Rafting and volunteering

When Nikki returned, she brought an Australian girl called Kiara with her, who she did her trek with. Kiara is now staying with us for China at least, so for now we have a new travel buddy!

After a few days of doing very little but lounging around and drinking too much overpriced alcohol, the three of us set off on a 3 day white water rafting trip to Kaligandaki river, which is the holiest river in Nepal. It’s kind of the equivalent to the Ganges in India, as it’s the place to be cremated. When we were floating around the river we often saw the cremation sites, and we when past a funeral procession, where everyone from the village had come down to the river to pay their respects. There were a few vultures around which I think take care of any leftover body parts. Delightful!

The trip didn’t start off too smoothly as Nikki woke up on the day of departure feeling really ill. I didn’t think she was even going to be able to come but she just about pulled through. There were 7 of us in our raft in total, with 2 French guys and a Danish couple making up the numbers. We also had a really nice German guy called Max kayaking along with us. The food on the trip was surprisingly tasty, and they even made us up a delicious rum punch on our first night at camp. The raft was used at night to create a tent with, which was obviously rather draughty but good enough, I slept much better than expected!

The second day was pretty tough for me as I got whatever Nikki had had the previous day, and felt really rough. I wasn’t too bad in the day, I had a little swim in the river which was really cold, and managed to survive 6 hours of peddling. By the evening I was feeling worse, and unfortunately we had to move camp as stormy weather meant that sand was blowing everywhere and the campsight was soaked by heavy rain. Instead, we hiked up a hill for about 30 mins to get to one of the guides’ homes. His family looked after us well, the food was supposedly amazing although I couldn’t bear to eat hardly any of it. I felt like I was going to die at the top of this stupid hill in the middle of nowhere! And when I came to need the loo, there was a massive spider sitting on the wall. Max came to help me bringing Kiara’s flip flop with him as a weapon. Kiara has really small feet, so when Max saw the spider he said ‘I think we’re going to need a bigger shoe!’ Thankfully though it just about did the job, although I spent the rest of the night on the family’s porch worrying that the other spiders were going to get me in the night as revenge!  

Happily I felt much better on the third day and so I could enjoy our final day of paddling, which had very few rapids so was easy going. Overall, the rapids were pretty tame, and although we got soaked a lot and had to cling on a few times for dear life, none of us did actually fall out. I really enjoyed the trip despite not feeling my best, and would definitely do it again somewhere else.


After returning from the rafting, we got going with the orphanage properly, and got ourselves organised to do craft activities with them, like making photo frames, a 2068 calendar and some masks. The kids were so adorable and we had a great time working with them. I found this orphanage to be a much more positive experience than when I worked in Argentina, as the kids were much better treated and had a higher standard of living. Although I felt sad leaving, I knew that they were being cared for, and didn’t feel guilty as I had done in Argentina.