A Brief Recap of Six Days on the Sun Kosi:
An interaction from day three:
Me: "You know I think I’m really starting to get repacking my boat figured out. It used to take me forever but now I’m pretty quick"
Jack: "Is this your first overnighter?"
Me: "Yeah. I wasn’t really gonna mention it."
Jack: "Damn. Six days in Nepal for your first overnight is a pretty big send."
Me: "I mean it's just going kayaking right?"
Jack was right, six days in Nepal as my first kayaking overnight was quite the send, but I was also right, it was just kayaking, with a heavier boat and longer days.
The starting point for all expeditions that happen in the Northern Himalayas and Foothills is the bustling city of Kathmandu. In the center of Kathmandu lies a sector known as Thamel. As the tourist epicenter of the city, the narrow streets and alleys of Thamel are packed full of trekking gear shops and hole in the wall bars where many pioneers of the Himalayas had their last drinks before groundbreaking expeditions.
Thamel is where we first got in touch with two local rafting companies and kayakers that gave us advice for our first trip: The Sun Kosi River. After three days of scouring gear shops and street markets for food and supplies, we were finally ready to set off. With the help of our guardian angel, a local kayaker named Roshan who decided to join us on our first overnight, we chartered a bus for around $10 USD each and loaded seven kayaks on top of the bus and seven smelly kayakers inside, with gear shoved everywhere in between. On all of my later river trips in Nepal, I would use public transportation and pay extra to strap my boat on top of the public busses, but because there were 6 of us together, it was cheaper to charter our own bus for the 3.5 hour journey. Our destination was a town East of Kathmandu on the banks of the Sun Kosi called Dolghat. Through the rattling bus window, I got my first glances of the river. The icy grey water struck a beautiful contrast against the lush green foliage in the surrounding mountains. Coming from Southeastern USA, where our rivers are rain dependent creeks with a few hundred cfs (cubic feet per second) of water, the sheer size of the Sun Kosi’s 40-50 thousand cfs was hard to wrap my head around. The river bed was wide and deeply carved through the earth, and the water moved swiftly, swirling and churning unpredictably. Our bus drove onto a wide beach where women washed clothes, men bathed naked in the cold waters, and children splashed about waiting for their mothers’ to be done with chores.
After getting many confused stares as we unloaded our boats from the roof of the bus and packed gear into our boats, we were sent off with kind waves, smiles, and kids chasing after us on the beach. We put on at 2 pm and after 3 hours of fast moving but uneventful flat water paddling, found our first beach camp. We set up camp using paddles as posts and kayaks as anchors for our tarps. That evening we bushwhacked through tall grass and brush to an abandoned house where we found a mystery citrus tree with fruits as large as my head and small but extremely potent chili plants. Dinner consisted of half burnt lentils with dried meat and chilies, and the citruses we had found. It would be one of only a few meals we would cook for ourselves and the last that Bat would be allowed to be in charge.
Me prepping one of our final dinners on the river. We bought a fish from a fisherman on the bank of the river and cooked it in leaves over the fire. This was after Bat was fired from cooking.
The next morning, I woke up covered in sand and enveloped in a thick white fog. Paddles, gear, and boats were scattered around me like wreckage the morning after battle. Fog swirled and clung to the blue-grey water and the deep green mountains watching over were just barely illuminated by golden rays of morning light. The surrealism and peace that I found in the early morning hours on the Sun Kosi sands will stay with me forever.
The next five days we paddled around 30 miles a day of big water class 3/4 and lots of fast moving flat water. The quality and frequency of whitewater increased each day, peaking on day 4. Like each mile of river we paddled, the views and experiences of each day were unique. One early morning after camping at the confluence of the Sun-Kosi and Dhudh-Kosi Rivers we watched a fisherman and his son emerge from the jungle and onto our beach to check his traps. Opposite the beach was the steep rock face of the gorge. There were five or so bamboo rods wedged into cracks in the wall every 10 to 15 feet. We watched as the fisherman sat himself in a tire inner tube and skillfully paddled across the current to the cliff to check what was on the end of each bamboo rod. His mastery of the swirling current fascinated us. The same fisherman later invited us back to his homestead where we met his wife, two sons, and menagerie of chickens, goats and two cows. He offered us peppers and fresh beans from his garden as we sat and enjoyed the morning. This gracious family was one of many on our trip that welcomed us into their home to meet their families and be fed and watered. The nurturing hospitality of the Nepali people is a trait sorely lacking from Western culture and has inspired how I hope to treat foreigners in my own communities.
The last few days in the ever-changing jungle landscape of the Sun-Kosi were spent stopping to marvel at waterfalls that cascaded into the gorge, meeting villagers and families that offered to feed us, sleeping on the sand next our campfires, and paddling through big, blissful waves. On the morning of our last day, we walked to a house between our beach and the nearby village where we were fed a breakfast of flat rice bread and lentils. When we asked what the bread was called, the mother of the family told us that others in the village had told her that "the foreigners eat pancakes for breakfast", but she had not known how to make pancakes so this was her best effort at making us feel at home.
As we were eating, we noticed a thick black smoke coming from the beach. Me, Jack, and Ben dropped our food and sprinted across the sand towards our camp. Three of us had slept next to the fire the night before and as we were eating, my sleeping bag had been blown into the hot coals, thus starting a chain reaction that led to the great Sun Kosi gear fire of 2022. In the wreckage we recovered remnants of my puffy jacket, Ben's melted sleeping pad, a mangled water bladder, and nothing more than a few feathers from my sleeping bag. Though I refuse to accept sole responsibility for the incident, months later in more than one introduction with kayakers whom I have never met, I have heard the phrase "Oh Madeleine right!? You're the girl that set camp on fire in Nepal!".
After cleaning up the remnants of the fire and thanking our breakfast host, we enjoyed our final 25 miles on the river. As the gorge disappeared, the banks of the river became more and more populated with villages and towns until we came across a holy Hindu pilgrimage site called Baraha Chhetra. The bright white peaks of the temple nestled into the dark green hills could be easily seen from the river. As we pulled up to the beach we noticed just how busy the town was, bustling with tourists and worshipers. After climbing the steep stairs of the temple we were quickly shocked out of the slow serenity of our beach camps and back into the busy chaos of the rest of Nepal. At our takeout just downstream, we loaded 7 kayaks onto two tuk-tuks and rode across town to where our group would part ways to conquer different rivers throughout the country.
Sun Kosi in English means Gold River. Named for the golden sand beaches that cradled our tired bodies after long days of paddling, and the sparkling Tibetan waters that carried us 170 miles; through hills, plains, jungle gorges, and green mountains, past villages and temples, and under swinging bridges. Nine months later, and every golden moment of my first overnight kayaking trip are still imprinted on my mind.
Commentaires