2024 LCC River Karnali Trip – Nepal

Day 7 – Gods House, Juicer and Strip _n_ Flip Paddling Day 4

This was set to be another big water day but only a half-day paddle today.

Whilst getting ready in the morning, we spotted an eel in a bucket, seemingly captured the night before. We had great amusement while watching Govi and Dipesh trying to clean down the eel and go into the ice box for the day whilst being electrocuted! But we had to question… why did we have an eel?

It wasn’t long before we reached the first rapid for inspection, “God’s House”, a Grade IV+, technically the highest graded rapid on the trip. Nevertheless, we were all up for running this one (perhaps helped by not realising the grade until afterwards!).

This rapid had a tongue in the centre(ish) of the river leading you into the rapid. The tongue leads into a big stopper where “people get flipped” so try to go river right of that and then keep paddling hard right to hit the tongue leading out of the rapid between the huge holes on either side of the river, but before you can relax, make sure to miss the stoppers straight afterwards.

I was feeling a little less nervous than yesterday. One thing I had realised was that these rapids were quite straight forward as long as you hit the line right. They are far from the boulder gardens of the Tryweryn or other British rivers we’re used to paddling.

So after Manoj demonstrated the line, Norris went first, closely followed by Martin, then me, then Dani (one of the other kayakers with us), followed by Keith and Stuart.

We broke in, we hit the first tongue, we paddled hard right but my boat spun upstream and I found myself heading backwards into the boat-flipping stopper. I don’t quite know how but somehow I survived and was facing the right way again (did I go through it backwards or did I manage to turn in time? I don’t know). I paddled even harder right and found the tongue out and at this point, the rafters watching from the bank say I seemed to relax and stop paddling and suddenly I was upside down. I rolled back up just in time to avoid the stoppers at the end and eddied out. That was an exciting rapid!

Next up was Juicer part 1, another grade IV. This one involved a river-wide recirculating pour-over with a narrow chute on river left heading right over some rocks to avoid a wooden construction that had been built/fallen into the river, followed by a large swirling pool of water and then a line tight up against a large rock on river right to avoid the big hole on river left.

Upon seeing the wooden construction, I immediately opted out of this one, the line was tight and I didn’t fancy my chances if I messed up. Martin opted out too, along with one of the other kayakers who had spent a long time underwater on God’s House. (At this point it’s worth mentioning that our fellow paddlers from China never bailed, if they failed to roll they would just hang upside down and wait for someone to rescue them, no matter how long it took! Not something I fancy trying on our shallow, rocky rivers back home!)

After having already demoed the line in his own kayak, Manoj came down first paddling one of our kayaks and towing the other 2 empty ones. Impressive. Everybody else followed, making the first part look easy but the middle part looked messy and the exit wave caused carnage, with even one of our number being thoroughly “juiced”.

Juicer part 2 was less eventful, Calu inspected quickly and confirmed the line and we all paddled through without stopping.

The next rapid (Flip n Strip, Grade IV) was very quickly inspected and consisted of a series of huge waves best run from the centre heading right to avoid the gnarliest parts. These were actual walls of water and one got the best of Martin – he was flipped ‘n’ stripped from his boat. He was hauled on board the raft and Manoj towed his kayak full of water behind.

By this time, we were clearly trying to catch up a little and the guides were trying to keep things moving as quickly as possible, which meant less time dawdling or inspecting and more running so the rapids became a bit of a blur, but they were big and bouncy and every time we asked if there were many more, Norris’ answer was “just 2 more”.

After a full on morning we came to a beach that should have been our camp for the night but we were unable to camp there (something to do with fresh cow poo) so we carried on and after another half hour we stopped for lunch on a small beach. We had been paddling for 4 hours, the longest so far.

Another hour’s paddling after lunch brought us to a suitable beach to camp for the night and before long dinner was served – eel with cheesy fried potato wedges and lasagne. I never thought I’d say this but the eel was good, it tasted like grilled sea bass. I ate everybody else’s as they all opted to stick with lasagne!