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Founder's Travel Journal: White-Water Rafting the Trisuli River Day 14

June 14, 2008

-Rafting Day 2: 2 hours, 28kms

On day two of the rafting trip (I got the most wonderful 11 hours of sleep last night, by the way)... On day two of the rafting trip, we woke up earlier than usual but as always for me. Once again a lovely breakfast and one last, short trek to Big Fig guided by Marc.

We loaded up at the shoreline in front of our tents. The water rose 8 feet overnight but nothing that would threaten our camp site. The water was cooler than Day 1 perhaps because of it being much hotter and the glaciers melting faster coming off the mountains in the north around the Annapurna circuit. The rapids for today are expected to be mostly level 4's with the chance of a 5 if the water rose high enough. We would be crossing Lady Luck, Surprise, and Electricity with Landslide thrown in as a bonus.

The first leg of the trip was relaxing as the winds coming from the northwest were nice and cool and blowing at a good clip. We hit a few smaller rapids at first but they began to evolve into something more to my liking. The first set was Lady Luck with a pace of about 15 knots+. Paddling fast with synchronization we rode the rollercoaster up 5 humps dead on. Dil, our rafting guide, was proud and we all gave a big "Shaka-laka-BOOM" paddle high-five after the group passed with flying colors.

The other rapids were pretty much the same, save for the one called Electricity. We had to stop and investigate the rapids before proceeding.

Our route started sketchy. Dil led us through a narrow opening which required the raft to be facing parallel with the shore. Had we been perpendicular we would have got caught between the rocks and capsized. As soon as we squeezed through we had to "Hang on!" for two humps. The only problem was on the other side of these humps was a large, domineering, flat rockface with the water crashing into it and doubling over on itself. We were headed straight for it at a 25 degree angular position. "Back peddle! Back peddle!" We all knew what Dil wanted us to do. The team could feel the warmth reflecting off the rockface. Kate, one of the Aussie's, was sitting in front of me. She began yelling, "Back! Back! Back!" to get us in sync. We narrowly missed the suction of the rapids and Electricity was definitely running through our bodies.

The rest of the trip went without incident. We arrived in Karankhot for lunch, got dressed Calfiornia style in the back of the van, and hitched a ride on the local bus with "Pokhara" written in Nepali on the front. It was a large bus, colorful, playing some corny Hindi movies on the single screen at the front above the driver's head. Going a good 50-60mph, its a Nepal wonder we never ate (explicit word) down any one of the 1,000 foot+ drops as we came screeching around each corner.

Merrily we rolled along.

 

Days With Illness
-28 May - 31 May: Asthma attack
-8 June - 9 June: Upset stomach, exhaustion
-13 June-14 June: Headache (left side), nasal congestion, queezy stomach, fever, diarrhea (Parmila with same); Began taking Hyland's Homeopathic Complete Flu Care)
-15 June: Runny nose, nasal congestion, diarrhea (Parmila still sick, still taking pills & blowing nose often)
-16 June: queezy stomach, fever
-17 June: severe diarrhea, fever (took first anti-diarrhea pill @ 7:25am), went to hospital in Dumre for 2nd asthma attack (nebulizer administered)
-18 June: Hospital in Bandipur for asthma attack (nebulizer administered)
-21 June: Diarrhea gone, fever gone. moderate bloating & non-digestion of food, difficult to pas gas and burp, no sleep because of constant walking around in room to get bowels moving

 

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