When most people think of Nepal, they think of the mountains. However, Nepal has some of the world's best white water available to the rafting and kayaking enthusiast. While I was in Nepal, I very much wanted to do some kayaking for this very reason. I did some research about the topic, but surprisingly, there isn't much out there when it comes to kayaking/rafting in Nepal. The best book available right now for kayaking/rafting in Nepal is White Water Nepal by Peter Knowles, ISBN 095194133x. This is an excellent book and after using it, I can say that it's all you would need to be well informed about the rivers and any other questions you may have about the undertaking of this adventure in Nepal.
Booking
my Trip
After reading White Water Nepal, I decided that the trip for me was a 4-day kayak clinic on the Seti River. I chose the Seti river because it is one of the warmest rivers in Nepal (warmed by underground thermals), and the rapids get progressively more difficult, perfect for someone learning to kayak. After I finished trekking, I spent about 5 days in Pokhara visiting different rafting companies to see who was offering the Seti kayak trip. The company I signed up with was Ultimate Descents, they offered the trip for a cost of $150 USD. If you've never done rafting/kayaking before, this is an incredibly low price for a 4-day trip. Ultimate Descents is one of the most reputable rafting companies in Nepal, so that price is probably the highest you'll find. When I went to them to give them my passport photo for my river permit, they told me that the instructor had broken his foot and they would not be able to run the trip. Because of that, they referred me to Exodus, another rafting company who runs the trip for $140 USD. By this time, I had run into Valerie (a girl I met while trekking) in Pokhara and she decided that she'd like to go kayaking too, so both of us signed up. It turned out that we were the only people signed up for the trip, and they still ran it. That really blew us away, we figured that they'd cancel it for sure. For the trip they provided a support raft with 2 guides, and a kayak guide. We camped on beaches and they provided all our meals from the food they carried on the raft. Oh, this trip is about $50 cheaper if you book it in Pokhara rather than in Kathmandu.
Day 1
This day was spent on the lake in Pokhara learning how to paddle the kayak
and how to do the one and only "Eskimo Roll". If you've ever seen
someone roll a kayak completely around, it looks pretty easy, but in actuality
it's damn hard. We tried this and kept failing and failing. What really gets you
is that you get stuck upside down and then water goes up your nose. That isn't
bad once or so, but when it happens over and over and over, it makes you feel
like you're going to hurl. Eventually you get to a point where you have to tell
the instructor that you're going to have to stop. If only they sold nose-plugs
in Nepal. If you're going to kayak, bring some from home.
Day
2
We start this day by going to the river put-in point, a 2-hour bus ride from Pokhara. We loaded up the bus in Pokhara with 3 kayaks and our support raft, along with a TON of other gear. Both Val and I couldn't believe all the things they were bringing for just the two of us. After we ate a great lunch at the river, we hopped in the kayaks and worked some skills in moving water. Then it was off to the rapids. We hit mostly small rapids, but we also hit a class III rapid. For someone just learning to kayak, a class III rapid is very unnerving. Valerie was in front of me in the rapid and I saw her kayak overturn right in front of me. Then I saw her head pop out as she ejected from her kayak, then she went back under. What scared me terribly was that I was heading right for where her head just was. I pictured her head popping back up and me hitting her head-on. Fortunately, the rapid moved her on and we both emerged about 10 feet from each other. That was such a relief, I honestly thought I was going to kill her and there was nothing I could have done about it. The first day seemed very long and both Val and I were exhausted when we finally got to the beach we were going to camp at. Over the course of the day, both of us had to evacuate the kayaks a few times, which can be a real pain in the butt. When you eject from your kayak you have to swim to shore with your kayak and drain it, which requires an incredible amount of energy, especially if you're already exhausted.
