Today’s activity: Ziplining!

I’d never been ziplining before. I highly recommend the experience.

Breakfast before the zipping included (at least) one thing of awesomeness: homemade jam! I tell you, India has no clue how to do jam. Every time I’ve tried to have jam, even imported jam, it tastes artificial, like bubble-gum flavoring. Nasty. I’ve given up on jam entirely. But this stuff was the good stuff!

After eating too much (they kept bringing around freshly-cooked stuffed parantha, couldn’t resist) we wandered around until we found the office for The Flying Fox.

We got there a bit early thinking we needed to meet at top of the hill, but we didn’t, we just needed to meet in the local fort office. So we waited until our guide and the rest of the people assigned in our group showed up. And looked at pretty birds in the meantime.

Finally, they put a harness on us. I got an extra harness for my shoulders for some reason. Only me and one other person. No explanation, but no complaints. I have Deep Trust in harnesses.

They had a lot of rules, some of which were reasonable, and some of which were ridiculous. Ridiculous ones being:

1. That I could not wear my sandals. I mean, I would get prohibiting flip-flops. Flip-flops would be unwise on a hike followed by a zip-line. But these sandals have survived river rafting! They will not fall off my feet. And they were infinitely better for hiking than the bowling shoe-like shoes that did not quite fit that they made me wear (having no socks.) At least they had shoes to fit their rules! Because I brought no others.
   
2. No bags allowed up, even little ones, even with long shoulder straps. At first, I was like, “okay, I get it, it could get tangled in the harness”, but then they gave a bunch of us shoulder bags with a bottle of water in it. So… why is that shoulder bag okay? Can’t we use that one to hold our money/passport/water/phone/camera? we had to leave our belongings in their office. At least they did not dare attempt to say we could not bring our cameras…
3. We couldn’t bring our own water (though they did provide ample water in the office). And they didn’t give all of us a bottle of water for some reason… me and another person kept having to borrow drinks from others. And, boy did we need those drinks.

Finally, we got our safety demo and began!

Our guide was everything you would want a ziplining tour guide to be: confident, energetic, competent, having good English, and trying to keep the atmosphere light with bad jokes. I swear I heard a New Zealand accent mixed in with the Indian, which would have completed the profile. (He said later that a lot of people told him he had an American accent.) His helper was quiet.

At the end of the steep, uphill hike up the mountain (pant) we rested under the shelter, re-hydrating. Then we had the chance to practice on a zipline set up at the top before heading out on the real thing.

Yeah, we were nervous. I mean, just a wire and a harness over a bunch of trees below. Yikes. Luckily, the drop was not too severe on the first line. But it was still down there. And that was a long string of wire floating through the sky there. You could barely see the other side, if at all.

There were five ziplines in all, all several hundred meters long, so I was figuring that by the end, scared or not, one would probably get used to it! I went second to last, so I got to watch – and photograph – all the people ahead of me.

It was so fun!! Floating smoothly through the air, a wonderful breeze cooling you down, and a stunning view. I loved it!

The sound you made as you ziplined, let me rephrase, that sound you heard other people make since I don’t recall hearing anything when I was on the line, sounded sort of mechanical like a high-pitched motorcycle starting up. Zooooownnn.

I had far more control over my speed than I would have imagined. If you “sat” in a posture as if you were in a chair, you might not have enough speed to make it to the end (though we learned proper ways to pull ourselves to the end if we stopped in the middle) though if you tucked your knees in good, you could get going fast. Too fast coming in, and the helper at the other end would sign a big “X” at you to slow down. You could slow by straightening your posture or by placing the palm of your glove on the line behind you. Though one person on our tour grabbed the wire little too aggressively and burned a hole through the glove.

The place we got on one of our final lines had an incredible view down to the fort.

Zip, zip, zip, zip, zip, each one a little different, but all fun. Then we were back where we started! Shortly after we all started walking back down to the office, we saw a monkey.

Whew.

Otherwise, if I had not seen it, this would have been my first non-monkey Indian excursion. I wasn’t fast enough to take a photo, though.

We spent a bit more time at the fort afterward, then checked out of all our rooms, handing over our keys to waiting guests, except the palatial one where we drank more juice and ate mangoes and bananas.

More fort shots:

This place was just amazing. The sunset the previous night gave it some good light, too.

And some doors, to go with my Jaipur doors:

And don’t forget the fort facilities…

On our drive back we stopped at…

You guessed it. Haldiram’s! A different Haldiram’s, though. They’re everywhere. I got myself a lassi and we enjoyed the consistent yumminess of Haldiram’s fare.

We dropped everyone off and ourselves were dropped off at the metro. It was another good hour and a half ride on the blue line until we reached Sector 18 (with the help of my regular cab driver) then my place. It felt like we left the fort early, but didn’t get back until after sunset, so it was all good.

Yay weekend road trip!