The Rishikesh yoga teacher that helped bring my collapsed lung back invited a few students to go on a short trek to the waterfall on the other side of the Ganga. I had to be careful because my broken ribs were still healing. I was too careful and slipped off the path over the side of a steep mountain incline. It was like out of Raiders of the Lost Arc sliding down that cliff. Just before it dropped off to waiting death I was able to grab a singe tree trunk. I hung there, whoa.
My friends above shouted "are you still there Ken?" "Yes" I screamed. They took off their shirts and made a rope out of them. That finally reached me and back up I went. Dragged through thorn bushes on the way. What a mess I was. But uninjured amazingly ... and still alive. I was one foot away from certain death.
The next two accidents happened on my bikes. First, the Bullet broke down on the way back from Gangotri, source of the Ganga. There was no one else on the road but finally a tourist Jeep from Nepal stopped. They asked if they could help and I said no since they couldn't get the bike on the Jeep. I would wait for a truck to come by. For 500 Rs trucks will put it on and let you off at the next mechanic. But no trucks today so far.
They offered to tow me. Not a good idea I thought but they persisted saying, "no problem" we've done this before. They found a guide wire from a hydro line and used that to tie the bike to the car and off we went. But not for long. After we got up to 40km I found that I couldn't steer the bike with no slack and so the first pothole we came to, down I went. Now I'm surfing on the side of the bike which is down and shooting sparks as we speed along. Finally they saw what had happened and stopped. A little bruised, but still alive was IndiaKen.
Next, I hit a huge bull broadside coming off a bridge in Goa. I had no chance to avoid it said the folks that stopped to help. It was mating season and two bulls were fighting and one dashed into the road from the bushes. I fractured my ankle on this one a bloodied my back and legs up pretty bad. Three months on crutches was the result but IndiaKen was STILL alive. Go figure.
No comments:
Post a Comment