If you are in need of an adrenaline rush and are seeking a life-altering experience, then bungee jumping could be the way to go. Sanjay Austa writes about an adventure seekers’ jaunt in Rishikesh.
“It’s a life-changing experience. You will not feel the same way about yourself after it,” their voices ring in my ears, as I rock softly in the evening train to Rishikesh. No, I am not going for a dip at the Ganga and witness the accompanying mumbo jumbo. Though, for over a millennia, ‘life-change’ seekers have taken the same journey to flock to the ghats of this ancient holy town.
My trip is far more perilous and takes me through a winding road, up a mountain slope, where perched high on a craggy cliff, I am to take my leap of faith. Its called the ‘Art of Letting Go’. Or to put it simply — bungee. For those who have done it, the exhilaration is no less spiritual and they cannot stop raving about it.
“Got guts?”, screams the poster at Mohanchatti, a village 15 km from Lakshman Zula, where Jumping Heights is located. We arrive here after many a loops in this unmetalled dusty road which goes further on to Neelkanth. Jumping Heights, India’s own extreme adventure company, offers three thrills here for any takers — bungee jump, giant swing and the flying fox. Here you have India’s first fixed bungee and giant swing platform. This is also India’s highest bungee and giant swing. A leviathan cantilever juts out from a cliff and hangs 83 m over the valley below, almost 10 m higher than the Qutub Minar.
Gallant girls
Do I have the guts? I am not sure. The provocative ad punch line is aimed at male machismo, but the fairer sex far outnumber the boys in making the leap.
“Boys usually back off. They come loaded with over-confidence and preconceived ideas and don’t listen. But the girls listen to the instructions carefully and are able to do the jumps,” says Ajay Rawat, one of the many instructors here, as he helps me with my harness. Another instructor had a slightly different theory. “I think the girls think of the money, which will go waste if they don’t jump,” he says.
At Jumping Heights, there is no refund if you funk. The cost of the bungee and the giant swing is Rs 2,500 each, and the flying fox, Rs 1,500. The ratio of the girls doing the jump compared to the boys stands at 60-40. And as Rawat eases me out on a ledge of the cantilever so I can get the right angle for photography, I watch three boys waddle up to the jumping platform and back off one after the other. They are followed by a petite pony-tailed girl who, without a fuss, makes a perfect leap forward and below.
I watch her fall. Hear her “I did it!” scream, and photograph her bounce around, attached to the cord. But I cannot help thinking of the infamous YouTube video where the bungee rope snapped, plunging a young girl head first into the crocodile-infested Zambeze river below. The girl swam for her life and survived to tell the tale. But there is no safety net here. The water in the Hall river — the tributary of the Ganga — over which you jump, has less than two feet of water to break your fall.
But as I share the chilling video clip on my phone with those in the waiting room, I am reminded, this is not Zimbabwe and that the safety standard here is world class. In fact, at Jumping Heights, everything from the design of the cantilever to the execution, everything has been outsourced to the New Zealanders. The jump masters themselves are from New Zealand. New Zealand, which refined the primitive rope jumping in Africa into the commercial thrill sport it is today, has the safest standards in these sports across the world.
Fear before the fall
Even as my ever-cynical nerves are calmed by the guides at Jumping Heights and I am beginning to be led on to make my own leap, they hand me a no-claim form. In it I read the ‘all important’ clause which says that I have volunteered to try the adventures and am well aware of the risks involved. Could I sign on the form, please? That’s when I wriggle out of it and decide to stand firm on terra firma and watch others dash down the cliff.
Bungee is a big draw here, but the giant swing far outweighs the bungee in both the scare and the thrill element. But just as you can’t enter the elitist mountaineering club until you climb Mt Everest, though good climbers know Annapurna 1, K2 and Kanchenjunga are far more difficult peaks, similarly, if you don’t bungee, it doesn’t count.
The giant swing plunges you down almost twice the height as the bungee and you swing wildly across the valley. The only psychological advantage here is that you are upright and have a rope in front of you to hold.
Flying fox is the third and the least scary of the three. At one kilometre, it is however Asia’s longest, and takes you down from the height of 120 m to barely 7 m above the shallow river at almost 160 km per hour. The speed depends on the weight, as you run purely on gravity. I volunteer to try this one and am straddled in with a man weighing above 90 kg. As we hurtle downhill, I close my eyes. But I realise later that this was missing all the fun. Because you experience the thrill mostly in the first few seconds. The contraption from which you hang slows down soon enough and swings to a halt before you are slowly pulled back to the platform again.
Every adventure is filmed and a CD is handed to you at the office along with the “I have got guts” t-shirt and mug. All for a small price, of course.
Fact file
* If you are travelling from Delhi, you can either take the road or train, depending on your comfort. The nearest train station is at Haridwar, 25 km away.
* From Haridwar, you have to take the road journey to the Jumping Heights office in Rishikesh town. The company has small buses to ferry you to Mohanchatti 15 km away.