River Rafting @ Bheemeshwari

We had fun last week end. We did river rafting @ Bheemeshwari. For a faint-hearted person like me, I can call it as an adventure. It is called white water rafting - using an inflatable raft to navigate a river. The rafting starts from Bheemeshwari and passes through thick forests, which is in Cauvery Wildlife sanctuary.

Before going to trip, my friends were scaring me. One was telling that he had a dream that we had drowned and another was telling that crocodiles might bite us. But still, I’m game.

Bheemeshwari is around 100km from Bangalore. We went in a group of 10 people. We left Bangalore around 7.30 in the morning, had breakfast on the way at ART OF LIVING campus. We reached the camp around 11.30AM.

My adventure began at car park itself. There were lots of monkeys. My husband parked our car at main gate and went inside along with our friends to talk to manager. He took the car keys with him and I was waiting inside the car. Meanwhile, I did a stupid thing. I said hi to monkeys and waived my hand at them. Suddenly 3 monkeys jumped on my car and looked at me through windscreen. They were jumping on my car roof and shaking the car. I was sweating inside and I could not open windows or doors. I didn’t have the car keys at least to turn AC on. The monkeys scared me for 15 minutes till my husband came and shooed them away. The lesson learnt is “Never say hi to dogs or monkeys”.:-)

We got the tickets for river rafting at 2.30PM. We were having some free time before that, so we had photo session and lunch. It was buffet-lunch and I learnt a second lesson. "In buffets, you don’t need to stand in long queues to get food if you somehow manage to get the plate".

Finally, everything was set for rafting. Somehow, I was not scared at all even though there are crocodiles in the river. In fact, I was so much excited. May be I trust my husband’s swimming skills. May be I trust that he fights with crocodiles like a tollywood hero if required to save me. :-)

We were armed with life jackets, helmets and paddles. An instructor gave us some instructions. We occupied 2 rafts. 4 of us started in red raft. Other 6 started in blue raft. It seems our raft is small and risky one which is difficult to control. Still, we competed with blue raft and even overtook it. We managed to get out of small whirlpools. We saw some crocodiles on rocks. Our friend was making fun in our raft and asked our raft captain to make us fall in water. At some point, the captain made us jump into water. I think it was around 20 to 30 feet deep. We were floating in the water. I freaked out singing Hakuna Matata.. :-) It seems my husband got afraid by seeing my overconfidence. 8 km stretch of rafting came to the end. We were disappointed as we wanted to be in water for some more time.

While coming back to the camp, we had to come back in jeep. All 10 of us were packed like goats in one jeep. The driver drove it so horribly that we felt it was like roller coaster ride. The jeep was like dryer and all our clothes almost dried up by the time we reached the camp. For some more time, we had fun with the nets there. I dared to climb the net and took some photographs.

We started back around 4.45PM to Bangalore. We had tea on the way at some place. Gossiped for 1 more hour and started again. We reached Bangalore around 8PM in the night.

It was full of fun. It was worth the trip. May be it raised my courage level little bit :-)