The river of gold - The Sunkosi

 Me and George had made a hasty dash back to Kathmandu from Pokhara on a hellish micro bus ride after our Kali Gandaki and lower Modi Khola trip. After a couple phone calls we arranged to meet the remainder of the team at the bus station in the morning.
 We bartered a reasonable price for our taxi from our hotel and arrived with time to spare.

Shortly after our breakfast of cake and bananas, Greg, Bastien, Ciaran and Alex turned up on the back of their pickup truck hired from their accommodation. But Bob was know where to be seen.
"Bob, where are you?"
"I'm at the new bus park. Where are you?"
"At the old bus park where the bus leaves from!"
"... I'll be right there."
It was going to be a fun trip!
We negotiated a surprisingly reasonable price for our kayaks and us to Dolalgat, the put on for the Sun Kosi. On arrival we stocked up on supplies in the small town, our cumulative Nepali language knowledge some how managing to find us everything we required.
A couple weeks before, a team from GRG had made a super fast monsoon run down the river in three days, and our plan was too do a similar thing whilst there was still some reasonable flow in the river.
It was fairly late in the afternoon by the time we managed to put on, and after a couple hours of boogie class 2/3 we found a beautiful campsite just above the first larger rapid, "No Exit".
With Bob managing to source some local moonshine from the tiny village on the hillside, and our dinner cooking on an open fire under views of the milky way, it was already shaping up to be a great time on the river.
Around 2am i awoke to a bright light in my face.
"Hello my English friends!!"
Several locals had ventured to the river to try and catch fish and to come and say hello. Unfortunately, this sentence was all the English they seemed to know, and with our nepali measuring up just as equally, the conversation was limited to say the least.

 With nothing else to do in the morning but go kayaking, we were on the water around 7am, the easy rapids of this section washing the sleep from our eyes. The "river of gold" lived up to it's name this morning, the low sun casting a golden glow on the cliffs, the water sparkling and glinting as the waves reflected the morning light.
 By mid morning, our stomachs were rumbling and spying a small village on the bank, we pulled in to the eddy to venture in and see if they could provide us with food. After some confusion down to language barriers, we were invited through to the back of one of the buildings for a meal of traditional Nepali dhal Bhat, rice with lentil soup and curry. As we ate more and more of the village came to see these strange white men in their plastic craft and by the time our meal was done we were surrounded by inquisitive faces. Once we had eaten our fill we came to pay, but our money was not welcome, and one of the younger villagers managed to communicate that we were "welcome anytime!".
This is something i've really enjoyed about Nepal so far. Once you are off the beaten tracks, then people are incredibly welcoming and friendly.
 The day continued with the majority of the paddling being fat water or easy rapids, with the exception of a couple of bigger drops, and after around 80km of flat water, we were happy to reach our camp at Hakapur, just above the biggest rapid on the river.

Yours truly, photo by Bastien DeMange

Planning the journey on our beach camp, photo by Bastien DeMange

 We opted for a far more leisurely start today and to add an extra camp in our journey, so we awoke a little later and headed to the village for a breakfast of Chipati and potato curry.
Fuelled up and fired up, we scouted hakapur, the biggest rapid on the river. This rapid has some pretty grim looking holes, with huge waves, several times over head height. Despite this, the line itself was fairly straight forward, and despite a couple of back loops in the huge waves from a couple team members, everyone who ran it made it to the bottom unscathed.

Me running Hakapur, photo by Bastien DeMange

Me running Hakapur, photo by Bastien DeMange

Bob dropping in

George amongst it!

Bastien's loaded boat getting back looped in one of the huge breaking waves

Next up was the Hakapur 3 rapid. A huge but technically easier rapid which all members opted to run this time.

The remainder of the day was spent on easy, yet huge rapids, many with holes that would hold a swimmer and eat kayaks, big waves and boil eddy lines. There were just enough rapids to keep the boredom of further flat water at bay and we enjoyed stunning scenery as we floated down this mighty river.

Our camp that night was above the infamous "jungle corridor", a section of the river around 10km long of continuous class 3-4, again the huge volume creating over head waves and holes, boil eddy lines snatching at our sterns if we weren't on the ball. rounding the corner from our camp we bumped in to Darren Clarkson-king, who was there with a group on a trip with his company Pure land expeditions.
 I had unfortunately become really ill the night before, and felt incredibly sick by the time the evening came around, barely stomaching my Dhal Bhat from the village next to our camp at Tribeni, the confluence of the Tamur. Our original plan had been to paddle the Tamur after the Sun Kosi, again at a higher level than the majority of commercial trips. However, it became apparent from the amount of water flowing into the Sun Kosi that it would have been a fool hardy attempt so that idea was quickly put to bed, as was i.
 We had a short paddle in the morning to Chatra, where transport back to Kathmandu would have normally been simple. Unfortunately, the fuel crisis had rendered almost all public transport inoperable, so after some phone calls from our friendly Nepali guest house owner, who Bob knew from previous years, we embarked on a huge 21 hour journey back to the capital, the bus journey proving once again to be the crux of the expedition!

