3 - 4 Dec 2012
We went straight from canyoning to white water rafting, so no chance to sleep in and recover from our big day on the waterfalls.We tried to have an early night but it was our last one with Aneka so we had to say goodbye. She was feeling incredibly home sick and lonely as Nepal is hard to meet people. As we've found out ourselves. Luckily Sam and I have each other. She was talking about heading back home early and not seeing the full 10 more days in Nepal she had left. Poor Aneka... I wish we could've hung out with her more to make her feel better. But we had already booked all this stuff and were on the go non stop stil at least after the rafting, but she couldn't wait another 2days on her own so we bid farewell before heading off to bed.
We had to be at the paddle nepal office at 5.45am this time which totally sucked! Luckily there were local men selling hot bakery goods which is exactly what I needed. I got a chocolate pastry twist thing for only 50 rupee (55c) - cheap as chips!
The bus was once again freezing and we were mighty uncomfortable. It was a long ride to, we didn't get there til lunch time. When we did finally stop and they pointed out the river we'd be jumping in, we realized we had been here before! We had passed this river heading to our trek start point. Oh this lovely road that we seem to keep driving on...
Lunch was delish! It was salami and salad sandwiches which you make yourself with bananas for desert. After I made my sandwich I headed over to this rock and sat down when all of a sudden I feel something heavy on my plate, I look down and there is this massive stick insect which makes me jump out of my skin and I lose half my lunch on the floor. When I realized it was just a prey mantis I calmed down and let him chill there until someone came and took him off me. I seriously felt so stupid for freaking out over a harmless prey mantis.
After lunch it was time to get going. I was feeling mighty nervous as I had been all month.Doing a river classed as 4+ was scary, considering I'd done a max 3 before and that was wild! Plus in the bus they were talking about this river being a 4+ and 5+! fuck! We had two rafts between the 8 of us and several staff split between, some American's, a Scot and a french Canadian were running the show. One of the safety kayaks was an extremely tall American guy with long blonde hair, so we soon started calling him 'Thor', apparently he gets that a lot.
So we jump into the river with the excitement cursing through our veins - woo! after an hr or so I start wondering if this river is even class 3. It just seemed so calm and easy compared to the 3 I did in Ecuador. I mean there were some really crazy rapids but only a couple and they were so spread out that the rest of the time we were just cruising. The couple of crazy rapids though were certainly insane! We made it through every single one of them without any of our crew falling out. The other raft was not so lucky.
We rafted for about 2-3hrs before driving about 20mins to our campsite. I was mighty disappointed as on the website it shows you rafting then camping on the side of the river - that's what I wanted! I didn't want to drive to our campsite - lame! I guess because we changed rivers this is what happened... oh well.
Camp was next to a school, still by the river though. Sam and I hung out with the 6 Europeans though it was hard because most of them could not speak very good English. Thor guy started making a fire so I congregated over there where he and the photographer (also in a kayak) were talking shit. He was young and from the UK so soon Sam and I were having a good old chat to him about our travel plans coming up. He's the one who told us that to stay in Thailand longer then 30days we need a visa, which we can apply for in Kathmandu. So that was now on the agenda. We also started talking about the beginner kayak clinic, because the safety kayaks made it look like so much fun! They all started raving about how awesome kayaking is and how you will get addicted and you need to be careful because soon, that will be all you'll ever want to do. It will take over your life. Maybe it was the warmth of the beer and the fire combined, but we pretty much decided then and there to do it! (even through my fear!)
The second day we jumped straight into the river we were camping on, which I was very happy about. We seemed to have less big rapids today but the ones we did were INSANE!! Once again we never fell out. This American girl who was staff and helping steer the raft ended up taking over the instructor spot at what should of been a breeze in the park - however she let us straight in between all these rocks so the raft got stuck and started to tip upright, with the back going under. We were all jumping from side to side trying to get it back upright but it wasn't working. Then somehow everyone was falling on my side and I got pushed out of the raft. I was gripping on with all my might onto the ropes on the side with my right hand and hanging onto the paddle with me left. My body was getting sucked under the raft by rapids and I was almost ready to give up with the instructor saw me and yelled at everyone to help me in. Sam - my knight in shining armor came to my rescue! That ended up being the funnest part that day! haha
You can only see me in the first pic (3rd on the left side) because the photographer was on the right side. But in the last two I am hanging off gripping for dear life!
We only rafted til lunch time, then headed back to Pokhara after lunch. It was a long long drive back....
