Rafting and walking, maybe I'll even get fit here

I got up at 5. Yeah, I don’t know why either. Oh yeah, I was going rafting!

I got a taxi to Thamel, got there at 5.30, walked to The Last Resort, and got on a bus, together with a Filipino guy who had a surprisingly American accent. We drove for about 5 hours, including breakfast, loading up the rafts, unloading the rafts, and then onwards to the place where Chad wanted to jump off a bridge. To be fair, he had something tied to his body, but as I walked across the bridge, I decided never to go bungee jumping or doing a canyon swing (bungee jumping with a tight cord, where you swing from a different bridge, a hundred meters from where you jump…)

I met my rafting group there as well, and we really clicked. We then went to the rafting drop-off location, got some info about how to raft, and got on the boat. I will now give a timeline of the first minute, which was really the most interesting part. About 30 seconds in, we got into a hole, which is a place just after a rock where all the water moves down very quickly, which meant that the raft was full of water at 35 seconds. Around t=45, the boat jumped free, throwing everyone up and forward or up and backward. At 47 seconds, I hit the water. 0:50 saw me (according to the people on the boat) almost get crushed between the raft and the rocks on the rock wall. At the time, I was just trying to get to an OK floating position, since I was scraping my hips on rocks everywhere, and the water was just throwing me everywhere. Finally I saw a paddle, so I grabbed it and was pulled up into the boat again around the end of the first minute.

After that, rafting was rather uneventful. There was an area of which the guide said it was quite dangerous and we really had to work hard together to stay away from the big hole, and we did. Nearing the end, we were implored to all take a swim (“no swim, no rafting”), so I figured I would since I was wet anyway. When we got back, there were some rapids again, and then the guide said “would everyone please stand up”, so we did, looking at each other with doubt in our eyes. He laughed and shouted “Full hard” – the command for paddling as hard as we could… Obviously a test for how well we listened now.

At the end, we had lunch and were driven back. I had some dinner together with Chad and the people he’d met at Vipasana meditation. We had a lovely night.

I went to actually see the sights of Kathmando the next day. I started at the Pashupatinath temple, where I got a tour of a guide who explained a lot about Hinduism as well as the temple itself, then went to the Bodnath stupa and walked around that part of the city for a while. Finally I took a taxi to the monkey temple, climbed the 150 steps with no problem, even overtaking some old ladies. Yeah, they were the quickest on the stairs… Thank you high altitude hiking.

On my way down I finally saw the monkeys. They were everywhere around me (see the pictures). Then once I got down, I stood near some Germans who were looking at a young monkey climbing on a string of prayer flags. Suddenly, out of nowhere, the little f*cker started making a weird sound. I was just figuring out what type of call that was when there were two big males in front of us, teeth bared, growling. Oh yeah, that’s the alarm call, now I remember. I started backing away slowly while the Germans were still discussing what type of behavior this was… Until I felt two small hands grab my calf. I yelled and kicked back, which was probably what saved me from getting bitten. I turned to him, then back to the other two and saw that the Germans had run away. So it was me against three angry monkeys. I kept backing away slowly, and they advanced slowly. Then one of them rushed at me. I screamed and kicked at him, causing him to do a backflip, then continued backing away, and that got them to stop moving forward. At that time, one of the Germans said “ooh, be careful” from a safe distance… I ignored him while I walked away.

Then I had some mango juice on the steps in front of the temple, and a female monkey sat next to me about 2 meters away. She seemed friendly, so I continued drinking my juice. Every time I took a sip, she looked up at me. So finally I decided to pour some onto the stone I was sitting on and she wasted no time drinking all of it. I drank most of it and then gave her the carton. She started tearing it apart, so I videoed her doing that until a big male jumped up onto the same step, so I decided to leave.

The next morning, I got on the bus to Pokhara. I went in as cheerfully as I could muster at 7 AM, sitting down with a “Goodmorning guys, how’s everyone doing?” and trying to continue the conversation. The guys on my right told me they were from London and New York, but that was all I could get out of them, but the girl on my left (Eva) started talking to me as well. And this continued for hours, on the bus, at the stops, when the bus arrived, when we got to the hostel I’d booked (she joined me and there was still room in the same dorm), during dinner (the other Dutch girl who stayed in the dorm joined us), during the next day when we went shopping… There was nary a moment of silence between us.

In the evening, there was a German girl who had just finished her Poon Hill trek – which was 5 days, didn’t go up higher than 4000 meters, and you didn’t need a guide. With all of my needs in a trek satisfied, I was thinking that maybe it would be ok to do a trek, even though I didn’t really want to. Eva was going trekking, so I wouldn’t need a guide (I’d only get one to not be alone for this trek, since it was very easy to follow the signs) and so it wouldn’t be that expensive… Ok I guess I’m going trekking the day after tomorrow!

The rest of the day was spent shopping for the trek, buying nuts and peanut butter, energy bars etc, but also renting a sleeping bag. When all this was done, there was just enough time to eat before going to sleep early. We’re leaving at 7 am…