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RIO BASTARDO
Welcome to Mars...the Zara Chu below the get-in. I was feeling pretty nervous, and revealed this by asking stupid
questions. Darryl went first, volunteering without fuss. Tom and I watched
him run the entrance rapid into the sheer sided gorge. He found
a micro-eddy about ten
metres above the rock-fall that happened to be blocking the whole river, and
grabbed a greasy rock to secure himself. It wasn't enough however, and his
boat swung back out into the current. Darryl turned his head downstream and
appeared to be considering running the evil looking maelstrom below. As distant
spectators peering into the gorge, we couldn't help him but we could certainly
panic on his behalf. Macho stuff or what? I'd just love to have you believing that the above scenario constitutes an average days' paddle for me. But the truth is elsewhere. A quick glance at my BCU logbook has just told me that on the same date a year before, I was busy kayaking the raging ferocity of Lulworth Cove. I'm still somewhat confused as to how exactly I wound up on the Zara Chu. I had wanted to visit the Ladakh region of India ever since reading Paul Mackenzies' article on the 'Little Tibet Expedition' ('Canoeist', Dec '92). A high altitude desert tucked away to the north of the Himalayas, Ladakh was supposed to contain one of the worlds' best paddling trips; the combined Tsarap, Zanskar and Indus Rivers. The appeal of the 'Grand Canyon of Asia' rested partly with my desire to see the Himalayas again, and partly with the fact that this Grand Canyon didn't have an eleven year waiting list and would certainly be cheaper to visit than the Arizona version. My usual paddling buddies don't have the same amount of time on their hands as me, so it was clear I had to go alone or not at all. This summer I said goodbye to my classes at the end of Term and took advantage of a cheap last minute flight to Delhi. Before I left, I was put in touch with Tom and Darryl, two Brit paddlers who were possibly/ maybe/ perhaps going to be in North India at the same time. Flying my Whiplash to Delhi (and back) was no problem or cost,
the airline folk neither blinked at it nor weighed my unwieldy
kit. I could have turned up with a stuffed Rhino for all they seemed
to care. The journey up to Leh, capital of Ladakh was more diverting,
involving an extended stay in Bus Hell. Select experiences included
waking up in mid-air halfway down a bus aisle (don't ever pick
the centre rear seat) and lying flat on the roofrack with strings
of prayer flags and live power cables swishing past inches overhead.
At least I had company for part of the journey. As the Manali -
Leh bus was about to pull off (two hours late) to begin it's two
day epic trundle across the Himalayas, a jeep pulled up with two
battered kayaks on top and two battered kayakers inside. Somewhat
improbably, I'd run into Tom and Darryl. They were disorientated
and unaware that they had nearly missed the bus; this was due to
the combined effects of running Monsoon Madness rivers and of a
week spent in Manali, the most spaced out town on earth. The journey
that followed was superlative, climbing to altitudes exceeding...well,
something very high I guess. By the second day we sat up on the
roof suffering from Catatonic Scenery Overload Syndrome;
Up in Leh, we recovered from the journey and conducted an extended comparison survey of the numerous Cake Shops. Spectacular Buddhist Monasteries overshadowed the town from a steep hill; we told ourselves we would climb up there once 'acclimatised'. The local raft guides made us feel pretty welcome. After a few days, excuses to stay dry began to wear pretty thin. In order to maintain some kind of credibility with our hosts, we were forced to get our long plastic suitcases wet. We took up an invitation to join a raft trip on a nearby section of the Indus River. This proved to be an opportunity to sun ourselves on bouncy easy rapids which the raft customers often chose to swim; it became clear that we weren't desperately needed in a safety capacity! This paddle gave us some ideas of what to expect on Ladakh rivers. The scenery was generally utterly barren and vertically inclined. As we reached the (fairly beautiful) point where the Indus was joined by the Zanskar, the warm water suddenly became liquid ice...no more swimming from the rafters! In our suite in the 'Leh Hilton' (actually a cowshed full of raft kit), we planned our big trip. This was to be the classic Tsarap/ Zanskar 'Grand Canyon' trip with a surreal variation; we would begin on an obscure tributary of the Tsarap called the Zara Chu. This ran from a put-in at fourteen thousand feet-ish for forty miles-ish and dropped two thousand feet-ish (grade unknown-ish) before joining the Tsarap. The only clue we had to go on was a vague mention by Pete Knowles that it was unpaddled and seemed to include 'interesting' gorges. With seven days' kit and food concertinaed into the back of my low volume Whiplash, I was clearly going to provide hilarious entertainment. The journey to the put-in was retrospectively code-named 'Operation
Ordeal by Jeep'. We could have taken the bus up there, but for
convenience, speed and comfort, hired our own jeep. Ha bloodyha.
