India is Huge!

Delhi felt like I was walking through a carnival situated in a landfill, located downwind from a coal factory, with an exhaust pipe strapped to my nose. Oh, and all the animals had escaped from their pens… After fighting a bad bout of giardia for over a month I’m finally back in commission and jump starting my brain. I, however, do not judge India entirely by my Delhi experience.

India’s grandeur can only be appreciated in its complete enormity, unabridged. Everything is huge. Capturing India in one picture is impossible. Snapshots of one rapid neglect the Himalayas. Similarly, taking a photo of one mountain peak ignores the giant Brahmaputra winding around its base.

The true Indian experience is immersing oneself amidst the enormity. The pictures of the rapids that we were paddling serve no justice to their true nature. Nor do they account for the giant peaks in front of and behind or the frail foot bridges connecting them from hundreds of feet above the river. Flying past Mt Everest and staring at her eye to eye made me realize that I do NOT understand how epic of a climb that is.

My experiences in Central and South America were much easier to portray to the minutest detail of one flower or firefly. The collection of these pretty little details created a complete feeling and understanding of the Sarapaqui Gorge or the put-in of the Rio Buey.

My point is I can’t take you to India through story and picture. It is unlike any place in the Americas. India makes you small. It’s no wonder Buddhism flourishes there. It’s impossible not to be humbled when waves are twenty feet overhead and no other kayakers are within a helpful distance. You can’t feel hubristic when the first person to drop into a rapid disappears and reappears smaller each wave finishing as a tiny insignificant dot. The eddies were too far away to catch unless we planned well in advance. So we were committed to rapids from a quarter mile upstream. Sometimes the anticipation was nerve racking. Waiting for the horizon to develop and the line to reveal itself took minutes. Sometimes I would have to blink and refocus my eyes as my depth perception would skew. Seriously. The horizon lines were so big the perfectly flat water at the top would throw me off.

I still laugh about one rapid on the Dibang. The anticipation of, yet another, gigantic crashing wave train was interrupted by a pack of monkeys on the river right side. We were so excited to see all the monkeys that we were trying to watch them climb up the bank but still avoid being eaten in any potential “river-wides”. My mind went monkeys, big holes, monkeys, big holes. The ordeal was a little frantic but really funny.

The morning after the monkeys was Christmas Eve- my golden birthday. I laid on the sandy beach, our standard for camp sites, while my travel buddies showered me in handmade cards, chocolate, and a birthday cake. Turning 24 on the 24^th in India was momentous, but my mom made me promise to never miss Christmas again. That’s her birthday and she spoils us! She got a car, so who knows what I missed out on.

The mighty Brahmaputra was precisely what we’d been training for since the first rapid of the Lohit. Big Brahma Momma delivered. Wary at first of her offerings I soon overcame my need for control and relaxed, Namaste. Then I got sucked under in a whirl pool and rolled up with my dry top vacuum sealed to my arms, Amen.

Day after day the waves continued to blow us away, literally. I witnessed one of the most elite teams of expedition kayakers surrender to snot nosed giggles and some serious celebratory fist pumps, high fives, and hugs. It was beautiful.

Meeting up with the rafters-in-training added a whole new aspect. For some of these Indians and Nepalese, it was their first time in whitewater and they absolutely rose to the occasion. Roland and Flo did an excellent job heading the operation and ran a first raft descent of a pillow rapid with a death eddy on the outside corner. River passion and awareness is the first step to defending live rivers as “a dammed river is a dead river”. Fittingly, the best wave train was our last rapid. Katie, with me as her wing girl, forged the Himalaya sized waves. We looked back at our comrades hooting and howling their way to the final take out as the sky darkened on Team Last Descent. It’s sad to think how accurate that name may be.

Check out the progress of the Last Descent project at www.thelastdescent.com

Lizzy