Pokhara is Nepal's second city. The tourists and thus us too, stay in the district called Lakeside, which it will come as no surprise to the enlightened reader, is situated beside a lake. People come here for all kinds of attractions. For those seeking enlightenment there are yoga courses and meditation classes. For those who want a little more activity there is the lake with boats and pedalos to hire, and a few walks in the surrounding hills - namely up to the world peace pagoda which looks back over the lake, across the town and up to the Annapurna mountain range beyond with the staggering peaks of several mountains exceeding 8000 meters and as you'd expect covered in snow.
For the little bit more adventurous again, Pokhara has in one town what many countries would be envious of and at prices they could simply never match. There are countless treks in the mountains, from day treks right up to the 18 day round trip all the way round the whole range taking you through the Indian, Tibetan, Chinese, Mongolian and Middle Eastern influenced corners. If you don't fancy walking far for your thrills there's kayaking, para-gliding, white water rafting, micro-light flights and of course endless shops selling the same ripped off North Face and Columbia trekking accessories.
We thought we might spend about 5 days here and maybe take in an activity if we could motivate ourselves - our travel slogan has become "sleep in, see nothing". Our first full day in town was the Christmas day of the Daishan Festival. Everywhere was closed and the town was eerily deserted on what was a lovely morning. We found the one German owned bakery that was open for breakfast and we joined the throng trying to get some sustenance for the day ahead. The day sailed by then as the town slowly rose from its slumber to party night in the evening. The next couple of days were spent with the usual wandering, and a bit of rowing and a trip to the peace pagoda. On our first evening we had caught a glimpse of the towering snowy peaks beyond, glowing in the setting sun light. We didn't know it at the time but that would turn out to be one of our very rare sights of them in what was an unusually cloudy spell over the town for the rest of our stay.
We changed hotels after our first choice invoked a one booking one toilet roll policy and then made some research into maybe going on a kayaking course. The trip had become a little sedentary, we felt we needed some sort of adrenaline kick just to keep things interesting. We booked ourselves on a four day course. Day one would be spent on the lake, learning all the basics including how to do an 'Eskimo Roll' which is what you call it when you right yourself after a capsize by flipping your paddle in a special way and popping back upright. Day's 2, 3 and 4 would then see us out on the river, getting more confident as the river increased from grade 1 (fastish flowing calmish water) up to grade 3 and a bit (boulders, froth, destruction and terror). There were ten of us on our course, 3 instructors and a supply/rescue raft.
Day 1, on the lake, went reasonably well. In most cases we could paddle in the direction we intended. We could all successfully capsize and in varying degrees of success some of us could even right ourselves. We could all get ourselves out of an upside down kayak too if the roll was unsuccessful, an exit maneuver that by the end of the week we were all quite expert at. Escaping from the kayak by this method though leads to a boat-ful of water, a drifting oar and a wet kayaker so if the roll is not successful we learned how to approach an inverted comrade from the side so they could grab the front of our kayak with their searching hands and right themselves that way too. Nic and I had much practise at that but we stopped after I came in too quick and crushed her right hand pinky between our boats creating the first bruise of the expedition. There was some concern from Nikki and I that we hadn't fully mastered the Eskimo Roll yet but we were assured there would be plenty of time for that on the grade 1 river. Relaxed, except for a sore pinky, we went to bed looking forward to our first day on the river.
Day 2 started off pretty good. We were a bit wobbly as we slipped into the current but we kept it together and like a paddle of ducklings following their mother we made our way tentatively down river. In fact it was nearly five minutes until the first bend came and the fun began. As people tipped, and Eskimos failed, people popped out of their boats and the instructors shot off rescuing both people and crafts. Nikki and I found ourselves behind the crowd as we battled to go in the right direction. Then wanting some of the fun I took the first tumble for us into a sink hole, attempted the Eskimo roll, failed, ejected from the kayak and popped up looking for my rescue. It occurred to me as I went around the left side of the rock that we were supposed to have gone around the right side of, that there was no one around to get me. Nikki was doing everything she could to simply stay upright and watch as i got carried away to the rocks, my kayak left upturned, spinning infinitely in the hole. That was the first scare of the day but it passed on reflection that I didn't really get washed quite as far down river as I thought I did and the boat was salvaged by an instructor who had realised there were two people missing from the mess further down river. The day continued fairly well, the rapids rapidly increasing in size and with them the frequency of kayak/kayaker separations.
