Screams as people fall from 220 meters up in the air are not uncommon. Less expected, however, are when the screams come from excitement rather than fear – that’s what you get from bungee jumping. This adventure sport, where people jump off high points with nothing but an elastic rope around their ankles, is highly sought after by adrenaline junkies.
Obviously, the idea of this – jumping down from an exceptional height – is terrifying. We spend most of our lives trying to avoid falling—why would you do it voluntarily? But in the adventure sport of bungee-jumping, people line up to do exactly that. Bungee-jumping is the act of falling off a high point and not hitting the ground. Sounds simple enough? Well, apart from the terrifying height that one jumps from, the logistics behind it is not that simple.
The jump happens around 220 meters above the ground, generally from a bridge or cliff or platform. By being attached to an elastic cord, just shorter than the height of the fall, when you reach the maximum length, you bounce back up. (And then fall again, then bounce, then fall, until you finally stop moving.) At this point, the operators at the top either lower you down to the bottom, where you remove the cord, or pull you back up. When you return to firm ground, you’re a little shaken, a little dizzy, but, very thrilled. For several moments, you were falling without restriction—you were weightless.
It should be no surprise that modern bungee-jumping began with college students. In an extremely illegal event in 1979, three Oxford students—members of the Oxford Dangerous Sports —jumped off an 80-meter high bridge. They were inspired by an even older practice—a ritual known as land-diving that takes place on the Pentecost Islands in the South Pacific. There, an ancient myth talked about a woman that ran away from her cruel husband. She climbed up a tree to escape him, tying a vine around her ankle as she went. Fighting with him at the tree’s edge, she jumped off the tree top. Her husband followed her down—but with no vine to hold him, he fell to his death. After that, the islanders followed the woman’s example every year, warding off the spirits of the evil husband and praying for a successful yam harvest.
The Oxford students had seen a video of this ritual. Interested in extreme sports, they tried it for themselves. They dressed up for the event in tuxedos and holding bottles of champagne. But they were unsure of how to get back up. In the end the police discovered them at the end of their ropes. For the first bungee jump in the Western world, they were put in prison. But the idea had been planted.
While the world’s first bungee jumps were unregulated, thought to be exceedingly dangerous and ill-equipped, today, with advances in bungee and harness technology, bungee-jumping has become more standardized. In present day and age, bungee-jumping is one of the safest, least time-consuming, and most thrilling adventure sports around. You can do it nearly anywhere in the world, from the mountains of India to the very first operation in New Zealand to even our very own Sentosa. For a few awesome minutes, it’s just you and the air— admiring the breathtaking views beneath you.
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