Bungee jumping

(RECYCLED piece: This was originally published in The Kathmandu Post, 21 July, 2001. Special thanks to Neeraj, Bhaskar and Salil for sharing the adventures.)


By Ashutosh Tiwari

How would you like to close your eyes and fall headlong from a bridge, stationed at a height of 160 metres . . . into an ice-cold, boulder-filled and ragingly foaming Himalayan river?

If that sounds like a fun way to spend a part of your Saturday afternoon, then welcome to the sport of bungy jumping, available, since early 2000, at a price in this country of mountains long known for, well, heights.

It was late last year when three friends and I, looking for a way to escape Kathmandu to finish up the year on an adventurous note, decided to go bungy jumping. We knew very little about the sport, of course — except that, on and off, we had caught a few bungy visuals on a foreign TV show or two (most memorably in an Aerosmith music video).

The idea that seemingly sane people would climb up to insane heights only to come crashing down to the earth with nothing but elastic cords tied to their body parts was frightening and exciting. We had to explore this fright and the excitement for ourselves.

That we could explore all this not too far from Kathmandu in one afternoon and still be able to make it home by the evening to sleep off the ‘jump-lag’ only added to our thrill.

And so we left, at seven on one chilly December morning, for The Last Resort in Sindhu Palchowk district. From Thamel, our bus, carrying about 20 potential jumpers, wound its way towards the northern directions, through the bazaars of Koteswor, outer Bhakatpur, Dolal Ghat and others.

The final stretch of the Kodari Highway was uneven, thereby rattling the bus sideways and up and down, and giving us all a good workout on our seats. But around midday, the bus did reach — like a caterpillar completing, at last, that lurch towards the end of the leaf it’s chewing on — our destination, within 12 miles of the Nepal-Tibet border.

Getting off the bus to stretch our legs, we soon forgot our hunger upon seeing the wiry mesh of the 166-metre-long suspension bridge atop a yawning gorge. A fast, furious and cruel Bhote Koshi river swirled below. The whole scene came upon us as though it had sprung to life from the Marlon Brando movie Apocalypse Now.

As the sun shone warmly high above, turning the jagged grey peaks of rock yellow on one side of us, and as crisp air from Tibet blew in our faces, all we could do was shudder in silence with nervous anticipation.

The Last Resort folks — two New Zealanders, one Nepali and one Israeli — did their best to make us feel comfortable. After welcoming us with coffee and a light lunch of noodles and potatoes, they gathered us all together, and started rattling off the procedures, before weighing each of us.

It was obvious that these bungy-masters had done the explanations hundreds of times (a la the flight attendant who tells you about those emergency exits just as your plane is about to take off), were thorough in the mastery of their methods, and knew how to have fun helping people throw themselves off the bridge.

Meantime, their good-natured ribbing was enough for some of us to start reconsidering the sheer lunacy of what we had set out to do. After all, think about this: who in a right frame of mind in Nepal would pay a little more than 3000 rupees (that too, at a heavy discount for Nepalis) for the pleasure of diving headlong from the side of a bridge into the yawn of nature?

But happily, as I saw it with my own eyes that day, around 20 or so Nepali and non-Nepali men and women - each with a varying degree of interest in adventure tourism - would really put themselves in that ‘lunatic’ frame of mind to pursue the ultimate adrenaline kick, and, to the best of my knowledge, survive well enough to tell the tale to all who would listen.

Considering that the Statue of Liberty on Ellis Island in New York is only 92 metres tall, and that a 25-storey building is about only 76 metres tall, it was no small achievement to have jumped off a height of 160 metres.

So how did the jumpers — forgetting careers, families and everything else - choose to make the plunge? Good psychology certainly helped. Knowing that that the Swiss-tested and New Zealand-managed safety standards would work just fine put all first-timers mentally at ease.

And the suspension bridge, we were reassured, was not going to snap under the weight of our collective excitement. That was because it was designed and constructed with a loading factor of 41,500 kg. Plus, the fact that the bridge functioned as a jump-platform for jumpers, a backstage for the bungy-masters to pull up the pulleys, and a balcony space for onlookers to cheer at his each jump while remaining a short-cut for Tamang villagers to get to the other side of the river in less than three minutes (earlier, they used to trek up and down for five hours) made all feel like they did not want to let it down by not, well, jumping down from it, especially after having come all the way from Kathmandu for bungy-jumping!

And so, with the issue of ‘hardware’ settled safely, it was easy to turn attention to the science behind each jump. Each jump takes about 15 minutes from start to finish, and once your turn comes, the bungy-masters beckon you to the middle of the bridge.

There, they strap you onto a chair that is locked tight against the bridge linings so you can sit but can’t move. And once you are seated, the bungy-masters wrap, with velcro, the y-shaped end of a thick manufactured-in-Malaysia but made-and-knotted-in-Nepal elastic rope onto those parts of your legs, where the ends of your socks hug your calves tight.

Since the rest of that mammoth rope, which looks and feels as if it were one long anaconda, is already down the bridge forming a U-shape under the bridge and over the river, all you do is quiver as you sit alone to feel the unmistakable pull of gravity on your legs and then on your whole body.

Meanwhile, to maintain balance, the bungy-masters drop down a vessel that’s slightly more than your weight, and take great care to keep a pulley-like system in place. Soon, the lock to your chair is open, and you are able to stand and walk about four paces forward onto the foldable iron mat, which juts out from the middle of the bridge. You grab on to the railings that are now behind you, and you take a deep breath as you look sideways, front and down.

Sideways, you see your friends and onlookers cheering you on; up ahead, you see calm, green hills, majestic in their remoteness; and, down below, you see the blue and naked waters of the Bhote Koshi River, and hear their roar amplified all the more by the big boulders.

And then, you open your palms to let go of the railings behind, and think of that Van Halen number as you move forward into the river from a height of 160 metres. Only then, you know that you have jumped . . . from one of the highest bungy-jumping heights on the planet.

As your whole body, respecting Newton’s laws, lurches headlong into the river, the U-shape of the rope quickly morphs into one giant elastic band so that you are soon turned into a yo-yo. As your heart beats like crazy, and blood seems to rush out of your system, and you feel as though you are going to smash yourself into pieces at that boulder below, you suddenly feel a gentle tug, which soon takes you back to the way of the bridge up above.

No uncomfortable jerks. No abrupt pulling and pushing. No spinning out of control, and no swinging wildly from side to side. But a bounce so soft and gentle that you feel as though you have been pulled up to float (yes, float!) all the more on air. Then the gravity pulls you down again, followed again by the upward bounce, and this up and down bounce goes on very gently for less than a minute until you become completely suspended, as it were, in a sort of an orgasmic bliss.

Only then the jump-masters up on the bridge start using the pulley-system to pull up the vessel so that you can be lowered to a sandy patch by the river.

Soon, you are able to wave at your friends below you, and grab hold of a long stick, pushed in your way by one of the Last Resort folks. Once you grab the stick, it’s only a matter of minutes before they help you land, and open up the velcro straps on your legs so that the rope can be pulled up to strap on to the calves of another jumper up on the bridge.

Finally, we Nepalis have long prided ourselves on being citizens of a country of tall mountains. Indeed, mountaineers among us have long appreciated the heights from which they can go around the world. But for those of us who have neither the time nor the inclinations to be a mountaineer, spending an afternoon bungy-jumping from a height may well be one adventure through which we can experience the world within ourselves.

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More on bungee jumping
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bungee_jumping

More on Last Resort bungee in Nepal
http://thelastresort.com.np/bungy.htm