BELIEVE THOSE ADS WHEN THEY TOUT “INCREDIBLE India.” I’ve been there many times but never tire of what it has to offer.

Last month I was in India again and this trip was particularly mind-boggling. My trip was sponsored by the Public Health Institute India and had nothing to do with tourism, but I thought I’d write about some of the more mind-boggling experiences to convince you to visit. Local tourism people might also pick up some ideas.

I landed at Delhi’s airport in the middle of the night, only to set off for another two hour land trip to Neemrana, a village in the next state, Rajasthan. Neemrana is a tiny sleepy place with narrow streets and an occasional camel sauntering through, but it also has a bit of a tourism industry because of a 15th century Mughal fort palace which has been converted into a hotel.

Don’t think opulence here. The Neemrana fort palace is impressive but they’re into ecotourism, so the owners try to offer everything as natural and as simple as possible, from the rooms to the food, and even toiletries. No elevators here, so imagine me arriving after midnight and a porter helping with my bags as we made our way to the top of the palace to my assigned room. It was Spartan, but had all the amenities: an aircon (I decided to use the ceiling fan), toilet and bath. No phones; if you needed something, there was a cell number you had to call.

Although I got to bed only about 3 a.m., I was up at the crack of dawn. One look out of one of the windows with a breath-taking view of the Aravelli mountains and I knew I couldn’t waste time.

Tarsier

I sprinted down to look for breakfast, promptly losing my way in the labyrinth but eventually locating my colleagues, who came from every continent in the world. “Are you joining us?” they asked, and I said, “Of course.” Our schedule said we were going to do “ropeways” that morning, which I didn’t understand. A check on the Internet gave me the translation: cable cars.

I have to tell you I suspect that in a previous life I was probably a tarsier or some tree-dwelling creature that had a horrible fall, which has left me, in this life, with a morbid fear of heights. I don’t particularly enjoy cable cars but can tolerate them since I’m inside something stable.

Still with cable cars on my mind, I joined my colleagues as we made our way to the office of Flying Fox, which was going to handle our tour. There was a cable line coming into the office, but no cable cars. Not only that, they distributed outfits that looked like we were going parachuting. There was a harness that went around the waist and the crotch, and two straps with hooks.

Oh well, I figured, maybe these were safety vests like the ones you get on boat rides. Then I began to hear the term “zipline.” An American colleague told me she had seen it in Costa Rica but didn’t join because she had reservations. I realized we were both joining because this was meant to be a team-building activity, with the mountain views as a bonus.

Two guides led us up the mountain slope, and I mean, up, up, up, with several breaks to catch our breath. I thought, oh, so maybe the cable car is up there. We finally got to a small clearing with a cable about three meters long. The guides explained they were going to orient us now on “ziplining” and practice us.

As they demonstrated what was going to happen, I could imagine my inner tarsier’s eyes growing wider and wider. The two hooks on our outfits, it turned out, were going to be used to hitch us on the cable wire. One of the hooks was actually a pulley, which we were to hold with our right hand. This pulley would allow us to slide down the wire.

Slide? Hey, no one told me about sliding. I wanted to ask if we would at least have a kind of chair to sit on as we zipped, but as the demonstration unfolded I realized the straps around our waist were designed to hold us. I was beginning to imagine myself in diapers, being hung on the clothesline to dry.

My past life as a tarsier was coming back to me, but my training in Zen took over: Detach, detach . . . your fears have no basis. Breath in, breath out. The guides assured us it was quite safe, but added that nothing’s totally safe. The wires are made in Switzerland, the pulleys come from France, and the thick gloves (and the guide paused) from Pakistan. He laughed, knowing our Indian colleagues were going to go into mock protest.

Icarus

To make a long story short, this former tarsier made it—not just through one cable wire but the complete course, which was five wires. The longest was 400 meters and I learned later we could have been zipping at speeds close to 100 kilometers per hour.

I didn’t get to see the mountains because with each zip I kept my eyes to the sky, feeling like Icarus about to crash. The strong mountain crosscurrents kept twirling me around and I felt like an Indian kurta shirt fluttering on a clothesline. On the third line, as he prepared to push me off the cliff, the guide told me I’d zip better if I bundled up. He ordered me, “Raise your legs higher, higher” his hand pushing up my butt. I realized that looking young was becoming a disadvantage for me. “Young man,” I wanted to tell him, “don’t get sassy with me. I’m nearly 60.” But I was afraid he’d get so shocked he’d fall off before I could zip.

My other problem with being so light was that I would lose momentum during the zipping and stop quite a distance from the destination, leaving me dangling a hundred meters above the ground. That meant I had to twist around and pull myself in, legs still up in the air. Pulling myself in, I realized why the gloves already had mysterious cut marks across the palm side when they were first given to me. Thank you, Pakistan.

Will I zipline again? The tarsier from my past says no, but who knows? By the time I did my fifth zipline at Neemrana, I was horrified to realize I was beginning to enjoy it.

Worse, while doing some research for my column, I found out that the Philippines actually has several ziplines in Tagaytay, Subic, Bohol, Cagayan de Oro and Davao (which has a one-kilometer cable, said to be Asia’s longest). I looked at the photographs and I have to tell you their ziplines are mild compared to Neemrana’s.

I have a feeling that when my kids are older they’ll pester me to do the zipline and I’ll have to go with them. (The minimum age at Neemrana’s is 10.) Maybe by then I would have overcome my acrophobia and moved on to bungee jumping and whitewater rafting. Keep reading my column to see how I’m doing.

Resources: Check flyingfox.asia for details on Indian ziplining and photos so you can visualize what I was doing and our palace hotel. For local ziplining, check tagaytayzipline.com and clarksubicmarketing.com for two of the company websites. I couldn’t find Internet sites for the other zipline outfits, but they are featured in various newspaper articles. Try googling “Project Challenge Talomo Davao,” “Canopy chair lifts Cagayan de Oro” and “Sui-slide Danao Bohol.”

Email to mtan@inquirer.com.ph