There has been high demand for the full river rafting story, so I have finally finished it, the blog bum that I am. I don't spend much time on the computer but here in Singapore we are afforded a bit more technological luxury, so here it is! And yes, it is a long post.
I have been river rafting once before, as a Girl Scout, when I was about 10 years old. I and the other youngest girl in our troop were thrown in the boat with our two troop leaders since we were too young/small to navigate the waters on our own. Laneisha and I screamed, laughed, and cried our way down what seemed like a watery roller coaster ride. It was such a thrill that I have been wanting to try it again ever since. Fast forward almost twenty years later, here in Nepal, and there is no excuse I can give to *not* try it again, since we are apparently in rip roaring rafting country...
We delayed our rafting trip by a few days due to what at the time we thought was giardia. We left early in the morning by bus with our group of about 25 people to reach the upper Bhote Kose River, about three hours northeast of Kathmandu. After being abandoned by our bus driver, who stopped the bus in a small town and walked off to "visit family", (he was replaced an hour later by some guy off the street who stalled the bus every time he hit the brakes, which was probably not frequently enough) and skipping the promised tea break, we were more than ready to get off the bus, stretch our legs, and eat whatever lunch they put in front of us: cold noodles with mustard, some salad and peanutbutter with bread. Thank goodness for the peanutbutter!
While lunch was being made, we helped our guides prepare the rafts. Lunch was shared with a local dog and a few cows. Afterwards we had a training session on the river side, where the water was so loud many people (including Mike) couldn't hear the instructions. We then seperated out into the three rafts with 9-10 people in each raft (including the guides). A safety kayaker would accompany us down the river to scout out tough areas and be on hand in case anyone fell out.
Mike and I, along with the one other American on our trip, a group of five Polish travelers and our guide Kamel led the three rafts down the river. We practiced rowing, turning, "getting down" (ducking and holding on) and sliding to one side of the boat (to prevent capsizing). Getting eight people to do everything correctly at the same time is more challenging then you might imagine, particularly when the guys in the front had some trouble with the English instructions from our Nepalese guide.
Kamel made certain that those who screeched the loudest (guess who) got the wettest, so we entered several rapids at deliberately poor angles, oftentimes spinning into them as if we had no control of the boat -- good practice for reality.
That night, Mike and I teamed up with an Australian couple and conspired to rearrange the boat groups so we could be with others who might be more compatible (that is, follow directions, understand English, and row consistently). The next day the four of us and another British couple (who Mike and I had met briefly in Songpan, China -- small world!) ended up in a boat together. We were quite pleased with ourselves. We started off north of the dam, which is known to be rougher than the south side. Before long, the river was tossing us pretty well, but as a team we were working together.
Our learning experience began when within half an hour of putting in, we hit rapids at an odd angle and two of us flew out of the boat -- I was one of the lucky two! I had prepared myself mentally for the possibility of landing in the icy water, getting a mouthful of it, and testing my swimming muscles, but once I hit the water all that confidence went swirling downstream. I was immediately swept under the raft itself, and as I came up for air I was met with a hard plastic wall and more water. In the maybe ten seconds that I was under, which as you can imagine felt a heck of a lot longer than that, I went from "I'm gonna drown under this raft!" to "wait a second, I can do this" and climbed out from under the raft just as our guide had taught us, by treating the boat like a ladder and pulling yourself in one direction. As soon as I surfaced I was hauled from the water and scrambling to get back into position with my oar, even as another one of our team (Neal of the Brits) was still swirling in the water. Mike tells me that I flopped into the boat laughing, and remembering that now, I was probably congratulating myself for having survived. He wasn't too impressed with the experience of seeing me disappear and after the adrenaline wore off, I realized that I was mildly traumatized as well. But wait! It gets better!
Our next segment down river had another one of our people go down, the other half of the British couple. After we hauled her back into the boat, all three boats pulled over to take a break. We took a few breaths, clambered back into our rafts and revved up for the next test: avoiding a huge series of boulders just downstream. The safety kayakers went ahead to asess the situation and communicate to the guides the best approach, which was to cut straight across the river to the far bank and let the current sweep us past the danger zone. Our team watched as the two other boats dug their oars in and powered across, just above the boulders. Our guide explained our plan of attack, emphasizing strong rowing, and we rallied a battle cry although we all knew we would surely be going for a swim.
I would have liked to have seen this all transpire from the river banks, because we were probably a pretty comical sight -- within just a few yards of our drop in point we were spinning right for the rocks. All we could do then was GET DOWN and hold on. It seemed we had as good of a chance making it across if we had just curled up into balls on the floor of the boat. Going over the boulders threw Dylan from the boat, taking Mike out with him before becoming a dot in the white water and disappearing downstream. For a moment the boat tipped on to its side, the bottom of the boat parrallel with the waterfall we had just gone over. Mike somehow managed to hold on to the raft's ropes and was looking up at us from below. Once the boat became level again, rather speeding off downstream after Dylan, our boat was trapped in the waterfall/whirlpool created by the boulders. For what seemed like an eternity we were stuck in a slow motion see-saw, having to throw our weight from one side to the other to keep from tipping over. The boat was so full of water that we were standing to keep our balance. After the initial shock of going over the rocks and trying to stay on top of the water, panic set in for Marriane and I -- she because her boyfriend was swept downstream, and me because Mike's face was nearly all that was visible as he clung to the edge of the boat trying not to get pulled away by the rapids. The horrible see-sawing, the roar of the water slamming over the rocks on top of us, and the complete helplessness of the situation was overwhelming. Our guide did his best to keep us together, and at one point it seemed like the only way we would free ourselves from this watery purgatory was just by jumping into the river. In retrospect, through all my screaming and everyone's flopping around, I realize our guide was calculating and waiting. At the precise moment that the boat freed itself, our guide heaved Mike back into the boat and we were flying downstream again.
We had to maintain some kind of composure and continuing rowing several mintues after the waterfall experience, minus one of our oars which had disappeared. When we finally beached we were relieved to see Dylan in one piece and drying in the sun -- he was picked up by a kayaker. At this point the drama had been enough. Mike and I had swallowed and inhaled our share of river water and couldn't stomach the lunch that was prepared. Standing on hot, knobby rocks never felt so good. Nothing could convince me to get back into the boat, and I didn't feel one bit bad about it. I was perfectly content to sit on the beach and wait for everyone else to finish their adventure before heading back to Kathmandu. Mike agreed, and so did the British couple. Thus our river rafting experience ended a few hours early, but I look at it in terms of the quality of our experience, which was just crammed into a shorter period of time. More bang for our buck.
As we discussed later, the six of us learned that being a part of a couple in the same boat makes rafting a lot more complicated. In addition to worrying just about yourself, you are constantly keeping an eye on your significant other to make sure they're still in the boat too. Even if you are perfect teammates in terms of being able to read each other in the boat, you are handicapped by your concern for the other. It also didn't help that all six of us could probably be classified as "light weights" -- either short, skinny, or both. Not much muscle power, and certainly not enough weight to keep the boat from tipping easily.
Mike and I both developed "river coughs" and had bruises that lasted well into India. My left elbow still hurts when I put pressure on it. As a final note, a week or so after our trial by water, I looked up the criteria for classifying river rapids. It is likely that the 3s and 4s we were going through in Nepal would be deemed 4s and 5s (on a scale of 1 to 6) back home. Does this make us expert rafters?
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