In the start of February my family and I decided to go on a rafting trip to Rishikesh and raft through a course of 22km over 2 days over the Ganga river. We intended to go on this adventurous trip to learn a new skill and get out of our houses and for this we decided to take up the challenge of whitewater rafting. Whitewater rafting is an outdoor activity which uses an inflatable raft to navigate a river or other body of water.
- LO 1: Identify their own strengths and develop areas for personal growth.
Not being a very sporty person this was a challenge for me. As we started rafting I realised that I had nearly little to no arm strength which is generally the key to quickly and efficiently raft through the rapids and waves, but as we rafted through the first 6km, I started getting grip and paddled much more efficiently. And on the second day I was a lot more confident in my ability to raft. Although I lacked strength, me and my team had a lot of synergy and coordination which allowed us to balance throughout the activity and raft easily.
- LO 2: Demonstrate that challenges have been undertaken, developing new skills in the process
As I earlier mentioned it was rather challenging for me to paddle at the right angle and with more strength so that the raft doesn’t topple. On the first day after half an hour I was very tired and felt weak, but then our well-experienced instructor taught us some easy tricks and ways we could overcome the lack of strength and with synchrony paddle in the same pattern in order to move faster. This technique allowed us to have more stamina for the whole journey while enjoying the process.
- LO 5: Demonstrate the skills and recognize the benefits of working collaboratively.
Whitewater rafting is a team activity and can not function by one single person and so this activity gave me an opportunity to showcase my social skills and collaboration abilities. The raft has 9 people who team up and work collaboratively and have more manpower so the raft stays balanced and moves forward faster. At the beginning of the journey it was very difficult for us to coordinate because all us were too excited to and didn’t listen to each other and the commands of the instructor, but after a while we got along and coordinated pretty well due to which we were able to raft 22km in a short period of time.
To wrap it all up rafting was a very enjoyable experience for me and it gave me an opportunity to outcast my social skills and collaborate with my teammates. It also gave me a space to be an inquirer and ask a lot of questions to our instructor who guided us throughout. I also portrayed my thinking skills since it took us a lot of strategy making to finally come up with an effective strategy to raft quicker and effectively.
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