So Close...

I had never felt so close to... death! Whatever be the facts - that I was having a life jacket on, I could hit the ground with legs (so water wasn't that deep) or I managed to hold the rope around the raft which I was loosing (and it seemed like 'the last straw' for me). Mainly coz of the fact that I could possibly compete with only an african rhino in a swimming ;) Swimming in the grade 3 rapid wouldn't have been easy even for a swimmer anyways. And the only near death experiences I had earlier were - managing to sit through physics lecutres (2 hrs non stop!) of Prof Mane :D. The Pigeon River runs through the scenic Cherokee National Forest in East Tennessee and offers one of the more exciting whitewater runs in the southeast. It has grade 2-4 rapids and is controlled by a hydo-electric plant. Incidentally, it was me who raised the query "Will this be able to float 181 (176 +5) pounds?" for the life jacket in the briefing session before starting. And it did :) 176 + 5... coz, I still cant digest the fact that I've gained 5 pounds over the 176 pounds after coming here to Tampa (though I happily digest even the gator tail and things like this which are responsible for this + 5 :( )

Me & Sudesh had volunteered (had khujli.....to talk colloquially ;)) for being the lead persons for paddling and hence were sitting in front. Wow! it was so wonderful and thrilling. It was real cool when cold water splashed across our raft in the first rapid. We just had to paddle through the rapids to maintain the direction. After passing through first few rapids we got into a slow patch and I decided to relax a little. It was then that we again entered and grade 3 rapid and a big wave thrashed our raft. Sitting on side of the raft, as I tried to peddle through, I tumbled and fell backward into water. Somehow, could catch hold of the rope going round the raft. And the drama started. Everybody on the raft panicked. The guide, who was sitting at other end, staretd shouting on other members - "Give the damn paddle to him...sit tight..." (He later told us the reason for shouting. In one of his recent trip, every other person fell down and he had a touhg time pulling them back!). The raft is made up of very durable, multi-layered rubberized fabrics with several independent air chambers and generally has a rope running round it. While falling down I had somehow managed to hold this rope with one hand. Gosh, when I think of it now, nothing seems very clear, everything happened so suddenly! In the moments of falling off the boat, I guess, I was not at all feared. It was kinda thrilling and I thought "Okay, I'm just falling off the raft". Now, since I was hanging from the front side of the raft, I started going below the raft. It being a grade 3 rapid, the raft was moving fast down the stream. As Instructed, Vipul offered me the other end of his paddle to hold. It seems I kinda tried to grab it from him and it fell into water! By now, my grip on the rope was getting weaker and I was hitting rocks at the bottom. As the raft was tryong to travel above me, It became difficult for Sudesh and Natraj to have a grip on me or my jacket to pull me up. I started tasting the Pegeon water and it was then that all the thrill went away and I started loosing hope. For few moments at least, I said to myself "mamu, tera chaptar khatam" (Ever heard the hindi slang " fat ke 74 ho gayi.." :D ) May be because of the fact that I was under water, I was not able to hear my fellow team-mates' voices. It was like they were coming form a remote place or rather I was going away from them...from all the surroundings. And I thought I am dying! I was literally scared-to-death. Meanwhile, I they had managed to catch hold of my life jacket. It was then easy for Natraj and Sudesh to pull me up. The next moment I clearly remember was - I was lying on the raft , face down. The funniest part was that I was holding my paddle all through those 1-2 minutes in water!. God knows why... as if I were gonna paddle and float with help of it :P.

The same day, we had one more near death experience. This was a different one though - the skycraper ride! The rush of the wind, the instant flash of the chairs whistling by and the thrill screams overload your senses as your heart starts pounding and you anticipate how it will feel when it is your turn. Turn to flip upside down and plunge headfirst 10 stories only to swoop up again in a 360 degree arc! The camera fitted on the chair records all the action on you face and relays it on a tv near the counter. Watching those vidoes was even funnier, esp. Prasanna's :P. Earlier that day, this guy presented the "smoky-hypothesis" with such a guile that I actually started thinking on, for a moment though. Ab kiske baap ko pata why Smoky mountains are called smoky ;). If you are interested in knowing the smoky-hypothesis- "A special kinda grass is found on these mountains. Inhaling this grass gives a high...like smoking cigarette. and some more crap on these lines. Hence the Smoky mountains...".

The next day, walking the 2.5 miles trail through thick woods and by sides of the beautiful creek to reach Abrams falls was awesome.

Ahem...blog is not exactly an ideal place to talk about the barbecue night we had at the cabin ;). All in all, Smoky trip was great fun - thanks to the folks in the picture above :)