GRG Highlights of 2014

As 2014 is coming to a close, we've been looking back over our highlights from last year and thought we'd share with you our top 10  of the year 2014!

1. Although we are a Rafting and Kayaking company, every now and then we like to mix things up a bit. In May, owners Chrissy & Maila ventured to Everest Base Camp with a group of trekkers. This is a 14 day trek taking you to an altitude of over 5000m! Not bad for people who spend most their life on the rivers!


2.Another highlight for us has to be having the Hereford Expedition Group with us over the monsoon. 30 under 20's came for a total of three weeks and did a variety of volunteering, homestay, trekking, rafting and safari. It was so great to organise their program for them and it was a really interesting trip for us to run, and have given us lots of new ideas for the future (stay tuned!)

3. This year has been an incredible year for GRG and we have run all time record amount of Expeditions. In the Autumn season alone we ran 6 Sun Kosi's, 1 Karnali and 2 Tamur's! We are very proud of our team for working so hard and making this possible, and are looking forward to breaking this record next year!

4. One of the biggest events for us this year was opening our own hotel. Located next to Nursingh Chowk, we are now running Hotel Prayer Flag which has 20 rooms and plenty of space for your kayaks. We had a really successful first season and were full nearly every day with kayakers, trekkers and bikers coming and going. We've had some great parties on our rooftop and are looking forward to more to come!

6. In the Spring we were joined by a group of trainee guides from Bhutan. Kali (Maila's brother) spends about 5 months of the year working in Bhutan running rafting trips for international companies, but he has also started training up the first Bhutanese guides. They then visited Maila to get more experience and training from Nepal. It's always nice to be able to pass on skills and knowledge and wonderful to see the industry growing in Bhutan. We hope to get there ourselves as soon as we can.


7. Always a highlight for us - the Himalayan Whitewater Challenge. Many of the staff from GRG entered (Maila, Tusc, Biki, Papu, Uttar, Jeevan & Shambhu as well as a raft team). For us it signifies the end of the season and it's a great party. We are always very proud of how well the guys do in the events and it's a chance for us all to get together and enjoy the rivers.

8. We've also been working hard on our yoga expeditions this year. Mahendra is now a fully fledged member of the GRG team and has joined us on the majority of our Sun Kosi and Tamur Expeditions this year. Waking up on multiday trips and doing yoga in front of the river is one of the highlights of these trips. We would like to say a massive thank you to Mahendra for all his hard work this year and we are hoping to introduce more yoga packages in 2015.

9. Although not trip related, a highlight for us is that we have been able to collect over 20 new kayaks this season, meaning that we now have the biggest kayak hire fleet available in Kathmandu. We have many brands and models and full paddling equipment. If your coming to Nepal next season, ask us about hire.

10. And the biggest highlight of all was when GRG won the Trip Advisor Certificate of Excellence 2014 for the third year running! This means the world to us and would not be possible without your support so we thank you from the bottoms of our hearts, and a thank you also has to go to our wonderful staff without who, we wouldn't get these fantastic reviews!


We hope your year was just as awesome and look forward to welcoming many of you on the rivers with us in 2015! Happy Holidays everyone.

If you fancy coming on a trip with us, please email Chrissy on info@grgadventurekayaking.com or check out our website www.grgadventurekayaking.com

The Tamur - Trekking and Whitewater at it's very best.

For us, the Tamur is a classic river trip. It combines world class whitewater with a stunning trek though the Himalayan foothills. Seriously, what more could you ask for in a holiday?! The ultimate adventure. 

This is a more technical river than the likes of the Karnali or Sun Kosi and has more continuous rapids, but is fairly similar to rivers such as the Bhote Kosi and Marysandi. For whitewater kayakers this means a whole lot of fun eddy hopping and for rafters it means one action packed holiday.

Located in the remote East of Nepal, the journey there is half the fun, either a 15 hour bumpy bus journey or a quick 45 minute flight followed by a shorter bus ride. Once you leave the hustle and bustle of Kathmandu, you won't see another tourist until your return. You'll drive through many villages giving you a real taste of Nepali life before we then start our three day hike at Basantapur; which has often been described as the most scenic trek in Nepal. Accompanied by local porters (you can breathe a sigh of relief that they will carry the boats for us!), the trek provides us with outstanding views of Everest, Makalu and Kanchenjunga which means 'five treasure houses of snow' giving you some idea what you can expect to see. A highlight of the trek is getting over the 10,000ft pass above the sacred lake whilst surrounded by the Rhododendron forests. And then we reach Dobhan and are greeted by the mighty Tamur River. 

Get ready for an epic whitewater rollercoaster ride.

131km with 120 rapids....

The rapids are powerful and continuous Class IV- V. But don't worry there are nice eddies the whole way down to catch your breath.

