Friday

Pokhara, Nepal - Rafting!

The road approaching Pokhara was not very promising - a huge line of ugly industrial shops, noisy trucks and rubbish everywhere. As soon as you get off the bus, there are loads of taxis who know exactly where you want to go... "lakeside, lakeside, lakeside!". It's not surprising that all tourists stay at lakeside, it's a relatively quiet part of the city beside Nepals largest lake. Everything there has grown around tourism since the hippies found it in the 70s, so it's mainly one long road filled with guest houses, restaurants, pubs and shops that mostly sell trekking gear and souvenirs.

It's was the perfect place to organise my next adventure. I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to go white water rafting in Nepal, so the next day I started a 3 day trip down the Kali Gandaki. It’s a grade 4 river (5 being very difficult and 6 being impossible) which runs through a gorge with sandy white beaches and waterfalls.



At night we slept under the raft which as propped up with a paddle. We had a camp fire and the safety kayakers (who follow the rafts and rescue anyone who falls out) double up as chefs for meal times.


The white water was brilliant. On our six person raft, four people fell out, but I managed to hold on for my life. Two of the people who fell out got sucked into an underwater hole for around 10 seconds before it spat them back out. Scary!


One night I felt something tickling the back of my neck. I sat up and shone my torch down. Yep, it was a big old hairy spider which I had to flick away with a paddle. In the morning I found it on the beach.


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