Nepal

Namaste!! Well myself and sean are now in Nepal a week. We are styaing in the Thamel section of Kathmandu. It's full of tiny crowded streets, shops, bars, tour operators, raft companies, beeping cars, bikes and small buses. Food is good and cheap if you go to the right places. Some good bars too! Took a few days to get settled in and then we met up with a mate of mine, Tom, from England, who works for ultimate descents. We then headed off on a raft trip he was saftey boating for on the Bhote Kosi. Day one was the lower section just to get warmed up and then day two was on the upper section- a classic run- 17kms of continuous grade four water, with one or two fives thrown in, it runs at 90 cumecs and drops 16metres per kilometre. Anyone who has been to nepal will know this run and anyone who hasn't should come and do it. Definitely one of the best runs I've done. I actually managed to get two days on this run. The first day myself Tom, and a local paddler Krishna paddled down with the raft. If the river wasn't intense enough, it got worse when the raft flipped on one of the bigger rapids called 'Carnal knowledge'. We managed to get everyone in pretty quickly and got the raft about 2km downstream. Some cuts and bruises though, and half the rafters decided they had enough.
The second day Sean was on with us, everything was going great until Krishna took a swim just after the biggest rapid on the river- "Frog in the blender'. We got Krishna in but after chasing the boat through solid class four that sean and I didn't really know we had to let it go. Lucikly it was into an eddy a few miles down and a local fished it out. If that wasn't enough Sean then took a swim in the same rapid as the raft the previous day, but this time we got the boats and paddles ok. This run is just class, it's big, fast, steep, and just keeps on going, a classic.
Well off now to try and sort out the next trip, looking at leaving tommorrow or thursday for either the Marsyandi(five day trip), the Karnali(ten day trip) or the Sun Kosi ( seven day trip).
Once again my poor knowledge of computers means I've no photo's up at the moment but I'll get them up soon as possible.