Saturday, May 31, 2008

Members of my rope and how I got a scar

We were a rope of 7 members. Besides me there were:

1. Bishal Thapa, employed in Sashastra Seema Bal (SSB), hailing from Darjeeling.

2. Amol, a student, from Akola who was sponsored by a club carrying out adventure activities in his home town.

3. Pratik Agrawal, an undergraduate student from Mumbai.

4. I. James, an undergraduate student from Tamilnadu, sponsored by National Cadet Core(NCC).

5. Krishan Pal Singh, a student of 12th std, from Uttarkashi.

6. Satpal Singh Makhloga, a local from Uttarkashi, aspiring to get employment with some adventure sports company.

Bishal and Satpal were in their early 20s and all others were 18-19 yrs old.
Despite the age difference with me, we had a good time together and we bonded really fast and well together as a group. We were allotted a room with capacity to house 6 people and Bishal went to another room. We were allocated an instructor, Mr. Anil Saklani, who was on contract for the period of the course, with NIM. The training at NIM started off at a frenetic pace and soon we were allotted equipment etc. also to enable us to get familiar with it and also to take up rock climbing at Tekhla.
Tekhla was about 8.6 km from the institute and we trekked one way daily for 5 days with a full load to the training area. As we learned the rock craft as the training was called, we went through some thrilling moments as we went up the steep rock faces and also rappelled down many a time.

The first small accident occurred on day one when we were trying to master some boulders by free climbing. As each one of us went up the big boulders, one person stood at the foot of the boulder, to steady the climber in case he slipped and came scrambling down. It was important to soften the landing as otherwise, landing on the stones could hurt.

I was standing ready to help Pratik when he climbed. He suddenly fell from about a height of 8-10 ft but made the mistake of jumping off the rock instead of scrambling down along the face as we were coached. He came down in a bundle of thrashing arms and legs and as I caught him, his elbow hammered down the bridge of my nose, driving the titanium bridge of my specs down into the flesh. It opened a gash and blood started flowing. We were all consoling Pratik who was in tears! I held the hanging flesh back to my nose and pinched it tight. Soon the blood stopped and I got a band aid on it. It's going to be a scar, but I am really not bothered about that.

1 comment:

manolin * said...

lol! am sure u like the scar now. Nice information of the course. Thanks.