Waterfall Rappelling- A Real Adventure

For a long time, adventure was always in my mind. Being a software engineer, I find google as a solution to everything. While googling for adventure sports near pune, i came to visit this site http://www.travelarks.com/. After spending a some time in site navigation, i finally found what i was looking for. Having done so many trekkings and river rafting in the past, this time i was looking for something different. And here it was ..... Waterfall Rapelling scheduled on 30th Aug. As i had few days left and there was a limit on the group size, i immediately called them and got myself and my roommate registered for the event.

Though we could join them on 30th in karjat, we opted for a bullet ride a day before the event to go there and stay in some village. We started at 5 p.m. from pune with our bags packed. After some time, it started raining heavily.By the time we reached khandala, we were all wet and i was shivering. We stopped at a stall and had 2 cups of tea each. It gave us the warmth we needed and we begun to move again. We reached karjat at 8:30. Karjat is a very small town, smaller than i thought. We even had a difficult time finding an ATM :), as 4 out of 5 guys didnt even know an ATM existed there. We moved from karjat to a village 'baidyanath' which was about 10 Km from karjat and stayed there in the night.

Next day we woke up very early in the morning and explored the nearby area. We joined the team at merud, 13 km from karjat at 8.30 A.M. The group consisted of people from different sectors, mostly from IT, journalism, media, graphics and even management too. It was nice to see the hunger for adventure in so many people.
In the introduction session, we came to know that organizing team too worked in different companies and they do it only on weekends. It felt great to see these guys doing what they really want or you can say in pursuit of finding little happiness in life.

As we all started to move to waterfall, it begun to rain. The path was very narrow at some places and slippery too. We were moving slowly to avoid any accident. Finally when we reached near waterfall, some instructions and a demo was given to us. It seemed simple :). All we had to do was to keep our knees straight, look above, keep 90 degree angle between upper and lower half of the body, changing our direction from one hand and loosen rope from the other. Simple, isnt it??And harness, belts , helmet, guides etc were all there for our safety. So lets do it. Me and my roommate were enthusiastic enough to try it out first. As only one person could rappell down at one time, my roommate Anand did it first. He did it pretty confidently and did not fall even once. It took him just 4-5 mins to rapple down the waterfall.


I was going to be the second one but as i was waiting for Anand to come back and take my snaps while rappelling, i had to go third. So looking at Anand's experience, i was even more confident that it would go easy. Meanwhile they had prepared me to go and rapple down. As i started and got there in the flowing water, i begun to feel the force of the water. I bent down backwards a little, holding the rope for direction from my left hand. For the first 3-4 feet, i was doing fine. Slowly moving my feet down, loosening the rope and all this time keeping knees straight was all i had to do. Suddenly, i slipped and in a few seconds, i was parallel to the waterfall. I looked above, tried to lift my foot , push me back and then got my second foot at the right place. Ok, it was'nt good but everyone falls for the first time:).

Anyways, after moving down a little more, i slipped again, and this time i hit the rocks harder. The water force also was more as i had descended a few more foot. I tried this time also and finally after some time got myself balanced. This time, i decided that i woudnt take it easy and will not fall again.I knew how much to move my feet and how thight to hold the rope and how much to bend. I thought i will move down rest half very safely without any problem. But hey, the next second i moved my foot, i didnt find anything to place it on. As it was white water, u cant see beyond it. You just have to assume there should be something beneath this water to rest your foot on. I tried to change the direction to find something, but a little movement in the rope for the direction takes you to the right/left by a larger distance. So now, i was in the middle of the waterfall, parellel to it and unable to move. The force of water was so much at this point that i was unable to life my feet against it. The harness was so tight on waist that i coudnt move. I stayed like it for abt 30 seconds. The organising team was saying something, but i couldnt hear it. I could only see their lips moving. At that time, i just wanted to get down.I looked at them in the hope that they would understand it and let me get down without rapelling.

But then i realized that the only way to get to the bottom of the waterfall was to rapple down. As i had to do it anyway, i loosened my rope again and let me bend till i was at 90 degrees to the rocks. After that i didnt do any mistake, as i knew next time i woudnt be able to take it:). Finally i had done it.
Then we enjoyed a lot in the water. All day it was raining again and again. We had our lunch and then waited for others to complete their rapelling. Others were engaged in talks and getting to know each other stuff. Finally, we moved from there at 6 :30 p.m.

It was great fun and a real adventure. It is always exhilareting for me seeing the nature so close, big mountains , waterfalls, so much green around me and a grin on my face. Truth is, God has put it everywhere around you. You need to have that sense of feeling to understand the existence of it.
Finally, we had to go back. We headed back to pune at around 10 P.M. Reached here, where I started from, where I belong , back home and there it is, the same old complexity of life around me again.

There is a pleasure in the pathless woods; There is a rapture on the lonely shore; There is society, where none intrudes, By the deep sea, and music in its roar;
A Nature lover !!An aesthetic voyager whose home is the road !!
It should not be denied that being footloose has always exhilarated us. It is associated in our minds with escape from history and oppression and law and irksome obligations. I want Absolute freedom ----(Christopher McCandless)