Godavari - Fierceness, inexperience, fear and luck

From my childhood, i heard stories from my mother about a few of my mother's uncles who swam across Godavari from Rajamundry to Kovvur. During those years i thought they should be something near to superhuman to achieve a stunt like that as the river in that area has a width over two kilometers and is deep enough. I started learning swimming when i was in my seventh standard, thanks to BPL which helped me learn a lot about sports and life.

First, i am going to tell a small story about how i started learning swimming.
We have a nice small pool (about 25 feet long) in our colony which brings a coach during summer months (May - June). I was in my seventh class (1996 or 97) while most of the friends i play with were one or two years older. I asked my parents for permission to join it but they straightly refused it as they were worried about my health (wasn't that stable then), my mischievousness and a lot of other factors only they know and i can't nearly guess. Anyways, after a week of bitter fighting from my side they agreed half heartedly. But when i went to the pool, i found that the coach already taught basics and he is screening few people for the next stage. The test was to swim from the deep end of the pool to the other end. I too gave my name and opted to dive. After a few seconds of very frantic movement similar to swimming (which i only saw earlier) i reached the other end and that was the start of my swimming lessons.

After many years now my basics are good, my strokes are technical though not at a pro-level.

A few weeks back, on August seventh, i was there in Rajamundry to attend my cousin's marriage and after three hectic days of roaming, working, doing favours (i was on the bride's side) here and there, i accumulated a lot of stress and felt a good swim in godavari might/will/should wash it away. I, my brother and another cousin started swimming at the Pushkar ghat above which the oldest and the newest rail bridges pass.

The pillars of old bridge are a good scale for you to know how far you swam. I went to three pillars and came back relieved and with a new determination to swim across like the old legends my mom mentioned. That's how the plan started. I calculated 2 weeks would be fine to gather people and finalize a plan and also we would get a little time for rest and physical preparations. I didn't want to delay the trip as the water flow was good and anything less wouldn't make it fun enough.

Finally, after i returned to Hyderabad, i put a mail across a few friends who in my view were good or better swimmers than me. After that we had to postpone the plan for two weeks as one or the other had some other plans. Finally, it was three of us who agreed to swim. Aditya (item raja), Madhu (my engineering classmate and a very energetic dude and an item) and Kranthi (a fantastic guy from Vizag NCC Navy and Microsoft, who thinks a lot and an item). Prem (another engg mate) joined us but we didn't allow him to join the swim-across-godavari-adventure as i wasn't sure of his skill. Only later we knew we over-estimated ourselves.

Thursday (September 3rd 2009), the CM of AP suddenly went missing in what seemed to be a helicopter accident and it was the breaking news. Friday morning i woke up because of a call from a friend telling me the news of CM's death. I was sad as we lost a good leader, he just gained a lot of strength and trust from his followers recently and it was almost time he served people with good power. We got news that most of the offices were closed and it was declared a state holiday. Madhu arrived that morning and we left to Rajamundry that night while speculating the chances of a bandh there the next two days.

Luckily, Rajamundry was quite normal unlike Hyderabad on Saturday and we got into a lodge early by 5. By 630AM we were at Pushkar ghat with a nice wind sweeping the place and i wasn't that surprised looking at the river as much as Kranthi who was stunned by the width and graciousness of the river which was almost full because of heavy rains in the last two weeks in catchment areas upstream. We had a little warm up and went to the first pillar which is like a base for the start.
Our plan was to get a feel of the river and its flow and to come up with a plan to swim across it.

We swam near that pillar for around an hour or two and were stopped and totally discouraged by the locals (godavari swimmers club) not to swim to the next pillar. We, as any other young guy would be after listening to old uncles, were quite annoyed. I already warned the guys not to seek advice from the locals as they would add a lot of drama to the facts to show off, which i already did (as rajamundry is my native too) though at an optimum level (a level which doesn't incite fear).

At the end of this trail round, Madhu and Kranthi lowered their target to 4 pillars and i to 13 pillars after which there is a small island.

Finally, we were out, broke our fast (he hee..), rented a car to see the places around. I showed the other guys the pure awesomeness of godavari and most of the places i have seen from my childhood. I really wanted to take them to my place of birth, Ambajipeta, but there wasn't enough time. Kranthi was awe-struck after going across Sir Arthur Cotton Barrage from Dhowaleshwaram to Vijjeswaram. Then we bought a few plants at one of the never ending nurseries in Kadiyam. Kranthi and Madhu enjoyed a long walk around the group of temples at Dwarapudi which host almost every known god of hindu mythology.

