In Part 1 of this post, I had written in detail about the plans we had made and the overall summary of our Rishikesh trip. In this part, I will give a breakdown of each day and activity and will post a video from each of the activities. All 5 of us had an exhilarating time doing these activities and thanks are due to 2 professional organizers - Adventure Nation who is an online aggregator based out of Gurgaon who was our primary contact from Chennai and Red Chilli adventures who were the local hosts who took care of our activities and stay at Rishikesh. The entire crew from both these professional organizers were amazing and helped us have a fantastic time that we will remember forever.
Here is how our trip panned out. We left Chennai by the 10am flight on November 4 (Day 1) and reached Rishikesh by 11.30pm the same day. We had the land activities on 5th November and Water activities on 6th. We traveled back on 7th. So effectively we spent 2 days on activities and 1.5 days on travel.
Nov 5 - Day 2 of the trip.
A car picked us up near Lakshman Jhula around 9.30am and we reached Jumpin Heights around 10.30. Our package covered 2 activities- Bungee Jump and Flying
Fox. There is a 3rd activity too "Giant Swing"
which was not part of our package. But we badly wanted to do it so we
requested the park to squeeze the 5 of us in to the slots (which were
fully booked already) and we waited for a couple of hours extra to get
these slots. The experience from the activities were out of the world and truly as the staff at the park said it was an experience we will remember forever.
The adrenaline, the fear and the subsequent relish after the jumps are beyond words. The high you get when you jump off is inexpressible. All 5 of us were scared at the edge but we jumped off in our first attempts itself (you are given 2 attempts, some back-off just by looking at the sheer height of the jump). Once you jump off during the bungee or the swing, you are lowered down and to come back up you have to take a strenuous trek back up to the base. More than the jumps, this trek tired us 😊 And since we did both Bungee and Giant Swing, we had to do this twice and we spent more than 30 minutes each time to climb back up. It was tough yes, but when you go as a group, this experience would be so much fun 😊 Don't worry too much about fitness etc. I was/am the heaviest person in our group but still managed the treks without issues.
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We were supposed to finish our activities here by 2.30ish and reach our campsite for lunch by 3pm. But we finished and packed up only at 4. We had to hence, stop on the way back for a late lunch. It was 6pm by the time we reached the campsite. There were (only) 5 other people in the campsite. We had some refreshing tea and spent the evening around the campfire. Post dinner we retired to our absolutely comforting and compact tents which had electricity and cots. We had 2 tents for us, one with 3 cots and the other with 2. The night was a calm and peaceful one. Since we were all tired, we slept very well.
Here are the videos from day 1. (Don't forget to like on youtube 😉 )
Bungee Jump:
Giant Swing
Flying Fox
Nov 6 - Day 3 of the trip
On schedule was a 26KM rafting course and multiple short water activities. We were all extremely excited as we had seen glimpses of mother Ganges flowing throughout the city the previous day and much to our surprise the water was pure throughout without a sign of dirt or pollution. We were told that 90% of the pollution happens downstream when the river enters Uttar Pradesh. We reached the rafting point and after a detailed briefing on safety instructions and operating procedure, we were on a superbly maintained raft. Each raft can hold upto 6 individuals plus an expert. On our raft was an instructor from Netherlands and a fellow tourist Matt. The rafting was incredible and physically and mentally challenging. This course is touted Level 3+ meaning this is a hard course. There were 5 rapids where we had to negotiate with skill and follow instructions cleanly. The video below is from the toughest rapid.
We were also allowed to jump into the water in between where water was relatively smooth. The stream was really fast and when I jumped in, i had no clue how fast the water actually was. At one stage I drifted off really far away from the rafts within 2 seconds. To swim back was extremely tough against the current and it was an amazing thrill. The instructor kept waving at me to come back fast as I was drifting off with the current at a fast pace. I managed to reach our rescue Kayak which was operated by Harpal Negi from Red Chilli adventures. He was amazing and followed us on the river course throughout often flaunting and playing with the water just to show-off 😉 He showed us how to do a Eskimo Roll and when we asked him to let us do it, he was gracious enough to encourage it. Check the video here - Imagine doing this 5 times back to back. This looks easy, but requires enormous physical strength to carry another person and pull it off safely. Harpal was a master at this and his professionalism is awesome.
After the rafting, we returned back to the campsite around 3pm and had a sumptuous lunch. My major complaint on the food in Rishikesh is that it is very spicy. Also other than Paneer there is very limited options for vegetarians. They seem to have only Paneer available from road side shops to restaurants to our campsite. I requested our campsite chef to cook gobi for a change and he obliged, but Paneer was also served. We relaxed a bit by playing some football and cricket and by 4pm we were out again to do the remaining activities. 250metres away from the campsite we had a pathway that descended down the hill to the riverbank. Here again it was almost therapeutic to watch mother Ganges flow smoothly with a relaxing sound and a gentle breeze soothing your senses.
We did Kayaking, Cliff Jumping, Rock Climbing & Rappelling here and as luck would have it we finished all these exactly 1 minute before darkness engulfed us completely.
Kayaking
Cliff Jump
Rock Climbing & Rappelling
It
gets pretty dark here by 6pm and it was quite an experience trekking
back up in complete darkness through the really tough terrain.
Surprisingly none of us felt the need to use even a mobile torch.
Somehow we felt so safe and really happy after all the activities that
we just kept speaking (and panting) and climbed all the way up in 20
minutes. Once back, we all took hot water showers and by 7.30pm we had
dinner. We were splitting up the next day - 2 were going to Gangtok on
an extended vacation, 1 going back to Lucknow (IIM student), 1 to
Vijayawada and I was returning to Chennai. My flight was at 1.30pm from
Dehradun airport, so we made a plan to visit Neelkanth Mahadev temple
the next morning and then reach back to Rishikesh city from where we
could split. We retired early and once again slept peacefully through
the night.
Nov 7 - Day 4 of the trip
We hired a cab that would take us to the Neelkanth Mahadev temple which was 90KMs away from our campsite and would drop us at Lakshman Jhula in Rishikesh. The cab costed 3k for this trip which is a normal fare. The trip was uneventful and it took us 90minutes to reach. We were eagerly looking forward to praying here as we were told this was the #1 spot to visit @ Rishikesh and about 7lakh people visit here every year. We reached the temple, prayed and came back to our cars in 30 minutes and if I were to be truthful and honest I was severely disappointed. The temple is maintained horribly with about 500 shops surrounding the main structure and you will easily miss the temple itself. The main Shiv linga is so small and anyone can touch with their hands and do a ganga jal abhishegam. Maybe it's just my fault, but I felt no sense of spiritualism or calm that overpowers you in a temple like Kabalishwarar temple in Chennai. This is just my view from 1 visit and I maybe wrong, take this with a pinch of salt please.
We then reached back Rishikesh around 11.30 and I immediately took off the airport in a cab again and reached by 12.15pm. To my horror though my flight was delayed by more than 2 hours. I could have spent this time usefully going around Rishikesh and visiting the multiple temples, if there was a proper notice from Spicejet. My flight departed late around 3pm and i had to change to another flight at Delhi (this was on the same day when an Indigo passenger was manhandled) and finally I reached chennai by 8pm.
It's been a fortnight since we returned back to our normal lives, but the 5 of us had an experience of a lifetime. We will never forget this trip and in more ways than one it has brought all of us closer as friends and I am pretty sure this is just the first of many such trips!
Thank you Aasish, Uday, Goutam and Nandith. Without you guys, this trip would have never happened.
