Rafting- Monsoon flows, Trishuli River, Nepal
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Getting ready
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Monsoon flows and it flows brown. It wasnt a white rafting but brown.
Monsoon rafting is considered to be challenging for river could swell like an ocean with powerful rapids and whirlpools. This means, our monsoon rafting was more than just a floating.
River Trisuli is one of the most popular Nepali rivers for rafting and that's where we headed to early morning on Saturday. We (8 in a group) were to arrive by 10 just so as to be ahead with and not caught up in tide. One of our 4WDs punctured on the way and we were late. On our arrival, we put our life jackets and helmets on. We had some instructions on safety measures and emergency procedures from both, instructor and a rescue guard. Listening to them brief on Do's and Don'ts were a bit hard to take in. We feared on being hurled out the boat. It started to drizzle. The river seemed to be running high offs.
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| Away we go |
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| Sailing away |
The total program was about two and half including lunch in the river bank. We skipped lunch just so to catch up with other groups. We had it later, after we finished off. Ripples, splashes and bumps were more than interesting at times considering the water was ice cold. There were gentler stretches too which were easy to raft on. Rapids were more interesting with the names they were associated with, 'nose', 'monkey', 'pinball' etc. In between, we had a swimming session, we were taken to a river running alongside. It was clean and the water was warm. The instructor had us play some games, all of them using paddles. I guess those were 'rafting' games.
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| Stand by |
At the mean time, dad and his friend were having their own time. The convenience of river running alongside the main highway, offered an opportunity for them to drive the same speed as we were on.
Well, that's called keeping an eye on, very much full on.
As soon as we were off the boat, we heard the news of five people gone missing. This made it to headline next morning, “Four women and a man went missing". A couple of days of rescue team searching and they could only find a body, out of five. What a tragedy!
Photo Courtesy- Daddy