Nick’s world tour

Well, I did leave Rishikesh eventually. Though it took a few more days to get round to it. Precisely 2 more rafting trips and  a near-death-experience in Rajaji National Park before I bit the bullet and moved south.

The rain in the mountains kept coming, making the river higher so it went to grade 4+ (which is big). We did the full 35km stretch, which included an imaginatively named rapid called The Wall. A combination of the wall of water to one side and the wall of rock the other, the trick was to keep closer to the water than the rock. I fell out in one of the rapids, there was so much water in everyones eyes that I’d hauled myself back to the raft before they’d managed to get the rescue line out. Comically, I got stuck in an eddy pool during a bit of body surfing:  this is great fun, you pointlessly swim and just end up going in circles whilst people point and laugh and then drag you back onboard. The trip finished with some of us jumping out in some 2-3m waves in the Golf Course rapid, which kind of worried the guide as he could only see a couple of us at a time.

We decided to go tiger and elephant spotting in Rajaji. Now we didn’t see any tigers, which was to be expected, and for a while all we saw was various tropical birds, deer… nothing too exciting. Then we saw the elephant 5 metres away from where we were illegally perched on top of the jeep. We were surprised (in a nice way). He was even more surprised (in a less-than-nice way). Then he charged us. Cue lots of screaming and shouting, and our driver hitting a rock, stalling, and then beeping his horn as we moved away again. This really annoyed the elephant. We out ran it, only to be chased across the plain by the others. Safe in the trees the other side, a head popped out of the drivers window, and nervously informed us we had to go back across the plain as this was a dead end: hold on tight. So for the third (and thankfully, final) time we were charged again. Still, got some good piccies!

On our final night in Rishikesh we got invited to the Red Chilli boys house for dinner and more illicit meat, rum and whisky. Obviously not content with us drinking all their free coffee in their place in town! Dinner was superb (all the best meals in India have been home cooked and on the treks), with a special spicy mutton curry along with the ever present veg, dal, rice and chapattis… the view from the roof where we ate was the last one I’ll have of the mountains for a while.

This entry was posted on Friday, May 12th, 2006 at 7:36 am and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.