White Water Rafting – Kali River
The Team
- Nirmal Sankaran (Me)
- Balaji Seshan
- Mani
We guys got a team for such activities and our trekking trips, a bunch of like minded people with respect to trips who otherwise are people with very contrasting characters. Me and Balaji are the regular ones and of course Nari who missed out on this trip due to un avoidable circumstances which though didn’t stop him from coming to the station to see us off and to wish us bon voyage on the afternoon of 8th November 2007 . It was that day of the year where people are mostly bursting crackers and are stuck to the television set, for channels air special programs keeping people away from getting out of their bean bags – Diwali.
We had boarded a train from Chennai to Bangalore on the afternoon of 8th November, which was more than empty for it was diwali day. Quite a comfortable journey with the usual making fun Balaji and we saw all of us getting down at the Bangalore city station by 7.45pm . We had a good hour and a half before we had to board another train to Londa, so we decided to step out of the station for a heavy dinner. We navigated through the over crowded platform of our next train to Londa and we had just about time to find our seats and take a deep breath to see our train depart.
For, we having coming from place where southern railway operates we found the cleanliness and orderliness a
little to our dislike. After a talk into night with Mani it was 1 am by the time we were all fast asleep. I was the first one to get up in the morning to the familiar tone of my mobile alarm. We all got up and took a peep out through the window and all we saw was thick deep forest in haze with the cold wind through our hair. Not everyday you get a chance to get up and experience it, more so for the people who live in the crowded cities whose best friend is the clock schedule. In less than 2 hours we were down in Londa junction, and I must admit londa was not half of what I imagined it to be. It was a village hardly twice the size of its own railway station which didn’t hamper us from getting a taxi to Ganeshgudi - our rafting base.
The Team
- Nirmal Sankaran (Me)
- Balaji Seshan
- Mani
We guys got a team for such activities and our trekking trips, a bunch of like minded people with respect to trips who otherwise are people with very contrasting characters. Me and Balaji are the regular ones and of course Nari who missed out on this trip due to un avoidable circumstances which though didn’t stop him from coming to the station to see us off and to wish us bon voyage on the afternoon of 8th November 2007 . It was that day of the year where people are mostly bursting crackers and are stuck to the television set, for channels air special programs keeping people away from getting out of their bean bags – Diwali.
We had boarded a train from Chennai to Bangalore on the afternoon of 8th November, which was more than empty for it was diwali day. Quite a comfortable journey with the usual making fun Balaji and we saw all of us getting down at the Bangalore city station by 7.45pm . We had a good hour and a half before we had to board another train to Londa, so we decided to step out of the station for a heavy dinner. We navigated through the over crowded platform of our next train to Londa and we had just about time to find our seats and take a deep breath to see our train depart.
For, we having coming from place where southern railway operates we found the cleanliness and orderliness a
little to our dislike. After a talk into night with Mani it was 1 am by the time we were all fast asleep. I was the first one to get up in the morning to the familiar tone of my mobile alarm. We all got up and took a peep out through the window and all we saw was thick deep forest in haze with the cold wind through our hair. Not everyday you get a chance to get up and experience it, more so for the people who live in the crowded cities whose best friend is the clock schedule. In less than 2 hours we were down in Londa junction, and I must admit londa was not half of what I imagined it to be. It was a village hardly twice the size of its own railway station which didn’t hamper us from getting a taxi to Ganeshgudi - our rafting base. We reached Maamu’s shop with
a bit of difficultly, where we were asked to wait by John, the person who runs white water rafting in this part of the world. We had more than decent breakfast to ganeshgudi’s standards and even before we could realize it was time for rafting to start and we had our guides Rana, Muna and Sunil pick us up in the forest department jeep in which we reached the start point of our rafting. We got a bit more comfortable with our guides by now and were making fun of Balaji and everyone seemed to enjoy each others company. We were now accompanied by a bunch of 12 people from Pune which spoilt the plans of ours and the guides to have fun together in the raft of throwing Balaji into
the Kali River. 
Rana was the guide assigned to us, a guy from Tibet, vastly experienced. Others in our raft were Pankaj and his family from Pune who were equally interested in throwing Balaji into the river, afterall he is always our scapegoat and the only person in our raft who didn’t seem to know to swim. The training lasted for about 30 minutes which saw everyone jump into the water to get the feel of it and of course Balaji was great fun, trying hard to jump into the water. It was about time to get started with our rafting and we did. Pankaj, Mani and Myself seemed to be the only people paddling hard following ever single command of Rana’s.The first rapid was first love, it was great with Mani and me at the nose of the raft we got totally got drenched and the rapids to follow were all great. The best thing I enjoyed about the rafting was paddling forward in the rapids were everybody was asked to take cover. Balaji as you must have guessed by now was never paddling and was always taking cover.
Few of us jumped into the river a few times for a dip, it was heaven. By about 3.30 pm we had reached the end point of our rafting were we had out pick up jeep waiting for us back to the maamu’s shop. We waved goodbye to John and co until next time in a more dangerous river – The Upper Barapole River, Coorg.
After a good lunch and couple of glasses of cold yoghurt we headed back to Londa railway station and took our train back to Bangalore which reached 7.30 am on 10th November, from where we split as I had to accompany my parents for yet another trip.
See with yet another trip shortly until then its buh bye from me and my team.
Aurevoir
-Nirmal Sankaran ( Setting new limits )
It was indeed a great experience. Incase any of you guys are interested in this place; please feel free to ask anybody belonging to our ahoyZz Adventures Club.
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