We went straight from canyoning to white water rafting, so no chance to sleep in and recover from our big day on the waterfalls.We tried to have an early night but it was our last one with Aneka so we had to say goodbye. She was feeling incredibly home sick and lonely as Nepal is hard to meet people. As we've found out ourselves. Luckily Sam and I have each other. She was talking about heading back home early and not seeing the full 10 more days in Nepal she had left. Poor Aneka... I wish we could've hung out with her more to make her feel better. But we had already booked all this stuff and were on the go non stop stil at least after the rafting, but she couldn't wait another 2days on her own so we bid farewell before heading off to bed.
We had to be at the paddle nepal office at 5.45am this time which totally sucked! Luckily there were local men selling hot bakery goods which is exactly what I needed. I got a chocolate pastry twist thing for only 50 rupee (55c) - cheap as chips!
The bus was once again freezing and we were mighty uncomfortable. It was a long ride to, we didn't get there til lunch time. When we did finally stop and they pointed out the river we'd be jumping in, we realized we had been here before! We had passed this river heading to our trek start point. Oh this lovely road that we seem to keep driving on...
Lunch was delish! It was salami and salad sandwiches which you make yourself with bananas for desert. After I made my sandwich I headed over to this rock and sat down when all of a sudden I feel something heavy on my plate, I look down and there is this massive stick insect which makes me jump out of my skin and I lose half my lunch on the floor. When I realized it was just a prey mantis I calmed down and let him chill there until someone came and took him off me. I seriously felt so stupid for freaking out over a harmless prey mantis.
After lunch it was time to get going. I was feeling mighty nervous as I had been all month.Doing a river classed as 4+ was scary, considering I'd done a max 3 before and that was wild! Plus in the bus they were talking about this river being a 4+ and 5+! fuck! We had two rafts between the 8 of us and several staff split between, some American's, a Scot and a french Canadian were running the show. One of the safety kayaks was an extremely tall American guy with long blonde hair, so we soon started calling him 'Thor', apparently he gets that a lot.
So we jump into the river with the excitement cursing through our veins - woo! after an hr or so I start wondering if this river is even class 3. It just seemed so calm and easy compared to the 3 I did in Ecuador. I mean there were some really crazy rapids but only a couple and they were so spread out that the rest of the time we were just cruising. The couple of crazy rapids though were certainly insane! We made it through every single one of them without any of our crew falling out. The other raft was not so lucky.
We rafted for about 2-3hrs before driving about 20mins to our campsite. I was mighty disappointed as on the website it shows you rafting then camping on the side of the river - that's what I wanted! I didn't want to drive to our campsite - lame! I guess because we changed rivers this is what happened... oh well.
Camp was next to a school, still by the river though. Sam and I hung out with the 6 Europeans though it was hard because most of them could not speak very good English. Thor guy started making a fire so I congregated over there where he and the photographer (also in a kayak) were talking shit. He was young and from the UK so soon Sam and I were having a good old chat to him about our travel plans coming up. He's the one who told us that to stay in Thailand longer then 30days we need a visa, which we can apply for in Kathmandu. So that was now on the agenda. We also started talking about the beginner kayak clinic, because the safety kayaks made it look like so much fun! They all started raving about how awesome kayaking is and how you will get addicted and you need to be careful because soon, that will be all you'll ever want to do. It will take over your life. Maybe it was the warmth of the beer and the fire combined, but we pretty much decided then and there to do it! (even through my fear!)
The second day we jumped straight into the river we were camping on, which I was very happy about. We seemed to have less big rapids today but the ones we did were INSANE!! Once again we never fell out. This American girl who was staff and helping steer the raft ended up taking over the instructor spot at what should of been a breeze in the park - however she let us straight in between all these rocks so the raft got stuck and started to tip upright, with the back going under. We were all jumping from side to side trying to get it back upright but it wasn't working. Then somehow everyone was falling on my side and I got pushed out of the raft. I was gripping on with all my might onto the ropes on the side with my right hand and hanging onto the paddle with me left. My body was getting sucked under the raft by rapids and I was almost ready to give up with the instructor saw me and yelled at everyone to help me in. Sam - my knight in shining armor came to my rescue! That ended up being the funnest part that day! haha
You can only see me in the first pic (3rd on the left side) because the photographer was on the right side. But in the last two I am hanging off gripping for dear life!
We only rafted til lunch time, then headed back to Pokhara after lunch. It was a long long drive back....
Wow. This sounds like so much fun!! I am so jealous, what an amazing experience. All of these photos are beautiful. :)
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