We’d cooked on a camp fire the night before (or rather, boiled some water to rehydrate our expedition meals), and slept under our tarps. We’d gone to bed very early (it was dark and we were tired) and therefore didn’t have much issue getting up and packing up around 6:30am, ready to get on the water and continue our river journey before 8am.
We were fairly anxious. The previous day had ended without us reaching our milestone of the ‘Morning Glory’ rapid, and we didn’t know how far down the river we had to go still.
The rapids had got a bit easier, with the character of the river being fairly similar to day 1, but with less gradient, making it a little easier and less likely to upset us!
We were still on the look out for a distinctive and harder rapid when the river flattened out completely and Becky and Mel recognised the beginning of the flat paddle out. We’d only been going an hour! We quickly realised that we had passed ‘Morning Glory’ relatively early on day 1 without realising and had pushed on so far that we were going to have a much shorter and easier day today! Phew!
The river valley is incredibly beautiful and it was a relaxing way to end the trip, cruising along the gently flowing water in the sunshine. Another hour passed before we reached the lake by the dam which marks the takeout. All done by 10:30am!
After our ride back to Pokhara we celebrated with pizza in a restaurant. Our light packing and exercise-rich days had left us in a state of frenzied hunger, and we ordered and ate 6 pizzas between the 4 of us. Strong work team!
Melanie and Colin Go Travelling 