Sphering, WWRafting, and Bruar Canyoning, Scotland

Well, what can be the perfect way to end a two week long trip to UK and scenic Scotland than two days of extreme adventure. This time I was with my family which is generally expected to be more of a sight-seeing trip. However, I seem to have given my brother-in-law the adventure bug and he also convinced my sister to take part in our adrenalin shots.

Nae Limits near Perth in Scotland is an award winning Adventure Club and is known for White water rafting, adventure tubing, zorbing and extreme canyoning among other things. We tried Sphering (zorbing), white water rafting on the Tummel River and Bruar Canyoning.

Sister and BIL posing before their roll

Sphering is this gaint rubber ball that they strap you inside and roll it down a hill. It was a weird and bumpy ride and lasted all of forty seconds. The second time around, my sister decided to give the ball a very hard shove before it took off. BIL and me were strapped inside and screaming as the ball made us do somersaults at something like ten kms per hour. Which is quite a bit of somersaulting. Overall, different but not worth the money.

The Sphering site, Nae Limits

Negotiating rapids on the Tummel River

The afternoon was spent white water rafting on the Tummel River. The last time I tried this was exactly a year ago on the Sita Nadi in Agumbe and I was disappointed. I volunteered for the front seat in the raft and got it without much trouble unlike last time. :) Most of the rapids are a grade 3, but there is two tier waterfall right at the end and is rated grade5. That fall was amazing and we took it going backwards! Apparently, in every rafting trip, atleast one of the rafts capsize on that rapid but ours was a record of sorts with none of the rafts turning over. Again, rafting was good but nowhere close to the adrenalin shots that me and BIL were expecting to get high on.

Going down a Grade5 rapid in Reverse!

The best part came last. Bruar Canyoning. This involved one and a half hours of high octane cliff jumps, waterfall slides, scrambling and rappelling. All this on a furious river rushing down a gorge. There are very few places in the world that offer this kind of an experience I reckon. It was just mindblowing. It was like this natural water amusement park ride laid out by nature. In an amusement park, its perfectly safe. This has a high degree of danger to it and thats what made it all the more exhilarating. I volunteered to do a cliff jump first and ended up getting swept into a cave. Finally, I had to be hauled out by a rope. That was scary. Luckily, the cave was a dead end! BIL and me couldn't stop grinning after the experience. We thought it was totally worth the trip. All in all, I would recommend Canyoning to any guy who is not scared of water and has good swimming skills.

BIL executing the jump

Our Canyoning guide Mia, hauling me out of the cave!

Whoa, thats high! Gotta be mad to jump off from there.

The Road to nowhere

Venue - Sakleshpur, a deserted road
Time - 8:30 PM, Dec 26, 08
Background - A scarlett red Swift, 4 friends, a carton of beers and coke, 80 kmph, a starry night

A cardboard box magically appeared, filled itself up with 4 bottles KF premium, a 1,.5l Coke bottle and a DSP Black. Courtesy of a local wine shop. The Swift came to a total stop on a small tar road winding through the dark countryside. Paddy(?) farms on both sides of the road. Hardly any space for another car to pass. But it was a deserted road. What are the chances that another car would pass by at that time of the night in that part of the country on that particular night? Well mathematically speaking, tending to nil, nada, zero, sonne, null, cipher. The boot was thrown open. Flickering hazard lights playing proxy to strobe lights. Sony Xplod acting as DJ. The Verve - Catching the butterfly, Porcupine Tree - Arriving Somewhere but not here - playing back to back. Clear sky punctured by a thousand radiant stars to form a million patterns. Total pyschaedelic moment. Fifteen minutes of pure intense heaven.

Verily one of the best moments in the trip. Much obliged guys. Hope we have more such moments :)

Mood - Dave Matthews Band - If I had it all

The under water ocean safari at Goa! Oct 2nd - 3rd, 2008

Scuba Diving!!! This is the second of the adventure sports that I am now taking off the list of have-to-dos after white water rafting. The other items on the list at present are:

1. Skiing
2. Paragliding
3. Cliff Diving
4. Bungee Jumping
5. Sky Diving
not necessarily in that order

A four day vacation at Goa kicked off on the evening of Sept 30th. A long weekend and late planning meant we couldn't find direct bus to Panjim and had to take the tortuous route of Bangalore-Karwar-Madgaon-Panjim. 17 hours of travel is not a pleasant experience! Only four guys made the cut this time. Krishna, Mithun, Adarsh and I. This time, I got everyone involved in the booking so that they would realize the effort involved in organizing everything. :P That meant Krishna did the research, Mithun did the scuba-diving booking and Adarsh did the bus tickets booking and I did all the co-ordinating between the group. What I love to do in any situation, managing!

We actually landed on the first day of the season opening at Goa. If we had arrived a week earlier, even the beaches would have been off limits due to the monsoon. Imagine the timing! To add to that, we were also the very first batch of scuba divers for this year's season. A trip of firsts!

Since it was a four day extravaganza, its almost impossible for me to go over the trip event by event. I will stick to the highlights of the trip.

