When Head Is Under Water: Don’t Panic!

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Imagine your head is below water level bucket under water for 15 seconds. Try that!
Imagine you have a to rescue yourself from that situation.

What were you thinking for those 15 seconds – about life, death, children, parents, family… ? Or were you calm and composed and were deciding your next step? Do you think you can do that in a life threatening situation like this?

My 3 day Kayaking session with Expeditions India under Instructor Anvesh Thapa made me experience exactly this.
For those who don’t know, Kayak is a very unstable vessel and turns upside down within a second. And THIS DID HAPPEN with us a lot of times.
We were inside cold Ganga water – UPSIDE DOWN and bound to a kayak. (While we were not tied to Kayak, but unbinding self from Kayak needs a lot of time to rebind when you have to start again).

There lied the biggest learning and basic principle of any sport – DO NOT PANIC!

Anvesh told us that we gotta be calm and composed when we are inside water. We MUST NOT panic. If we panicked, he wont rescue us. 😀

So, at the time we were practicing not to panic, we were made to turn upside down in kayak about 3 meters from shore with Anvesh standing and handling us; we had to be calm, feel the kayak from inside to imbibe its structure (while in emergency situation), and then tap on the kayak with both hands to signal our rescue.

The emergency technique to deal with this if nothing else works had already been told to us. Check out the video here to understand better.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KiA6c8UBVFE]
Thats how they train you for Kayaking

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