Day1 - 3rd Sept 05 - Rafting

Woooooooooaaa!! Another looong weekend in US of A. I had the time of my life! It was too good a weekend to miss writing about it here.. : D. Let me introduce the participants of this full fledged masti-mania weekend..

Mr. and Mrs Tripathi –The Couple
Mr. Parshuram Patil – The Leader (We called him PP, for the ease of Americans ;-) )
Mr. Kiran – The Caretaker
Mr. Anit Jha- The American yo-yo!
Mr. Jitendra – The innovative singer!
Ms. Dimpi – The babe
Mrs. Mimi – The simple one! (Twachaa se umra ka pataa hi nahi chalta!! )
Ms. Shuchi – The Confident but oo-aa-ouch girl!
Mr. Vijay – The reserved Bramhachari ;-)
Mr. Mahesh – The dude with sunglasses!
Ms. Sarita - The stylized American!
Ms. Svetha – The dimpled smile
Mr. Raghu – The south Indian chavaa!
Mr. Pankaj – The mimicry artist

And last but not the least myself, who enjoyed the company of each of the above and had a ball time this weekend! It started off for me on Friday night. I along with Anit headed for the Stamford station on Friday night around 7.45 PM. Dilip (Anit’s roommate) dropped us there. The ticket system there is unlike India where in, you can punch in your destination in the machine, drop the desired cash and you get the tickets! We took a train via Norwalk, where we had to change the train. The train was more like the 1st class AC compartment of our Indian trains.

Day 1:
It was a one-hour journey to Danbury. Instead of bridges, we have more of subways there to change the trains. Once we reached Danbury, we called up the Parshu, and he came to pick us. We headed for Shuchi’s place, where I was supposed to halt for a night. There are some people whom you instantly click with! Shuchi was one of them. We talked endlessly. She instantly made me feel at home. Danbury is more like a small town, unlike Stamford, which gives more of the city feel. I really felt at home after a week’s stay in USA. Ok, to continue with the narration, we got up at 3AM again and got ready to head for river rafting. We had Kiran’s car at our place. Shuchi had got her driving license just 2 days back and everyone seemed to be scared, but I was the scapegoat: D. Kiran’s car was pretty much easy as compared to the rental mini-van, which resembled more to an Indian truck. She managed to drive that too!! (And so goes the name Shuchi- the Confident!).

On the way we picked Jitu and then Dimpi and Mimi and then went to Parshu’s place. We exchanged the pleasantries of hi-hellos and started off for the journey. Everyone had taken extra pair of clothes, but thanks to Shuchi, that just we two did not! L
The journey was fun and we managed to miss the route thrice. Kiran was driving the mini-van and was pretty good at his ride. All three cars were headed in different directions, but eventually we all somehow managed to land near the Wild water spot, where we had done the booking for rafting, at around 7.30 AM. After strolling around the place we were all set to get going! We got equipped with the life jackets, the helmets and the rowing sticks (As I love calling them “Chappus”). Every one was looking so funny: D. As I did not have an extra pair of clothes and we were anticipating the water to be very cold, I landed up wearing jeans Capri and a jeans jacket. Imagine!! and going into the spine chilling waters!! It still gives me shivers!
We were told to board the bus, which would take us to the place where all the rafts would be ready. It was a 20 min ride and every body tried to fit in the bus with all the equipments loaded. Each raft can carry a total of 8 people. We were a purrfect 16 and there were others who clubbed up to form groups of 8. In the bus the lifeguards started giving a number of instructions. They almost made me give second thoughts about rafting. The instructions included all possibilities of we falling over the raft or at least one of us drowning!! The person told us all possible things to do in case if someone falls on a rock, if someone is not able to carry the rowing stick while falling, if someone got stuck in a whirlpool, if someone was driven by a high current wave, if someone got panicky, if people on raft were not able to extend their support, if someone was not able to catch the rope, and the if’s continued for ½ hour. I got really scared. It was only a few of us who did not know swimming. Moreover back in India parents and friends were really scared for me, knowing my enthusiasm when I go on such adventures: D

