Kayaking has taken me to some amazing places over the past few years, through the pursuit of quality whitewater I have met some incredible people and seen sights that will stay with me forever. The driving force behind that travel has always been the kayaking, the promise of amazing whitewater and phrases like “five days of continuous class 4/5…” are what has driven me to explore new places, and the experiences that I have had were just been icing on the cake. My recent trip to Morocco was almost the opposite, it is the country, scenery, and people that made me put a trip together, and any good kayaking would be the bonus. Thankfully we got all we expected and plenty of bonus action.

Stunning scenery:

Plenty of Sitting Around and some relaxed multi-day paddling:

Great quality paddling in some stunning deep sandstone gorges:

The usual transport problems and associated Sitting Around:

Moroccan wildlife:

Classic North African skylines:

The enticing hustle and bustle of the Djema el Fna in Marrakesh:

And some great whitewater kayaking (Chris on the Sources of the Oum er Rhiba):

Over the ten day trip, we had some great paddling from grade 2 to 4 through some beautiful gorges and valleys. The paddling wasn’t the hardest and we didn’t get as much boating in as we could have if the van had been a bit more co-operative or the had been a touch more snow melt in the High Atlas, but as an experience and a chilled out trip with good friends, it would be hard to beat. Often on kayaking trips I can get quite stressed in focusing on trying to maximise the amount of boating, but I on this one I was getting quite into participating in the national pass-time of Sitting Around. I would recommend that everyone add Morocco to your destination wish list, regardless of your level of kayaking, and the sooner the better as we did encounter a few large dam construction projects on the trip, so some of these rivers, especially the Oum er Riba may not be around for much longer…

Oh, and the food beats any other country I have been to.

Last week I borrowed a pair of Speeders from Pyranha and headed up to Scotland with a friend from Guildford for a gentle trip along the Great Glen, from Fort William to Inverness. This is the most relaxed multi-day trip I’ve done yet – more ‘Three Men in a Boat’ than ‘Canoeing Down Everest’, and I thoroughly enjoyed it for that.

It’s not touring without lots of photos of the front of your boat

Aside from the kayaking and stunning views, highlights included; otters on the Canal, checking into a hostel in Augustus and offending an American chap with our drying thermals , being able to carry a whole roast chicken in the boat for lunch, spending the evening in a pub on a barge, and being buzzed by two RAF Tornadoes half way down Loch Ness.

“Hey, I think we can fit another Chicken in here if we move those bottles of Scotch down a bit”

There are some more words and photos from the trip on the Pyranha and Level 6 blogs. I can see myself getting hooked on touring kayaking, it seems to complement white water paddling nicely.

Reports from Peidmonte this year looked pretty grim, the snow pack was low, meaning that all the snow melt rivers would be low and the notoroiusly short Italian creeking season would be shorter than ever. Good job then that the region experienced torrential rain to keep the rivers at a tasty level.

Park and huck on the Gronda, Photo: Tom Laws

Pat Clissold and I flew out for a long weekend to meet up with a bunch of assorted students and layabouts that had been hiding under umbrellas in Campotonga for the previous few days. They all spent the Friday muttering something disticntly un-British about it being too cold and wet, so Pat and I had quick blast down the race section of the Gronda and the Sorba slides at a good high level.

Tom Parker on the first slide of the Ayasse

Saturday’s plan involved a drive across to the Aosta valley, and a blast down the short, steep and slightly terrifying Ayasse. We had all seen pictures of Simon Westgarth and co. on the Ayasse last year and were excited about some park-and-huck fun slides and drops. We got there to find that the rain had sent the river high, resulting in some long, fast slides in to sticky holes and a fair few chin-scratching moments, especially above the large triple drop combo. Good fun all round and we all felt that we had earned the large and unorthodox meal we enjoyed that evening.

“There are two ways out of this eddy; run the drop, or jump the drop”

Tom Laws runs the drop

The Souana was Sunday’s river, described in the bar a few days before as “the best run in the Alps”, we had high hopes, and we weren’t dissapointed. Entering along and committing gorge, reminiscent of Corsican rivers, and containing numerous bedrock and bouldery rapids from grade 3 to 5, this is a fantastic day’s paddling. One drop in particular saw three of the five paddlers that attempted it swimiming like carp (myself included).

