Nepal

I got a job for a while as a safety boater which means I got paid to paddle down rivers with a raft carrying all my gear and cooks preparing big spreads of food and occasionally I'd have to pluck bodies out of the water when the rafts flipped, but they were all alive so that wasn't to hard really. And I'd have to sit around campfires and drink rum punch and pretend I knew some words to Nepali songs and wake up on a nice white sandy beach with not too many scorpions on it and drink hot chocolate. So.....I hope you're all enjoying your jobs too!

K.C, an English bloke called Neil, and I, self supported the Karnarli River, Nepal's highest volume river with holes big enough to swallow my Mum and Dads house and waves big enough to scare Jelly Fish silly. This adventure started with a 20 hour bumpy and sleepless bus trip to Surket where it took us about an hour to find someone who spoke even a word of English. We planned a day of rest to prepare for the trek into the river but instead got a guided tour of the largest town in the West. Our guide was the Sherpa son of our host for that night (the English speaking guy) who took us walking to view points over paddy fields, temple ruins, local baths and gardens. Using sickles to harvest the rice plants and carrying huge bundles of it with a strap over the head is a tranquil comparison to western farming.

The Karnarli is the most remote river I've ever paddled on with relatively quiet beaches that we only had to share with a few water buffalo and the occasional deer. Managed to avoid the company of Royal Bengal tigers, pythons, crocodiles, bears etc and unfortunately we also missed seeing any of the fresh water dolphins that hang out around here. We weren't prepared for how cold it was so didn't get much sleep and spent most of each night tending a fire or shivering.

After the 2 days hike into the river we had 2 days on awesome HUGE white water and the last day we paddled 90 km (55miles) of flat water back into urbanisation which provided a stark contrast to our past five days of remote and scenic wilderness.  The take out was marked by a monstrosity of a suspension bridge which we decided looked like a bit of German engineering (about as subtle as a Sherman tank).

Our next river, another classic, was the Marsyangdi but with KC making her way towards India, Neil and I decided to brave it on our own. On the walk in we bumped into kiwi Ling, Glen, and Irish Dave who were keeping company with a multi-national bunch of paddlers. For our first day on the river they were preoccupied with trying to unwrap a boat that had stuck itself to a rock in the middle of the river the day before. After that we paddled ahead of them, joined by one of their crew, a Canadian called Sadia. This river provided 3 days of spectacular and continuous whitewater with fantastic mountain backdrops. Most of it was on the limit of what I will paddle 'read and run' style.  This river is characterised by 'lots' of pour-overs, some really big and ugly, with at least one in each rapid. So the paddling was pretty intense, demanding a high level of concentration and a continuous flow of adrenalin. The water eased off at the end of the river giving an opportunity to take in the ever changing geology and mountain scenery and to stop and lunch with the locals.

Nepali people are just awesome, they take any opportunity to talk, smile and laugh with you and they are incredibly hospitable. For example, KC and I had been told of a teahouse at which we could get dhal bhat (rice and stuff) on the night of our trek into the Karnarli river. At twilight we found what we thought was the village and spent a few minutes doing our best to ask in Nepali for dhal baht. We were introduced to the woman who volunteered to cook it for us and were sat on chairs to wait while the whole village crowded around for a very entertaining cultural exchange. We felt like the new King and Queen of the village, it was like being in a fairy tale. I was doing my best not to be perturbed by the kids taking souvenirs from my hairy legs which they found very amusing. When dinner was ready we were ushered into what we then realised was someone’s home (not the teahouse we had failed to find) with mud walls and a small oil lamp burning. It dawned on us the great hospitality of these people and after a while of continuous plate refills I realised I needed to learn the Nepali words for "I'm really full thanks and if you put any more food on my plate I'm going to explode".

The food in Nepal ranges from edible to awesome with most of it being awesome and there is always plenty of it, so my notion of reversing the expansive metabolic changes that began to occur in Scotland’s pubs has not been fully effective. Especially since I have not experienced too many of the anticipated violent spontaneous expulsions of nutrients from my digestive tract.

This morning I am sitting in a hotel restaurant on top of a hill that is 1980m tall (6000ft). The views are really quite spectacular across an expansive deep valley to folds of jagged foothills and further to precipitous snowy peaks, one of which is 8153m tall (approx 25000ft). I can feel the altitude on my lungs at this height but I guess my cold isn't helping. This place is called Nagrarkot and is a couple of hours out of Kathmandu and is a pretty relaxing place to hangout and chill while I’m waiting for my Indian visa to be processed. The rivers are all getting cold now and I think I'm water-logged anyway so I'm going to head to India and find a meditation course or something to do for a while.

There is so much I could write, I'm having a ball here, I just love this place. Wish I could stay in closer touch with all of you too but that is difficult from here. But I still think of you all so Merry Christmas and all that stuff.