Where Life Can Be One ExtendedCanoe Ride.

A heady cocktail of moments of calm and rushes of adrenaline in eastern Canada

CALL it nirvana interrupted by a tenacious mobile network, which follows me everywhere (even though it doesn't have a pug for a brand ambassador). As the bowman of a canoe in the middle of one of the 1,500 lakes in Ontario's Algonquin Provincial Park, I am navigating the precious space between a state of the cessation of all thoughts and that where I can hear myself think. All my mental and physical resources have been deployed in the hard act of paddling. There are thoughts, though, that form around every new ripple in the lake and every new arrangement of the red, yellow and orange maple carpet sprawled across the water.

Algonquin's nirvana-bestowing-powers are apparent to me when I find myself unflappable even when a telemarketer hawking a freehold house in Gurgaon conspires to interrupt my moments of solitude. "Coming soon! Freehold plots 25 sqyd approx in Sec-102 GURGAON on Dwarka Expressway," my cellphone announces to me, after I fish it out from under my life jacket. An hour ago, I would have agonised over the prohibitively expensive international roaming charges I would have to pay for the incoming text message, or experienced a BP surge over the sheer disruption of my quiet time.

But I am far too distracted counting the number of trees on the little island up ahead. I'm also nursing delusions of grandeur, after Bob, our guide for the day, appoints me the bowman and tells me somewhat patronisingly that how I paddle will determine the canoe's course. I know precious little of what constitutes good canoemanship, and I am not sure if I have even understood the basic 'J' stroke. I realise later it's actually Bob, doubling as the sternman, who has been doing all the work. I know this when exhausted with my clumsy paddling, I stop for a bit. The canoe sails on determinedly -- and as effortlessly as Bob's paddling. I am reminded suddenly of a friend who hedged out of every potential relationship saying that he wanted an uncomplicated life, akin to a canoe ride. I finally understand what he meant.

At 80-plus, Bob's mother is leading the life-is-a-canoe-ride life. She lives alone by the lake, goes canoeing on her own, and has a more hectic social life than Bob, who I am fortunate to have met on his last day at the park. A high school teacher on a sabbatical, Bob will spend the next one year travelling around the world. He has been at Algonquin for the last few months among the bears and the canoes purely to nourish his soul. I wish I could swap lives. I don't stay long enough to pitch my tent at Algonquin, or check into a ranger cabin without electricity or running water. A pity, because among the many adventure stories that I would have come back with, one could have been about being chased by bears. Or that of counting moose in the park. Or investigating where wood turtles spend their winter.

Or avoiding paths infested with wolves. But perhaps, none of these would be chicken soup for my cityweary soul as much as paddling a canoe, and fantasising about life being a canoe ride in perpetuity. East Canada, I discover, is teeming with adventure activities. If you are in the minority (like yours truly) that voluntarily goes to shop only once in six years, then you'd much rather spend your time getting an adrenaline rush in the outdoors. About the most touristy thing you can do is take the Maid of the Mist tour of the Niagara Falls. Do this you must, else you can't claim to have really seen Canada. Always in competition with the Americans across the border, Canadians will tell you with great relish that their neighbours get only 10 per cent of the water in their part of the falls -- the rest comes to the Canadian horseshoe falls.

The boat takes you dizzyingly close to the shower of mist and foam inside the curve of the horseshow falls that take a 170m plunge, but turns away just as you start screaming -- part hysterical with the excitement and part with a sudden hydrophobia. THE only drawback? Unlike the Algonquin Park, which gives you plenty of alonetime, Niagara is teeming

with people, especially honeymooners, who have been thronging the falls ever since Napoleon's younger brother Jerome Bonaparte and his wife consummated their marriage there in 1803. Part of the blame for overpopulating the falls also goes to Marilyn Monroe, who shot for Niagara here in 1952. Even more spectacular than seeing the Niagara by boat is seeing it from a helicopter. You won't have the spray on your face but the vantage point of 2,500 feet allows you to situate the falls within the topography of the region, and also, curiously, lets you feel more powerful than the falls, albeit for all of 12 minutes.

But by far my favourite East Canadian adventure activity is biking down old Montreal -- perhaps because I can never think of doing it in Delhi. It's been over ten years since I sat on a bike and I find myself gloriously out of form while trying to mount the one I have rented from Rue de la Commune Est in the old part of the city. As I come precariously close to falling down, I am filled with nostalgia for home, for my father, who took upon himself the arduous task of running along with me when he first taught me cycling. Five minutes of utter clumsiness on the bike and I am relieved to see that the lesson hasn't been forgotten.

The way to see old Montreal is to bike it, I realise, as I sail languorously along the old port, taking a break next to Tai Chi statues, which have been commissioned across the city. Montreal has pulled out all stops to retain its heritage look, and I find myself overtaking horse-drawn carriages with tourists atop them, who look like they'd like to pinch themselves to make sure they aren't in a dream. I could do with an affirmation of reality as well. It comes when I stop by at a boutique hotel on a cobblestoned path in the middle of my ride to get a drink of water. I get a rather shrill reminder that this is real, this is not a dream, when Federiko, the hotel's parakeet, looks at my cycling gear rather amusedly and cries: "Bonjour, bonjour, bonjour."

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Publication:	Mail Today (New Delhi, India)
Geographic Code:	1CANA
Date:	Nov 7, 2010
Words:	1110
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