Asian Journal - Chapter 6 - Messin' about on the river (March - April 2000)
Set deep in the Himalayan hills, just 6Km from the Tibetan border the Borderlands reserve is a wonderfully remote area totally unspoiled and with the feeling of being very much removed from time. Along with the rest of my group we spent most of the morning rehearsing paddling techniques, learning how to read the river and what seemed like far too long on what to do if you fall out of the boat, and various ways of getting back in. I'm all for safety, especially when playing with large volumes of water hurtling down narrow gorges but the lengths to which our safety training went began to scare me, very very much. Was I really ready to partake in something that required this much depth of water rescue knowledge??? Over lunch I was somewhat relieved to find I wasn't the only one feeling slightly nervous, but before we had time to scare each other too much lunch was cleared and we were suited up for our first set of rapids. Our river guide (a former bodybuilding Mr Nepal!) launched us out into clear water and for the first 10 minutes we trundled leisurely downstream whilst he shouted "Left paddle! Back paddle!" and we all admired the view. Mr Nepal wasn't impressed. "This is a very serious river!" he screamed, "if you do not listen and obey me you will get hurt, seriously!" OK, he'd got our attention, from now on we'd paddle. All rapids are classed according to their difficulty, 3 being reasonably taxing, 5 being very difficult and grade 6 being applied to those that were technically impossible. All the rapids we'd be tackling on ourfirst day were 3's and 4's and we were now fast approaching our first white water, appropriately named 'Frog in a blender'. Imagine being stuck in a bouncy castle, wedged inside a washing machine that's chock full of rocks and set on fast spin cycle. Everything happens very very fast and its easy to forget to listen to Mr Nepal because your concentrating on that large bolder that's hurtling towards you. Then suddenly you plunge 5 feet over the edge of the rapid and you pop up in a pool of calm still water, wring out your soaking t-shirt and wondering just what the hell happened back there. We'd survived our first class 3! Fear took a back seat and the adrenaline came out to play. . . With the sun on the water and feeling very much more confident in ourselves we eagerly paddled down stream to our next challenge, a class 4 rapid named 'Ex Lax'! Once we'd watched the safety kayaker go down through we realised why. Still riding on the adrenaline rush of earlier in we went, and 45 seconds later out we popped, battered, bruised and grinning like Cheshire cats. We turned our raft around so as to watch the second team come through, and so they did, one by one without their raft! I'd been waiting with my waterproof camera hoping to get some action shots but now we had to work quickly and pluck these poor people out of the drink. Our hours of training paid off, we'd been suitable drilled and using arms, legs, and any other body part we could gasp we unceremoniously hauled them aboard. More than their confidence was shaken, and suddenly we weren't feeling so gung-ho either. The rest of the day was less dramatic but still incredibly exhilarating and we retired to the campsite that evening exhausted but happy and swapping differing accounts of the same day. Bright and early next morning we paddled out again, the river swollen further from by the rain during the night and snowmelt from further up. A couple of class3's and a 4 in before lunch and we were doing well. Mr Nepal congratulated us in the way we worked as a team but informed us that we were not yet up to tackling what was round the next bend, a class 5. We put the raft ashore and clambered over the rocks towards the awful din that was coming from downstream. 'Hydraulic holes' appear when large volumes of water drop over a ledge directly towards rocks and anything that falls into these black holes gets sucked deep down, and stays down. We unloaded the raft of everything that wasn't necessary and watched in awe as our guide brought the raft over the rapid and to the side of the hole single-handed. This man definitely knew what he was doing. Having seen Mr Nepal in action I'm now better able to understand what happened next. We'd reloaded the raft and changed our seating so as to better spread the weight to get us over the next set of rapids. I was now perched at the very front of the raft, far away from the safety zone where I'd nestled for the first part of the trip but this didn't concern me too much, how much different could it possibly be? "Don’t look at the rock. Don’t look at the rock" I remember saying to myself, repeating the mountain biking logic that if you don’t look at the obstacle you wont hit it, as we hurtled towards the bolder. SMACK, we hit it broadside. The force reverberated through our bouncy-castle-raft and I was quite literally shot out of the boat, hit the rick then fell into the river. I remember having time to think 'wheres the raft gone???' then before my safety training had time to kick in I was back in the boat, dazed and confused. Henning, who was sat opposite me at the front of the raft, informs me it all happened so fast that I was still paddling and smiling as I flew through the air and bounced off the rock. And within seconds of going overboard Mr Nepal had bent down and with one arm quite literally plucked me from the water. He said he didn't even have time to scream "man over board!". I'm pretty sure that if we didn't have such an experienced guide I would have come back with more than just a blue bum and a few cuts and bruises. To the river I now owed much respect, and to him I am eternally grateful. Not wanting to subject my bruising to the 48hrbus/train/bus journey overland to India I grabbed my trusty credit card and booked a flight - well a girls got to have some luxury!!! Stepping gingerly on to the tarmac at Delhi's International airport, I was ready to embark on the last leg of my travels. Hopefully things would a little more relaxed from here on in.