Where Love Finds You

Chapter 34

Copyright © 2020 Sara R Stewart

All rights reserved

This is a work of fiction.

No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the author.

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The day after the oar broke it started to rain. Without my satellite phone we couldn't check the weather and given the past forecast we decided to go ahead with our day as planned. Packing up the camp in the rain was the pits and as soon as I was dressed in my hydro skins and stepped outside of my tent, I was drenched all over again. At least it held in my body heat. Given that Abhaya no longer had a second oar to control the raft on his own, Neel was going to raft with him, and they were going to switch to a two-man paddle formation with one of the paddles from our raft. That left us with Sanjay in the other boat and I was asked to again take the bow to help steer the front of the raft.

We were out early as it didn't make sense to dally and we had been on river for about ten minutes before we hit our first bit of rapids. I think it was a grade two or three, nothing too intense but we were busy focusing on the water below us when the skies literally opened up and dumped a wall of water on us. It was near impossible to see anything and Sanjay instructed we try our best to keep the raft centered and I was to call out the moment I saw anything in our path. We kept like this for another fifteen or so minutes when I heard Abhaya yelling for us to steer to the left bank and we all paddled like hell.

Neel and Abhaya had found a beach and pulled their raft out but I didn't see them until it was too late, and we were already past them and moving fast down river. Sanjay was yelling something to me, but I couldn't really hear him as the rain was coming down so hard it felt like buckets of water were being dumped on my head.

Visibility was crap, I couldn't see beyond where my paddle reached. Then we hit some serious rapids. Sanjay got very quiet and I just focused on trying to keep the raft straight and when something came into view paddling away from it as fast as I could. This only worked for another minute before we hit something and the raft was pulled down and under the water so fast that I barely had time to register what was happening before me. Everyone else was in the water trying desperately to breath with the water around us and pelting the top of us.

I tried my best to do what I was trained to do but it was very difficult to avoid rocks, tree limbs and other things in my path because I couldn't see through the rain. It was scary but I was just starting to get the hang of it and feeling like the rapids were leveling out when I was sucked down river between two large boulders and spun so quickly, I didn't know which way was up and then everything went dark.

"What do you mean you have no way to find them? There has to be villages or towns along the river. Why can't we go there to check if they have been seen or passed through?"

"Sir, I assure you that Sanjay, Neel and Abhaya are the best rafters in all of Nepal. They will ensure the safety of their crew and if the weather gets too bad, they will pull out and wait for the weather to pass."