You Will Get Wet

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I wish could approach more things in the blasé way I approached white water rafting. Naively I'd assumed it'd be just like the river rapid rides you get in theme parks and I didn't think there'd be any danger at all. I think the moment, 5 minutes into the experience, where I unintentionally let a lot of water into the boat was when I realised it was quite important for me to concentrate.

There were 5 of us in the raft along with 2 other paddlers and our guide who also steered the boat. At the start of the trip I had to sit at the front and in the centre pulling the front of the boat up with a rope. Luckily this meant that when we hit the rapids for the first time I got the full brunt of the first wave right in my face. This was when I let the water on board.

We were rafting down the Teesta river which marks the border between West Bengal and Sikkim. At any point on our trip down the river I could look ahead and see the white frothing emerging from the brown river that would indicate our next shot of adrenalin. If the river was flat we'd generally just let the current pull us along. But as we got closer to the frothing our guide would shout "forward" and we'd all start digging in with our paddles. Our guide's English wasn't brilliant and he'd say; "One, one, one..." in order to get us to row in time, but he said it very irregularly which was reflected in our rhythm as a group. I'd try to match my speed with the other people on my side, but I found I had a tendency to increase my pace unconsciously and quite often I'd bang my paddle with the girl's behind me. When we hit the rapids our guide would shout "forward, hard!" and all rhythm I had would go out the window and I'd just paddle as hard and fast as I could. Often I'd be paddling in air as out side of the raft was lifted out of the water by a wave which was very disconcerting. I also learnt not to look directly ahead when in the rapids. Firstly because it threw me off my paddling and also because I generally got water in my eyes if I did and on a couple of occasions I thought I'd lost one of my contact lenses.

We all only did what the guide told us to although at times we'd get very close to the sheer rock wall that hemmed in the right hand side of the river and everyone gripped their paddles tighter. The internal effort to not dig in with our paddles and move away from the wall was tangible.

It seemed to be complete pot luck whether we hit a wave right and just carried over it or, in the most exciting and scary moments, we faced it and began to tip into the trough before it broke over us.

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