The car ride to our hike was quick and easy. Soon enough, the five of us were hiking uphill through someone's terraced corn fields. Our briefing was informative and done by Bobby. He gave us the run down on each of the five pitches (sections). Pitch 1: rappel then slide. Two to three meters above the water, let go and drop into the pool. Swim out. Pitch 2: cliff jump, swim. Rock slide, swim again. So on and so forth. He asked us if we knew the five steps of canyoning. We got the first four: rappelling, jumping, sliding, swimming.
"And five?" Bobby asked. We all paused.
"Fun?" I guessed. No.
"Safety," Kevin tried. No.
Arik offered no help here.
"Walking," Bobby said. Oh yeah, walking.
We started off, again Kevin taking the guinea pig lead. He rappelled, got on his butt and proceeded to slide out of view. I could hear Vijay saying something. Next came a large splash and hooting. My turn. From where Kevin disappeared, the chute narrowed and went vertical. I lowered down towards the small pool. Vijay instructed me to let go of the rope so I did. After the freefall into the pool below, I emerged and swam. Kevin was laughing and Vijay was hooting some more. I felt like I was made for this silly sport. Arik followed suit and we all cheered. Bobby stopped part way down to pull the ropes. He was stationed on a ledge. From there, he cannonballed into the small pool. Kevin and I sported ear to ear grins from here on out. This was too good to be true!
Next came the jump pitch. Vijay demonstrated as Bobby spoke. There was little room for error here. At five meters (about 15 or 16 feet) height was not the issue. We'd jump from a nice platform into an area about four feet wide. Both sides were rock cliff that needed to be avoided. We also had to jump a good way out to avoid the rocks directly below us. Don't jump too far or it will be shallow. Sheesh, you can imagine how many different ways this could go poorly. Kevin pulled it off. I did too. It was great! Incredible actually. We both touched bottom but it was silty and soft, so no worries there. Arik decided to lower on a rope, which I thought was wise.
The rest of the day was full of rock sliding, a rappel to zip line transfer, and a very long rappel. This last one was 45 meters. The chute narrowed quickly and you were immediately put into the waterfall. Your face got blasted by the water as you lowered half way down. From there, you had to swing right to the next anchors. Vijay assisted with a rope transfer. More rappelling led down to the last, long pool. From there we swam to the end. We agreed that canyoning is incredibly fun and will need to be done again...hopefully something we can do in Washington.
After lunch and packing up, we got into the car that would take us back to Kathmandu. What the
driver lacked in personality, he made up for with his driving gusto. This was the most terrifying part of the two days, oddly enough. Kevin and I exchanged worried glances as we passed trucks, motos, sheep, you name it around blind corners at unmentionable speeds. Our car started sliding into a ditch at one point, front right tire fully in, but our driver saved it. Holy Crap! In 3 hours, the braying of sheep as they jumped from our path turned into school children screaming as they did the same. Good thing they moved too. This man braked for no one. He ran over someone's tomatoes and shortly after, a bunch of hay that was in the road. It was becoming funny at this point. What else could we run over? More sketchy passing in corners preceeded high speed GTA style traffic dodging. How could jumping off a bridge be less scary, I have no idea. We made it, by some miraculous act we arrived at our destination shook, but unscathed.
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