We were split into groups of three or four with an instructor per group and this proved pretty good. We were taught direction signs which were fairly intuitive. If the instructor waggled his paddles to the right it meant go to the right, a waggle to the left intimating the expected alternative. However instead of using his paddle our instructor just used his hand. For Nikki who was paddling without her glasses this wasn't ideal. Even I had trouble seeing what he was saying sometimes leaving the only other option which was going roughly straight on or following the person in front, hoping they had seen the signal and were in full control of their craft, almost a certainty in the negative. The result was that I tended to spot the danger just before I was on it, sometimes avoiding it, sometimes tumbling, for Nikki though, the first she knew was when she was ploughing over it all, time after time after time after time. While the rest of us were tackling grade 2 stuff, Nic was successfully conquering falls, holes, whirlpools, jaggy rocks and the like, by leaning forward and just paddling like there was no tomorrow, trying to get back out of the grade 4 stuff and coming out each time like a hero. Unable to match her dexterity the rest of us competed for the best tumbles and swims down river, I took a hard knock on the knee off a boulder on one of my swims.
Day 3. (day 2 on the river) It was unwise of Nikki to use up all her luck on the first day like that but without her glasses on, she can be forgiven for a little shortsightedness. For my part I had been moderately lucky and would continue to be so today. We had camped overnight on the beach, had a good breakfast and were off. The morning proceeded as the day before but during the last rapids before lunch we had a big one to get through. It was time for Nikki to stop being so good and start falling in like the rest of us. The only trouble was, she was rather good at that too.
Coming through the rapid she tipped, ejected and bobbed down the river a bit, watching as her kayak and her parted ways. I was ignorant to all this at the time until she came shooting past me as I did all I could to fight against the same outcome. She made good time as she raced past all the obstacles, beaten only by her kayak, quite literally, which also made good time and then spun round whacking her on the nose for good measure as it continued passed. A little dazed, Nikki's troubles were over as she fell into a pocket of calmer water off to the side and the instructor came to rescue her. Not knowing about the whack to the face, and fearing more for the kayak, our leader told her to swim to the side while he recovered her boat. White water is a funny beast though for those of us ignorant in its ways, and before you could say "where's my paddle?" Nikki was off on part two of her adventure, caught in another whirlpool and spat off again on another jaunt through the rocks, our instructor looking around, kayak now recovered to see a little white helmet and life vest bobbing off past our lunch spot. That particular adventure ended shortly after that, Nic paddling back up river in her delivered kayak with a bloody nose and a few bumps too.
That was most of the excitement for the day except the last rapids before camp where everyone got put through the spin cycle, my kayak disappearing completely and requiring a search party to find it. Due to my missing kayak, and fellow comrade, Esther's kayak doing a superb impression of the last moments of the Titanic, we got a lift through the last bit of choppy water on the raft and were the first people to set foot on the beach. Five minutes later a few successful kayaks came in, a few more were towed (including mine) and once again Nikki went racing past us all sans kayak as the Nepal national kayaking champion raced her down river to pick her up and bring her back. It had been a hard day but day 4 was yet to come.
Day 4 was a short day, a big rapid, then a HUGE rapid and then an early lunch and back on the bus to town. The big rapid was predictable, lots of us flipped, a few of us survived it and while I tried Nikki's lean forward and paddle paddle paddle technique, owing in part to finding myself stuck in a terrifying torrent, Nikki got swept under and pulled along for a bit down with the fish before getting spat out straight for the next set of rapids we were all told to stop before reaching. Plucked out by our instructor with a battered toe that looked (but wasn't) broken and being punched around a bit by the water and possibly a boulder in the face she sat out the final rapid which in secret I was wishing I could have done too.
They marched us along the shore first to take a look at it and talk us through the route to take, the result being that I was utterly freaked and terrified of what seemed my inevitable death. Soon enough though we were all getting pulled through the machine by the current, our paddles really only serving to point our boats while we got dragged wherever fate had decided. I went round the big boulder, down the hole in front of it mostly up the other side of the hole, and then suddenly had nothing else to worry about as I tumbled about like upturned flotsam. My biggest concern had been the sharp S Bend I was going to have to take around the two very big and particularly Jaggy rocks, which hid inside two churning mountains of froth, betrayed only by the glinting sunlight. One arm over my face, I ejected from the kayak, and got carried along while I tried to work out which way was up to swim to the surface. The life jacket did it's stuff though and within a few seconds, which seemed like a few minutes I popped up, delighted to discover that all the peril was already quite a distance behind me. All that remained now was not to crash into the rest of the debris that was kayaks, paddles and bodies racing down with me.
