Rafting

Dear all,
First of all, I’m heading out to the field again this coming week. The Dhimals are going to be celebrating their biggest festival of the year. I’m terribly excited, but I’ll also be gone for awhile. So please forgive me if I go silent again for awhile. But I am resolving now to write more often as soon as I get back. And I’ll try and write at least one letter from the field. That said, last time in the field, I wrote personal letters to a few of you, but then I realized I don’t have your addresses. So I’m including a form here, if I know you, please give me your address so I can write to you. Of course, you don’t have to, but if there’s no address there’s no chance you’ll get a letter.






Ok, so, today I have another adventure to tell you about. Yesterday, I went rafting with 35 of my closest friends here and it was sooo much fun. We all met at 6:30ish and climbed on to the bus we had reserved. From the first moment, I was completely impressed with how well organized the whole event was. My friend, we call him Buffalo, was the organizer, and he’d not only secured the bus, but he’d gotten us all boxed breakfasts, and he’d remembered to get two huge jugs of water. So before we’d been on the road even half an hour, we were all enjoying a breakfast of vegetable pakoda and my favorite Nepali sweet, julabi. (actually, they call it something else here, but I seem to only be able to remember the hindi name for it right now. Sorry) Once the sugar from the julabi had kicked in, the silliness began. Another of my friends, who has the biggest most constant smile I’ve ever seen, started to sing, and I’m pretty sure he didn’t stop for a full two hours. It wasn’t long before most of the bus had joined in. Sadly, I only know one song in Nepali, a child’s rhyme, but to make sure I didn’t feel left out, we all sang that too. It was hard to hear over the laughter, but it was there.
The trip to Tirsuli, takes about 3 hours, so we stopped once to buy bananas (which were fresh and sweeter than any banana I’d ever eaten in the US.) We actually thought we were stopping for tea, but we’d mistaken a big house for a tea shop, and the woman who lived there was only polite enough not to chase us away with a stick. It was actually pretty funny. Then we climbed back on the bus, and didn’t stop until we’d reached the rafting place. At the rafting place, all the girls needed to change, but there were no changing rooms, so we had to borrow a room from a neighboring farmer. We changed in the room where they kept all their corn, and as we changed we made jokes about how we’d become just like goats. Once we’d changed, we walked down to the river. I was so excited, it was hard not to rush a head. There were a couple groups of tourists as well, but we mostly kept to ourselves. We all got geared up in helmets and life jackets, and looking back at the pictures, I think we all looked pretty silly. Then we split up into four different boats, and headed to the water.
Fortunately, our rafting guides were friends of Buffalo and Skeleton, because we were quite a handful. I got the sense that other rafting groups actually have an interest in rafting, whereas we were mainly interesting in waging war on each other and being mischievous. It reminded me a lot more of a game of battleship than rafting. One boat even had the foresight to bring a bucket. Sadly, that wasn’t my boat. We weren’t even 10 feet from the shore when the splashing and chasing began, and for a good twenty minutes all of our boats simply rotated in place as we were all more interested in splashing neighboring boats than moving forward. Eventually, our guide was able to gain control of our rambunctious crew and we headed out in to the river.
Our rafting route was actually pretty long. We went about 16km before we stopped for lunch and then after that we went another 5 or 6km. It ended up being about three hours all together. The river was tamer than I had expected and we only hit a few really big rapids, but I still managed to lose my seat a couple of times. We also had plenty of chances to jump in and swim, and the water was so refreshingly cool and deep. It was really nice. In fact, being a Michigan girl it was just nice to be near water again, and I couldn’t help but think of all the canoeing trips I’d taken back home. The scenery wasn’t all that different from home either, except for the occasional waterfall and of course, the ever present hills looming in the background. Buffalo caught me looking dreamily at the water, and being as intuitive as ever, worried I was missing home too much, but it was more a happy nostalgia than a heartsick feeling. In a weird way, it felt good to miss home that way. But it also made me resolve to get at least one afternoon of jetski-ing in when I get home.
After rafting, we climbed back on the bus and headed back towards Kathmandu. We stopped once for fried fish on the way. At the fish shop, there were 5 or 6 different kinds of really small fish, all about the size of my palm, and they were fried whole in oil. Everyone said they were delicious, but I’m a strict veggie over here, so I didn’t try them. They smelled pretty tasty though. After our quick fish dinner, we headed back home. Despite our exhaustion, the singing picked back up in a matter of minutes. We played a game where one side of the bus would sing a song and then the other side would have to sing a song that began with the last letter of the last word in the other side’s song. It was very summer camp-ish, but it was also a ton of fun. Once again, I wasn’t able to contribute much, but I did sneak Happy Birthday in, which made everyone laugh. When most of the bus had drifted off to sleep, a few of the guys started singing old nepali love songs, and I fell asleep to their soft singing.
In short, it was another wonderful day full of great friends and great fun. I uploaded the pictures and you can see them in the slideshow for now.
As always, I’m sending my love your way.
Sarah