Nick on the Souana

Chris Eastabrook running the ‘Land of the Giants rapid’, Souana

Bank holiday Monday’s are made for relaxing, so this is what we duly did. Taking full advantage of the sun, we spent the day drinking good coffee, swimming in the River, taking touristy photos, and eating ice cream before heading to Turin airport and back to work…

Tom Laws, messiah complex?

…and back in time for sunrise in London on Tuesday

One of the things that I like about foreign kayaking trips is that I get to see new places, meet new people, and learn new things. One of the new things that I learnt on this particular trip is the meaning of the phrase “continuous grade 4 paddling”. The educator in this case was the incredible Thule Bheri River, which flows south from the mountain region of Dolpo in Western Nepal to the Terai.

I have paddled continuous grade 4 rivers many times before, Wales has continuous grade 4, the Alps has continuous grade 4, Kyrgyzstan had some incredibly intense continuous rivers. Somehow the Thule Bheri is different, for four days the river provides world class whitewater kayaking that doesn’t let up over it’s 90 km length. Everything about this river is special, from the somewhat sketchy flight over the mountains to the top of the river, to the scenery, the feeling of remoteness, the people you meet, and the whitewater.

The river was first kayaked in the mid nineties by a team including Charlie Munsey and Gerry Moffat and since then has only seen a handful of descents, this is due at least in part to the region being difficult to access in recent years because of Maoist activity. Thankfully, the tensions in Nepal appear to have eased and travelling in Dolpo (as with the rest of Nepal) is now much easier. Hopefully this means that the Thule Bheri river will start to see the sort of attention that befits a river that must surely be one of the best hard multi-day whitewater trips in the World.

I first heard about the river when in India last summer, I bumped into Andy Sommer, a German kayaker living in Nepal who was talking about the river with the sort of enthusiasm that suggested the river was something special. Try talking to a beginner that has just run their first river, or asking a Devon local about the Upper Dart when it’s going through the third arch at New Bridge and you’ll get an idea of what I mean. I’m a sucker for enthusiasm so when I got back to the UK I contacted Andy and started getting things organised for an Easter mission. Andy sorted logistics from the Nepal side and I found two more paddlers that were willing to spend a few weeks in Nepal over Easter.

Andy Sommer on the Thule Bheri

Fast forward to mid-April, and there are four of us, having spent a few days warming up on the Bothe Khosi and Tamba Khosi rivers, crammed into a small Twin Otter Yeti Airlines (yes, really) plane to Juphail glancing of the window at some alarmingly close mountains. After a night spent drinking the beer that made up the rest of the cargo on our flight and watching a snowstorm descend down the valley, we were putting on the Thule Bheri river and heading off downstream. The previous night’s snowfall meant that the river was higher than when Andy had paddled the river previously and the water was a disconcerting grey colour that made spotting a line tricky at times.

Chris Smith on Day 1 on the Thule Bheri

Despite starting as a gentle fast grade 3, the river quickly gorged up and picked up pace, here is where the fun starts, from here the next four days were physically and mentally exhausting. To try and give a description of the river would be futile, suffice to say that it was rarely if ever below grade 4 and often above it. Andy proved to be a godsend both on and off the river, spotting improbable lines, offering reassuring smiles and arranging for us to stay in local houses and negotiating porters to carry our laden boats around a grade 5/6 gorge suing his fluent Nepalese.

My memories of the four days between putting on the Thule Bheri and reaching the confluence with the Sani Bheri are mixed, I remember feeling in turns terrified, more confident in my boating than I’ve ever been, exhausted and constantly amazed by the country and people. At the confluence of the Thule Bheri and Sani Bheri, there were feelings of elation and relief at having reached the end of the river coupled with a feeling of regret that the river had ended.

Giles playboating on the Seti

After a further long day’s flat paddling on the Bheri river and a tortuous bus ride to Pokhara, there was still time to fit in a quick blast down the River Seti in borrowed play boats and spend a few days relaxing, recovering and behaving like regular tourists – gawping at monkeys, taking photos of religious men, wandering around monasteries, watching cremations etc….

Giles was looking a bit rough by the end of the river

To sumarise, if you haven’t been boating in Nepal yet, do it. If you have, go again, and this time do the Thule Bheri.

Thanks to Andy at Shiva Outdoors – if you are after logistics or river leading in Nepal, then get in touch.

I have just got back from a short visit to Slovenia, although the intended purpose of the visit was research, whilst there I managed to successfully combine work with a little bit of paddling and some sightseeing. I was in Maribor visiting a researcher at the university for a week before heading into Ljubljana for a day and then hiring a car and driving across to the Soča in the hope of getting a few days of paddling.