The trip had been a lot of fun despite our various bruises and bumps. We had thought it was going to be a four day course, at the end of which we would be able to cope with the conditions we had gone through. Instead it was really just a guided trip where the instructors were mostly available to rescue you when the inevitable happened. As such we seemed to spend more time in total terror of situations we felt in no way equipped for. Despite that though, we survived to tell the tale and it was most certainly an adrenaline kick, and punch, and scrape and bump and dunking...
For the little bit more adventurous again, Pokhara has in one town what many countries would be envious of and at prices they could simply never match. There are countless treks in the mountains, from day treks right up to the 18 day round trip all the way round the whole range taking you through the Indian, Tibetan, Chinese, Mongolian and Middle Eastern influenced corners. If you don't fancy walking far for your thrills there's kayaking, para-gliding, white water rafting, micro-light flights and of course endless shops selling the same ripped off North Face and Columbia trekking accessories.
We thought we might spend about 5 days here and maybe take in an activity if we could motivate ourselves - our travel slogan has become "sleep in, see nothing". Our first full day in town was the Christmas day of the Daishan Festival. Everywhere was closed and the town was eerily deserted on what was a lovely morning. We found the one German owned bakery that was open for breakfast and we joined the throng trying to get some sustenance for the day ahead. The day sailed by then as the town slowly rose from its slumber to party night in the evening. The next couple of days were spent with the usual wandering, and a bit of rowing and a trip to the peace pagoda. On our first evening we had caught a glimpse of the towering snowy peaks beyond, glowing in the setting sun light. We didn't know it at the time but that would turn out to be one of our very rare sights of them in what was an unusually cloudy spell over the town for the rest of our stay.
We changed hotels after our first choice invoked a one booking one toilet roll policy and then made some research into maybe going on a kayaking course. The trip had become a little sedentary, we felt we needed some sort of adrenaline kick just to keep things interesting. We booked ourselves on a four day course. Day one would be spent on the lake, learning all the basics including how to do an 'Eskimo Roll' which is what you call it when you right yourself after a capsize by flipping your paddle in a special way and popping back upright. Day's 2, 3 and 4 would then see us out on the river, getting more confident as the river increased from grade 1 (fastish flowing calmish water) up to grade 3 and a bit (boulders, froth, destruction and terror). There were ten of us on our course, 3 instructors and a supply/rescue raft.
Day 1, on the lake, went reasonably well. In most cases we could paddle in the direction we intended. We could all successfully capsize and in varying degrees of success some of us could even right ourselves. We could all get ourselves out of an upside down kayak too if the roll was unsuccessful, an exit maneuver that by the end of the week we were all quite expert at. Escaping from the kayak by this method though leads to a boat-ful of water, a drifting oar and a wet kayaker so if the roll is not successful we learned how to approach an inverted comrade from the side so they could grab the front of our kayak with their searching hands and right themselves that way too. Nic and I had much practise at that but we stopped after I came in too quick and crushed her right hand pinky between our boats creating the first bruise of the expedition. There was some concern from Nikki and I that we hadn't fully mastered the Eskimo Roll yet but we were assured there would be plenty of time for that on the grade 1 river. Relaxed, except for a sore pinky, we went to bed looking forward to our first day on the river.
Day 2 started off pretty good. We were a bit wobbly as we slipped into the current but we kept it together and like a paddle of ducklings following their mother we made our way tentatively down river. In fact it was nearly five minutes until the first bend came and the fun began. As people tipped, and Eskimos failed, people popped out of their boats and the instructors shot off rescuing both people and crafts. Nikki and I found ourselves behind the crowd as we battled to go in the right direction. Then wanting some of the fun I took the first tumble for us into a sink hole, attempted the Eskimo roll, failed, ejected from the kayak and popped up looking for my rescue. It occurred to me as I went around the left side of the rock that we were supposed to have gone around the right side of, that there was no one around to get me. Nikki was doing everything she could to simply stay upright and watch as i got carried away to the rocks, my kayak left upturned, spinning infinitely in the hole. That was the first scare of the day but it passed on reflection that I didn't really get washed quite as far down river as I thought I did and the boat was salvaged by an instructor who had realised there were two people missing from the mess further down river. The day continued fairly well, the rapids rapidly increasing in size and with them the frequency of kayak/kayaker separations.
