I arrived in Nepal, within 2 hours I had a hotel for 200 rupees a night, about 1 pound 70 pence maybe less, a trip on the Trishuli river the next day and given my paddle to a guy to mend.  Sweet.

The Trishuli

The guy in the Rainbow rafting office says, ”there are 300 people of the river today and you’ll be safety kayaking”, oh thats great, having never even heard of the river before I was a little miffed.  It turned out that there was a rafting feastival going on for Nepali people to go rafting, which was great, the river went through some lovely scenary at a very leasurly pace, with one good rapid, one rapid that I broke the paddle that I was borrowing, a rather useless split that snapped in half whilst I was trying to catch a wave.  whoops.

The next few days I relaxed, got the squits and recovered on the loo. 

 The I had 3 brilliant days,

Day 1

I went mountain biking with an aussie couple, Tim and Sarah, who were on there way moving back to Australia having been living in London and Europe for the last 4-5 years.  The ride was great and it was especially good to get out of Kathmandu, which is a fairly polluted clostraphobic city, good fun for a bit but I felt I had been there to long.  We saw loads of little villages and met loads of school kid all in uniforms, whole schools would shout hello at us as we went passed, which was lovely.  The biking itself was pretty good, mostly on dirt roads, which were pretty rough, both I and Tim ended up with fairly bruised bottoms by the end.  There were a few pretty steep bits, and some climbs none of us could get up. 

 Day 2

Bohte Koshi

Tim and Sarah happened to be on the same rafting trip as I was on the Bohte koshi, pure coinsidance. It was to be a 2 day trip with Ultimate Descents, a rather more professional seeming company than Rainbow rafting.  First day we did the lower Bohte Koshi, as way of a warm up for the rafters, and me, before we attempted the upper section.  I was meant to be safety kayaking for the rafts but spent most of my time rescuing a couple of trainee safety kayakers, one managed to wedge himself under a raft upside down, and swam.  The other just swam a few times. 

some random rafters

Day 3 

Upper Bohte koshi

The upper was nothing short of amazing, continuous class 3+, no flat at all, with the odd class 4 to liven things up.  Also the river has the best named rapid I’m yet to find, Frog in a Blender, brilliant, and it was a brilliant rapid as well.  No photos sorry, camara ran out of Battery.  All the rafters had a great time and none of them fell out, which made my job very easy indeed. 

Now I’m all booked for the Sun Koshi river, 9 days long, camping on the beaches, and some big volume class 4 and 4+. 

 Sunkoshi - River of Gold (in Nepali)

Generally an excellent river trip, 270km long, lovely scenery, lovely little white beaches to camp on, good company, lots of rum and local rice/millet wine, and some good rapids if a little few and far between.

 day 1

Met at 6am in Kathandu with all the other rafters (all 4 of them) and all the other kayakers (all 2 of them).  Ellie from Alaska was my fellow kayaker customer and Assok was the safety kayaker;  Manfred from Austria and Raj from Singapore were the rafting customers, with Sila the raft guide, Santose and Rajendra the trainee raft guides/general helpers and cooks and chicken murderers, but that will come later.  The company we went with were Mountain river rafting, and the guys from there ensured everything went very smoothly indeed…

We drove to the river, uneventful, then drove into the river and got stuck, the driver was trying to clean his van, by driving it into the gettin point, nice one, and it invariably got stuck. 

the stuck van

The first day had very few rapids and theywere all small, the first night however was far more eventful.

we put the tents up, 4 for each of uspunters and a shelter made from a raft and a tarp for the Nepali staff, it was nice and sunny so they were put up in a fairly haphazard way, just as we sat down to our first Dall Baht of the trip the wind picked up and the rain came down.  Our Dall Baht got covered in sand and had to be abandoned, and we all sheltered inside the raft shelter.  My tent was the first to cop it, being dismantled by the wind and my down sleeping bag soaked by the rain.  Ellie’s was the next to be blown away, fortunately her sleeping bag was still in the dry bag froom the raft.  Rajs’ tent, who had gone to bed early,was nearly blown away, saved by his body weight and one of the Nepalise putting a few more rocks on it.  So the rest of the night was spent holding on to the raft and tarp which was trying to blow away, and sleeping in the shelter using a throw bag as a pillow, which incidently is one of the worst pillows i have ever used. 

