My story of surviving after drowning! (On 13.04.2006)

By Malini Shankar, 

Digital Discourse Foundation

Hello,

I have just come back from a very adventurous trip to Kitulgala, its the place where the Oscar winning "The Bridge on the River Kwai" was filmed. This place in Sri Lanka is now known for white water rafting and yours truly had a few brush ups with the blessed travel agent and finally after my companion, - the office receptionist who had promised to accompany me to assist with photography and give me graceful company did not turn up, I went to Kitulgala by a rickety old bus from Colombo on the day the New Year holidays started - on the 11th of April. 14th April is the Buddhist and Tamil New Year... so its usually a weeklong holiday for the Buddhist New Year in Sri Lanka. 

All of Sri Lanka's vehicles were on Colombo's roads and the cops were also ofcourse busy celebrating the onset of holidays with Kiribath, so mayhem ruled the traffic lanes. It took 3 hours for me to wait for my princess not to turn up before I decided to go it alone and another 1 and a half hours for me to reach that bus station in a place called Pittahkotu in Colombo. Once there, I asked a hapless cop to guide me to the bus to Hatton. Buses were parked crosswise and if you had the misfortune of being anywhere near the tyres of the bus that could move without warning and you are mowed down, just too bad. That is the way it is, in Colombo, take it or leave it. My boss, was actually very worried about how I would manage alone with my huge camera bag and tripod besides luggage alone on a day when chaos would start ruling. The office staff were very worried since I am physically challenged. 
 
On reaching the bus station the cop whom I asked for help barked at a driver to take care of me till I board a bus to Hatton. (I did not understand Sinhalese much but bI guess because of the distance his voice had to carry across the tarmac ... his call, best qualifies for that rather rude description I lend sorry for that brother cop!) He in turn brought me to the head of a long que of people waiting for the Hatton bus. None knew if an AC inter city bus would come at all that day! I did not see any bus platforms, ticket counters or staff of the so called bus station. So wait I did at the head of the queue. After 25 minutes of roasting and getting stuck, literally amidst perspiring oily haired women and men, I panicked at the sight of the bus hurtling  straight towards me! Then out of nowhere a uniformed guy took my luggage and blocked the mad rush of people storming in to help me get into the bus. Once inside, I was kind of ok. I called my boss that I was in one piece and that I would be leaving if the bus moved, in 20 minutes. It moved indeed. People were standing even on my toes, because of the maddening holiday surge and there was a traffic jam even in hill country. After rumbling along for 4 hours I finally arrived in Kitulgala barely 75 kiliometres from Colombo.
 

I was honestly not prepared for what I saw. This place is not for the run of the mill, also-ran tourist, not for romancing people either, it is for the hardened serious traveler of the Backpacker variety. I have done white water rafting before, I have stayed in many beautiful eco tourist resorts... but words fail me now to express the beauty of this place called Rafters Retreat,. I was booked in a log cabin, made wholly of wood and not a plastic anywhere in sight. The log cabin or tree house is set in the midst of rich evergreen rainforests, quite the way you see it in the movie. Birds start chirping early morning from the wines and saplings creeping up the balcony demanding your attention. The tree house literally overhangs the Kelani river, and I was actually waiting for more cheap thrills like dangling over the mouth of a hungry crocodile. But alas there are no crocs in this river! The flooring, also made of wood, is not even, you might roll down literally from the bed because of the sloping floor. But well, its a tree house, what did you think Malini ? 



The bathroom is a cave, lined with rocks and granite blocks; herbal snails as big as my palm stick to the granite walls. The contraption that passes for a shower is a chiseled rock and so you cannot quite regulate the flow of water. If you turn on the tap, you can be assured of washing away your sins and cynicism in 8 minutes flat. The water is simply too cold for you to indulge in an elephant bath like I do in Colombo twice or thrice a day. Handcrafted lanterns adorn the lampshades and the mirror is literally framed in a couple of wooden logs. The candlestand is a piece of uneven rock. The chairs are also made of wooden logs, flattened, revealing the tree rings and all. Its rustic charm, rustic beauty of Mother Nature,... all the way. Oh I was so lost!
 
Sri Lankan food like all cuisines on earth offers a platter full of breakfast food...Red rice flour string hoppers  called Idiyappam in India, freshly cut fruit, Fresh fruit juices,  red rice with vegetable stew and sambol, coconut milk, sausages, omelette  and freshly baked bread slices ... Grated coconut is not just a garnishing for the eyes in Sri Lanka, it definitely enhances the authenticity of the local cuisine. 
I went to eat food...ummmm authentic Sri Lankan food, with lots of coconut milk, coconut gratings, coconut shellings and everything with coconut and ofcourse my new found favourite red rice. The curries were so good, so spicy and authentic... ummmm I can have some more. That evening after I completed the interview to do the article I met with a group of Europeans who  were to be my raft mates the next day. I need to introduce them to you... for you to understand my very frisky rafting experience. Jeronimo Candela is the Deputy Head of Mission of the Doctors of the World - Spain, his wife Dominique, Miguel, a travel agent and his wife - although her advanced pregnancy disallowed her to come rafting, Fabrice and his friend Mare Katha,  and myself were to go rafting. I was taking pictures of every single object in three different cameras while on dry land. And very smartly I took the auto focus and digital cameras with me for the rafting. They warned me that 70 - 75 % of the times people take a toss at Killers Fall, so if I insist on taking my cameras I better make sure they are safe in a water proof bag. I did take the 2 cameras and with water proof bubble wraps but once inside the boat when I started shooting pictures, it was difficult to put the cameras after every shot into the plastic bag, so I kept them in their tarpaulin covers / bags. 