It was lunch time when we came back. We took the much needed nap (for two hours) after that, then went for a ride over the KK Bridge (rail-road) to Kovvur. We roamed the main road of Rajamundry and had some local specialties like Appaji nimma soda and jeera soda, Rose milk, various bhajjis at godavari gattu (literally godavari river bank), sweets and khara at Devi chowk. After that no one had appetite for any thing other than curd rice which we had and retired for the day.

Sunday morning the real adventure began (though it ended very fast). We were at the Pushkar ghat by 8AM. I felt the wind blew much faster (varada godavari's number one sign). We argued whether to hire a boat for support (madhu and kranthi) or not (me). There were two reasons i was against hiring it. One i was sure we will be back from pillar one after looking at the flow and two the boat guy was demanding 800 for two hours. After nearly half an hour we reached a consensus when the boat guy agreed to lower his rate to 600. This was the best decision of the trip, to hire him.

Finally we were at the base pillar or pillar zero and our primary target was now pillar one which was approximately 75 meters away. The bridge above was to help us not to loose direction because of flow and after fifteen minutes in water and once we thought we were accustomed to the flow and the support boat was ready (not ready enough as it was upstream when it should have been downstream). "OK..! GOOO..!!", i shouted and started quickly followed by madhu and kranthi. I quickly crossed halfway and found that i was being taken away by the flow in '<' direction. I quickly turned to back stroke and increased the speed of my strokes and crossed the two thirds mark when i suddenly heard madhu shouting for the boat. I steadied my stroke to stay there and turned back to see what was happening and found that madhu and kranthi were very quickly being taken away by the flow and the boat (prem was in it) was quickly going in their direction to pull them out.
I turned again and saw that i was a few meters away from the pillar and accelerated to reach it. After around 30 strokes i found that i was only one foot nearer. I could still hear madhu shouting for the boat. The energy in my arms and thighs was fading. Then it crossed my mind that even though i spend rest of my energy in reaching the pillar, i might not be able to get a hold of it . So i decided i would use the rest of my energy to get to bank/boat which ever is easier.

I changed my position to floating on my back and was carried downstream at the speed of the river while slowly changing my direction towards the bank. I was totally out of breath and was calculating when and where i would be able to reach the bank. By this time, i was a bit relieved to see that madhu had got in to the boat. It was kranthi's turn next. But, a few moments later i found that i was nearer to the boat than Kranthi. I quickly grabbed the rope thrown towards me and got into the boat and a few seconds later Kranthi too was in it.

Well, there may be a lots of questions, thoughts, emotions on what could/would/might have happened but I never ever think about that. You may say we are stupid, reckless or anything else. I will say we are simply adventurous. We like to take our chances.

Anyways, Kranthi was totally down with thoughts of what could have happened, madhu (i am not sure what he was thinking), and me. I was thinking. Lots of thoughts were crossing my mind. Would i have made it to the bank if there was no boat, i calculated my chances at 70%. The unknown factors (a, b, c, d, e, f) other than x, y, z that are already in the equation turned out to be not negligible but more important than x, y, z.

After we hovered at the bank for few minutes. I called off the adventure (actually postponed) and asked the boat guy to take us to the island where we will relax for some time. Kranthi's spirit was totally crushed by godavari and madhu was trying to talk to him but he wanted to stay quite. Prem was almost clueless as he was expecting a bit more from us and our talks and calculations from before.

The island turned out be lot of fun and our spirits were back in no time. We found the best reason for our failure. We were simple, lazy software engineers with no exercise. That was it. We will come back again this time with much more preparation.

On the island we vented our frustration in the form of creativity and took some awesome, funny videos.

On our way back, we tried some dives (i always wanted to dive from a speeding boat and i did). And after swimming again for some time, we were back in our hotel rooms. We finished our lunch and now were free for the rest of the day (about 6 hours from 3 to 9PM). I was out of ideas for places to visit. Finally, we decided to go to Kasthurba Ashram at Seethanagaram, 30kms away.
We reached there and found it to be a calm and peaceful place with a small hut (a special one), a few buildings and fields around. My mom's aunt works there and is quite respected at that place.

The special hut i mentioned earlier was the place created by Kasthurba gandhi in 1925 for the uplifting and education of women and girls. It was visited by Mahatma Gandhiji in 1929 and he also planted a tree. The hut has a very rare collection of his photos/paintings of his lifetime divided into four periods roughly. We enjoyed looking at them. I had a brief chat with my great-grandmom over a cup of tea. I and Kranthi wanted to donate but we were out of cash. So we thought we can do it once we reach hyderabad.

Thats how this simple trip turned into a fearsome adventure and then back to a happy ending. I always tell my friends, my life is a comedy and there is no place for extra drama in it...he hee....!!!

I will be adding the pics to this blog soon, also the links of the videos. Bye for now.