiri is always fun. It involves everybody and lets others know what kind of person you are, in a way. The best part of antakshiri, was santu's song selection. "Ghunghat ki aad mein dilbar ka deedar adhura rahta hain" - made everybody laugh. At the end subhodh bhai showed some talent by singing "Kuch na kaho, kuch bhi na kaho, kya kahna hain, kya sunna hain". Another hyd fella Pavan also got some singing talent.
After breakfast and antakshiri, it was time to pack up and head for some adventure - White water rafting.
This trip was planned ahead of time so reservations were made for white water rafting. But unfortunately the reservation was made for WWR-level1 &2, I wanted to go for level 3&4, and our group was also in sinc with me, 5 of us decided to change the reservation to level 3&4, another guy (Romel) from other crew also joined us. So six of us were in for more excitement. I missed out on an opportunity to go WWR in west virginia last 4th of July and all the talk about it later and talk at my work place, I could not wait to get on with it. We had some time in our hands, so we went on a small trial across the river. The weather turned around completely and it was probably the best day weather wise this summer. After some photo session around the waterfalls, we moved on to the WWR starting point. We had an initial orientation of 5 minutes and then we needed to put on the gear (life jacket and helmet) and hop onto a bus, which would take us to the rafts. We were thinking that there would be a guide in the boat so we thought its going to be easy. Well we get to find out it was guided escort not fully guided, there is a difference. Anyway, we thought we have satti, the man who has done this before, so obviously he was our raft's leader and he got the back seat.
Now nobody else has any kind of experience and satti, santu and romel know swimming, the other three including me were non-swimmers. Our raft was a part of 8-9 raft group and there were 4 guides, 2 escorting through 2 canoe and 2 other were on 2 rafts with passengers.
Within first five minutes we got stuck on a rock and were the worst performing raft in the whole group. If one named all the rafts, the best name for ours would be "Chaotic experience". poor girls anu and richa were just listening and I, santu, satti and romel, were shouting at each other about how the other one is doing it wrong.
After that incident it was time for change of guard, satti's position was replaced by romel. I tell you what, romel was helpful, we would have been ok without him, we always find ways to get out of bad situations. We talked to each other and took it slowly and within next 15 minutes, probably were one of the best crews in the group.
satti and santu were on the front side of the raft and for the next 2 hours they were disagreement about which way (forward/backward) they should paddle depending on situation. satti was doing it wrong but he would not listen to anybody, after two hours of convincing he got fed up and asked santu to just shut, his reasoning he knows what he is doing. Well a simple explanation after words did the trick, and he realised that he was doing it wrong.
In the first hour, while trying to push the raft away from a rock, romel fell in the water. I was the closest to him, so i had to lift him back into the raft. no big deal because it did not happen near a rapid.
The rapids got bigger and we got better at passing them, one by one. we were like man if this is so easy, level 1&2 would be a cake walk. The chaotic experience quickly turned into a smooth ride session. Then it was time to park the raft and have a sandwich for lunch. After re-energising ourselves, we were set to finish the rest of our 7-mile rafting experience.
Just before the last mile came the most exciting experience of all. Our cockiness got to us. At one of the rapids, richa lost the balance and almost fell in the water, all of reacted to hold her, and because she was close to the front side, I and romel sitting in the back (the two most heavy guys) did not move much making the front side lot lighter than the back of the raft. Within no time we were all in the water underneath our raft with the raft being upside down.
In the moment when I realized that we are going down, I decided to hold onto the rope on the side of the raft no matter what and I did just that. Life jackets, as expected made us float but I was right underneath the raft all the way through and because I held onto it, I was ahead of everybody else, meaning moving fast. I did see a big rock ahead and immediately made an effort to put the legs in front, did not do in time so hit the rock with my legs. After that I could hear a voice saying "let go of the raft, let go of the raft" checked on my left side, there was anu, holding onto the raft very tightly, she was not the one shouting, the guide on top of the raft was shouting, so that he can turn the raft around. I let go of the raft and asked anu to do the same, she would not do it. Then the most amazing thing happened, the guide took the rope of his waist tied onto the rings on one side of the raft and held the other side and jumped on the other side making the raft turn, because anu was holding on to the raft and because she does not carry much weight as the raft turned, she was lifted with the raft and dropped in it. I did not get to see it, but immediately when I was pulled in the raft, I could see her. She was looking forward, backwards, sideways and was shouting "richa, richa" and we could see richa ahead of us floating and shouting "Help me, save me", she was on board immediately and when we look behind us we could see romel and satti on the shores/rocks but could not see santu. Now anu was like "where is santhosh, where is santhosh". Man I got real worried about santu, real fast, in the mean time, romel hopped onto another boat and when he reached us he informed that santu is alright.
We were all back in the raft, couple of paddles were missing, had to get on the sides before the next rapid. Everybody had a tired scared look on their faces, and were like lets get this over with, the next 15 minutes seemed too long but we made it through the next 2/3 rapids with no issues, and extra focus and effort.
The whole experience was awesome, if we did not have fallen in the water, it would have been less exciting. Now we have a story to tell, experience to remember, at least until we go on the next adventure.
