Pokhara - Kayaking & More

So... We ended up picking up where we left off with Kayaking last year.  And then we loved is so much (as expected), that we just kept doing it.  Thanks to the great guides, and our friends at paddle nepal, half the time when we had a day off in Pokhara we were just hanging out with them!  All in all we spent 7 days paddling on 3 rivers in Nepal, camping as we went.  We started with a 2 day warm up on the Lower Seti; the same river we did last year.

Gearing up and getting ready to go.  This was our gear boat... it was a bit too much (we thought) but these guys spoiled us.  We had 2 guides, one in a kayak, and one guy manning the gear boat taking down all the camping gear and food.

Unfortunately we don't have the action shots that we managed to get last year... so the pics won't be as exciting.  This was where we camped the first night...

Getting ready and packing up the next morning...

Our boats...

And after the 2 days on the river we needed to go back to Pokhara and get ready for the next river ~ the Kali Gandaki.  The Lower Seti was a great warm up with only class 1-2 rapids.  The Kali Gantaki was going to be a jump, as it had class 3-4 rapids!

Our guides and friends Suresh and Sayas... simply great guides.  Suresh has guided in Japan.  Half the guys working for paddle nepal guide in Japan/Europe/Iceland in the off season.  These guys are simply some of the best guides in the world and companies from all over the world recruit from Nepal.

So thanks to some people that dropped out of our Kali Gandaki trip, we were delayed a day.  The result, a very LATE night with a couple of Irish Steven and Brita (we met on the trek) on St. Paddy's day.  If anyone tries to convince you the Irish aren't savage drinkers... they're lying, don't believer it!

Jillene and Brita having a good time...

But back to business... our first night on the Kali Gandaki trip.

The boats... this was a bigger group, not just the 2 of us like on the Lower Seti!  And thats about it... we had a great 3 days on the river... which unfortunately we can't show you.  You'll have to trust us!  No sense showing you more camping spots!

Other 'stuff' we got up to in Pokhara... we visited a number of orphanges for poor familys, orphaned kids, and street kids.  This was a facility that specialized in getting kids of the streets.  These guys were characters.

And our drug pusher in Nepal (Rehka); she works at paddle nepal and volunteers organizing other volunteers whom work with students in rural schools.  We bought a bunch of deworming medication to send out with them, as it is a huge problem in the rural villages...  A cheap medication, that just insn't available to them...

 But time to get back to business... River number 3, the Trisuli.  Huge waves, and a great river to raft.  We did a 2 day trip, and this was our camping spot after day 1.

A little fishing Nepali style!  You can't tell, but this guy has a battery strapped to his back, is passing a current through the water to knock out the fish which the guy on the left then captures in the net downstream!  This would go over so well in Canada for sure...

Our friends and crew for the Trisuli.  Som (the yougest brother of 3 and co-owner of Paddle Nepal ~ also and Kayaking prodigy), and Sayam a kayaker in training.

But sadly that was the end of our kayaking, and time in Nepal.  Time to head back to Kathmandu and catch our flight to Thailand for a week of beaching before we fly home.  But it wouldn't be nepal if we didn't get stuck in a MONSTER traffic jam coming into Kathmandu that delayed us 2+hrs.  May be tough to see, but if you look close you can see a line up of cars/buses on the 2 lane highway heading up the hillside on switchbacks

We had a great time in Nepal, and we left already planning on when we can get back there for 4th visit!  Amazing people, great food, fantastic trekking, and incredible paddling... what more could you want.