Winging the Humla Karnali
Namaste from Pokhara,
After Pete got me in a head lock and forced me to take 5 weeks off from the shop, I headed out here on my tod to try get as bigger fix of Nepali adventure as I could….the world-wide-kayak-community and Kingdom of Nepal didn’t let me down!
The Humla Karnali has been on my all time wish list for a while but I never thought I would be lucky enough to get it done this trip. The world-wide-kayak-community came up with the goods within days of arrival in Pokhara in the shape of Scottish Colin and Kiwi Paul. I planted the Humla seed with them within hours of meeting. Colin took a day to get over the ‘may-be-we-should-just-do-the-Thule’ vibe. Paul just needed a boot from Colin to make him change his flights and skip his trip to Blighty!
We spent just over 9 days travelling 380km travelling through many different cultures, environments and river features. One night we were sleeping under palm trees watching monkeys, the next night the pine forest were puncturing our sleeping mats to pieces! One day you have rocks being hurled at you and the next you are welcomed into a village with open arms and an army of children to feast to rotti, alu and chutney – just days before paddling though some very arid food deprived vallies. As for the paddling – well the lack of paddling photos tells it all! Days of neck stretching-hole dodging read and run and some long hard sole searching inspections!
Here are a few photo from the trip:
And a video I made about some gear we used.
Basically we found that Ortlieb dry bags were the bomb. All other thinner material dry bags can’t hack it on multi days trips. The camera bag I had was perfect- small, light weight and didn’t let any water in!
I shall be doing a more detailed trip report, photos and videos etc in my own blog shortly!
Look forward to getting home and seeing what the Thames has been up to!
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