In The Lap of The Ganges

I know this is a little overdue, but I have to write about my most memorable trip ever. Possibly among the happiest three days I ever experienced. It was not my first white water experience, nor was it my first trip with my teammates. I'd actually been rafting over a subset of the same stretch of rapids with my team the previous year. Although, as a matter of fact, there were only four people other than myself who were part of both the trips.

So most of the people going rafting that weekend were from my team, except for a couple of Ashish's (Random observation: I think this is the first time I'm actually referring to one of my friends by name in my blog. So far I've only referred to people by description) childhood friends, and my friend Aarti, whom Ashish and Hemant also knew and asked me to invite along. Come along with us she did, as did another friend of hers.

The day we were supposed to leave for our camp from Noida started out with an almost torrential and completely unseasonal downpour. And that gave us some amazing weather. Aarti, her friend Deepa and I spent a large portion of that evening enjoying the lovely breeze out in the open, walking around and, well, since I'd seen Aarti after quite some time, so we were catching up with the latest in each other's lives. Oh, and that was the evening Ashish tried to ram his car into the three of us :P

So anyway, after a bit of delay, as is usual for a trip involving around twenty five people, we set out for Devprayag (I think that was the name of the place from where we started our rafting) amidst good weather and good cheer. After all, we were taking an extended weekend off from our drab routines to wash away our sins in the Ganges and have a lot of fun doing it! On the bus ride, there was a lot of singing, chattering, leg pulling. (Especially with Aman teasing Anuranjan and me endlessly. But I'm not really complaining here. Because I know I provoked all that!) There were only two or three people in the group whom I did not know prior to this trip, but there were, apparently, quite a few I was not well acquainted with. Who'd known me only from a distance or on a strictly professional, developer-quality engineer interaction level. So a bunch of people got to see the real me during that bus ride. Another thing about that bus ride. I normally cannot sleep while travelling. On our Dalhousie trip, we were travelling all night and everyone was asleep but I was awake for the most part of the night. Only after Rachita gave me a nice, relaxing forehead massage was I able to sleep for just under half an hour. But on this journey I had a little over a couple of hours of deep sleep. Apparently Ashish's singing was a lot more soothing than Rachita's massage.

So, anyway, after some digression from our route and a stopover for breakfast, we finally made it to our starting point for the day's rafting. On the banks, some of us helped pump up the air into the rafts. After they did a bit of pumping with all their might, we were told that those rafts were not ours and ours were already ready down at the riverbank. By the way, the unseasonal showers continued all the way and at the time of which I speak, it was drizzling. When we started our journey down the river, it was raining considerably and the shower continued all through the way that day. The first day's rapids were relatively mild, and not too exciting for those of us who had experienced rapids before, so the rain added the component of novelty that we needed there. Even so, we were quite thankful when the skies cleared up that evening and the next day came up all bright and sunshiny.

The evening was completely awesome. There is something that I did not find out about Anuranjan on any of the earlier trips. After he's had a couple of drinks, his sense of humour becomes absolutely legendary! He'll poke fun at anyone and everyone in that state, and everyone will have a good time. And the frequency with which he uses his favourite word - bhangi - will go up exponentially. There was a lot of interesting conversation centered around the origin and the meanings of this word, and what it takes to be a bhangi or to marry a bhangi. Then one of the guys at the camp did a little song in the local dialect for us, which set off a bit of discussion on love and heartbreak.

There was talk of going for a night trek after the campfire and dinner, but that was dropped in favour of going down to the beach (the riverside beach, that is) and counting shooting stars. Aman, Anuranjan and Gauri built a futuristic sand house for themselves, complete with a helipad and bean bags. And then there was the part where Aman made a mental map of our floor back in the office, iterated over every cubicle and cabin, and asked me for my opinion on every guy I knew. He claimed he was trying to judge my taste in guys so he could help me find one for myself. Meanwhile Mr Gaurishankar Kshirsagar was spotting shooting stars and counting away to glory. He wished a dozen wishes that evening and I doubt if any of them have come true so far. Alok tried really hard to match up to the number of stars that Gauri had spotted, but not to much avail. Oh, and those who were there on the beach that night will always remember that once Alok starts laughing, there's no stopping him!

On our second day there, there was a little trek to a waterfall, actually a series of three waterfalls. We had to climb up the lowest and smallest one of the three to go and shower under the second one. I don't think there were too many people in the group who could have done that without Aman and Sunny pulling us up, and Dahuja pushing from below. Now that was a lot of fun, an experience to remember.

That evening we did some miscellaneous activities in the camp. There was a bit of beach volleyball, a bit of rappelling (I think everyone remembers Meenal's experience there!!!) and throwing stones at an empty soft drink bottle (a plastic one). And we buried Ashish and Alok in the sand, turn by turn. Later in the evening it was back to the campfire, and Anuranjan and his alcohol. That night we decided to go down to the beach with our blankets and sleeping bags, and sleep on the sand. There were six of us who finally executed this plan, and I'm glad I was one of them. On the beach, we were back to wishing upon stars (Gauri saw another dozen that night), revealing secrets, and laughing at each other. And I think we all slept really peacefully that night.

The next day's rafting involved some interesting rapids, albeit a couple of overrated ones too (perhaps it was just that we passed over them when the water was a little low), but the ones we traversed after our lunch stopover were a lot of fun. And then there was the cliff jumping which I did not do, and which Aman did around half a dozen times, over and over again, until the guides started pointing out that we had to finish our stretch on the river before dark.

Even so, our departure for Noida was delayed by two or three hours. But well, every moment of this trip was worth it. But hang on, I have some memories from the return journey too. I'm sure neither Ashish nor I will ever forget the time when he asked me who, out of himself and Hemant, was a better singer. I will certainly not forget how jealous Ashish pretended to be at my answer! And I have been taunted about that little incident any number of times since then. But, all said and done, Ashish actually does sing really well. His singing is even better than Anuranjan's sense of humour (comparing apples and oranges, are we? But I guess people will get the drift.).

Those three days were legendary. But I'd been away from home for three days and I really wanted to go home and take a nice, warm bath, eat something my mom had cooked and sleep in my own bed. I called my mom when we stopped for tea that evening. Actually, Alok made me call her. I told her we'd reach Noida around one in the morning. She put her foot down at the idea of me driving home all by myself at that hour. I knew she was right, Delhi is not a very safe city. But I still wanted to go home. And quite possibly, I would have, if Ashish hadn't told me not to do so. In a slightly scolding manner. So I stayed over at Meenal's place that night. When we reached her place, we did not have the energy to do anything more than fall into bed and go to sleep immediately.

Does that conclude all I want to say about this trip? By no means. I could go on forever. Well, for a really long time at least. But while writing I try to stay concise and I have already gone way past my regular standards of being concise, so I'll just conclude here. Ashish, Alok and Hemant did a fantastic job organizing this trip. And Aman and Anuranjan did an equally fantastic job adding flavour to it.