After spending a week in Gorkha, we all took another long bus ride to reach the tourist city of Pokhara. A hotspot for tourism, Pokhara was filled with shops and activities for the average tourist looking to experience the best of nature the Himalayan mountains surrounding the city had to offer.
Putting our heads together, we decided to all go white water rafting, an activity Gresom and Ramesh hadn’t experienced yet. Actually, a bunch of people on our two combined teams hadn’t, and I ended up being one of only a couple people who had been white water rafting before now.
The day came, and we all piled on the bus to be taken to the river we’d be rafting on. Besides our combined group of fourteen, there were three other strangers who’d be rafting with us. When we landed at the push-off point, I and Taylor piled into a raft with these three men.
They were all travelers, one of them a man from Texas, the other from Britain, and the final from… honestly, I don’t really remember, he didn’t speak a lot.
Anyways, I queried the men and found out the two from Britain and Texas hadn’t been white water rafting either. I was surprised, because I never expected to be a rafting veteran. Britain, as I will call him for privacy’s sake, began questioning me about tips. I was only happy to oblige, because while the safety briefing had been adequate, it didn’t include some things I’d picked up.
I told him about keeping his feet up in the water if you get knocked out, that the most important thing was to face forward downriver and use his feet to push off of any rocks he might hit. I told him to stay calm if he got stuck under the raft and to simply feel his way out from under it, how to paddle correctly when swimming in the rapids, and in order to get out of a boil you simply have to ball up and it would shoot you out.
Little did I know that I might actually have saved his life with the tips I gave him that morning.
We clambered into the raft and pushed off, me and Taylor in the middle row with Texas and Britain in the front and the other behind me, and our wise-cracking guide directing the raft.
The first half of the rapids was filled with fun jokes, hard paddling, and laughing as the other rafts lost passengers or flipped in the crazy Himalayan rapids. In levels of difficulty, the rapids were either level 3 or 4, so we had a lot of fun. Britain had a Go-Pro, and we all had fun cracking our best jokes and teasing one another for the camera. When we reached the halfway point, we had the option of cliff-jumping.
Now, as those of you who know me are aware, I am extremely afraid of heights. But the freezing cold mountain water and the adrenaline of rafting with new people spurred in me a daring spirit. Brooke almost didn’t go, but I grabbed her hand and promised that if she did it, I’d do it with her. So up we went, clambering over rocks to get to the edge of the small cliff overlooking the river. It wasn’t that big of a drop, maybe 15 feet, but my heartrate shot upward all the same. I looked over at Brooke, and on the count of three, we jumped.
Boy was it a rush. The water was ice cold, and immediately it felt like there were needles poking me all over my body.
Before I continue though, I’d like to clarify that I was still getting over my illness at the time, so my lung capacity was at about half-percent. It wasn’t an issue until I jumped into the water, and it shocked all the breath out of me.
I surfaced, grinning victoriously, before I realized I had little to no breath left in my lungs to keep me conscious and afloat. I immediately swam for shore, gasping for breath.
I made it out safely, and took a moment to catch my breath in the shallows of the river, before climbing back into our raft. Despite the minor scare, adrenaline was still pumping through my veins. Before then, the last thing I’d describe myself as would be “adrenaline junkie,” but the crazy grin stuck on my face gave me doubts about that fact for the very first time in my life.
Recklessly, I asked our guide if I could be in front. A naturally fearful and cautious person, and someone who despises rollercoasters, I’d been rafting multiple times but had never been in the very front of the raft before. Our easy-going guide smiled and said “sure” and Taylor and I re-positioned ourselves to sit in the very front of the boat.
A mistake, perhaps.
The very next rapid, we were paddling strong, my grin big and laughter contagious, right up until we hit a rock and the front of the boat, having a lot less weight with two small women in the front, immediately tilted sideways.
As Taylor fell on top of me and I felt the raft beneath my right leg drop, I only had time for a single thought: we’re going down.
We flipped, and the boat fell on top of us.
