Taj Mahal

Delhi still sucks... The Taj is Rad. Now I'm going to look for a tiger!
Tigers are very nice...

The Decent of Ganga

sooo i am stoked.. because i am doing two 5 day back to back river expeditions where we will start up above the confluence that makes the Ganga River. we start on a river called Alaknanda, which is the "true source of the the Ganga. the source of the Alaknanda is a holy glacier, the actual Ganga River begins at the confluence of the Alaknanda and the Bagirathi
in Hinduism Ganga is the Goddess that is supposed to wash away the sins of the world, however she did not want to come down to earth. so Shiv(the main god,he's blue), confined her in the form of water and through the locks in his he brought her down. so the Alaknanda, the Bhagirathi, the Nandakini rivers and i think one more are the main locks of shivs hair and all of the other rivers, creeks, and streams are the rest of his hair bringing ganga down to earth to cleanse humans of their sins.
humans like these guys..


so anyways.. sometimes i am doing an internship while i am out here and i figure i may as well put my bi-weekly reports on here every now and then.. so here ya go. or not. this computer is actin crazy. here is some of it

2/12/2012 - 2/25/2012 Bi-weekly Report

So there I was, after a long flight and a day in Hong Kong, Finally in India. Pavan, one of the CEO’s for MHE/HOB, arranged for a driver to pick us (my Friend Joe and I) at the airport and bring us to her place. Joe had met Pavan along with 15 other Indian clients as their rafting guide in the Grand Canyon the previous summer. Joe and Pavan became friends and she asked Joe to come to India to see her river (the Ganges) and work for her company. Joe told her that he would come if he could bring a friend, and that’s where I come in! Anyway, we spent the night at Pavan’s place in Delhi and the next day drove 8 hours to the Shivpuri camp just 35 minutes passed Rishikesh. The only way to cross get to camp is for a raft to ferry you over because there are no roads on the river left side, only steep jungle mountains.

The following morning, we jumped right into training with all the rest of the guides. MHE is working very closely with Himalayan Outward Bound and with that HOB requires a Facilitation training that lasted for 2 days. This training was like taking a chapter/couple days straight from Betsy’s 2400 class (I forgot what it was called). We talked about skills and facilitation. We played icebreaker games and practiced processing the experience. We had 2 days of learning Facilitation skills. This class was taught to about 18 Nepali and Indian Guides and 2 American. The facilitator thought that most of the staff would speak English; however that is far from true, so she ended up having to teach in both Hindi and English.

The next day was the first day on the river! We got up and had a nice breakfast of toast and more Indian food and headed up the road to the put in. It was a very fun all guides trip as well as Pavan. It was great having Pavan on the trip because she was able to tell us many stories about the river as well as the rapids and how they got their names. Pavan was part of the first rafting explorations on the Ganga River in the early 80’s and took part in many of the rapids names. The water was running very high that day and the rapids seemed very big and intense. There are many good class 3 and 4 rapids on the Ganga. Two days later, we had a group 50+ staying at our camp that were part of an entertainment/ catering company.

So, my second time down the river I was guiding a group of 8 Indians. This was a very intense journey for me. It felt kind of like being thrown into the deep end to learn to swim. I admit I did get stressed when two people in my boat fell out in the first big rapid called three blind mice and later when I hit a big sneaky rock and almost flipped the boat. I felt bad about that sneaky rock until I found out that that same rock has flipped many a boat. It really was a very sneaky rock! Other than that everything went well. The next time we had a big group it was about 70 students from a hotel management school in Punjab. I went back wards through part of a big rapid called golf course because I had very weak paddlers and the strongest paddler kept paddling backward while I was yelling “FORWARD! FORWARD ALL FORWARD!” When I realized that he was paddling the wrong way I smacked him with my paddle and yelled “FORWARD” one more time and was able to correct my boat just in time to T-up for the big hit which would have surely flipped us if we had hit it sideways.

I really enjoy the river and after two weeks I feel very confident on the water. The biggest conflict is the language barrier. Many of the guides don’t seem to speak English at all. I think that my biggest concern has been either where should I pee? Or what does the schedule look like and when will I be rafting next. Often times I don’t know that I am rafting until that morning. Pavan has gone on holiday to Peru until the 22^nd day of March and there are a couple other guys that speak English well, but they stay in the office in Delhi. Although there are a few difficulties, it seems as though things are getting easier to