By the way Colin's here too....

I realised that I forgot to mention that Colin arrived before Emrys and Si... he's here and loving it. Enjoying all the food and cheapness that Nepal brings. Of course after spending most of our summer together working on the marquees, our chat is pretty special, and it's certainly lucky there's others here to aid conversation.

Anyway, we've now been in Pokhara for a few days, and it's all I remember it to be. Easy to sort things out, cheaper and cleaner than Kathmandu. We're staying in a place called Hotel City Annapurna for around 100 NRs per head per night, and the owners son has taken to hanging out with us, when we're not on the river. It turns out he's related to the owner of the guest house up the road where I stayed last year, New Future Way, as is the way out here.

The day after we arrived in Pokhara (Thursday the 16th... I think), we had a good warm up run down the Upper Seti. It was nice to do it in the light, since the previous evening we almost sucked ourselves into a plan to do it by moonlight. This plan was obviously subject to the wares sold in the bar we were in. The river was fun, but not exactly challenging, what was more amusing was the young punks at the take-out who charged our taxi driver for the privilage of parking in their playground/ patch of scrub.

That night we hatched plans to do the Upper Modi Khola, we booked a coach with Charlie at Ganesh kayak shop and porters for the walk. We needed the coach as we hooked back up with Sonia and Monica, but also a group of 3 British guys, including Tim Burne. That meant a total of 10 of us heading up... The coach ended up costing us 270 NRs per head (!) and we got porters at 500NRs per day each. We drove to Lumli and couple of hours away and began the days trek.

The trek up the Modi Khola is pretty ace, with views of Mataputchre and Annapurna South popping up around corners and plenty of interesting kids and folk on the trail (see pics below). As usual we got lots of funny looks for hauling kayaks around. We made an hour or so shy of the put in at New Bridge and stayed the night in a tea house next to Old Bridge. My knees gave me healthy gip most of the way... I must be getting old.



The next day we made good time to the put in, leaving Sonia and one of the Brits to meet us at the Bridge, and hideous syphon (where lots of the river headed underneath rocks) at Old Bridge. We were a bit slow getting going, Si managed to drop one of his bags off the edge of the trail, down a small cliff into dense undergrowth. It took him a while and the help of a couple of Nepalis passing by to eventually retrieve it.

The river was a good as I remember it, if a bit lower than last year. I chose to be photographer for the day, which meant I portaged a few drops to get pics and because my camera and lens act like a suicide block in my lap! All in all the river was ace and although we had planned to carry on down the lower section, we ended up getting out at a dam and jumping on a local bus top back to Pokhara. This saved us a 3km walk in the midday heat with kayaks on our shoulders. I felt it was the right move and we got back into town mid afternoon on the Sunday 19th.




I write this on Friday 24th October after we got back from running the Upper Upper Kalighandaki from Tatopani hot springs yesterday.. but that's another story...