At night you'll be treated to 5 million star accommodation on secluded, remote white sandy beaches. Enjoy our famous rum punch around the camp fire and you'll have to wait just a few minutes before locals from the village come down when inevitably the singing and dancing around the campfire begins.

We'll also rustle you up a feast in the evenings around the campfire with some scrummy food such as rice, lentils, buffalo steaks, french fries, chicken curries and more. And if your lucky we'll source the locals favourite brew - Thungba - fermented Millet with hot water, trust me when I say it's much better than it sounds

Imagine waking up every morning to fresh Himalayan coffee, the mist slowly rising off the river to show you a sneak peak of the gorges above, your Nepali guides singing folk songs as they prepare eggs, pancakes, toast and fruit for breakfast before you set off down for another adventure.

The river continues, gaining power and we go down. Exhilarating rapids flowing through a narrow jungle gorge. And this trip isn't just about the whitewater (although believe me when I tell you that's pretty spectacular in itself). The scenery is just as incredible as the river.  For those wildlife lovers among you, you'll be able to see Monkeys, bird life including Himalayn Eagles, deer and if your really lucky Leopards and Tigers. We'll also paddle through a few remote villages where we'll be greeted by fisherman trying to catch dinner for their families, and children running through the rice paddies on their way to school. You'll get a glimpse into Nepali culture that you wouldn't see sticking to the tourist trails in Pokhara and Kathmandu.

The best section of this river is towards the end when the river turns West, creating Ocean sized waves like you've never seen before. On the last day of the river the Tamur joins the Sun Kosi where the river peters out and we have about a 30 minute flat paddle until we reach Chatra, our take out. After one last Dal bhat at our friends house, where we can also grab our first shower in over a week, it's back on the bus for our drive/flight back home

If this sounds like an adventure you would like to join, we have a guaranteed departure on the Tamur River headed out of Kathmandu on the 4th November 2014. Email us for more information.

What else do you need to know?

When to go rafting the Tamur - April- May is good as is the end of October - November after the river has fallen a bit after the monsoon. This is one to avoid during the monsoon months.

How to get there - All our trips depart from Thamel, Kathmandu. You have two options 1- Fly from Kathmandu to Biratnagar where we will collect you at the airport of 2 - Join the staff on the bus for the 15 hour drive.  

 

How much experience do I need? Kayakers should be solid Grade III- IV, but we can take beginner rafters who will be in the care of our expert rafting guides. If you are concerned about your paddling ability, email us and we can discuss further with you.

 

How do I book? Email us!!! info@grgadventurekayaking.com

 

Blog post from Jón Heiðar Þorsteinsson

On the beach at dusk by the Sun Kosi, the river of gold in Nepal. Picture by Lee Stokes.

Getting the Sun Kosi on my brain
Back in 2003 I rafted the East Glacial river in Iceland in the northern region of Skagafjörður in Iceland. I wasn´t new to rafting, I had been on that river four years earlier but somehow I had much more fun the second time around. Perhaps, because we had an epic flip in the infamous "Green Room" rapid! I also got to know Nepalese guides who told me about the ´River of Gold´- Sun Kosi - in Nepal. They told me of huge water volume, huge rapids, massive waves and big hydraulics. Over the years the idea of going to Nepal and take on that river grew on me. The civil strife in that country dissuaded me and friends from actually going ahead.

The suburbs of Khatmandu from the air

The thought of Sun Kosi didn´t  leave me alone though and in 2012 I knew I had to scratch that itch and I had the perfect excuse of turning 40 (hey, its cheaper than a sports car!).

I contacted my friends but they were lukewarm to say the least. For some reason they weren´t turned on by spending 8 days on a river bank in Nepal and rafting some 275KM. I just don´t get these guys :)

I tried my brother and to my delight and surprise he was all for it. So I went online and started my search for a reliable Nepalese rafting company.

Map of our route

Safe, reliable, predictable
I wanted to find a company who was reliable, was safety conscious and had been in business for some time. I had never travelled to Asia before and could hardly describe myself as an experienced traveller. I decided to use Tripadvisor and contact the highest rated Nepalese rafting company. It was clear that GRG Adventure Kayaking (GRG) was that company.

Starting out. In the background you can see the guides inflating the cargo boat and on the right you can see our raft who somebody had named "Krishna"

I went on the GRG Facebook page and found a picture album from a Sun Kosi trip they had organized and messaged one of the guys who had been on that trip and asked for his verdict. He recommended GRG without any hesitation so I decided to use them for the trip. We booked a trip that started on the 2nd of October 2012.

One of the beaches we camped on.  

One of the camps. We did the dishes in the buckets in the centre with ionized river water. We also used treated water from the river for drinking.

