Saturday, August 05, 2006

Severn Falls – The Falls that were never really the falls

I am in Canada with my colleagues for a project. Canada is extremely picturesque. There is a lot of greenery all around. You can make a picnic basket, find a picnic spot in the countryside and have a great time. That is exactly what we did on a bright sunny day. We saw the map and found two places that sounded exciting - Severn Falls and Swift Rapids.

With dreams of swift rapids in a river and waterfalls, we left for our picnic spot.
It was a 2 hour drive from our hotel. The drive towards the countryside was scenic. Quaint little houses, green farms, tall green trees, fresh flowers, bright blue sky, clouds like cotton stretched and spread across the sky. I have only read about such things in novels. But I saw all this in Ontario, Canada.

As we were driving, we were keeping an eye on the road signs and every time we would see a road sign for Severn Falls, we would all get excited. We were wondering how close we could go to the waterfalls. We were geared up with our cameras to take pictures.

After some time we realized that the signposts no more pointed to Severn Falls. We were a tad disappointed. Unlike in India, you really cannot just stop your car on the road or honk at another vehicle and ask for directions. You have to park 'properly' and then ask only if you manage to find people standing or walking which is a little unusual here. Since the signposts stopped showing the way to Severn falls we decided to turn back...

On our way back, we stopped at a tourist spot, parked our car and asked one person about Severn falls...This is what he said - It is just a waterfall during spring. It forms when the snow melts and falls down from a higher altitude. We were disappointed. Our trip to find the waterfall ended in finding out it was never really a waterfall.

We did manage to find other picnic spots around the place and did have fun that day. But the Severn falls were the falls that were not really the waterfalls we thought they will be.

4 comments:

Samrat said...

nice description.
even swift rapids had no actual rapids. what to do about these nomenclature challenged Canadians.

still we made the most of it, best part are the snaps we took

Anonymous said...

i'VE LIVED SEVER FALLS MY WHOLE LIFE. IF I HAD A BUCK FOR EVERY ONE WHO ASKED "WERE IS THE FALLS" I'D BE RICH. NO ONE BELIEVES ME WHEN I TELL THEM THE DON'T EXIST. THEY TRIED TO CHANGE THE NAME TO SEVERN PARK BUT WE DON'T HAVE A PARK EITHER

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