Spiti Khola Adventure

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I made it to Kathmandu yesterday (barely). After the paragliding I got my first taste of 'traveler's sick'; in a nutshell betrayal by all my normal body fluids and temperatures & so I braved the 8 hour bus ride to Kathmandu (thank you, thank you, my sensitive travel companions). Today I am feeling back to my normal self and I'm trying to be good but I couldn't help slowing down at all the scrumptious cake shops (rum raisin chocolate, apple donuts...)
Kyle read up on temples, stupas and chowks of the city and took me on magic tour of the city's most ancient and beautiful architecture including one 5th century sculpture of the Buddha just sitting in a courtyard. An art curator would have a heart attack but I thought it made the art alive, relevant and living, it had tika on it's face to mark Tihar. After today I'm thinking the best way to kill some art is to lock it in some stuffy museum. It was so exciting to see art in the city with life happening all around it. Kathmandu is architecturally the most beautiful city I've seen in India or Nepal. Tomorrow more exploring crumbling tunnels made-for-extremely-short-hobbits and less Fever (I hope).

Our group has happily discovered we are well within budget, we spent about $700 each in the first two months. With some $$ lining our pockets, we signed up for a three day kayak clinic on the lower Spiti Kola (Spiti River) for $150. We returned the day before yesterday to Pokahara and I spent all day limping from chai shop to bakery because I was too sore to do anything but eat chocolate croissants. I learned to roll my kayak on the first day of practice but I haven't developed the knack of flipping over in the rapid, and I was 'rescued' I think 7 times, about average for our group of beginners. We ran one class 3+ rapid, and it flipped everyone (8 people) except Kyle, who attributes it to Divine intervention.
This in great contrast to our first kayak attempt on the Spiti Kola, when we headed off on our own with $20 kayak rentals and a zero English-speaking taxi driver. We were dropped off up river where the white water rages from class 3 to 4+ for miles. After some scouting up the river bank, Jake, our 'teacher,' reassured us that "No one dies on class 3. That happens on like, class 5," heads down first, flips not 15 feet from us and after a wet exit is swept down into Big Rapids. We lost the paddle and the rest of the afternoon trying to pull his kayak out from the Whirlpool it was stuck in. Jake himself was stuck in the middle of the river for an hour with raging water on both sides, too loud for us to yell to each other. I ran from Nepali hut to homestead pantomiming the action of pulling rope while wearing a ridiculous looking kayak "skirt". Really look it up it's the stupidest looking thing I can imagine and the most humiliating to cross cultural barriers in. Every single child and teenager in both river bank neighborhoods shows up to watch us struggle with the boat, and only later do six young men successfully pull it out while tied together (so as not to be swept down river).

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Comments

[Katie Newman]

I got your email!!
And it made me so happy!! Everytime I think about you being in India (which usually begins when I tell a Corrina-Story, or the mention of the word "India") I get filled up with a sense of awe and pride : I am very much in awe that you have the travelling cahones to GO to India without like... a preplanned itinerary, and then incredibly proud that I'm friends with such an intrepid person. Really. When you come home I want to hear all of your wonderful stories in person. And give you a hug. Because I probably didn't do that enough when we were on the same side of the globe.