how the shelter should be

Day 2

The damage from the previous evening was evinndent, tents all over the beach; sleeping bag out to dry.  But good news, the river had risen and was a good spate colour, sort of colour that gets your heart beat up when you see it in a UK river.  The rapids were a little bigger today but still nothing hard.  The highlight was a rapid called meat grinder, which had one of the best surfwaves ever halfway down, with eddy service, it was bouncing my mystic, and had a foam pile on one side steep green face on the other.  Oh how i wished I had a play boat, unfortunately the raft had gone passed so we could not stop and play long, we found the raft just too far down stream setting up camp, infuriating, we could have camped next to the wave, the other two boats at least had flat hulls. 

That night Assok went off to the local village and came back with roxy, not a young lady, but a locally made rice or millet wine that is discusting generally.  fortunately we still had 4 bottles of rum so didn’t have to drink the roxy, yet.

Day 3

Another river joined, the Tammar Koshi, so the volume increased.  this meant some of the rapids had some reasonable sized holes. 

Raj got very excited that night when he employed a young kid to swim accross the river with 50 ruppees (less than 50p), walk up a mountain of a hill and return with about 2 oz of ganja, smoking dope in Singapore is punishable by death!!

 Raj relaxing  “Buffalo soldier….”

Day 4 - Harkapore

Today the rapids started in ernest first up is Harkapore 1, a few lines on this rapid, all trying to avoid a nasty hole on the right (claimed the life of an experienced safety boater) and a big hole in the middle, the tiger line involves running from right to left down the rapid avoiding the holes.  As always it was much bigger when your amungst it, and i had to put in more strokes than I would normally care to to stay on line.  Ellie and I graded it at 4+ the rafting company uses a fairly optermistic grade 5.  Next harkapore 2,which was easier, Ellie and i took a really rocky and steep and I thought I was pinned at one point and quite pleased to be down.  Assok took a different chanel entirely, we were at the bottom and looked upstream and in the distance he was inspecting, strange, he had said it was just some waves.  When he got to the bottom he was saying:

“Wow, oh my god, Wow, big hole, wow, oh my god….”

 He liked the word WOW.

That evening the guys went off to a local village and came back with a chicken, and a bottle of Roxy.  The Chicken had its feet tied and was put in ellie’s kayak to keep it safe.  not for long though!! it broke its leash and chicken run 2 ensued, with all of us chasing it in the bush near the beach, apart from Raj who is a Vegie and was quite pleased that it escaped.  It was only a matter of time and the chicken could run but it couldn’t hide.  Rajendra dispatched the recaptured chicken.  you’ll be pleased to hear that this is all on film. 

 

big rivers mean big fish.  Note my extencive beard right now I’m looking more and more like a pillgrim father.

Day 5

Jaws was the rapid of the day followed by dead mans eddy, both lots of big waves, really big waves.  Further down was Rhino Rock, with the second best wave of the river at the top, again it had my mystic airborn when Icaught it.  surfing right above a hole on the right and left was a little itimidating, but straight down the middle was fine.  More chicken that night, and roxy, by that time we had run out  of rum and coke.  Hunters from the local village kept wondering through the campsite brandinshing percusion muzzle loading rifles that would have looked more at home on a American civil war battle field.

 Day 6

Began with prabably the best series of continous big volume rappids ever, called the jungle corridor, rapids just kept coming, big waves big holes, good stuff.  The river flatterned out for a bit, then we stopped by a nice waterfall, i checked out the landing and it would have been too shallow, even for the mystic.  but it was our fist wash for a while…

 

the crew having there first wash for days.

Day 7

Started with some more big volume easy fun rapids, easy that is until the raft flipped, this was the first flip, unfortunately i didn’t get any pictures but this should give you an idea:

It was full of all our equipment, so extremely heavy, and trying to flip it back was nearly impossible, and ended up with 6 of us all pulling on a rope.  i’m glad it only happened once and not in a dificult rapid.