Day
3
Unfortunately, Valerie got sick this day and was unable to kayak. She rode in the support raft and one of the other guides paddled her kayak. Because Val wasn't kayaking on this day, she took pictures of me in the rapids. For those of you that know me, that guy in the pictures with the goatee is me. I had thought the guide using Val's kayak knew how to kayak, but he had never paddled one before, and we were going to see class IV rapids on this day. Our kayak instructor gave the new guy some very brief lessons, and then it was off to the rapids. The rapids today seemed to get much larger, and after we'd scout them I'd get these butterflies in my stomach. There were some rapids where I just gazed at them and said "I'm going to die". I honestly did say that, many times in fact, so I as we walked back to our kayaks I would say a quick prayer or two, or three. The instructor would tell us "follow my line", which is difficult when you're upside down, but we would try our best. We had one rapid on this day, a class IV, that was pretty damn scary. We scouted it out and then went back to our kayaks, not forgetting of course to pray while walking back. The instructor told me to follow him and the other guy to follow me. I don't know what happened, but the new guy got in front of me before we went in the rapid. I was very afraid of that because I did not want to be behind him. He was very slow in the kayak and did not control it very well, and you don't want to be slow when you're going through a rapid. Also, because of the way rapids are, you can't pass, so you just have to stay behind. So, we enter the rapid and sure enough, I'm having to hold my kayak back because he's not moving his butt. Then it happens... He hit some huge rapid and had his kayak thrown-up on top of a rock and then it turned perfectly perpendicular to the river, right in front of me. I was paddling hard through this section, but I will never forget the look on his face. He was just perched on this rock, not moving at all, with massive rapids all around him. If I thought I was scared, it was nothing compared to what this guy was going through. He had terror written all over his face and all he could see was me coming right at him. There was an absolute 100% chance that I was going to ram him off of that rock. Which scared the hell out of both of us. So, the inevitable happened and I smashed his boat, almost dead-center. It spun him around (the right way thankfully), and my kayak stayed somewhat straight. Unbelievably, we both managed to finish the rapid without flipping our kayaks. God was truly at work there, and our instructor just looked at us in disbelief. I think the guy I hit was still shaking a few hours later.
That evening, some of the villagers came down to the beach to entertain us. They sang songs and played their drum while the young women of the village danced for us by candlelight. They also had us dance with them, so that was a lot of fun. Oh yeah, the kids were great too, we had tons-o-fun playing with them. Halfway into the evening all the villagers just stopped and looked to the other side of the river. There was a trail that followed the river and there was about 6 people with flashlights that were walking on the trail, but all you could make out were the flashlights moving along the trail. Val, the guides, and myself didn't think anything of it, but the villagers thought it was ghosts. Val and I laughed at that, but they really did think it was ghosts, and you could tell by the look on their faces. They were SO scared and they wouldn't even move or talk until the people had gone out of sight. Trekking at night isn't normal, so our guides told us that what it probably was was somebody was very sick and they were taking them somewhere where they could get some help.
Day
4
This day was great, Val was feeling better so she decided to get back in the kayak. These were the biggest rapids of the trip with a lot more "I'm going to die" moments. Val was probably a little bit more scared than I, simply for the fact that she didn't kayak the day before. However, we both probably had our scared meter pegged anyway so it didn't matter much. The most memorable rapid of the day was the last one. Known to the locals as the "Coffee Pot", all it looked like to me was a big wall of water that you get sucked in to. Val went into it first and it sucked her in and tossed her around like a little rag doll. I was right behind her and knew that I was going to suffer the same fate. It really didn't seem like kayaking at that point, just suicide. Sure enough, we both ended up swimming through this rapid. Incidentally, Val has a bad habit of panicking when she has to bail out of her kayak. What that means is that her kayak and paddle just go in all sorts of directions. When we came out of that rapid, I was the lucky guy that had to swim to shore with two kayaks, both full of water. That sucked and those kayaks were damn heavy, so if you ever kayak with Val, make sure she's leashed to her kayak. Probably the most cultural thing of the day, other than the bus ride, but we'll get to that later, was the kids. When we would scout a rapid, the kids walking to school would follow us over the rocks to the rapids. They would stay there and wait for us to run the rapid, kind of like waiting for a car accident. But while the kids would wait, they would clap their hands and sing songs for us while we paddled to the rapid, it was really neat to see. The kids have so much spirit to them, it's truly amazing.
That was pretty much it for the kayaking. We merged with another river at the end and then took our kayaks out and had lunch. After that, Val and I got on a bus to go to Kathmandu. We had the bus ride from hell. It truly was from hell, and I'm absolutely certain that our bus driver was Satan himself.