We survived the first and second rapid alright. Fabrice was showing the whole world how much he loved his girl, and I was actually taking pictures. At one point he actually admonished me if I behave like paparazzi journalist! I turned away to take a wide angle of a lush green valley that you see in the movie... Bingo, the raft commander said forward paddle please because we were almost crashing against the rock. If only he had asked forward paddle a couple of seconds before we would certainly have avoided the rock and been midstream. 

Then we could have conveniently fallen or cascaded along. But bingo we hit the rock and a gentle nudge was enough to push the raft outside the grip of the perch on the rock. But after being perched when someone pushed the oar into the rock to enable us to move along... we plunged headlong vertically into the fall. 
We were warned that this was a tricky Waterfall, and we got perched onthis rock on the left Releasing ourselves from the perch meant we plunged headlong vertically about 5 metres in height! Picture Credit: Rafters' Retreat, Kitulgala, Hill Conutry Sri Lanka


If we had not perched on the rock, we would have cascaded down with the mass of water and moved along. But plunge we did, and in the excitement of falling headlong, Jero who was rafting at the right hand fore corner of the raft virtually got to his feet, that means on a plunging raft he was akin to sleeping against the water! As he crashed against the water, it threw him right onto me, while I was sitting in on my haunches in the hull of the raft on the 2nd seat.  

When he crashed against me (my right side), the force took me to the left and I fell right into the water, hold on I took Jero along with me ! Minutes before that Marki and someone else had fallen in a the 2nd rapid I think. It was my turn now, but alas I do not know how to swim... A lot of water went into my mouth, throat, lungs and nostrils... till the amount of water equivalent to my weight was displaced I was drowning, then the life jacket worked. It brought me afloat. But by then I was atleast a mile away from the raft!!! Current was really swift at that point. I saw my blessed cameras floating in front of me in their bags! I screamed my cameras! but it only took more water into my mouth. By the time I came to the surface, I was in panic breathing helplessly and saying ayyo, ayyo, amma amma...
 
But by then Jeronimo, (in Spanish J is pronounced as H!) was right there with me having wrapped me from behind and arrested me from sailing away in front of him by holding the oar against me. Indeed he turned out to be the real hero. He asked me if I was alright and told me to calm down, that everything would be ok. By then the boatman from the 2nd boat came to me, and started gently tugging me away. He was not in the least panicky! It was for him a routine rescue on every trip! 

I asked Jero what must I do, because I was kicking my legs violently though I was vertical in water. I could not retain my balance. So Jero told me to just lay down on my back on the fast flowing current and look up at the sky but to hold on to the oar that was in his hand!  I did, and the current took me to shallow waters. Did not quite realise that our boat had drifted away without an oar! The boatman and Jero asked me to stand there and wait for the boat to come to us. I was actually standing on slippery rocks and could not balance again. I would not let go off Jero's hand...and when the boat came it crashed against me and I think I lost my balance. I told them to take the boat to the shore a couple of feet away lest I could not climb in. then, in all that confusion, I took out my extra film rolls from my pocket and gave it to the boatman who had rescued me, asking him to keep it till I went to dry land. I climbed in and we went rafting further down again. Later in placid waters I went down into the water to enjoy Mother Nature again for a few minutes more. All my raft mates were downstream enjoying. But Fabrice started swimming against the current to get into the raft for he was exhausted. He asked me to let go of the raft so that he could stop swimming against the current, I would not, instead the boatman managed to steer the boat with me limp against it towards these guys, they got in, we rafted another 30 minutes or so and came back to our resort. Man, what an experience!
 
I will need awhile to recover from the shock but I hope to be foolhardy enough one day to risk one more such adventure ... someday hopefully. But please do rest assured I was having great fun. I enjoyed every moment of it except when I panicked I guess. Huh! that's the story indeed. Later ofcourse I trekked quite a bit to take a lot of pictures and even went to the Belilena caves. That's another story...

Needless to mention I lost for good my first digital camera. i brought it back ashore but it was so jinxed with water have gone into the PCB of the small digital camera I had bought in the US after my film course in the New York Film Academy, barely two years before my Sri Lankan adventures.  The other small auto focus camera with a film strip inside was washed out and fortunately... thank God the resort owner advised me not to take my Asahi Pentax K 1000 camera for the raft... 

Pictures: Courtesy Rafters' Retreat.
Text : Malini Shankar, 
Full disclosure. This trip was self sponsored. 

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Elephant Census, First hand experience