Kayak Clinic on the Seti River

As part of our trip to Nepal, we wanted to do a river kayak course.  After resting a few days in Pokhara, we returned to Kathmandu to obtain our India visas and started researching our kayak options.  We decided to go on a 4-day clinic with a company called Paddle Nepal, on the Seti River.  Unfortunately, it required us to take a 7 hour bus ride back to Pokhara… but it was totally worth it - the trip was awesome!

Day 1: Learning the Basics
We spent our first day on the Phewa Lake where we learned some basic kayak skills such as how to: hold the paddle, safely eject from the kayak, rescue other flipped kayakers, and the fundamentals for doing the eskimo roll.  The instructors were excellent - by the end of the day, both of us were able to do the eskimo roll in the lake.

Days 2 - 4: Riding the Seti River
We spent the remainder of the clinic learning to ride the rapids of the Seti River.  The Seti River is perfect for beginners practicing their basic kayaking skills - the water is warm and fairly deep, rapids gradually increase from day 2 to 4 and range from class 1 to 3+.  We also lucked out with perfectly sunny weather over the 3 days.  On top of that, the campsites were sandy and beautiful, the food was great, and we went during the full moon so we got to see 2 brilliant moon-rises.   We took a few spills in some of the rapids but managed to roll back up a couple of times (turns out it's a lot harder to roll in big rapids!).  We enjoyed the experience so much that we're hoping to perhaps practice our skills in one of SE Asia countries that we'll visit next!!

 

After the clinic was over, we made our way back to Kathmandu on a local bus.  Since, the clinic ended right after the Dashain festival, all of the busses were packed full of Nepali families returning from their villages, back to work in the city.  The bus ride that was suppose to take 4 hours, ended up taking us 7 hours.  For the first 3 hours, we had to ride on top of the bus since there wasn't any standing space inside.  We later discovered the top was actually an uncomfortable privilege - after 3 hours, the driver got in trouble with the police, so we were all forced to cram inside of the already over-filled bus, where we suffered the last 4 hours of bus ride.  Despite seating at the top merely being a hard metal rack intended for luggage, it was actually far more comfortable (and scenic) than being sardined inside!!!