River Ride

Starting Point : Thuruthi, Kasaragod, Kerala.
Riders : Noushad, Mujeeb, Nilofar, Najma, Afrin & myself.
Travel Mode : Canoe.

On a sunny day, suddenly I got a call from my cousin Noushad as he want me to join with his family for a river ride on a canoe. I got thrilled and within an hour I reached his home. From there we went to his sister’s house which is on a river bank. Everything we needed for our trip was pre-packed from there and we were ready to hit the river in about five minutes. We had some fantastic views of the river as we headed near to it.

It was around 4 P.M. when we finally hit the water. Mujeeb – Our bro in law, slowly started paddling and water swiftly moved us downstream. We entered the larger body of water easily and floated along at a slow but steady pace. The constant crashing of waves eventually grated on my nerves. Birds twittered back and forth across the water as it rippled and gurgled against our canoe. The placid surface was often so still it reflected like a mirror to the sky. We had much geeky fun, and the best part was no one was around to witness it on the river bank. We also saw a group of goats standing on the river’s edge. They were in bushes, behind trees, scaling the rocks…more and more appeared before our eyes. I sometimes would call out to them, speaking their language: “Behh-eh-eh-eh-eh-eh-eh!” Most ignored me but some whipped their heads my way. We slowly sailed for an hour.

When we saw an eyot on the middle of the river, we headed towards it to take few minutes rest. While on the eyot we ate some snacks and basked. I and Noushad stripped down to our swimming dress and leaped into the water. It was a short but sweet swim, especially because it’s a sunny day. The sun had fallen behind the line and the sky was darkening. Then came the worst moment of the trip – The return. So we all returned back to the canoe and started paddling towards the landing point on the river edge. When we reached the bank, we threw our stuff into my car so that we can reach our homes as fast as we could.