Manali is well known for its adventure sports, so when we woke up on our first morning here, our first stop after breakfast was to the tourist agent up the road.
We decided to do some white water rafting in the late morning. Just a few phone calls after, we were set! We didn’t bring an swimsuits, so all of us ended up in t-shirt and shorts. It was a half an hour drive to the rafting centre and another 10mins by 4WD to the rocky river banks. After a safety briefing and getting suited up in our life jackets, we were good to go!
I can’t remember what level rapids they were but mid-way on the descent was definitely not easy. One of our paddle instructors did fall into the water at one point. It may be July, but the waters were from the mountains and was freakin’ cold! Towards the end of the trip, we floated down the river a bit in our life jackets, and managed to get our instructors into the fun and got them all drenched!
After all that rafting, we “conveniently” ended up at a tea house with toilets. I was a bit annoyed when I saw some guy at the top of the hill filming us with a video camera. I quickly checked my headlights just to be sure there wasn’t any indecent exposure. When we walked up to the tea house, there was this little hut and in it was a guy with a computer uploading videos and photos of us going down the river! Ahhhh now it made sense. This guy was trying to sell us footage of the raft down the river!
We caved in the end, and decided just to buy one and duplicate the discs back home. Hmmm which reminds me…. where is that CD?
Conclusion? Definitely worth doing it if you’re looking for a lil adrenaline rush!
