We always have some special way of celebrating republic day. This is it was rafting and kayaking
With four more friends, I went for river rafting on this 26th.

This river kundalika is some 100km from and is a nice place to spend your day.
We started little late (thanks to Avanti for coming late) at about 0545hrs. Reached Kolad by 0830hrs. We were early in reaching there because the roads are good now.

At 0900 Mumbai gang arrived & we started for the river at. While we were getting ready & listening to the safety instruction, the dam buzzer notified us that water is about to be released. Geared up, hurried to the spot and started the fun trip.

There were 7 rafts in total, on every raft there were 8 people and 1 guide. Fortunately/ unfortunately there were 5 girls 😉 and 3 guys on my raft. We were lucky enough to get the pole position, the first to start the rafting. Water was shivering cold & wind was in nice speed to add to the chill.

Fun part was managing raft in rapids, although the rapids were only of level 2 & 3, but it was fun. Our guide was telling us the names of these rapids, all I remember are just two names now
John Carry: John was not able to cross the rapid & people had to carry him, man he must be weaker than girls on our raft
Rajdhani Exp: It was supposed to be the most dangerous 😉

After finishing our rapids in 2 hours, we were on normal flowing waters where we jumped out of rafts to enjoy our floats in water. That was the time when we got everyone in water & enjoyed some good swim.

I was longing to get on to the kayak and had a talk with coordinator also before hand Got hold of the kayak and requested him for a try, He agreed & I tried my hands on kayaking. Kayak was little small & I was not able to sit properly with my legs stretched, but why miss a chance. Kayaking is fun & the shape of kayak give you a good speed on every stroke of blade, but balancing on a kayak is difficult, atleast for the first timers.

This is not my photograph but added just to show what I tried 😉

After kayaking for some 2-3 km, I was back on raft. The last few km on raft was very tiresome, we all were so tired that no one wanted to paddle. Slowly enjoying chilling weather, all wet we reached the end point. We were first to start & last to reach, but that was fun no doubt.

After finishing, nothing was much interesting, changed into dry clothes, had nice lunch, took rest & started back to Pune.

Shweta with us needs a special mention here, she has a curse which she told us. On every trip she goes since childhood, there is something wring going to happen on the way back. How we could have escaped from it. On our way back we had a flat tyre, but everyone was in good mood. People enjoyed the breakdown rather than getting frustrated.

Reached Pune by 1730hrs, had coffee at home & dispersed.

More photos @ http://www.rohit11.com/albums/Rafting-26jan08/?dir=rafting-26jan08