Soca: sublime

It is coming towards the end of the season on the Soča and so water levels were low but there was enough water that the popular stretches were never a scrape. I hired a boat for three days from the friendly chaps at Alpin Action and headed off to the river. It being a weekend there were a lot of paddlers around and it wasn’t hard to find someone to tag along with, in this case a friendly Slovenian chap named Peter who I paddled with on the Srpenica – Trnovo section, a wonderful section of grade three paddling.

The problem with solo boating: the photos suck

The following day I decided to check out the stretch of river from Bunkerji to Zmuklica as I had seen some gorgeous photos of the river here and the (excellent) river notes promised grade III – IV. I didn’t find anyone to paddle with and so kayaked this stretch on my own and walked back up to the car. This was the first time I have paddled solo on an unfamiliar river and have to say I enjoyed the experience immensely. It feels pretty special to be paddling through the morning mist on your own, just ambling along at your own speed and enjoying your surroundings. My favourite moment had to be running a tight tricky rapid into a serene little gorge that was particularly enchanting with the mist that was covering the river.

I almost trod on this little fellow when trying to find my way back to the road having missed the get out on the Bunkerji to Zmuklica section.

My third day of paddling on the Soča was the highlight; I was lucky enough to hook up with some of the guides working for Alpin Action and paddle the river from the slalom site at Trnovo to Kobarid. The fast slalom course at Trnovo provides a great warm up to the tight and technical section below which has some nasty siphons in places if you miss a line. Paddling with these guys here was inspiring, they paddle the stretch pretty much everyday and for these guys style is all important on the river. On every drop there was a sweet boof, flare or grind to be had, this was some of the smoothest paddling I’ve seen for a while. So that was all the paddling I had time for this trip, I had time to head up over the mountains for a relaxing day in Bled before heading back into Ljubljana for my flight home.

Fabian tries a “sporty” new line on the Soca. The rest of us went left.

The country is beautiful and with Easyjet now flying to Ljubljana the Soča is really no hassle to get to. As well as the paddling it is also well worth spending some time in Ljubljana, taking time to visit the very moving war museum in Kobarid (the Soča valley saw some of the most horrific fighting of WW1) and spending some time in the stunningly scenic town of Bled. I plan on returning next year earlier in the season to catch the higher water levels.

Bled is very pretty, there is a church in the middle of the lake

Packing gear for the trip

India is beautiful, chaotic but beautiful. Three weeks in the Indian Himalaya is simply not enough time to experience the place and I’m sure I will be back as often as time and money allow.

Roads blocked by landslides on the road to Leh – this should have given us a hint of things to come…

Five of us flew out to India at the start of August with the intention of paddling the Zanskar river and it’s major tributary the Tsarap Chu. The Zanskar is in turn a major tributary of the Indus river, carving it’s way through the Zanskar range of the Himalayas before providing the Indus with the bulk of it’s water when it joins just below Leh, in Ladakh.

“if I didn’t have the shits I’d be bricking it right now” Graham on the Tsarap, Day 3

There are some big holes on the Tsarap

Ladakh was wet, very wet. As a result, the Tsarap was high, very high. Altitude sickness isn’t fun and long portages over treacherous skree slopes at altitude are horrendous. During our fours days on the Tsarap we encountered large holes, enormous waves and some incredible big volume whitewater. The incredible hospitality of the monks living at the Buddhist monastery nestled in the cliffs at Phugtal is a special memory that will stay with me for a long time.

Monks at the Phugtal Monestary

The Zanskar was similarly high, but instead of making the river harder this seemed to wash out many features whilst creating some enormous boils and whirlpools. I’m not sure that words can really describe the beauty of being in the stunning gorge that the river has cut through the mountains so I won’t try.

Day 1 in the Zanskar Gorge

So we just about survived the Tsarap and Zanskar rivers. We were a tired, broken and relieved bunch when we reached Leh. Three of us just about had time for a run down the monsoon-swollen Lower Beas river in Manali before heading home and the other two blagged a lift to Nepal for more adventures.

Waterfall beach, Day 2 in the Gorge

A few things I learned from the trip: it’s wet in monsoon season, Indian food is fantastic, expedition food is appalling, hunting mice for food is just silly, it’s amazing what smiling sweetly can achieve with airport check-in staff.

Bouncy rapids on the Lower Beas