We were split into groups of three or four with an instructor per group and this proved pretty good. We were taught direction signs which were fairly intuitive. If the instructor waggled his paddles to the right it meant go to the right, a waggle to the left intimating the expected alternative. However instead of using his paddle our instructor just used his hand. For Nikki who was paddling without her glasses this wasn't ideal. Even I had trouble seeing what he was saying sometimes leaving the only other option which was going roughly straight on or following the person in front, hoping they had seen the signal and were in full control of their craft, almost a certainty in the negative. The result was that I tended to spot the danger just before I was on it, sometimes avoiding it, sometimes tumbling, for Nikki though, the first she knew was when she was ploughing over it all, time after time after time after time. While the rest of us were tackling grade 2 stuff, Nic was successfully conquering falls, holes, whirlpools, jaggy rocks and the like, by leaning forward and just paddling like there was no tomorrow, trying to get back out of the grade 4 stuff and coming out each time like a hero. Unable to match her dexterity the rest of us competed for the best tumbles and swims down river, I took a hard knock on the knee off a boulder on one of my swims.
Day 3. (day 2 on the river) It was unwise of Nikki to use up all her luck on the first day like that but without her glasses on, she can be forgiven for a little shortsightedness. For my part I had been moderately lucky and would continue to be so today. We had camped overnight on the beach, had a good breakfast and were off. The morning proceeded as the day before but during the last rapids before lunch we had a big one to get through. It was time for Nikki to stop being so good and start falling in like the rest of us. The only trouble was, she was rather good at that too.
Coming through the rapid she tipped, ejected and bobbed down the river a bit, watching as her kayak and her parted ways. I was ignorant to all this at the time until she came shooting past me as I did all I could to fight against the same outcome. She made good time as she raced past all the obstacles, beaten only by her kayak, quite literally, which also made good time and then spun round whacking her on the nose for good measure as it continued passed. A little dazed, Nikki's troubles were over as she fell into a pocket of calmer water off to the side and the instructor came to rescue her. Not knowing about the whack to the face, and fearing more for the kayak, our leader told her to swim to the side while he recovered her boat. White water is a funny beast though for those of us ignorant in its ways, and before you could say "where's my paddle?" Nikki was off on part two of her adventure, caught in another whirlpool and spat off again on another jaunt through the rocks, our instructor looking around, kayak now recovered to see a little white helmet and life vest bobbing off past our lunch spot. That particular adventure ended shortly after that, Nic paddling back up river in her delivered kayak with a bloody nose and a few bumps too.
That was most of the excitement for the day except the last rapids before camp where everyone got put through the spin cycle, my kayak disappearing completely and requiring a search party to find it. Due to my missing kayak, and fellow comrade, Esther's kayak doing a superb impression of the last moments of the Titanic, we got a lift through the last bit of choppy water on the raft and were the first people to set foot on the beach. Five minutes later a few successful kayaks came in, a few more were towed (including mine) and once again Nikki went racing past us all sans kayak as the Nepal national kayaking champion raced her down river to pick her up and bring her back. It had been a hard day but day 4 was yet to come.
Day 4 was a short day, a big rapid, then a HUGE rapid and then an early lunch and back on the bus to town. The big rapid was predictable, lots of us flipped, a few of us survived it and while I tried Nikki's lean forward and paddle paddle paddle technique, owing in part to finding myself stuck in a terrifying torrent, Nikki got swept under and pulled along for a bit down with the fish before getting spat out straight for the next set of rapids we were all told to stop before reaching. Plucked out by our instructor with a battered toe that looked (but wasn't) broken and being punched around a bit by the water and possibly a boulder in the face she sat out the final rapid which in secret I was wishing I could have done too.
They marched us along the shore first to take a look at it and talk us through the route to take, the result being that I was utterly freaked and terrified of what seemed my inevitable death. Soon enough though we were all getting pulled through the machine by the current, our paddles really only serving to point our boats while we got dragged wherever fate had decided. I went round the big boulder, down the hole in front of it mostly up the other side of the hole, and then suddenly had nothing else to worry about as I tumbled about like upturned flotsam. My biggest concern had been the sharp S Bend I was going to have to take around the two very big and particularly Jaggy rocks, which hid inside two churning mountains of froth, betrayed only by the glinting sunlight. One arm over my face, I ejected from the kayak, and got carried along while I tried to work out which way was up to swim to the surface. The life jacket did it's stuff though and within a few seconds, which seemed like a few minutes I popped up, delighted to discover that all the peril was already quite a distance behind me. All that remained now was not to crash into the rest of the debris that was kayaks, paddles and bodies racing down with me.
The trip had been a lot of fun despite our various bruises and bumps. We had thought it was going to be a four day course, at the end of which we would be able to cope with the conditions we had gone through. Instead it was really just a guided trip where the instructors were mostly available to rescue you when the inevitable happened. As such we seemed to spend more time in total terror of situations we felt in no way equipped for. Despite that though, we survived to tell the tale and it was most certainly an adrenaline kick, and punch, and scrape and bump and dunking...
1 comment:
Could have given you a glasses strap Nic!
(am so jealous!)
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