I crashed into the icy water, and knew with startling clarity was was happening. My head bumped against something rubber, and I knew I’d been trapped under the boat. My feet tangled with another person’s legs, and I fought for control in the strong currents. I was oddly clear-minded. I actually remember thinking to myself, “Don’t panic,” and being pleasantly surprised that it wasn’t necessary because I wasn’t panicking in the slightest. In the moment I counted it to my experience with rafting, and kept calm as I felt my way to the edge of the raft and pulled myself up for air.
But when I opened my mouth, I only got a small gasp of air before a wave crashed me under again.
That was when I realized I had no air left. The icy water had ripped it from my lungs just like it had at the cliff, and my limited lung capacity only made it easier to accomplish.
The first wave of panic rushed through me, and I fought desperately to return the the surface, but the currents simply wouldn’t let me.
I genuinely thought, “This is where I die. I’m going to die drowning in a Himalayan river somewhere in Nepal.”
Just when my vision was flickering with darkness, the currents relented and my head broke the surface. I gasped, desperate to draw breath into my starved lungs. My blurry vision cleared slowly, and I noticed with shock that Britain was floundering in the water to my left only a few feet away from me.
I realized in his floundering, he was going backward and headfirst down the river, and he wouldn’t be able to see if he was going to hit a rock. Suddenly, my chest tightened not with lack of air, but with the terror that this man was going to be killed right in front of me. A supernatural calm spread over me, because I knew that if I couldn’t help him that Britain might actually die, and I immediately leapt into action.
My feet already up and in the correct position, I frantically waved my left arm to draw his attention as my right arm continued to paddle my body away from the rocks and closer to him.
I shouted desperately, “Feet first, FEET FIRST!” It took a couple seconds for him to focus on me, clearly dazed and confused. His scared expression cleared a bit when he recognized me beside him, and he reached out and grabbed my arm, but I shook him off, knowing that grabbing arms would only put the both of us in even greater danger. Again I waved my arm at him and shouted loudly as I could, coughing with the energy it took as my lungs tried to accommodate enough air for both my own breath as well as my words, “FEET FIRST!”
This time he understood, and he quickly maneuvered himself around. That was all I could see before the strong currents pushed me under once more. When I surfaced, he had been swept farther away, but as I struggled to stay above the waves a rescue kayak paddled closer. I grabbed on and held for dear life as I struggled to draw in breath as the icy water continually knocked it out of my lungs.
The kayak brought me close to a nearby raft, but I realized a second too late that I was headed toward the very front of the raft, and that’s something that you should never do. Why? Because you’ll get pulled underneath it, and that’s exactly what happened.
In the span of two minutes, I was stuck underneath two rafts. Honestly, my memory blanks out there, but I remember using the last dregs of my energy to drag myself out from underneath the raft and grab onto the side rope. My fingers slipped free, all my energy spent, but hands grabbed onto my lifejacket and held fast. My eyesight was too blurry to make out who it was, but I was later informed that it was Gresom who grabbed me.
They tried to pull me into the boat, but ended up unable to pull me out of the water, and I was blearily aware of their guide taking over and hoisting me into the raft.
I was out of energy, out of breath, and choking on ice-water so I simply laid there, spitting up river water and gasping for air as we went down the rest of the rapid.
When I’d recovered, I gave a watery smile to my teammates, but inwardly I was shaken. Never had I come so close to dying. I was honestly amazed I’d been so calm. In the moment I had attributed that calm to my experience with rafting, but looking back revealed the supernatural quality of the stillness of my soul in the utter chaos.
When I got back into my raft, Britain shook my hand and thanked me.
“If you hadn’t been there and helped me, I honestly think I would’ve died. I think you saved me life!” He told me gratefully. I nodded, slightly shocked.
Looking back, there’s really only one explanation. God had put me in the position he had, and granted me the calm I needed to act decisively not only in order to save my own life, but possibly save anothers.
God is the ultimate protector, and I know he controlled the situation that day not only to protect and impact my life, but also the life of the stranger I’d met only that morning. How’s that for protection?
