Rowing Hard in the Himalayas

Rowing Hard In The Himalayas LEH, India (AP) - High on the rocks above, Yousuf Zaheer and his two fellow river guides were mulling the narrow channel of the Zanskar River, plotting a route for their three rafts of tourists through the twisting corridor of rolling water. Danger lurked under the surface. Unexpectedly, in moments, one raft overturned and careened out of control toward the rapids downstream- with four people hanging on. “Flipping is part of rafting” Arvind Bardwaj, had told us earlier. Arvind was our guide. He had a way of making disaster sound like fun. “If you fall into the river,” he said, “point your feet downstream, lean back and smile.” The Zanskar is one of India’s most remote, most isolated and little-traversed rivers. Our group of 10 vacationers and 5 outfitter staffers were on a 180-kilometer (110-mile), seven day whitewater rafting expedition. More than half the journey passed through an otherwise inaccessible gorge, where each bend in the river brought yet another astounding array of color and shape and perhaps a new danger or adventure. It was the narrowest point of the gorge, where river is compressed from an average width of 100 feet (30 meters) to a corridor of 18 feet (5.5 meters), that Shurbir Bhandari’s raft flipped. A swirling undercurrent popped Shurbir’s oar from its oarlock, leaving him helpless, against the force of the powerful river. The raft slammed sidewise into a protruding rock, tilted slowly up and over. Shurbir and the three others in the raft tipped into the icy water. Roland Krist, an Austrian diplomat, and the expedition’s cook, Tejpal, grabbed the lifeline, but Kavita Kulkarni went under the raft for a terrifying 10 seconds. “My first thought was, ‘I’m not going to die here,’” Kavita said later. She blindly reached out a hand, and Roland grabbed it. Shurbir quickly clambered on top of the overturned raft and pulled the others out of the water. But with no paddles or oars, the raft was at the river’s mercy, heading swiftly toward the rapids a few hundred meters (yards) downstream. Someone from Yousuf’s team grabbed the lifeline of the overturned raft, and I held onto Yousuf’s linking all three rafts with a human thread. Rowing hard and cursing harder, Yousuf and Arvind pulled the train of rafts onto a thin sandy beach. Shurbir’s raft, carrying all our stores, was turned right side up. Our supplies, securely-fastened in watertight drums, were rescued and lunch was served. Only the salt and pepper were soggy. The Zanskar is known more for its dramatic beauty than its thrills. Rafters classify it as medium-difficult. Flipping can be serious, less from the threat of drowning than from hypothermia in the 5 degrees Celsius (40 F) water. “All rivers have personalities,” says Yousuf, of the Himalayan River Runners, who had been rafting India’s rivers for 20 tears and Zanskar for the past six. “Each rapid has a meaning for you and gives you a different emotion. Every turn brings something new.” Our trip in Leh, where the altitude of 11,500 feet (3,500 meters) makes you light headed and the simplest chore - climbing a few stairs or struggling with a tight sleeping bag - leaves you panting for breath. Most people need at least 24 hours to acclimatize. Headaches, a loss of balance and breathlessness usually can be controlled with rest and a pill against altitude sickness. Leh is the capital of Ladakh, a peaceful province in the insurrection-plagued Indian state of Jammu-Kashmir. Often called Little Tibet, it is an area where time has moved slowly since the first Buddhist kingdom was established here 1,000 years ago. Ethnically and culturally, Ladakh is closer to Chinese-controlled Tibet across the Himalayan peaks than to the Hindu-dominated India. Fortress-like monasteries perch above many villages, from which the drone of Buddhist chants waft over the valleys. The landscape of the high Himalayan desert is harsh, stark, with no trees to soften the contours of rock soaring thousands of feet from the floor of a valley or the rushing waters of a river. The mountains are a canvas of abstract art, with the exposed rock face hosting whirls of geological designs in ochre, rusty red, flaming orange, sea-green, turquoise and aquamarine. Rising day after day with the dawn, I could think of no name for the color of sunrise striking a snowy mountain peak. In India, where one billion people are squeezed into a country one-third the size of the United States, solitude is a rare and prized commodity. The three-day ride to the put on point on the Doda River traverses mile after mile of empty valleys, past millennia-old glaciers and up dizzying mountain passes 14,000 feet (4,240 meters) high. Only a few villages, with mud-walled huts insulated with dry grass and sticks, hunker in the valleys, normally covered with eight months of the year. In summer, horses graze freely on the broad marshy and meadows that form the headwaters of some of India’s greatest rivers. Most of the drive was on an unpaved track in rickety rented bus with “Good Luck” appropriately emblazoned on the cab. The northern state of Jammu-Kashmir had long been a popular tourist destination. Until a Muslim insurrection began in 1989, the lush Kashmir Valley was second, perhaps only after the Taj Mahal. The Zanskar region, bordering Pakistan and China, was closed to outsiders until 1974, and even today it is known only to the most intrepid trekkers. Ours was a diverse group. In addition to the Austrian diplomat and Kavita, who is a software designer working New York, it included a tree surgeon and a garden designer from Australia, an American diplomat stationed in Germany, and his Indian-born wife, two Indian businessmen from Calcutta, an off-duty AP reporter and his son. Of the 10, only three were under 40 - and two were over 60. We hit the river outfitted in wetsuits, rafting jackets, life vests and helmets. But the first plunge through icy waves was like an electric jolt. We were told the body cannot withstand more than seven minutes of exposure – a theory disproved by our unprotected toes which survived much longer in the water sloshing in the bottom of the raft. By the second day of rafting we grew accustomed to the cold. The sun, barely filtered by the thin atmosphere, was fiercely hot. Hands and cheeks were burned raw, but the mountains gleamed in the clean air and the sky could be described only as Himalayan Blue. Food that emerged from the simple ten was surprisingly good and plentiful, from standard Indian fare to Chinese egg rolls and Italian pasta. We slept in cozy tents on inflatable mattresses. The bar was limited, but cocktail hour was at 7 p.m. Washing was possible only in streams even colder than the river. Toilets were the great outdoors. We splashed through easy Class II rapids down the Doda until it joined the Tsarapchu to form the Zanskar River near Karsha, a vertical village impossibly attached to a bursting steep rock face. Lungs bursting, we climbed up to the monastery capping the village, frequented by Richard Gere. On Day Three if rafting we entered the Zanskar gorge, where the river squeezes between sheer mountains towering 2,500-3,000 feet (800-1,000 meters) above the water. The canyon is an awesome display of nature. But the river can be a dangerous beauty, with its traps and snares. Beginners soon learn the jargon of reading the river - eddy lines, holes, boils and flowovers. The water can churn or bubble, like a pot on a stove. It ricochets off the canton walls, swirls around rock – seen and concealed – and can suck a 16-foot rubber raft into a spinning vortex. After surviving the flip, though, our group of paddlers felt like seasoned and skilled rafters, even though the guides did all the work. The final challenge came on the last day, soon after the Zanskar flowed into the mighty Indus River. We hit an S-shaped monster 500 yards (meters) long with successive 8-foot-high (2.5-meter) waves pushing us toward a massive hole. Our raft bounced and bobbed like corks on the sea, but we sailed through with a whoop of exhilaration. Two hours later we beached by a culvert on the road back to Leh. We ate lunch in the shade of the rafts propped on their sides with paddles, and thought of our first hot shower in 10 days. This Article is written by Arthur Max and appeared in the USA Today several years ago .

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