Every group had a guard with them. Ours was a German lady Hyde. She was no doubt beautiful and knew her job well. She tried to grasp the pronunciation of each of our names, but alas! Parshuram became ‘Pacchu’ which finally shortened to PP ;-). Bibhuti was spontaneous enough to shorten his name to “Bibs” when his turn came: D. It was instructed to us that the 1st seat has to do the maximum rowing and the ones at the end have the major chances of falling off. I chose the second seat, since I did not know swimming. We had to sit almost outside the raft with only our feet dig inside the plastic drum kinda thing. The journey finally started, with all of us really scared but showing a brave front! The entire span was of 17 miles, of which first three miles were of Indiana river, which is comparatively very simple. Hyde was real scared, as we all were too busy chit-chatting in Hindi. Poor thing was confused as to it was fun or we were making fun of her! ;-). She was also not very confident about us; as we were suppose to listen to her, when she would instruct us to row the sticks. Half of us seated in front were not able to hear what she said, and others were busy in there own talks. She us to shout instructions like, “three forward”, which meant we were suppose to row thrice in forward direction; “left backward”, which meant that only the left side people had to row 3 in backward direction so that raft moves in other direction; then she would say “take a break” The rowing was supposed to happen in sync, but then who would listen. Everyone wanted to be a teacher. Poor girl! She was all scared about the latter half, when the waves and speed would be real high! I was too busy admiring the scenic beauty and singing songs by my self! The three miles were covered comparatively very fast and we all were charged up by then. Everyone awaited the next half wherein; we were anticipating some real fun. But before that Anit fell off the raft. Wooa! Finally some adventure had started to happen. He knew swimming and so it wasn’t difficult to pull him inside again. Thankfully (or not-so-thankfully) no one else fell after that. We had a little break near the riverside for lunch at around 12PM. To our surprise, the lunch was more like a breakfast with an apple, a sandwich and a chocolate bar. But we were too charged up to really mind that! We still had 11-12 miles to go. Woww.. I was all enthusiastic, but was very careful to keep my legs well fixed below the drum kind of thing. The couple was busy worrying about each other. (Saath jiyenge – saath marenge types. How very romantic!). By this time, each one’s inner leadership skills had taken toll! Everyone seemed to know how to row. No one now heard what Hyde had to say. We started off with our own instructions. Hehehe. I think this got her annoyed, because she stopped instructing after a while;-). The waves were real high in the second half. Every time a high-speed wave came and she told to row, we all were so scared and busy catching the ropes, with the fear of falling off, that we hardly rowed. But by now we really knew what each instruction meant, so we all managed to take the raft till the end. In middle, the swimmers had the choice to jump into the water and enjoy swimming. Anit and Parshu were the only ones from our raft. How I wished then that I knew swimming!! But alas! There was a point in between where we could do rock-jumping, which meant that we could jump from the top of a rock and then catch the rope extended by Hyde to come inside the raft again. I did not try that. People who knew swimming did. Bibhuti was one who tried despite being a non-swimmer. Poor Sunita got so scared when our boat went far too ahead for him to catch the rope. He managed to get into another raft, but then love sees no reason not to get worried. Hahaah. She relaxed when Bibhuti was finally in our raft again. Sigh! I was enjoying every moment in the water, with water splashing hard on our faces, the whirls that the raft took, it’s speed, the very pleasant climate, the tall trees and the sun glowing in between for short durations, as if to just provide us warmth amidst the cold water! I enjoyed looking at the sky and singing songs, putting my legs out of the raft when the flow was not very high, slipping in between the raft to relax and straighten my back. We tried to sing songs together. But ended up only with “Mangala mangala mangala mangala” (With the very typical nascent accent provided by the singer Jitu)..Hehehe. Moreover, the more we tried to talk, the less audible were Hyde’s instructions! It was fun to compete with the other group, which was with us. We named their instructor as a “horse-rider” with 8 horses in his carriage :D. The last 2-3 miles were very relaxing. We had learnt the art of rafting and everyone was of the opinion that they can come the next time w/o a lifeguard! Bravo!!

We crossed a beautiful bridge in between and Hyde kept telling us the historical significance of the names given to certain locations. Not that every one of us were listening ;-) but we did acknowledge with our hmm’s and haan’s.. I did grab that there is a gun-in and gun-out point, there are rapids named after the people who dies in the rapids (None of us were too eager to get our names engraved!). The raft finally came to a halt from we carried it for a short while. Zor lagaake hayiia! We finally were back in the bus, which dropped us to the spot where we had left. After which everyone changed into dry clothes. We had dinner, which was organized by them. I observed that Sarita had a style of eating, very Americanized (And so she gets her title: D). Thankfully there was something vegetarian served too! We then headed back to Danbury. Gosh! Everyone was ready with his or her oo-aa-ouch by the time we reached back. I was shivering a lot, since had not even changed the wet clothes! Thankfully no one fell ill! After reaching home, Shuchi and myself were half dead! She seemed to be more troubled soul and so I decided to act as an angel and did some massaging of her hands. We fell dead asleep after a while! ZZZZZZZZzzzz..
That was the Day 1 in Danbury! Really felt like home with very humble people around J

Day2 and 3 details coming soon.. Snaps of river rafting can be found in the following link..

River Rafting photos