One thing I’ve really never wanted to do is white water rafting. I don’t like the idea of falling in a raging river and it’s moderately dangerous.

Being in India is also moderately dangerous.

Therefore, a sensible person would not combine the two dangers and go white water rafting in India. I am a sensible person. And yet…
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The day began with Richard, our English traveling companion (Iona was working) and I joining a fleet of jeeps on an hour and a half journey south and west of Leh along the great Indus river. Also in the jeep was a Belgium couple. Dirk taught English and spoke fluently with no accent at all and Marja taught Spanish.Oppblåsbare svømmebasseng

After getting on our helmets and life jackets we received our safety instructions. This came from a local who strutted his stuff and posed to us – his audience, as if he were a Ladakhi gangster rapper. He waved a paddle around, presented us with a bag containing a rope and made strange and exotic sounds. But no-one actually understood anything he said. His words sounded most like a tribal language from a remote part of the Amazon. I told Dirk I’d give him 500 rupees if at the end of the talk he said “Hands up anyone who actually understood any of that”. He just laughed and said that he hadn’t understood any of it. Neither had his wife. Neither had anyone. I guessed we’d have to pick it all up on the boat.

Next the four of us (two English, two Belgium) were put on a boat which had three people on board already. They said that they had been told that it was for 6 maximum. As the seven
of us set sail with our Ladakhi captain we were sent back to pick up another two to add to our crew. But this is India. Nine people in a six man boat is probably pretty conservative. However on this occasion it did cause some problems…

The unsettling thing about rafting is that you don’t actually sit in the boat. Rather you purch on the side of the raft and try to wedge your feet under something to stop yourself falling out. Also rather unsettling to me was that in front of me was Christian – a young German who had fallen of his motorbike right in front of our eyes outside our guest house a couple of days before. He had been uninjured but nevertheless had shown himself to be the sort of chap who was not unused to falling off things/ accidents. Behind me was Marja.

The first hour was pretty great. Most of the time the river was fast flowing but smooth and we could admire the sharp jagged mountains rising up front out of the very water around us – all bear rock in purples, pinks, blues, greens and yellows. After periods of calm relaxation we would enter periods of level 3-4 rapids (5 is maximum danger, 6 six is unraftable) where our captain would shout out

“Forward!

Left Forward, right back!

Fast forward!

Fast back!”

Unfortunately he wasn’t very loud and he wasn’t very clear and half the crew (the three Germans) had no idea what he was saying. So I took to repeating him and that seemed to work a bit… A bit… The trouble was that sometimes you need to be able to react very quickly.

As we came through some level 4 rapids the freezing water leapt up all around us, waves crashed into us and at one point we tipped up about 40 degrees, our vessel was rocked and shaken unforgivingly. But we stayed aboard, stayed afloat and were thrilled and excited by it all.

Then we came to the level 5 rapids. As water crashed all around us the captain shouted incoherently, waves jumped up at as from all directions, we lost control. The right hand side of the boat came up above my head. The raft tipped over. We were all in.

As we plunged into the freezing water I grabbed at my glasses and paddle. Richard had fallen on top of me ensuring I stayed under water for some time.

I eventually kicked my way back to the surface only to find that I was some way ahead of the boat and rest of the crew, downstream, being washed uncontrollably and increasingly further away from the others and safety. Christian was even further away and to the right of me. We were now both riding the level 5 rapids alone.

I was thrown left and right, up and down and around, under the water and back to the surface. I wasn’t scared. I was just very concentrated on doing whatever I needed to do to breath. It was a case of grabbing a breath whenever possible, whenever I came to the surface.

After a while the river became fast but smooth and I was floating along with my head above the water. As I came to a right turn in the river I was relatively unconcerned and assumed that I would be taken around the corner. But I wasn’t. I was being taken at speed towards a wall of sharp rock. I kicked as hard as I could to be get away, but it was useless. There was another raft some way away but too far to help.

I decided that the best thing to do was to kick against the rocks, maybe try to almost run along them placing one leg after the other against them. I have strong legs, but maybe not strong enough. I had no idea what would happen. I was just very concentrated on keeping my soft body from being smashed into the sharp hard rock. As I got within three meters I braced myself for a fight…

Suddenly a rope was thrown to me. Behind me, but close enough. As I got to within a meter of the rocks I grabbed hold of the rope. The raft was ahead of me and to the right, the rope was slack. As I got within a foot of the rock the rope tightened. It was pulling me away but across the face of the rock – closer to it. I was pulled across the face of the rock. It would certainly have ripped in to me. I couldn’t have been closer to it without touching it. But I didn’t touch it. I was pretty releaved.

Now I was being pulled down stream by the raft. I was exhausted but had enough energy and strength to pull myself in, one hand over the other. I was still being pushed under water, still having to fight for breath but gradually I pulled myself up to the raft. Two people heaved me into it.

I lay sprawled out on the floor, exhausted, panting hard, shocked. A few minutes later the safety kayak had picked up Christian and he was also bought to us. After some time he stopped gasping for breath but he couldn’t stop shaking and shivering. He said that when he was in the water he thought he was going to die. For my part I hadn’t even thought about it – I was too busy to think. And I wasn’t even that cold. It was a sunny day and I was warming up and my clothes were beginning to dry out.

It turned out that our new boat was being crewed by the family of the British High Commissioner and we had just made their day.

“Hooray! We’re super heroes! We saved two men from drowning!”

They were enjoying it all a bit too much. Then came the news that the Belgium lad Marja was missing.

Dirk had managed to get back in the raft and had helped everyone else back in the raft and everything was OK. Accept that his wife was nowhere to be found. For twenty minutes he sat and worried. Had she also been swept downstream like Christian and Tom? Where else could she be? Was she safe somewhere or in the water somewhere or even under the water somewhere?

Then came the news that she had swam to some rocks and got on another raft and was safe. We were all safe.

Well thank God for that!

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I lost my glasses in the water, have been unable to get a new pair and have been wearing my sun glasses ever since – this looks pretty dumb at night. I also swallowed a considerable amount of the Indus and got a sick (bacterial infection). I got diarrhea and couldn’t eat anything for about 72 hours. For the first few days afterwards when I closed my eyes at night I was back in the water with the wall of rock looming up towards me.

But I’m fine now. I’m 500 miles away and warm and well. I had a bit of a shock but I don’t feel I was in all that much trouble. I was probably close to being injured but probably not that close to being drowned. But I just don’t know. It’s very hard to know. All I do know is that I’m never going white water rafting again! As I said, I’m fine now.