The near-death experience ....

Note: Copy pasted from my travel diary of the March 2006 trek along the Kabbinale/Addahole river in the Shirdi ghats of Karanataka.

But for some my own basic instincts and courage and tremendous help from Sunny, I would probably haven't been here to write this. When we hit the first pool-like place on the Kabbinale river, I was the first to jump inside water. Even the swim-know guys were hesistant to get their bodies to contact the ice-cold water, but swimming had never been a necessity for me to get into flowing waters. Being along the wild-stream, the pool had tricky rocks which were both slippery and had deep hidden pits. In my 'try to swim' assignment, I hit upon one slippery rock, whose slope took me to the deepest part of the pool, and I ended up gasping for breath, with the height of water above my head. I tried in vain for a few seconds to climb up the same rock back to safety, and finally decided to call for help. My mates first thought I was just making some funny tries and were just staring at me with a smile on their face. I kept attempting to climb the rock in vain and hit upon a simple idea. I kept one leg on the slopy n slippery rock and another down on rock under more than 6 feet of water. The slippery rock had the coutesy to allow me to keep my leg on it so as to balance myself, but not to climb it. This gave me time to regroup my mental and physical composure and calmly I told my onlooking friends that I might be drowning. They were surprised a bit, but soon Sunny and Rohan removed their shirts to get into water. It was a tricky few seconds, with me standing on my toes of right leg and balancing on algae covered rock on left leg, when my friends learnt that I don't know swimming and how I was standing. Every second streched something on my thigh, but I kept my position. Just then I was thinking to give another try on climbing a different rock nearby, sunny got into water and got me out of trouble.

.... When we hit upon another beautiful pool, I was again the first to get into water when Rohan remarked with a smile, "The people who don't know swimming are those who jump into water first", and the saga continued ...

PS: After this, within a couple of months, I learnt swimming good enough to save myself :-)