Paddling the Lower Karnali River, Western Nepal, November/December 2018 by Roy McHale
The Lower Karnali River had been on my hit list for a while and I finally got the chance to paddle it after I convinced several other Liverpool Canoe Club members to join me on the adventure. The team consisted of myself, Tom Morris, Mark Young, Nathan Marsden and Rich & Liz Reeves. We decided to use a company called Paddle Nepal, who the club have used previously, to supply kayaks and organise the logistics of getting to the river which is situated in Nepal’s remote western region. The Karnali is Nepal’s longest river and along with its tributaries drains most of the far west of Nepal, the Wild West as many people call it.
Tom, Mark, Nathan and I flew from London Heathrow to Delhi then onto Kathmandu. We had a pretty good flight with Jet Airlines and arrived on the Saturday before the trip started the following Tuesday. In order to fill the days before the trip we had arranged to go to a river festival called the “Himalayan White-Water Challenge”.
