White-water rafting can be a spiritual journey

By Joko Sarwono

BOGOR, West Java (JP): For the nonadventurous and faint of heart like me, white-water rafting would hardly seem to be an ideal way to spend the weekend.

The long stream, the strong current and the crashing rapids frighten me to death. The thought of smashing into the stony walls of the riverbank, or of drowning should have been enough to completely dispel any notion of tackling the rapids.

Well, that was until an opportunity, or rather a challenge, came my way to try it out.

"You can still enjoy white-water rafting even if you can't swim," an acquaintance from college days, Makmur Affendi, who now manages Jeram 2000, said. Jeram 2000 organizes rafting trips down the Cianten River in Bogor.

That still did not entirely convince me, a nonswimmer who is still haunted by the image of 14 senior high school students drowning in Cisadane River in April.

"Cianten is ideal for a novice. Besides, every participant will be equipped with a life jacket and an expert will be present in each raft," Makmur assured me.

My own ego finally got the better of me. I rose to the challenge rather than risk being called a coward.

Although my mind was set, I still had second thoughts on the appointed day. My fear grew on arriving at the awesome Kracak hydropower plant, the starting point for this adventure. My feet turned cold upon seeing the strong current and the solid walls of rock along the riverbanks.

I was assigned to a rubber raft with five other people, one of whom I soon learned was, to my relief, an instructor. All of my traveling companions -- Agung, Budi, Hari, Iwan and Dian -- were also first-timers.

The launch itself was frightening, giving us a foretaste of things to come. We set off at high-speed, nearly crashing into a wall and coming dangerously close to turning the raft over.

Once our raft was safely upright again, the instructor slowed the raft down and began giving us instructions. He could have given these before we began the journey, but I guess it was easier explaining things while doing them, sort of like on-the- job training.

"Try to keep the balance between left and right. It is essential that we keep the balance," the instructor said.

It did not take us long to learn to keep our balance and we began to negotiate the rapids and turns with relative ease.

We became so good, or so we thought, that we began to look forward to each new rapid. There was an ecstatic feeling of conquering the rapids and we figuratively screamed our heads off each time we survived the scare.

With such confidence, we also began to absorb the natural beauty on our left and right along the eight-kilometer stretch of river. The paddies gave way to plantations, which in turn gave way to bushes, stony banks and even waterfalls. Although the water was not all that clear, it was relatively free of garbage.

Half-way through our journey, the instructor decided to give us a deserved break from our tireless rowing and balancing. He guided the raft onto the bank and a grassy patch to give us an opportunity to have something to eat and absorb the scene around us.

I took the opportunity to reflect on this adventure and concluded that, personally, this would go down as a spiritual journey.

Some of my traveling companions saw it as a journey of discovery.

"This is what I really call living. It's so full of challenges. I'm really getting tired of my day-to-day work," Hari, an executive at a garment company in Jakarta, said.

"What do you say we try the Citarik River in Sukabumi? I hear the stream is even more challenging," Agung proposed and his friends readily agreed.