Day 8

Last day on the river, the river had risen and there was a lot of wood in it, we stoppedby a temple and tryed to lift a stone onto our shoulders and run around the temple, if you could do it you were a lucky man.  i could not even get it off the ground! must be very unlucky. 

then we got to the take out and had to say good bye to the Sunkoshi, it felt quite strange to travel in a bus after so long in a boat, the Bus journey was fairly awful, 13 hours of uncomfort through the night.  We arrived in kathmandu at 5 am, and we saw the ultimate descents bus loading up for a Bhote koshi trip.

The Mountain River Rafting team:(right to left) Manfred, Rajendra, Raj, Assok, me, Santose, Sila and Ellie/Lizzy (she’s only been ellie since coming to Nepal because the Nepalise cant say lizzy)

“fancy a trip on the Bhote Koshi” i ask Ellie, she thinks for about a second and says yes. 

So at 6 am we wonder into the Ultimate Descents office and ask if we can go, Ellie needs a boat and paddle, not a problem, so we were off once again on a bus…

 Bhote Koshi

First day, lower, loads more water this time, really good fun. 

Balaphi Khola

Next day would normally be the upper , but this was too high and dangerous for rafting so we took a rough road up the Balaphi, which turned out to be one of the prettiest rivers I’ve ever done, really green unpopulated valley, low volume rocky river, not unlike the Romanche, in Frrance.  Was a bit like a mini expedition what with the really bumpy road and the feeling of isolation, we only saw the village we started from and finished at, there was nothing else to show civilisation had reached the valley. 

Colin taking it easy with a little help from the locals

Pretty standard, The rafts stuck again

 Pokhara

I had exhausted the rivers around Kathmandu that I could do, and so headed on the most uncomfortable bus in the world to the delightful Pokhara.  A lovely city with view of lots of mountains and a large lake, or at least there would be views of mountains if the monsoon clouds were not covering them. 

First of all I met Charlie, the french Kayak shop owner, he speeks Nepali with a french accent which is amusing.  He was superb and organised everything for me, and didn’t take any money, he even leant me a sleeping bag and dry bag for the multi day trips I did.  Brilliant chap.

Upper Seti

The river people normally do as a warm up is the Upper Seti, its a grade 3 play run, Ellie from the Sunkoshi had done it and said it was easy but an absolute must.  So I did it.  As there are no other paddlers in Nepal at the moment I had to go it alone.  Not a problem its only grade 3 i thought.  The monsoon however changes things, it makes things grow, it makes roofs leek and it makes rivers bigger faster and harder.  The Seti was the hardest Grade 3 river in the world that day.  And I was the only one there.  Looking at the get in I thought it looked more like 4, then thought that it would ease up as it I went down further nope, no chance, but it did get a bit harder in places.  Solo boating is scarey especially on a river that you don’t know and is continous grade 4 with big holes and no flat sections to pick up pieces if things get out of hand. It could also be considered a little stupid, and fool hardy.  But, it is very liberating, purely you and the river, no one to encourage you or disuade you from doing anything, every descision you make is purely contolled by you, and you end up paddling much better for it. 

 

 The Get in, must get easier after this I thought, It didn’t.

That said I was the most relieved I’ve ever been to finish the river.  I did it in 1 and a half hours, which is the normal amount of time to take, but I scouted about 8 times, which is not normally necessary.  Probably won’t solo any more rivers that I don’t know after that experience. 

I also cut my big toe.

Kali Gandakhi

The Kaligandakhi was a trip that i did with a guide called Max or Bikram, i called him Max.  It was a big volume river and reminded me of padling in Ugnada, except this was in a gorge.  We spent about 3 hours on the river the first day doing lots of rapids, names of which include little brother and big brother, the latter being the hardest on the river, good morning, the first rapid of day 2 on the rafting trip, Temper, Ass kicker and many more that i forget. 

 We then stayed at a little village that was next to the river for the night.  It was really nice, I played volley ball with the kids, and we ate Daal Bahd with the family on who’s Veranda we slept.  The early the next morning we paid them a bit of money and set off on the river again.  This is the normal way of paddling multi day trips in Nepal, and means that your boat stays quite light as you don’t need to bring food or a tent. 

The second day was briefer than the first, and we soon ran out of rapids and hit flat water, caused by a hydro dam where were got out. 

 The ride back to Pokhara was great, it was my first roof top bus experience in Nepal, and from the roof of a bus you can see so much more, you should try it next time you have to use public transport.