Kayaking @ Panshet near Pune (continued)

My first kayaking experience was more of - leaning, adventure and then enjoyment. But I was not satisfied and wanted to take one more chance at the kayak. I asked them to bring it back in water. I was trying to decide what next? Having learnt the art, how should I make the most of the next trip? I finally set a goal for myself for that 15 minute kayaking trip. We were on one side of the riverbed. I looked at the other side, spotted a tree and made it my target for the next few minutes. I decided to take a shot at the following: Drive the kayak at the best speed possible, take it to the other of the river, touch the soil on that side, and then come back on this shore. All this in 15 minutes. I had to be on my toes always in order to make sure that I kept the time.

My Timex digital watch came to the rescue. I set the timer on and started kayaking with all strength possible. I realized that it was easy to attain fairly high speeds. And now that I knew what my target was, it was much easier to maintain the direction.

But maintaining the direction was still a fairly non-trivial activity. I assumed that since I was applying equal force on the right and the left hand sides, the kayak will always go ahead in a straight line. But when I started staring at the tere, I noticed that all the time, I was either moving too much to the left or too much to the right. And then, I had to make appropriate adjustments to ensure that I was chasing the target tree. I realized at that point, how difficult it must be to paddle the kayak in the sea when there are no visible targets in any specific direction. You would require a magnetic compass and that would be your life line.

I first checked my wrist watch timer at around 2.5 minutes into the drive. I was stunned to see that I was almost half the way into the breadth of the river. I decided to keep going full steam and paddled hard for the next minute or so. Once I stopped momentarily after 3.5 minutes, and estimate that I was 2/3 of the way into the breadth. I was sure that I would be able to make it - touch the other side and come back. At this time, I just tried to soak in the moment a bit. I observed that the constant chatting of the people on the original side of the river had now stopped. I was surprised because there were many people on the shore. And so far, I could always here many of the talking simultaneously. Then I realized that I had come far enough from them to be able to hear their voices. That pleased me a bit :-) But then, I concentrated a bit and found out that I could now hear so many other natural voices. Birds were really singing wonderfully. I could hear some voices from the other side of the river bed. I was absolutely delighted.

I decided to stop at this place for the next few minutes or so. And dropped the plan of touching the other side of the river. Just wanted to relax more. I looked at the river and saw that it was really huge. I could see the river leading into the dam and its gates about 500 meters or a kilometer away from where I was. Which meant - that the only time we could go kayaking here was when the water was calm. I just though we were lucky enough that there were no rains or strong winds that day. And it also gave me an indication that I can come here in the future only when the weather is as calm as it was on today. Otherwise, kayaking would become very risky.

Most of the river had beautiful, blue water. But somehow there was a patch where the water was green, had some weeds and leaves and that looked odd. I tried to wonder about this patch. I would have understood if it was near the shore, but near the shore, the water was very clean. Once that bad patch ended, it was again clean and beautiful. I could now see some speed boats making rounds one after another at some distance from me.

Whenever a boat went from anywhere nearby, it would send a series of waves in the water. The waves would spread and hit my kayak. This was a scary moment. The people had told me that I would have to balance it when the waves are hitting. Once such speed boat sent very strong waves. My kayak started shaking up and down, and for the first time, I was nervous but still not scared, though. The only problem I saw with a kayak is that - it can flip and turn turtle easily - with a few strong ripples/waves. But once that happens, it would be difficult to turn it around while swimming. And then even more difficult to climb on it from within the water.

Once the waves started hitting, I decided to move. I thought - while moving, the kayak might be able to handle the waves better, and I was right. After around 8-9 minutes since I had begun, I started on my way back. This time, I really stepped up the force and attained tremendous speed. I was now able to observe how to voices of the people on the shore had started to reach me again. I was kind of sad that my kayaking trip was about to end. I again tried to soak in each and every part of my vision and the sounds. I looked at all the surrounding mountains again and allowed myself to be stunned by the awesome beauty of nature once more. Finally, I decided to park. My speed was so high, that I had to reverse peddle in order to slow down so that I could hit the shore. This time, I could park perfectly and single handed, without any help.

I knew that I had stumbled upon a new passion. I vowed to come back here once every month or two. I started to share my experiences with everyone on the shore and explained to them the mind blowing experience. My shoulders had started aching a bit and I was really hungry now. It had turned out to be a really nice exercise. I wished I could have a house near a river so that I could go kayaking every day :-)

If anyone of you know of other good places to go kayaking, then please let me know. And if you can swim, then try out kayaking. It will refresh you!

Cheers,
- Ashutosh