White Water Rafting? at the Sita Nadi, Agumbe, July 19-20, 08

After a two month break following the Wayanad trip in May, we finally got together again for a WWR trip at the Sita river in Agumbe. While this is probably not the best sites to be doing this, it is the closest, one that we could go in a weekend and come back.

It is generally an uphill task to get everyone to be free at the same time and after a month of advanced planning the dates were set for the third week of July. By the way, this was also the first trip that I organised fully on my own right from finding out details of the trip, book the rafting and the bus tickets. Phew! Tiresome work, but I was determined to make the trip see light of day.

Agumbe is known as the Chirapunji of the south understandably because of the rainfall that it receives during the monsoons. This water is supposed to feed the Sita river as it gushes its way to the Arabian sea forging its way through rapids (or thats what we thought).



Since we had the Saturday to ourselves, we got off at Someshwar. This is a view of the Agumbe ghats from Someshwar at eight in the morning. By the way Adarsh tells us that the hills are not exactly Ghats but just the end of the Deccan plateau from where we descend to the coastal plains in the west. He could be right. Agumbe is just about 850m high which is actually the same height as Bangalore. We initially planned to stay over at Anil's uncle's place at Someshwar but then decided to stay over at the top.

Agumbe has four very scenic falls - Kuudlu Theerta, Onake Abbey, Sirimane falls and Jogi gundi. Of course all of them can only be accessed by a trek which is a very good thing because we don't want bumbling tourists to spoil their pristine beauty by littering the place. However since I was with a group of friends who prefer beer slugging to a three km trek anyday, we had to go the one which had the least trekking to do which was Jogi Gundi.


Nikhil, it is in fact Jogi Gundi and not Joga Gundi like you insisted. Check it up on the net. Don't simply argue unnecessarily. Apparently a rishi 'Jogi' meditated here after which it got its name. Hardly a big falls, but it was a very secluded place surrounded by really tall trees on one side and a fast flowing river on the other. And we had the place all to ourselves. The last time we came here, Nikhil and I jumped off the rock some fifteen feet high straight into the Gundi. This time around, it was too slippery to venture up the rocks. Although the guide/driver told us not to get anywhere near the falls, I usually cannot rest until I have had a dip right below the falls wherever it is. So we did make it there and pose for a few pictures too. Adarsh had the brilliant idea that we should all take off everything we had on. The adventurous lads that we were, we all dived in, removed our undies and even waved them in the air in exultation which was captured on camera for posterity. The difficult part is to try and put the undies back on while staying in deep water since you have nothing to balance on and you can't afford to come out of the water with nothing on!

All in all, a refreshing experience to swim in ice cold water with nothing but nature around you. A delight for the cubicle sitting techie.

Adarsh knew a bajjiwallah near the Sunset Point since his native place is close to Agumbe. Our next stop was there. We quickly became his VIPs and were treated to 58 (35 mangalore bajjis which tasted more like uddina vadas and 23 masala vadas) vadas. With six guys, thats an average of almost 10 per head! We were all confident that it would have touched three digit figures had we not ordered lunch at our hotel in advance which we had yet to eat! Just to give you a comparison, our bajji bills came up to Rs. 160 while our full plate meal lunch was Rs. 108!

This is one photo of the trees by the road to Shimoga on Agumbe which I feel resembles Switzerland, thought to be honest I have never visited yet. This is just to reiterate to people that you don't need to go all the way to Switzerland to experience beauty like this. Its right here in Karnataka.

Dinner and breakfast consisted of piping hot neer dosas, buns and steaming idlis with some lip smacking sagoo at the Hotel Ganesh Prasad. Amazing food! Glad we didn't stay over at the Sita Nadi camp. Would have missed all this amazing food. When we go back to Agumbe the next time, there is no doubt as to where to head for food.

Even the crappy 'Mallya Residency' that we stayed at had this beautiful view from the balcony early in the morning on Sunday. We were initially given to understand that this was a 'resort' which we naturally assumed was Vijay Mallya's. We only later discovered that it was a run down two story lodge. But it served our purpose well enough. We are not luxe travellers in any case. A warm bed and a roof will suffice.

Sita Nadi as seen from the camp. The rafting was a far cry from white water. Poor monsoons this year played spoilt sport and 80% of the time we had to row hard. The biggest rapids lasted a couple of minutes at most. However, the small blue raft that we used for the first half of the run did splash enough water to excite us once every while. We dived into the cool waters for a swim every half hour to break the monotony of the rowing. Our rafting guide Karan from Nepal introduced us to the back somersault of the raft which I was convinced to learn. Once I had got a hang of it, I couldn't stop doing it and this became the adrenalin thrill of the ride. Nikhil and me even managed to get videos of us doing the back flip. Learning how to pull yourself back onto the raft was also a big thrill. I was the only one in the group who could manage it. Others had to be pulled back on by someone inside the raft.


