“Crazy” (Katie Melua)

Nepal is a very beautiful country and we could all just sit here with a cold drink in hand and admire the scenery. However it is also the home of several unique and exciting ways to cause your adrenalin to flow and your heart to stop! Pokhara is a lovely town with a really chilled feeling, and the most amazing steak I have had for a long time! And wine! Very exciting! We had hoped to go paragliding, but unfortunately as it is the off-season, all the pilots have gone somewhere drier, so instead a group of us headed off for our first white water rafting of the trip. Well, brown water rafting is probably a more apt description, as it is the monsoon season and the rivers are somewhat full. All kitted up in our life jackets, helmets and with our paddles in hand, we boarded the raft and set off down the river. We quickly discovered that unfortunately the person at the front of the raft on the left side had no rhythm, so there was much clashing of paddles, but somehow we muddled our way along and managed to stay in the boat! We ended up about 30kms down the river, wet but happy (particularly once the monsoon rain stopped!). From Pokhara we headed to Kathmandu, a sprawling, busy, hectic, awesome city, full of temples and countless shops offering to embroider t-shirts or knock-off North Face fleeces. Leaving the truck at the workshop where it lives in Kathmandu, we headed into the tourist area, Thamel, in a fleet of tiny taxis. It was like an Asian version of The Italian Job as we wound through the tiny streets in convoy, running pedestrians and rickshaws off the road. Just as Crofty announced that the city seemed a bit dusty and “needed a bit of rain”, the heavens opened and we watched the windscreen wipers vainly trying to deal with all the water being thrown at them. We arrived at a local landmark, the Kathmandu Guest House (we were later to discover that this seems to be the only hotel in Thamel that taxi drivers actually know) and sheltered in the New Orleans Café, enjoying the food and roof! Eventually the rain abated and we were able to wind our way through the streets to our hotel. The next day I had grand plans for all the temples I was going to see on a walk through the streets, but Dr Pete had other ideas and carted me off to the travel clinic for a malaria test as I was suffering from flu-like symptoms which are the first sign. Fortunately it turns out that I really did have the flu (Influenza A incidentally), and I suffered through two nasal swabs in order to help research for next year’s northern hemisphere flu vaccine, so you can all thank me later (apparently researchers believe that Nepal provides an early warning system). I spent most of the rest of the day lying in bed taking paracetamol, but I managed to reappear for dinner and a cheeky bottle of wine… The next morning a group of us were up very early for a scenic flight to see Mt Everest. We joined Yeti Airlines flight 301 and headed off on a rather swish plane for about an hour as we flew to Everest and back. There was quite a bit of cloud cover all the way, and I was starting to worry whether I had got up for nothing, but we ascended through the cloud and all of a sudden, there it was. It was absolutely awesome. In a range of huge mountains, it was clearly identifiable and majestic, and quite breathtaking. Climbing it is madness, absolutely insane. Before seeing it I had respect for anyone who climbed it, but now I am caught between thinking that they need psychological help, and complete awe. Too quickly we headed back to Kathmandu, past other huge peaks, but they weren’t Everest! Finally feeling a bit better, I missioned off to see the Monkey Temple (well, the temple with monkeys on the way up to the temple, there didn’t seem to be any at the top), and had an unofficial (and uninvited) guide in the form of a 12 year old boy and his 4 year old brother, so happily wandered with us to show us around (including the monkey swimming pool – had to visit it as I had visions of monkey sized sunloungers, but alas, no). Finally they asked for biscuits, and although they had been good guides and quite entertaining (“I know all the capital cities in Europe, ask me one”), we were aware that others in the group had already donated many biscuits to the young guides at the monkey temple, so we headed off with his warnings of attack monkeys foremost in our minds. But we survived, and headed to Durbar Square where we fended off another guide (a slightly older version this time, and who in retrospect might have been quite useful as we wandered rather aimlessly around the buildings and made up stories about what they may have been used for). Monkeys:

Me at the Monkey Temple:

From Kathmandu, we headed north towards the Tibet border (Kodari), to The Last Resort, a luxury tented camp famed for its adventure activities. The “tents” provided beds, duvets and electric light, and were all under corrugated iron roofs, so were slightly different from what we had experienced in our camping days! The first afternoon was spent trying to work out which activities to do, and when, over the coming days, and then we had a buffet dinner and headed to my tent (which was huge) for a couple of drinks.

Despite the relative luxury of the tent I managed to sleep very little, as the drinks the night before had elicited from me an agreement to do the bridge swing and I had spent the night panicking about it! On waking up I made the decision not to do the jump, and instead became the group photographer while everyone except for myself, Elaine, Ann and Simon jumped off the bridge either doing the bridge swing, or bungy. It is very difficult to explain the sheer terror that crossed everyone’s faces as we watched Pete do the first bridge swing, which consists of jumping off a 160m high bridge over a gorge, attached to a rope about 140m long which is in turn attached to a set of cables about 50m from the bridge. On jumping off, the first 6 seconds are complete freefall, then finally the rope kicks in and you swing down the gorge, about 20m above the water, before finally hauling yourself to the edge of the river using another rope. Watching all my friends jump off was terrifying, and confirmed in my mind that I had made completely the right decision not to do it! A couple of the guys also did bungy jumps. Once they had all walked back up from the gorge, everyone concluded that it was an amazing experience and they were very glad they had done it… Sure they were…

