Marsyandi crosses the road from Pokhara to Kathmandu roughly a third of the way. From there, turn North and go upriver - as far as you dare. The river gains difficulty with each dozen kilometers.
Three days from now, Oleg and Dima have to catch a plane in Kathmandu, so we picked a stretch of the river that could be done in two days. We’ll start in the town of Besishahar, and finish in the village of Turture -about ten kilometers before the main road.
Our white minibus struggles under a pile of gear. We are glued to the windows, trying to catch a glimpse of the river. Powerful and famous Marsyandi. Raft guide tales agree with the description in the guide book: A lot of water, combined with a lot of boulders and steep rate of descent. We are in for a treat.
In Besishahar, we pour out of the van and take a look around. No river in sight, just the houses and gardens. And a crowd of would-be porters, ready to haggle. The guide books warns about this little town: "Watch your gear and haggle hard." Haggle we do - this is the way of the land.
In a few minutes, our gear is divided into piles and loaded on our backs. We turn onto a dirt road and start the descent, following a small creek. Our group is loaded with food, kayaks, and cataraft frames. We are sharing the trail with a group of a different sort - a funeral procession. The porters are carrying bunches of firewood and the body, draped into bright-orange cloth. This is also the way of the land.
Suddenly the Marsyandi gorge opens up in front of us. It’s rough and beautiful, with the angry clowds and the white peaks piercing the sky between them. Both of our groups stop on a small beach on the opposite side of a huge boulder. Both groups start the preparations.
It seems that the funerals are much more common here than the foreigners with Russian-style catarafts: The crowd that carried firewood for the funeral pyre forms a semicircle, turn their backs to the deceased, and watch us put the catarafts together.
The rapids are powerful, violent stretches are interspaced with quieter spots. We enter a beautiful canyon - wall almost meet high overhead. While scouting a rapid, I feel an odd itch in my trunks. I ignore it, and soon the sensation goes away. (That was a mistake - later I discovered that what I felt was a leach attaching to my inner thigh. Ugh!)
The river features are huge. The catarafts are dwarfed by house-sized boulders, and powerful holes abandon in between. At one point, the cataraft with Oleg and Dima goes down a drop and gets completely vertical! I’m supposed to follow, but whatever can throw a heavy cataraft into the air, will doubtlessly eat my Vertigo for lunch. I get out of the boat, see water flowing through a crack between two boulders and run it. I drop right into an eddy and see the cataraft - Oleg and Dima are looking upstream, still expecting me to come over the drop. A crowd of small brown monkeys is watching us from the shore.
And the slalom continues. I’m franticly trying to divide my attention between the cataraft far ahead and the hole right in front of me - and the hole seems much more important. The theme of the day: Avoid the holes at all costs!
It’s four o’clock, and everybody is tired. Slava gets run over by the heavy cataraft, and has to spend a few minutes getting his breath back. After blundering into yet another Class 4 rapid, we land by a tributary.
The night is hot and muggy, and we sit in the dark talking about adventure and paddling.
We get up fairly late, but by ten o’clock the boats are back in the water. As we pass by, the powerful pourovers make sound like breaking ocean waves. The holes are large, but seem to be just where you would expect them - easy to predict, easy to avoid. I keep thinking it when a pourover snicks up on me. No time to avoid it - I accelerate the best I can and try to punch through. Oh no! The hole grabs my boat, flattens me on the back deck, violently thrashes, throws me end-over-end and finaly lets go. I snap back to attention, the next hole is right around the corner!
After a while the river mellows out. We break the formation and start looking for waves to surf and eddy lines to squirt.
I see a small hole that looks promising - nothing like the monsters earlier in the day - and try to get in to surf. Soon I have to veer away to let Slava pass. Then the cataraft with Oleg and Dima drops into the same hole. Suddenly, the twin noses of the tubes point to the sky, and before we can do anything, the cataraft is upside-down! Dima climbs on the overturned cataraft and paddles it to shore. I help Oleg get out of the water. Then we team together and flip the cataraft right-side up. Turns out, they took off the thigh straps and were straddling the tubes behind the seats. Good time for lunch, anyway!
Off the shore, Slava spots something flapping in the current - we investigate and find a dead snake. The expedition cook examines the new find: Just entertainment or possibly food?