In the beginning all of us were fighting to get the front seats in the raft since that was where all the action would be. Nikhil and me even pushed each other of the boat even before we started off. But post lunch, people were fighting to stay at the back since they wanted to nap! The second boat after lunch was a bigger grey boat which felt like a Merc and we could hardly feel any of the rapids on it. They seemed like supressed speed breakers. Our guide Karan did get friendly with us after a while and told us a lot of interesting stories about the rafting in the north. In Nepal, there is apparently a rapid named 'Dead Man'. Any guy who falls of his raft in that raft is a dead man. Which is how it got his name. He also said that the Nepalese rafting guides are very much in demand for their services throughout the world.

The entire rafting actually lasted from ten in the morning to five thirty in the evening! Thoroughly exhausted at the end of it. But the trip was definitely a change from the usual trekking trips. Around four o' clock in the evening, we got off the rafts and lay down on a island rock in the middle of the river. All of us dozed off for almost half an hour under the warm sun. After that Macy was reluctant to get back into the raft and get wet again. But he had no choice. After the end of all the rafting, we had to carry the raft on our heads uphill for about 100 metres to load it back on the jeep.

As I edit this piece a couple of weeks later, Agumbe reported heavy rains in the last week of July and the first week of August. My only complaint is that if we had gone there a couple of weeks later, the rafting would have given us a better thrill. Oh well, there is always a next time!

Oh, but to create!

I think the biggest rush of all is to see something that you create succeed. To put a rare brainstorm or light bulb flash into practice and to give it shape and to finally see that it works and well at that; nothing gets better than that. It is hardly surprising to see that parents are overjoyed when they see their kids doing well for themselves. After all, we are our parents' creation.

I was watching this episode a couple of days ago on Discovery channel. Its called smash labs. And yes it has to do with smashing up things, and no, you don't get paid for going at things with a baseball bat or a iron rod. (Notice how I say baseball instead of our desi cricket bat, but I despise cricket in any case, so ...). But the point here was to try and prevent destruction from happening. The challenge in the particular episode was to come up with a solution to help the occupants of a 3 tonne car somehow survive a crash from a 300 tonne moving train doing around 40-50 kmph during collision.

You think air bags and you would be right. Put one in front of the train to cushion the impact of the train on the car parked right in the centre of the track. Sounds trickier than you think. Here are a few problems with that:

1. What material to choose. It should take a lot of strain from the pressure of the impact and not rip apart and yet it should be flexible enough to absorb a large part of the impact. It should also have the ability to be compactly packed when not inflated. After considering rubber tyres, basketballs, buoys and white water raft materials, they went with the raft material.

2. How to inflate the air bag quick enough like say 3-5 seconds before impact, since thats how long the train driver has to trigger the mechanism. A tube pump wont do it. And using a highly compressed cylinder of gas wont cut it since the gas rapidly cools on expansion and freezes the raft material making it brittle. So the went for a system which simultaneously sucks in air from outside along with highly compressed gas from a cylinder to keep the gas from cooling off too fast.

3. Air has to be let out on impact to absorb the shock or the Gs. Air valves to release air didn't work. They were too slow and the bag just ripped apart at the seam. So they went for pressure caps which would blow off above a certain pressure much like the safety valve of the cooker. But getting them to blow off at the right pressure is the tricky part. You don't want it to blow off when the bag is getting inflated. That would defeat the entire purpose.

4. How to strap the bag to the train so that they would not be any loose ends. Any weakness at the seams could cause the bags to blow up prematurely during inflation itself and much before the collision.

They also came up with the novel idea of actually pushing the car off to the side with a fulcrum mechanism to minimize the blow instead of taking it head on. Their were several other finer details but even I am beginning to realize that this piece is becoming a bit tiresome. So I'll omit the rest.

In spite of all the preparation, there were a lot of unknowns. But this design managed to cut down from 8Gs to almost 4Gs the force of impact. This was a huge achievement. Towards the end, as the car got pushed off the track, the wheels got stuck and the car overturned, which is not good news for the inmates of the car. But they did absoerb half the forces of impact.

It was greatly inspiring to see this one hour presentation and made me realize that it is all the more vital to create. If we have a job that lets us create on a daly or even a weekly basis, what more can we ask for. Perhaps, thats why I prefer being an Architect any day over a Verification Engineer. :) However, not many chances to create on my side. Looks like that still needs me to pile up years of experience. Hmm...