Maura going for the big leap - bear in mind, that platform is 160m in the air:

While I had chickened out of the bridge swing, I did manage to keep my appointment for a massage in the afternoon. Even massage becomes an adventure sport in Nepal, as I was pummelled by yet another surprisingly strong woman. After a particularly vicious attack on my left arm which caused it to start hurting, I exclaimed, and the woman was very apologetic, and then spent the next couple of minutes massaging the same spot over and over again in order to ease the pain – so she was causing me more pain in an attempt to cure the pain that she had caused! Didn’t work! She did manage to sort out the knots in my back (I always thought they were stress related, but after 4 months of travelling, how stressed can I be?) and I hobbled out and up to the bar.

The next day I headed off with Edel, Mike, Shinnick and Jo to go canyoning. After getting dressed into some very attractive wet suits, helmets and abseiling harnesses, we headed up the hill for a short walk before starting our descent. The first waterfall that we came to, we slid down on our bottoms, landing with a splash in the pool of water below. For the next couple of hours we abseiled down a series of waterfalls to the bottom of the gorge. It was great fun, and lovely to be drenched in cool water to combat the heat! The walk back up the hill at the end was a bit of a mission though… Had a lazy afternoon sitting around in the Instant Karmabar, the common room for the resort, and then headed to dinner and off to bed early as it was going to be a big day the next day…

Do you remember back at school when your parents used to trot out the classic phrase of “would you jump off a bridge if all your friends did” as a plaintive cry against peer group pressure? Well, it turns out that peer group pressure is still very much alive and well, and, as it turns out, yes I would jump off a bridge if all my friends did. So I woke early the next day and headed to the bridge to face my fears along with Elaine, who had added further pressure to herself by already buying the t-shirt for the bridge swing with a promise to get “I was too chicken to do the [bridge swing]” embroidered on it if she didn’t go through with it. Elaine and I headed to the bridge (along with Rich and Shinnick who were insane enough to want to do yet another jump) and watched a group of about 15 Belgians jump off. Then it was our turn. Elaine went first. After some encouraging words from the Jump Master, Elaine jumped off. Mike T has said that her scream will haunt him for the rest of his life. Suffice it to say, Elaine didn’t enjoy the jump, but she does get to wear the t-shirt with pride! Then it was my turn. I had visions of bravely walking to the edge of the platform like it was nothing, however, harnessed up and attached to a rope with nothing between me and the bottom of the gorge 160m below, my courage failed me, and it took the Jump Master 3 turns of counting from 3 backwards to get me to jump. But I did jump. The feeling of free-falling will never leave me. It was absolutely horrific. I screamed “Nooooooo” the whole way down, and pedalled furiously with my legs in an extremely futile attempt to get back on the platform. The relief when the rope finally kicked in and I was swinging down the canyon was overwhelmed by the shaking and pounding heart that only comes from sheer terror! I hauled myself to the side of the gorge and somehow managed to stand up on my extremely shaky legs for long enough to get the harness off. Walking back up from the gorge with legs of jelly, we eventually arrived back up at camp and I went and bought a t-shirt which I shall be also wearing with pride. I am very glad that I did it, as there was no way I wanted to be the only one who didn’t, but I will never jump off another bridge. There is a video…

Me, smiling, before I jumped off the bridge... Elaine is looking a bit more pensive... She was right to be!:

As jumping off a bridge wasn’t enough adrenalin for one day, I headed off for my second whitewater rafting of the trip, along with Rich, Elaine, Mike T, Michael S and Alexa. A short minibus ride took us, and the other 20 rafters to the launch site, and we got kitted up and went through a very detailed safety briefing about what to do in the event that the raft capsizes. As the 6 of us had all been rafting only last week, we were keen for them to get going and stop going on about the safety stuff. We wanted to get on the water, and we were never in any danger of capsizing the previous time. Eventually we got onto the water. And quickly discovered why the safety briefing had been so extensive and why there were two safety kayaks in the water. It was absolutely amazing, huge rapids, the raft being tossed around, clinging on for dear life! So much fun, and so different from our previous rafting. After about 45 minutes of very hectic rapids, we stopped for lunch which involved a bit of eating, and in our cases, a lot of throwing each other into the river. Eventually we got everyone doing it! After lunch we cruised along for another couple of hours on pretty flat water. While there were no rapids to contend with, we had an absolutely fantastic time jumping in and out of the water, kidnapping people and shoes off other boats, swimming through the smaller rapids, and racing the other rafts. It was one of the best afternoon’s entertainment I have ever had. All of us came away with smiles plastered on our faces, and countless stories of our antics to bore the others with when we got back to Kathmandu!

Looking slightly deranged with Elaine in rafting helmets on the bus home from rafting... although the way people drive, maybe helmets are a good idea...:

But it wasn’t all fun and games that day as it was our farewell dinner for Crofty who has decided to head back to reality early and leaves us in Kathmandu to fly back to the UK. He was farewelled in true Odyssey fashion, with far too much food, cocktails and laughter, and a great time was had by all.