After lunch, the river is calm. I notice a temple on the right shore with a statue of a cow in front. As we follow the river around the bend, we see the bridge and the houses on the right shore - we are in Turture. Our van is waiting. The children watch us unpack. The climb to the road is short, but steep. I shoulder my kayak and start climbing. Soon, I’m hopelessly stuck in thorny bushes. A little girl shouts to get my attention - she is standing on a perfectly good walkway, just two meters to the right! I push the kayak over, then climb there myself, but not before getting my forehead stung by some local vegetation. I grind my teeth and keep walking. The walkway leads me through the village. Some of the houses don’t have walls facing it, it seems like I’m walking straight through people’s living rooms. The occupants don’t seem to mind though - they watch me and smile as I walk by. The day is growing hot, and I’m dripping with sweat. When I make it to the van and load the kayak, I’m surrounded by a group of children. They are happy to pose for a camera. A pause to catch my breath, and back towards the river bank. This time I am carrying the cataraft skin - much heavier than a kayak. By the time I reach the van again, I’m ready for a shower! The villagers laugh "You are very powerful". Yeah, right, I think, fighting for breath.
After everything is loaded and tied down, the van starts towards Kathmandu. The Himalayas unfold behind the windows.
A chairlift goes over the river and up the hill, taking pilgrims to a temple. In a few hours we stop - the road is blocked by a landslide. Out of nowhere, a flock of merchants pops up selling food to stranded motorists. In the meanwhile, a bulldozer clears up the rocks.
We arrive to Kathmandu after dark. The city looks like a cross between a labyrinth and a marketplace. Everything is alive with activity and filled to the brink with people, cars, and animals.
In the morning, Khem makes the phone calls to arrange transport for us to get to Bhote Kosi, simultaneously bringing me up-to speed on local news. It seems the country is troubled - petrol prices are high, only one gas-station is working, the Maoists are active in the mountains that are our destination. Nevertheless, within less than an hour we are seated in a van, with our kayaks and the cataraft tied on the top.
The van navigates through tight back streets of Kathmandu. A grey-haired monkey is perched on top of the fance. For an instance, our eyes meet. The monkey doesn’t react, neither do I.
Gradually, the city becomes different. Buildings grow taller but more unkempt. At one point, people carry two red flags. Then we leave the city and head into the mountains. The valleys and mountain ridges are humongous, we feel like insects by comparison. All hillsides are covered by rice terraces. Pine trees grow next to bananas. We see a lot of goats. The day is muggy, and the haze hides white peaks in the sky.
Each new valley seems like a whole new world. The hills are split by mile-deep canyons. Villagers are everywhere - harvesting crops, breaking and carrying rocks. Some just sit, thinking. We pass groups of school students in uniforms. Some carry stacks of books on top of their heads.
When we get to the put-in, it’s starting to get dark. The driver warns us about a possible trouble - there’s a band in the area, he says. "They are not Mao people. Mao people never attack anybody. They are just poor. Be polite and say that you are students and have no money, and they won’t attack." Then he looks critically at the four of us and says nobody would challenge us, unless they had at least twelve people.
We set up tent. Soon it starts raining. Slava cooks the dinner under a makeshift canopy. In the dark, we watch somebody walk over the opposite side of the canyon. Of course we can’t see a person, just the wavering flame of the torch. The flame slowly crosses the face of the mountain, then it drifts across the bridge and back. No robbers, but the night is alive with small thunderstorms passing through adjacent valleys. The air is fresh and clean.
In the morning we take our time - yesterday a group of rafters told us that the whole run can be done in one day. We put in around noon. Right from the start, the river becomes a continuous Class 3-4 slalom. We are waiting for the first Class 5 called "Frog in the Blender". Slava is ahead of the group, looking for suitable eddies for the cataraft. As before, I bring up the rear.
Suddenly, the cataraft misses an eddy and disappears behind the drop. Slava follows. I see hem go down a chute and flip. I catch an eddy, take a quick look downstream and decide to follow them. Soon, a pillow flips me. I hit a few rocks with my helmet and roll up only to land right into a pourover. The boat back-enders out of the hole. Next drop looks bad - a rock in the middle splits it in two, and I have no idea what is below either one! The current pushes me towards the right channel, and I take it. I go down the drop, lose my balance, brace to recover, and see Slava and the cataraft on the bottom of the rapid. For a while we sit on the shore, catching our breath. "Frog in the blender" is right!
I take pictures, Slava is making friends with a huge butterfly. We consider running the rapid again, this time right. The decision is instant and unanimous "No Way!"
