Whitewater Tourists - Nepal

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Last Updated on Sunday, 29 January 2012 16:39

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White Water Tourists in Nepal!

Nepal, the most gorgeous looking country anywhere! Friendly people, great paddling, easy logistics. If you haven't yet been, go! We were in Nepal from early September to early December.

Info Sources
Rivers We Paddled
Travel
Accommodation and Food
Costs
Summary

Info Sources

'Whitewater Nepal' by Pete Knowles is well known and indispensible, orderable from the bookshop.

Maps are a mixed bag...you can buy nice colourful maps in Kathmandus' bookshops, but they tend to be decorative rather than particularly useful. The Guidebook maps are usually sufficient. If you are planning a bit of exploratory paddling then try to get hold of Tactical Pilotage Charts from Stanfords Map Shop in London.

Raft companies are the best on-the-spot source of info. They tend to be very experienced and can usually help with the logistics of getting to rivers that they don't raft.

Rivers We Paddled

* - 'Trip Highlight'. Do it!

After hard paddling in India, Nepal's rivers were usually 'light relief' by comparison! Blue and warm, there is simply nowhere with rivers like them.

Trisuli - Grade 3+. A great intro to big water. We paddled this in the monsoon when it was washed out big waves (40 miles in four hours!) and in October, when it was still a day trip, but with plenty of playspots and eddies. A lot of people don't like this run, we think it's underrated.

Bhote Kosi (lower) - Grade 4, later in the season grade 3. in September, a fantastic blast with the odd big hole. We paddled it many times following rafts.

Sun Kosi - Grade 2 (4+). A seven day raft trip, we safety boated this in the monsoon. The rapids were massive but widely spread out, the rain kept coming. Not a great kayaking experience in high water, but certainly a great river journey experience...does this make sense?

Kids on the Sun Kosi.

Seti - Grade 4 (5), later in the season Grade 3+ (4). An afternoon trip near to Pokhara, we ran this many times whilst stuck in Pokhara. It has a great playhole and some great steep sections high up.

*Karnali - Grade 4. A stunning eight day trip with rafts. The bottom half is flat but the jungle section is amazing, endless playspots only disturbed by fishing out the odd raft customer. Unmissable.

*Bhote Kosi (upper) - Grade 5 in mid October, easing to 4(4+) later in the season. We had an unforgettable day on this in October with some Idaho paddlers, sunny, challenging and raft-free. Later on we safety boated this section which was stressful...there isn't a lot of room on the Bhote for kayaks and rubber busses together.

Balephi Khola - Grade 4. A very pretty river, lots of low volume boulder 'forests' to sneak through.

Kali Gandaki - Grade 3+ (4+). A gorgeous three day play trip, we did this a few times with rafts. A few harder rapids near the start, then no end of great waves to shred.

*Madi Khola - Grade 4 (4+, 5). One of the best looking rivers we've done. A lousy trek in with Porter problems was more than compensated for by lovely scenery and two days of enjoyable low volume eddy hopping. The top section was rather hard in places and led to Mark swimming after breaking a paddle. A very 'unspoilt' valley, don't expect McDonalds. We trekked stright from the Madi to the Marsyandi.

Miles and miles of blue water and stunning scenery...the Madi Khola.

Tim Rex and Simon airborne on the Madi.

*Marsyandi - Grade 4 (4+, 5). Three days (or two in late October!) of mindblowing readrun grade 4, we know nothing like it. A high water run with friends Tim and Rob was awesome, did they ever quake in their boots! We later returned as safety boaters and enjoyed five days running sections of the river over and over. One of our favourite rivers anywhere..and due to be dammed soon, unbelievably.

Modi Khola - Grade 4+ (5). A hard steep paddle with a day long trek-in. It was rather high and Tim/ Rob walked out. Disaster struck when we both dropped into the portage by accident, a walled-in pourover. A lesson dangerously learned; not inspecting led to two of our trips' three swims - at once - and nearly killed us.

Travel

Not half as bad as India. Bus is the usual way to get around. A lot of our journeys were done with relatively comfortable raft trips, but on occasion we trekked to rivers and hired porters.

Porters carrying our boats to the Madi Khola.

Accommodation and Food

There are a million and one great hotels in Kathmandu and Pokhara. We established base at a couple of them and lived from them for the season. On the river, we slept in trekking lodges or on the beach...Nepal has great clean sandy beaches which make this a pleasure.

Food...oh yes. As we did lots of safety boating we ate lots of good food (intended for raft customers). In town, K-Too's Steakhouse (Kathmandu) and Everest Steakhouse (Pokhara) have all the comforts you'll ever need. No need to eat elsewhere!

Costs

We had a budget of 10 quid a day which would have been sufficient if we were living a frugal lifestyle. We weren't, but as we were spending a lot of time safety boating this kept our costs down a great deal.

Summary

A trip to Nepal can't be highly enough recommended. Everything is set up for you, with raft companies doing all the hard work. We had a fantastic time, despite both of us having spent plenty of time there before.

Working for Equator Expeditions as Safety Kayakers (aka 'Safety Surfers') gave us something useful to do with our time, and made getting to the rivers very easy. if you are interested in this kind of work, make sure that you are sufficiently competent. Arriving early in the season will help you get a job. Note that we weren't being paid, just enjoying free trips. We probably could have been paid, but then would have had to do whatever trips we were told to do, rather than our own choice.

We hoped to fit in a longer 'expedition' paddle towards the end of our stay, but couldn't muster the group or the money for the flight...around 2000 dollars to charter a plane.