Be a lazy tourist in Kathmandu as well
My wife advised me to stay at a nice hotel in Kathmandu as the trip involves eight days on the river. I decided to go for the Hotel Shanker which I found to be a really old school four star hotel with some really great and helpful staff. The best thing about it was the resturant, the spa and of course the pool where you can relax with a nice drink and surf the web.

 The guides cooked some awesome food for us on the way.

I booked my flights through Icelandair and we had a smooth (albeit long) travel which started in Keflavik and then on to London with Icelandair and then with Etihad Airways to from Abu Dhabi to Khatmandu.

The "facilities" - when you wanted to use the toilet you would take the helmet with you to indicate that it was occupied. Notice the lantern on the right of the paddle. It would light our way in the dark.

Culture shock
When we arrived in Kathmandu we were taken to the GRG office where we met up with Maila and Chrissy and our companions on the trip. We had our dose of culture shock when driving through the traffic choked streets of Kathmandu. Neither of us had been to Asia or a third world country for that matter so the poverty and the massive chaotic traffic was something quite new to us.

We are not in Iceland anymore
Early next day a bus from GRG picked us up at our hotel and we drove in a bus for three hours to our starting point in Damauli. The trip was actually fun for us who had never been to Nepal. The guides pumped up the volume of their favourite music and I felt a world away with the Bollywod music and the excotic scenery outside. We stopped once or twice along the way and, man, it was hot outside. My brother provided a taste of home by bringing some dried fish but it was somewhat underappreciated by our companions. Next time he should bring butter as well :)

My brother Gudjon with dried fish on his way to the Sun Kosi

Routine is good - when it involves a lot of thrills and spills
There is a detailed description of the Sun Kosi trip on the GRG website so I won´t go into what we did each day but what impressed me was the routine that took over from day one. It went something like this:

1. Wake up at 6 in the morning - look greedily at whatever the guides were making for breakfast
2. Have coffee or tea and breakfast and lots of it
3 Strike our tents and get our things into rubber dry bags
4. Carry all things to the raft and cargo boat
5. Put on helmets, lifevest and get on the raft - feel a flutter in your stomach as we pushed the raft from the beach and on to the river for some thrills and spills
6. Paddle hard through some awesome rapids, joke with the guys on the raft, swim in the river if the guide gave the green light or just enjoy the fantastic scenery.
7. Land at a pristine beautiful beach and have delicious lunch
8. Repeat no. 6. We would spend some 6 hours on the boat each day
9. Land at beach and bring all gear to land, pitch our tents, dig the toilet, light candles, collect firewood and get ready for darkness which falls at 18.00 or so
10. Have an evening snack prepared by the guides
11. Eat a delicious dinner prepared by the guides, these guys prepared feasts by the light of an open fire or a small torch
12. Sit by the fire, chat with my friends and have a beer or two
13. Fall asleep in record time

I also realized how disconnected from the cycle of day and night us westerners have really become.  I mean, I found my self at a riverbank in Nepal thinking to myself: "Hang on, it´s all dark now,  where can I turn on the light?" The guides were ever patient with us so when we had forgotten to find our sleeping bags after it had become really dark they were quick to help us out.

Love sand
And I have talk about the sand. Beaches are nice but you shouldn´t stay there unless you love sand. And believe me there is a lot of it and it gets everywhere. So just love sand. Even the kind that is made from crushed rock and consists of razor sharp crystals.

The rapids of the Sun Kosi river
The Sun Kosi is filled with large (and small) rapids. The main ones are:

• No Exit
• Meatgrinder
• High Anxiety
• The mighty Harkapur, the 10th largest rapid in the world
• JAWS where we flipped (see below)
• Rhino Rock"
• Jungle Corridor
• Rollercoaster
• Big Dipper
• Black Hole

Entering a large rapid was for me scary at first, especially when we were paddling towards it, but then the sheer adrenalin infused fun just took over. We would shout at each other to paddle hard and try to keep the rhythm of our paddling as good as possible. This could be difficult when big waves would lift the boat and you would end up just pushing your paddle through air. The alternative would be a large wave coming from your opposite side so you would sink your paddle into the water. The sheer fun of it all is difficult to put in words. 

The Beastly Harkapur
The feeling of going successfully through a big rapid like Harkapur is a pretty unique feeling to say the least. I think the videos and the pictures below tell the story much better than I ever could. What is missing from those videos and pictures is the deep rumble of a large rapid such as the Harkapur rapid. We heard this bone crunching growl when we came to our camping site the night before and it was our companion throughout the evening and the morning. We scouted the rapid in the afternoon and in the morning before running it and it wasn´t the massive waves or the rocks that scared me, it was that rumbling sound that got to me. You would listen to it and think "My God ... what have I gotten myself into?"