Our "porter" into the village of Chatra

Nepal: part 1

Wow...
Where to begin? This could be a long post! It's been almost six weeks now since i arrived in Nepal and It's certainly hasn't been smooth sailing thats for sure. I had originally come out here to work with a company but decided to go it alone in the end, just to say first off it's not a reflection on them and that i'd still recommend their trips and staff, and in fact the guys have become really good friends.
Anyway, i'm unsure on how much coverage there has been in the west of the goings on in Nepal, but things here have been rocky since i arrived to say the least. Many of the areas normally bustling with tourists are ghost towns, almost certainly due to the media coverage of the Earthquake that occurred earlier on in the year. On that matter, i'd like to say please don't be put off by that. Almost all of there areas i have visited have survived unscathed or have recovered well, and if you have put off or are putting off your visit because of that then you are doing more harm than good. Tourism is Nepal's lifeblood and the country needs it to survive.
To make matters hugely worse, Nepal created a constitution shortly after my arrival. This is something the country has desperately needed for decades, but also a matter of huge controversy. The creation of this bill of rights upset India, who, to put it bluntly, there their toys out of the pram. I can't explain the issues in too much depth, but the constitution made it hard for India to gain further control of Nepal, and it's no secret that India want to own Nepal. India closed their borders after unrest in the Terrai region and haven't open since. This has cut off all fuel to the country and caused a huge amount of difficulty to everyone, creating even further economic downturn and political unrest. Taxis and buses are running out of fuel, making it hard for us to get transport anywhere, restaurants have run out of gas and food to cook, forced to prepare meals on wood fires. Hospitals are also running low on supplies. I struggle to understand how the UN haven't stepped in and forced the border to re-open with support from UN troops to keep the peace. To me it seems like a political atrocity, the type that organisations such as the UN have the responsibility to help police.
Anyway...
back to our adventures.

After i decided to go it alone i put a shout out to my kayaking pals to ask if they knew anyone else in country. After a few replies i met up with George Younger and we teamed up to try and get out paddling. Sick of the noise and pollution of Kathmandu, we headed West to the much more chilled city of Pokhara, to escape the hustle and bustle and to meet up with Roshan, a Nepali who i had become good friends with.
Roshan had been working with the same company, but had also decided to move on so was now freelance in Pokhara, and through him we managed to jump on some trips on the Kali Gandaki river in exchange for video boating for the raft companies. I was happy to oblige as it meant free transport and food, in exchange for another of my favourite past times, taking photos.
The Kali Gandaki is a holy river, with many cremations happening on it's banks and at it's confluences. It also has great geological significance as well as being home to many rare plants, animals and birds... and scorpions! It's a pretty chilled affair, with most of the rapids on the commercial section being class 3, however, it also has a couple harder rapids and is a great river to get used to paddling with exped kit on big volume.

 On our second trip, for Adrenaline Rush, the Nepali guides suggested we embark on a mini mission to run the lower Modi Khola. This river has several dams, so early season is often the only opportunity to paddle this section. After they were kind enough to arrange a taxi for us we woke up at 5 30 am to hike out of the canyon with our boats and kit to the road where our taxi should of been waiting. Notice i say "should of".
After almost an hour of waiting and calling the taxi driver, (who didn't speak English) one of the guides, Gotham, appeared around the corner.
"What are you guys still doing here?"
We explained the situation and handed him the phone. After a few heated words in Nepali, Gotham handed me the phone back.
"He'll be here in 10 minutes"
We were feeling pretty rough after our early start and hike, plus the few days of having bad stomachs before the trip after eating some dodgy food in town, but despite this we had a great run down. The river started steeply, with boulder garden grade 4, most of which was scout-able from the boat. We opted to portage all of the dams, which although may have been runnable, we didn't want to risk any metal work piercing our kayaks, or us for that matter.

The river eased off as we descended, eventually turning to continuous alpine 3/4 before rejoining the Kali Gandaki and we boosted down catching up with the raft group for some lunch.

After our stint in Pokhara, we headed back to Kathmandu to meet up with Bastien, Ciaran, Greg and Bob and to head east to paddle the world famous Sun Kosi...