A Week in Nepal

Just returned from an 8 day rafting expedition down the Sun Koshi river. 7 bravehardy souls and myself made up the motely crew, a raft of fools if you will. A trilingual doctor couple from the States, an Israeli Tankdriver who had just finished his army service (shocker), 2 cool French dudes (one whose English was non-existant, the other one was worse), a Japanese/Chinese/Hong Kongese girl, a young American raft guide chick and a dreadlocked Kayaker from Quebec.
The first day was lovely, just floating down this beautiful river, looking at the stunning mountains in the distance. At night we camped on the beaches by the river and the 3 lads from the gear raft would cook up a storm with minimal utensils. Day 2 saw the river get slightly unrulely to say the least. We had to scout one rapid, which involved throwing ourselves into a furious tributary and swimming across to the otherside. Only 5 meters across, but the water was so fast flowing that it was bloody difficult. I managed to smash my knee into a rock in the process and I have been hobbling ever since. We survived that rapid only to flip the boat on the next smaller one. American number one nearly drowned and dislocated his shoulder at the same time. Japanese girl managed to drink at least 0.01% of the Sun Koshi and was spluttering for hours afterwards.
Day 3 saw us encounter the Hakapur, which is the biggest rapid on the river. We scouted it from the sides and to be honest it was more like a clip out of "The perfect storm". I have never seen so much water move down a river so quickly. There was also a hole in the middle of the river in which you could have buried a small town. Our guide sent us down the left side and it was all looking great for about 1.2 seconds and then in a millisecond we lost half our crew as a tsumami hit the left side of the boat. They all left superman stylee as the were catapulted from the springy raft into the ice whirlpools. I managed to stay on along with the Guide, the American girl and one of the dynamic French duo. We were pummelled like Rocky smacking up a shoulder of cold pork for at least a minute (picking up the missing Frenchman on the way) and we flew out the other side unscathed to catch up with the survivors who were now hanging on to the safety Kayakers for dear life. They all look liked they had been put on a 100 degree white cotton wash with full spin cycle. Needless to say each one of them thought they were a goner. One puked, one cried... Ah, holidays... Beats Lanzarote any day :)
We managed through the next couple of days with no loss of life, well unless you count the chickens which we bought some nights from local villagers. They were dispatched with a nice Gurkha cleaver to the neck and now I truely know what "to run around like a headless chicken" means... The second last night saw us camp on a slightly low lying beach and after the usual beers (yes, even in the darkest depths of Nepal we had our beer) and some of the local Moonshine (Raksi) we all proceeded in an orderly manner to bed (8.30pm like clockwork). During the night it rained quite heavily and I awoke with the sun only to find half the kitchen missing. Yes indeed, the inflated floodwaters had made away with some buckets, a bunch of bananas, the kettle, 1 barrel of food, 2 tables and a full cylinder of gas... The Nepali guides were already up, boiling water in a big pot and dispatching local hill kids up to their villages to buy instant ramen noodles for lunch.
The last day saw us flip just for the hell of it and paddle out of the last canyon into the great nothern Indian floodplains. Not a hill in sight. A lovely cold shower, some of the usual Dahl Bhat, a couple of ice cold beers and we hopped merrily into the bus for the 16 hour bus ride back to Kathmandu. No suspension + bad roads + noisy bus + bad drivers = no sleep. Later.