One interesting thing that happened and something you might catch on the GoPro video below, at one point when were are approaching the rapid the senior guide (Gotam) yells something in Nepalese to Rajul the other guide steering the boat. We all took this as "Forward hard" so we paddled really hard, it was like an electric current going through the boat. He was actually telling him to steer to the right. Oh, and they didn´t mention to us until we had gone through that two other companies had bypassed Harkapur so we really opened the rapid for the 2012 season. Pretty cool :)

Scouting Harkapur from the riverside.

Running the Harkapur rapid and opening it up for the 2012 season (GoPro view - my brother is wearing the camera on his helmet).

Running the Harkapur rapid (GoPro view - my brother is wearing the camera on his helmet)

Below are images from us running the Harkapur rapid: 

Kali guides the cargo boat through Harkapur.

Flipping in the Jaws rapid
The same day we ran the Harkapur rapid we had an epic flip in the Jaws rapid.

Flipping the raft in the JAWS rapid. My God!

Apperantly, our angle into the rapid was a bit off so the massive wave just swept us aside like we were a piece of cardboard in a hurricane. I remember paddling hard when two successive waves struck the boat and flipped it over. It is strange but I wasn´t really surprised when the boat turned and I was in the water.

I was lucky as I got ejected from the boat in a way I didn´t spend significant time under it. I will never forget the view when I got to the surface, a huge wave on the right and that sound again, the massive roar of the rapid. Successive waves of water slammed me in the face. Then I saw the kayakers in front of me and I yelled so loud for help I was hoarse for two days. They rushed towards to us and pulled us to safety. My trip to the riverbank took an interesting turn when Finn the safety Kayaker turned to me where I was hanging to his kayak and said: "You have to let me go now." I knew I had to comply as this meant we were having an encounter with a whirlpool. As soon as I let him go I was sucked under and I wish I had a recording of the gurgling sound I heard myself make while stuck in the whirlpool. When the whirlpool ejected me to the surface a rope appeared in front of me as by magic. This was thrown from the guys on the cargo boat. They pulled me in and one of the guys patted me on the back and said: "You went down for a long time."

After this we all worked together to salvage the situation and get everybody back on the raft where they belong and tackle the next rapids in the Jaws series. And that whirlpool? Finn told me later that it was at least 15 meters wide. Holy crap.

The last two days were pretty quiet but I liked those days as well as it gave us all a time to chat, cement our friendship and enjoy the beauty of Nepal.

Team FORWARD! From the left: Sanji, Jon Thorsteinsson (me), Gudjon Magnusson, Raju the guide, Ralph Boelzner and Lee Stokes. We are mates for life.

Finally, we opted for a flight back from the "take out" point of Chatra which involves a two hour crazy drive through the countryside and an hour long flight back to Kathmandu. We flew with Buddha Air which was just as uneventful and smooth as you want a flight to be. The alternative was a 16 hour ride on a bus. We were glad we took the flight. We came to the Shanker Hotel, hugged the water toilet and took extra long showers. The morning after we revisited Buddha Air and joined them on a mountain flight to see Mt. Sagarmatha (or Mt. Everest as it is known in the west.

Mt. Sagarmatha or Mt. Everest on the left.

What to bring on a rafting trip to Nepal

• Sun Screen and after sun lotion
• Bug repellent
• After bite lotion
• Baseball cap to wear under your helmet to screen your face from the sun
• Thin dry fit long sleeved sweater to wear on the river to shield yourself from the sun (GRG issues a jacket but it got a bit hot sometimes)
• Dry fit pants to wear on the river, again to shield yourself from the scorching sun 
• Imodium in case you get a stomach flu
• Carbohydrate drink mix or energy gel like long distance runners use (in case of stomach flu)
• Copy of your passport and insurance documents

Booking a rafting company in Nepal
Be careful when deciding upon a company and a trip. Make sure that the company is reputable and they care about safety and know what they are doing.

This includes the following:
1. Enough safety kayakers who are experienced and certified in river rescue
2. They are insured
3. Have been in business for a long time and have a good safety record
4. Have the proper gear
5. Safety isn´t just about rescuing in big rapids. It is also about being able to run a proper camp on a river beach in the jungle or next to village. This means taking hygine seriously and being aware of the risk of theft which is inevitable when bunch of tourists with priceless cameras and stuff show up next to an impoverished village. The guides also need to be proficient with first aid, for example it is necessary to clean and bandage all small wounds or cuts immediately to avoid infections

Disclosure: I am not affliliated with GRG Adventure Kayaking in any way but both Chrissy and Maila are friends with me on Facebook. I would without a doubt use GRG again should I return to Nepal for rafting or hiking.