Rafting the Kali Gandaki
Trip Start
Sep 30, 2009
1
9
37
Trip End
Ongoing
Kali Gandaki, Nepal
Sunday, November 8, 2009
Mike and I bit the bullet and decided to sign up for rafting! We chose a 3 day 2 night paddle down the Kali Gandaki river which can get up to a class 4+ (pretty scary). We looked around when we met our fellow paddlers and realized we were in the upper echelon of age range. Pretty soon we realized age didn't matter and began to meet the others while stopping for a lunch break and getting our pre trip instruction. We were a pretty eclectic group including Israelis, Dutch, Belgium, Spanish, Brits, Polish and Danish people. I had a great time going around and chatting everyone up.
The rafting itself was more challenging than I'd planned and we spent the entire rafting time soaking wet from being splashed. The second day was the scariest...especially when we flipped our raft and we were all spilled into a huge current and had to be rescued by the other boats.I was trapped under the raft for a while and had to claw myself out to get some air only to find I'd lost a shoe and my sunglasses. Luckily my shoe stayed in the boat and was still there when we flipped back up!
The three boats were divided up into people who liked flipping and people who were o.k with it and people who did not want to swim in the river. Guess what boat Mike and I chose to end up in? Of course we stayed with the flippers! We flipped over two more times...the second time Mike was kicked in the head just as he was about to grab the raft and was sent down some gnarly rapids. Mike said he drank some of the river and called the flip a very intense experience I had to be towed to shore by a rescue kayak on another flip just before the next set of rapids. We ended up hanging out with the other paddlers when we got back to Pokhara and spent the next days dancing, eating, golfing and paragliding with a few of them...more later.
Except that the night we got back from rafting I ended up out with a few 'younger' ones and didn't get back to the hotel til three. Mike was sleeping and didn't hear me knocking on the door...the Nepalese hotel worker had to try our windows til he found one open then pushed me in...I wasn't feeling very good the next day.
Mike's Entry.
Mo said it all pretty well and the pictures let's you know how much fun we really had. The rafting on the Kali Gandaki river with the Paddle Nepal company was great value for the money. I recommend it to any of you adventurer types.We lucky enough to paddle with some really great people. Made some lasting friendships.
Comments
I Love your rafting story & photos!! Looks like it was an amazing 3 days! It's really great to see your adventures and photos as they happen, thanks for sharing!
The rafting trip looks like it was a wild adventure -soggy but thrilling. Glad you survived the flips. Was it that warm that you wanted to flip often? Snow has started here yesterday (16 nov) more today. The great Kitimat fittnes program has started for another year - the shoveling.
I want so bad to be a world traveler too. I think the travel bug has resurfaced within me. Happy to hear your travels are fun, exciting, adventurous, etc, etc.