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I wriggled into my harness as the instructor told me how to squeeze into the chest harness piece of equipment to make sure that you don’t fall of the ropes. The letter informing us about the course had come about a week ago.

The ropes were a chain of obstacle courses that were around 30 meters off the ground. It was Monday 14th January 2008. I felt bored as I watched my friends who were now high up struggle to stay in control. I smiled to myself, being too sure that I would be much better than them. But as I saw my pals struggle with the course even more, I wondered if I could really do it easily.

My question was answered when it was my turn to go up. I climbed up a rod sort of thing that looked like a telegraph pole. I picked up a pattern on the way my arms and legs should climb once I was halfway up. Left arm! Right arm! Left leg! Right leg! I tried to concentrate and realized that it was extremely complicated after all. After I reached the top, I was praised by Jackie who was part of the staff. I was later tied to a sling and let out in the towering and complex ropes course.

The first obstacle that I had to battle first was tricky. I had to walk on a skinny wire and hold on to two other bony chains for support. After completing the first challenge, I congratulated myself on being successful to complete it. Only after congratulating myself, I looked at the obstacle in front of me. According to everyone who had already finished the course, that was the easiest of all.

The next obstacle was a large, circular beam that was above around 30 meters above the ground. I made my first mistake when I looked down. The height sent a shudder through my spine. Clutching on to my harness and taking a deep breath, I began to try and balance. I forced my eyes not to look down again. I had to be very tolerant with my buddies because they were yelling and screaming encouragements but what they didn’t know was that their cries from down below were just distracting me. While I was thinking all this, I didn’t realize that I had already nearly finished the beam. The bar made me feel like I was walking the plank.

The next obstacle was my favourite. There were two sleek wires: one for my foot and one for my hand. After completing it, I came to the hardest one. I had to walk on a wire that was about as thin as the thickness of a $1 coin. There was nothing I could hold on to all the time, as there were ropes every now and again. I did fall of a few times but got saved by my faithful harness. Finishing that took me around two minutes but it felt like two hours.

I had finished it! I had conquered the ropes course! Coming down was fun as I could jump down from the whole 30 meters but we had a rope attached onto us that a staff person was controlling so it was okay. After completing the whole obstacle course, we got to have our break.

The next was the low ropes in which we got to play a game called “ruthless”. The rules of the games are that you have to wander around when the referee calls a number. You have to get into groups of that number in order to stay in the next round. Whoever does not manage to make it into a group has to go out. After playing a few suspenseful rounds of the game, we hopped onto the ropes. Our objective was to swing like Tarzan from on side to the other. After practising, we played a game called “around the clock”. The rules were that we had to use the rope and swing onto the next mat as there were four mats set out that represented: twelve ‘o’ clock, three ‘o’ clock, six ‘o’ clock and last, but not least, nine ’o’ clock. If you were in the mat representing twelve ‘o’ clock, you would have to jump onto the mat representing three ’o’ clock and so on. We had ten lives to start off with and we lost a life if any of us touched the grass, the rocks or the ground.

The games were very interesting and I enjoyed every minute of it.

I just loved the ropes course. Roped in……….

Thanks

Aditya K