According to the guide book, the next rapid is called "Carnal knowledge of deviant nature". It’s a technical Class 4, with something that the guide book calls "cyphon" at the bottom. Soon, I end up braced sideways into another pillow. To the left is a drop, to the right - the cyphon itself. On close inspection, it turns out to be a Jacuzzi-sized pool with an evil quality: Water comes in through the top and leaves through the cracks on the bottom. I’ll take a blind drop over becoming a cyphon plug any day of the week! For an instance I struggle against the current, then break free and promptly drop into the hole. It gives me a mild thrashing and lets go.
Again, we stop to catch our breath and consider stopping for a night. A group of kayakers come from upstream. They are from England, running safety for a group of rafts. They show us a great cartwheel hole. After about forty minutes of trying, I get one. Slava gets into his boat and joins in. Then Boris gets into my boat and pops a few squirts. Soon, we are tired and nobody is going downstream. We set up camp.
The night was pleasant and cool again. We left most of extra luggage in the hotel, so getting ready in the morning is easy. At ten o’clock, we are almost ready. A group of rafters (from Ultimate Descents) comes down. I try to work the rodeo hole. After about 30 tries, the Vertigo reluctantly swaps two ends. Slava applauds, I feel tired.
The next item on the agenda - "Midnight special", supposedly Class 5. According to the guide book, it’s after the paper making house. Remembering yesterday’s fiasco with the "Frog in the Blender", we stop in front of every drop to take a look ahead. The paper making house is completely manual - shifts of half-made paper are drying out in rows on wooden frames.
Finally, we see the approach to the rapid. A large curler wave leads towards a narrow but deep hole. We consider punching the hole straight-on, just as two safety kayakers run the rapid right-to-left, over the top of the curler. We try to follow, but both flip at the same spot. Slava’s skirt gets blown and he leaves his boat. The raft guides throw him a rope. I roll on the bottom of the rapid.
After two-three miles of Class 3-4, we come to the town of Bahrabize. Rafters have lunch, so we open the PowerBars. The group leader says "We river rats have to stick together". The next big one is "The Wall". Rafters stop to take a look, and so do we. After the confluence with Seti Khola, the river is beefier. And all tthis new volume is running through a jumble of nasty undercut boulders. The only clean chute is on the far-right, it curves to the left and drops about two meters (six feet) into a nasty-looking hole. Rafters set up throw bags to pull the rafts into the far-right "sneak". We decide to follow their example.
Slava and I catch an eddy above the drop. I pull out the throw bag and signal a "go" to the cataraft. Slava takes the end of the rope and sits on belay. As I take my eyes back from Slava and towards the cataraft, it is upside down.
The first rope hits the cataraft between the tubes - too early to be effective. Then, Boris’s head pops up next to the cataraft. I try to throw my rope, but the line is too short. I pull on the bag to release more line and throw. The bag flies true, together with the end of the line. Somehow I yanked it from Slava’s hands!
I see Lev climbing back on the overturned cataraft, just as Boris approaches the eddy. I jump into the water to pull Boris in. When I climb back out, Lev is out of sight. The raft guides tell me that he has washed through the undercuts together with the cataraft. I jump into the boat, pull on my skirt and slide into the water. A small hole above the first drip turns me around. I decide to cross the tongue as I drop and punch through the left corner of the hole. Suddenly, Slava appears, cranking full speed downstream and shouting "Forward!" His boat hits my left side and I drop into the hole sideways and with no speed. Predictably, all hell breaks loose.
I feel the boat drop into the first hole, get windowshaded, endered and backendered, and go off a drop, and up in another hole, and finally flush into the calmer water downstream. On my fourth roll attempt, the hand slips of the paddle shaft - but I really don’t feel like swimming, so I reach up, re-capture the paddle, and try again. Air!
Neither Lev nor Slava are in sight. Rafters tell me that they washed downstream. I struggle through a couple of miles of contiguous Class 4 rapids, and finally see them. It turns out that Lev managed to hold on to his paddle. He climbed between the tubes of the cataraft and waited through the worst, then got on top of the overturned cataraft and paddled. Then Slava caught up with him, and together they got the cataraft into an eddy on the right shore.
Soon, the rafters bring Boris. We spend a few minutes to recover, then head downstream. My boat is half-full of water, and the Class 4 rapids become hard. I flip, get windowshaded, roll up, flip again - don’t know how many times - until finally, we see the dam! Without thinking, we let out a cheer.
The van is not in sight, so Lev and I walk into the nearest town to call the hotel. The mountains are extremely beautiful. The evening sun makes them look like an old painting.
The town of Lamo Sangu is very small. As we wait for the phone line to clear, we see our van lumbering towards us down the main street.
Part 1