In the spirit of closing down dams and increasing loadshedding up to 18 hours, this weekend was spent white water rafting near the Tibetan border, north-east of Kathmandu.
A bit of background information. The rivers of Nepal are disgusting. To be fair, I have only seen two, the Bagmati River which on the best of days smells more like fresh feces as opposed to fermented sewage water, and the Botekoshi river which rages through the mountains with just the right amount of power you need to entice a bunch of foreigners and their inflatable rafts to hurtle themselves into the icy fresh Tibetan glacier water (it may not actually be glacier water). The Bagmati stinks like no other, the journey from Patan into Thamel should never be done without a scarf of facemask for the journey, and the beautiful Botekoshi looks like it might be on it's down a similar path. Fortunately, there are a few modern people in Nepal who know that throwing all your waste into the river is a bad idea because the gods will NOT magically clean it up one day, and they've decided to do something about it. And what better way than to invite Nepal's youth of today to splash around in a healthy river and show them how fun clean and clear rivers can be.
A water revolution complete with team building activities and Tibetan rastas.
The first day was mellow. Enjoyed chiya on the ring road (Kathmandu's type of highway which circles the city) within the comforts of a warm SUV until the driver got tired of waiting for the delayed bus, kicked us out and left. Fair enough really. So there we were, six of us prime targets for curious eyes and highway vendors. Skip 3 hours ahead and we're all holding hands with 80 other people walking around in circles around the 12 year old winner of the river awareness competition in an attempt to demonstrate the ripple like effects of the river. The rafting on this day was fun. Swimmers and non-swimmers were split up into two groups. Two swimmers, four non-swimmers, a guide, helmets, paddles and life vests, and we were off down the lazy river. There was lots of splashing involved and by the time the evening disco at Borderlands resort came round, I was too tired and lazy to participate.
The second day of rapids was better, although the river seemed to have a lot less water in it. There was a lot of getting in and out of rafts and bouncing involved. We were able to choose our own groups this time, which only seemed to add a lot of pressure on individual performance after all the complaining that had been done the night before. After some time, the bird enthusiast in our raft became distracted by the birds, the Brits stopped listening to commands and our professional guide handed over his leadership position to a young trainee who tended to shout out commands a couple seconds too late. "Get down!" *CRASH*.
It was all good fun though and I would definitely recommend it to anyone coming to Nepal. Just another 15 cm of water and it would have been amazing.
The second day of rapids was better, although the river seemed to have a lot less water in it. There was a lot of getting in and out of rafts and bouncing involved. We were able to choose our own groups this time, which only seemed to add a lot of pressure on individual performance after all the complaining that had been done the night before. After some time, the bird enthusiast in our raft became distracted by the birds, the Brits stopped listening to commands and our professional guide handed over his leadership position to a young trainee who tended to shout out commands a couple seconds too late. "Get down!" *CRASH*.
It was all good fun though and I would definitely recommend it to anyone coming to Nepal. Just another 15 cm of water and it would have been amazing.
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