Cleaning Initiative - Pokhara Lake

The GRG team have been at it again. As we are primarily based In Kathmandu, it is not often we find ourselves in Pokhara. We recently ran a Kaligandaki Rafting trip and afterwards had a few spare days before our next adventures. So we decided, we've got the staff, we've got the kit...why not spend the day cleaning the Fewa Tal, which is the beautiful lake in Pokhara.

Pokhara is a very popular tourist destination in Nepal. They flock there for the start and finish of their treks, it is also a famous site for paragliding

We set up a tarp on the banks and had a two of our guys busy cooking up some yummy snacks to keep energy levels up! The rest of us jumped in our kayaks and rafts and started paddling the edges of the lake. The kayakers would go ahead, jump out and fill their sacks then drop it back in the raft before going out again.

We managed to collect over 40 sacks of rubbish that day and caused quite a stir! We had a few locals jump on the raft and offer to help out, visits from the police to find out what we were doing (when we told them they were a little bit confused and asked 'why would we want to do this'?! Which kind of gives you an idea of Nepali mentality!!)

Although this is not a long term solution, it is a step in the right direction, ad if we keep it up we hope that others will follow and eventually we will get a handle on the litter situation in Nepal.

I would personally like to thank all our staff at GRG who voluntarily gave their time and did so with a smile! Even though we were sifting through rubbish we actually had a lot of fun and laughed the whole day! I think the highlight was when everyone got thrown out of the raft, including our adventure dog, Buttons, who then scrambled onto one of the kayaks and capsized him as well!

Next up - the Sun Kosi! We are running a rafting expedition to the River of Gold on the 15th September and plan on taking an extra gear raft specifically to collect garbage as we go down.

There's always time to learn kayaking!

Paddling back quick for lunch!