Before I even start, let me first tell you that the trip was a culinary orgasm of sorts for me. Never before have I tasted so many different dishes and great food in a single three day stretch. Let me list down all the amazing dishes that I tasted. Every day and every meal was at a different restaurant and each was better than the other. The highlights are:

1. Oct 1st - Lunch @ the Ritz, Panjim
White snapper masala fry plus vegetable biryani - brilliantly soft and fresh fish and amazing masala in the biryani. Mithun had the fish thali from which I also got a taste of some crab meat and mussels curry which were okay, but a pain to break away all the shells.
2. Oct 1st - Dinner @ Jamies - European Fast Food, Bagha beach
('Over the flames' has shifted to Candolim and this restaurant come up in its place, but the food in this place was amazing as well. Sadly, I could not make it to Over the flames this time.)
Calamari fritters - (squid rings shallow fried)
Tiger Prawns - (forgot the dish name; these are huge prawns marinated in some amazing masala; simply exquisite)
Chicken chettinad + idiyappam - south indian combi

Tiger Prawns @ Jamies

3. Oct 2nd - Lunch @ Xbar, Bagha beach
Kingfish Cafreal + 3 tawa rotis - Goan preparation in coriander and spinach. Superb!
4. Oct 2nd - Dinner @ Platain Leaf, Calangute circle
Usual North Indian fare since Adarsh was tired of all the exotic food since he is a veggie
5. Oct 3rd - Lunch @ Capricorn, Calangute Beach
Jumbo Prawns biryani + Butter Garlic and Lemon Barracuda
The Barracuda meat was good, but too bland and the quantity way too much. Mithun's Grilled King Fish was better. The biryani was out of the world again.
6. Oct 3rd - Dinner @ The Infantaria
Jhinga masala (Prawns preparation - An ancient Hyderabadi recipe) - superlative
Bebinca and vanilla ice-cream - A traditional Goan dessert that I even got back home for my parents and colleagues since it was so good.
7. Oct 4th was usual south and north indian fare. If I had my way, I would have tasted three more new dishes at least, but the rest of them were already complaining that we were spending way too much on food.

NOTE: Dont miss The Infantaria, Jamie's European Fast Food, Over the Flames or Brittos at any cost if you ever visit Goa and are a non-vegetarian who likes to try out seafood and new stuff. Phew! I got exhausted listing all that out.

The other thing that I love about Goa is all those deserted well maintained roads. Since we had hired bikes (which is a must by the way if you want to loaf about in Goa unhindered), it was a welcome change to be able to rip on the roads with the wind on your face and no traffic to hinder you. In spite of the rented measly 100cc bikes, it was hardly difficult to do speeds of 80kmph even on non-highways.

Our stay at Bagha beach was very close to the beach. Being off-season, we managed to get a really good room for the four of us (two wide beds plus one extra bedding) for Rs. 500/- per day. It had a fridge, a/c and TV (although TV didnt work) too. The operator at the lodge told us that the same rooms sell for 4000/- during peak season! Thats an 87.5% discount for us! In fact the very next day, he started quoting 800/- for the other customers for the same room. In fact, Mithun's colleagues stayed at the same hotel in November and ended up shelling out 3K per night!

Infantaria had a live band - a Goan trio playing on Friday evening. And although they were only doing covers, the vocalists (alternating between the lead/bass guitarist) had very good voices and it was quite an enjoyable evening of music. Some Austrian tourist and his girlfriend also chipped in with some Austrian number in between and the crowd went mad.

The band @ Infantaria with the Austrian chick

PADI (Professional Association of Diving Instructors) has setup a dive centre at Bagha- Arpora, Goa, where you can not only do dives for pleasure around Goa but also receive the 'Open Water Dive Certification' which allows you to dive anywhere in the world with a buddy. However it doesn't come cheap at 18k for the course. We opted for the 'discover scuba diving' course here, which involved introductory training as well as two open water dives. I think it was well worth the amount (3500 rupees).

The water at Goa was quite murky especially since the monsoons had just stopped and the water was yet to clear up completely. In spite of that, we were able to see a wide variety of coral fish in myriad colours, sting rays, moray eels, lobsters, sea cucumbers, sea urchins and a few varieties of hard and soft coral. Imagine diving at Bali or Maldives or Australia with a dive certification where the water is almost as clear as the water at your local swimming pool if not clearer!

All of us in our dive suits

Anyway all of us came out from the course thinking that we would definitely come back some day to do the open water dive certification.

You can vist Morjim, Mandem and Ashwem if you long stretches of pristine beaches that you can have all to yourself. We saw a huge flock of sea-gulls in Morjim and ended up watching the sun go down sitting in the middle of the sea.

Sunset @ Morjim Beach

Flock of seagulls @ Morjim

The only thing which badly wanted to do but didn't have the time was to go to Dudh sagar falls. I had heard and seen a lot of pictures of the beautiful falls and din't want to miss it. But sadly, we ran out of time...
Overall, the trip was a lot of fun and I dont regret the decision to go to Goa instead of some adventure outing.