Operation OBJ began when the jeep driver inexplicably refused to
set off for a couple of hours and pretended to speak no English.
Having finally got going, he managed a few miles before trundling
to a halt. He suddenly regained multilinguistic capabilities.
An extended stand-off began. Our driver refused to budge and driver #2 returned every half hour or so, waving bits of scribbled scrap paper which were variously claimed to be a driving licence and orders to us from Head Office in Leh. Each time he returned he brought more henchmen with him, presumably for 'moral' support. We did NOT want to travel with this guy. Matters finally came to a head when Tom (not a small fellow) put a grim expression on and faced down the whole crowd with a hard stare. Suddenly petrol was produced and we were on our way, our original jeep having apparently fixed itself. Operation OBJ wasn't over. Running the engine dry had cream-crackered
the engine and we kept on breaking down, this time for real. This
got beyond being a novel experience when we shuddered to a halt,
clearly permanently, near the top of a seventeen thousand foot
pass. Hitching away and abandoning our driver seemed the obvious
option; except that traffic was thinner than the air. After an
indeterminate period of thirsty boredom, a military convoy of ten
ton trucks wiggled it's way up the hill towards us. I waggled my
thumb, wondering just how big the soldiers' guns would be. Tom
wasn't convinced of my plan.
Our put-in was a shabby cluster of roadside tents (sorry, a 'Motel') going by the name of Pang. We sampled their dahl and rice, before making an early start the next morning. The Zara Chu, our epic unrun raging river, was an embarrassingly pathetic stream.
Rounding the first corner, the valley floor opened out to provide a dozen or so miles of shallow braided slogging. At least the scenery was bizarre enough to take my mind off it all. According to one map, the Zara Chu proper only joined us at the end of this stretch (although we didn't see it, perhaps it was subterranean?) and the river suddenly had much more volume. Realising that it had to go downhill at some point, it suddenly narrowed and flowed into a gorge....which was blocked by a boulder choke. We portaged up 'n' over using a faint Yeti path, with fingers crossed that this would be the only portage... The river then flowed into gorge number two, a more substantial
affair! As we passed from blazing sunlight to it's gloomy interior,
Darryl's sixth sense kicked in;
Actually it percolated through more undercuts, chokes, sieves, siphons, sumps and other fairly scary things than I could wave a paddle at. With no route along the bank downstream (indeed, no bank at all), Darryl and I climbed the nasty loose scree to the left and gained a glimpse of the river returning to it's natural grade 1 state somewhere far downstream. Returning scratched and grazed from our recce, we agreed that portaging the boats up the scree would be lethal. We lugged our boats back out the gorge the way we entered. After scoffing dinner down we stretched out on a beach to doze, watched by something large, unidentified and four-legged (and presumably salivating) up on the cliffs... The next morning we crossed to the left bank and tried to carry
our boats right up and over the whole gorge. It was easy at first,
but became progressively nastier as the 'path' degenerated into
cliffs and horrendous loose earth slopes high above the river.
As the portage dragged on into hours, the altitude and dehydration
caught up with me. I felt like I'd suddenly put ten stone in weight
on; constantly breathless and uncoordinated. Thankfully I had the
other two on hand to motivate me (i.e. swear at me) or I'd still
be there. Settling my boat on an imaginary rock, I watched in horror
as it pinballed down a steep gully towards the river. Impossibly,
it was halted by a small ledge; I can thank luck and the quality
of Perception plastic for not ending our trip early. We finally
staggered down to the riverbank and gulped the Zara Chu dry. Darryl
reflected upon our experiences so far;
On the morning of day three, we portaged the boulder choke through a rather convenient 'tunnel' which lead straight into another technical grade 4 gorge. I don't know if I've done these stunning gorges full credit yet. They just went on forever....vertically sided and hued in indescribable cacophonies of technicolour (just try saying that quickly). Top paddling though this was, there were still plenty of opportunities to 'claim your refund' so we progressed carefully. We were silent and tense each time we entered the portals of yet another gorge. We knew that we'd been lucky so far. However dire the previous days' portaging had been, at least we'd always been able to portage the horror story rapids... ...and then suddenly it was over! The valley sides dropped away
and the Zara Chu mingled with the larger Tsarap river. We whooped
and paddle span, ready to forgive Rio Bastardo instantly. I'm sure
I should have just felt relieved and chastened, but for some reason
I felt bloody great. We headed off down the Tsarap towards Phuktal
Monastery, twenty miles away. We were there in under two hours,
the Tsarap was well high and flushing like a cistern! High above
the river on the roof of the incredible monastery, surrounded by
throngs of infant Buddhist monks, we reflected upon the general
weirdness of our surroundings. Mark Rainsley.
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