I was at home in Delhi. Though I was on vaccations, but most of my friends had their daily offices to attend and I was also busy with some unofficial works of mine (If you are going home on vaccations, its actually not vaccations 🙂 ). Anyways, so I planned with a friend of mine Pankaj, to go to Rishikesh on the weekend and make the vaccations worthwhile by doing some adventurous activities. And the only planning we did was that there was no plan other than leaving on friday night, October the 18th. Caught the bus from ISBT and we were on the way to Rishikesh. While we were chatting and most of the passengers were sleeping, there was this one particular passenger who had got the ears of dogs. Even though we tried to keep our voice down, he would always bring his hand up in the air rotating in form of making a chakra in the air from 3 seats ahead of us. I am pretty sure he was drunk as sometimes when we were staring outside the window not talking, he hears our voices and does the hand thing again. Anyways, we reached the Rishikesh quite early in the morning around 3 AM and had a nap in the waiting room till the sun came out. Took the autorickshaw till Lakshman Jhoola where there were many agent offices who can arrange for the adventure activities. There was this one particular guy at MB Adventures who gave us pretty good deal. There are two places where you can start the river Rafting in Holy Ganges, Brahmpuri which involves 12 Km Rafting and Shivpuri which involves 17 KM of distance. We went to Shivpuri. Between Shivpuri and Brahmpuri comes 6 high tides.
At Brahmpuri, you can have a light food like Maggie. There is one cliff from which you can make a jump in Ganges. It would had been around 4-6 meters high. Standing on the edge, right before taking a jump, the fear you will feel is completely different. Also the experience of zero gravity for that 1-2 second is entirely different. Though I tried 6 jumps but each time before jump, I could feel that fear again. Pankaj took 3 jumps and he looked more confident than I was before taking jumps.
From Brahmpuri to the office of the MB adventure, there comes another 3 high tides. We were done with Rafting around 1’o clock. Now the time was to face the actual fear. Bungee jumping in Rishikesh is done from a height of 83m. We reached the bungee point. Pankaj was afraid that he might back out if I would go first. So he decided to have the jump before me. While he was getting geared up, I was chatting with one of the Bungee professionals Martina, who comes all the way from Switzerland. She was all encouraging. In Rishikesh Bungee, you get 2 chances to take the jump. If you wont be able to take the jump, your jump will be cancelled. Pankaj could not take the jump in the first go and its not an unusual thing as its a scary show looking down from that height. Mark, another Bungee professional from NewZealand, consoled him and asked me to cheer my friend for jump. He took the jump and now it was my turn. I was pretty confident till the point I reached the edge. Standing there looking down while Mark counting from behind, I can tell you it scares a shit out of you. Anyways, I made myself firm and took the jump. Its an elastic rope and you get bounced back three to four times. In first fall, for those 3-4 seconds, I did not know where I was. All the blood getting circulated in the entire body, adrenaline rushing towards your brain. It was quite amazing feeling. You will even forget to shout :-).
After the jump, they give you a water bottle and a badge saying “I have got guts”. You need to trek back to the office. After Bungee, we decided to go for flying fox. We both were tied together on Ropeway and in seconds, we were flying over the Ganges like we see Hanuman flying in ramayana. Flying above the river, hills, it was a view to behold. Came the end of the journey by having a dinner at Rajasthani Hotel and we were back on the roads towards Delhi with wonderful memories.
Different Universe 