Learning to Kayak in Nepal
Kayaking has got to be one of the most popular adventure and recreation sports, and Nepal offers a real playground for novice to experienced Kayakers. Quiet winter Season Rivers and post monsoon rapids make for the ideal year round learning environment.
Nepal is Asia’s home to white water rafting and kayaking and boasts some of the best guides and instructors in the world. In fact if you came to Nepal in the off season, you would struggle to find a kayaking guide as the demand for their advanced skills takes them all over Asia.
As an avid kayaker myself, I have become totally addicted to Nepal’s white-water and want to share some of my thoughts and ideas about ways to get more out of your kayaking experience.
Getting Started Before you come to Nepal to kayak, you should limber your body up with lots of stretching and flexibility exercises. The biggest part of controlling a kayak comes from your hips and upper thighs and you don’t necessarily need a lot of upper body strength to be able to paddle.
If you are going to learn to kayak in Nepal it’s essential that you find a reputable company with experienced guides and good safety equipment. Though it may sound like a small point, you should test your guides ability to communicate effectively in English as this is going to be your learning medium and if you have communication problems, or do not understand what’s being asked of you or when potential hazards are being pointed out in the river, it can be a huge frustration not to mention dangerous whilst on the river. For the complete novice you should first attempt a two day induction clinic then follow up a few days later with a four day clinic. You may find that first up a four day clinic is too tiring for you. You will find you get very sore muscles and you need a few days recovery time. An ideal opportunity to discover some of Nepal’s other wonders, and stretch out those muscles.
Remember, the best remedy for tired legs is to keep them supple by moving gently for the next few days. All companies that offer clinics in Nepal will supply you with kayaks, paddles, spray jackets, spray decks, life jackets, helmets and wetsuits in winter. Also they will supply camping and cooking gear, on and off river support and all the transport required for your trip.
For single women or group of women it is also possible to arrange all female guides and support crew. This is a new incentive in Nepal where disadvantaged or abused women have been taken in and taught how to Kayak, speak English and become river runners. In fact now some of the best river runners in Nepal are women. It’s a great way to support a very worthy cause.
T-Rescue and Guitar Rolls Overcoming your fear is the key to kayaking and learning to roll. Firstly it’s a trust issue. You have to trust and believe in your safety (rescue kayaker) and that he/she is going to rescue you, and trust me they are GOING TO, that is what they are there for! When you are learning rolls, putting yourself under the water that first time, without knowing what’s going to happen is really, really hard. Fear also leads to panic, and for me personally every time I have flipped in a rapid or failed a T-Rescue is purely because I have panicked. Overcoming fear and not panicking is a personal issue and we all have to deal with that in our own time.
Of course before we do this we all learn and practice the spray deck realise. This is your panic button if you find yourself stuck upside and cant upright yourself or your T-Rescue fails, then lean forward, pull your deck and push yourself out of the kayak. It’s the easiest way back to the surface, but then you have the problems of you, your boat and your kayak floating down the river. Your safety will get your boat first and empty as much water as possible out of it, then put it upright in the river. Then they will get you and you can use their boat to help yourself get back into your boat. Re-secure your spray deck then try and retrieve your paddle. Hand paddling is required to do this and you need a lot of balance from your knees and hips. It’s much harder as there will be a lot of water in your boat, which counter balances you in the fast flowing water and you have to work harder to stay upright. You will have to paddle to the nearest bank and then haul up your kayak and empty the remaining water out. Do this a few times during the day and you will soon find yourself exhausted. It’s even worse if the water is cold. That’s why learning T-Rescue and rolling is important.
Rolling is hard. Personally, I understand what needs to be done, but coordinating your hips, head, shoulders and paddle whilst upside down in moving water is really hard and tiring. I get three quarters of the way up and then just flop back down again. We tried T-Rescue which is an easy way to get upright without pulling your spray deck off. You put yourself upside down and then while you are underwater, run your hands along either side of the kayak and wait until you feel the nose of your safety’s kayak, then put your hands on the nose of their kayak to balance yourself and thrust your hips to get upright. The first few times, it’s really hard as your natural instinct is to get yourself upright in to the oxygen as soon as possible, so you end up using your upper body and arms to pull you up. It’s really hard for you physically to do, and you may find yourself getting half way up and then going back under again and you also risk unbalancing your safety. What you have to do is flick your hips and head. After many frustrating attempts, I finally managed to get the coordination to use my hips, you pop up so easily it’s unbelievable. In fact, I had so much power from my hips that I came up so fast and completely rolled the kayak and ended up back upside down under the water!! Learning to use your hips is essential and you will be surprised how easy it is to upright yourself in a T-Rescue. It’s important though, when you do flip in a rapid, make sure you give enough time for your safety to get to you. Don’t panic, put your hands on the boat and wait 5 to 10 seconds. That can feel like and eternity while you are under water. If he doesn’t get there after 10 seconds then you know you can always pop your spray deck. The most important things to remember, are to keep your body vertical, don’t lean backwards. Stay calm and don’t struggle to pull yourself up, use your hips and a fluid motion not dissimilar to using a hula-hoop!
Once you can comfortably T-Rescue, your guide will then show you how to Guitar Roll. This is the first step to the harder Eskimo Roll. Guitar roll is a skill that you can use to right yourself, unassisted in smaller rapids or eddies. Although, whilst tackling larger rapids the harder Eskimo roll is recommended. Basically with a Gaiter roll you have to put one hand on the end of the paddle blade and the other mid paddle. You should be leaning forward with your head in the nook of your leading elbow. The paddle needs to sit flush with the bottom of the boat (this is when you are upside down) then when you are ready, flex your wrist backwards towards you and pull the paddle, keeping it horizontal and your arms locked till it reaches the line of your body. At this point you thrust with your hips and your head should also come up off your elbow and you should pop back up to the surface. Sounds easy, in theory right? A good guide will help you in shallow water; they will guide your paddle so you can get a feel for the motion and position. It may take awhile but once you get it, this skill to right yourself unassisted will triple your confidence. I find it’s easy to get frustrated in these situations, especially as I don’t have natural flexibility and coordination. But practice, patience and a good instructor will have you rolling within two to three days.
Paddling in Rapids The best and most fun part of kayaking is rapids. Pro’s make it look like a synch, but for us newbie’s, kayaking rapids is a daunting and frightening idea. If you have rafted before you may have some experience of what rapids are all about. Trust me when you are at water level in a kayak the rapids look twice as big and you can feel every eddy and swirl in the water as well. Panic is a newbie’s worst enemy!
For me, personally, I panic when I feel lost or alone in a rapid and it stems from lack of faith in myself that I can get through it without having my safety guide me through. Now I have a fair bit of experience in rapids, I still have panic moments and get angry with myself for failing and coming out of the kayak when I know that if I stayed calm I could have gotten myself out. Contrary, every time you flip you learn something and it makes you more determined to get it right next time and less inclined to panic.
The first time we went down a big rapid, in my first clinic, our guides gave us very little instruction, they just lead us down into this huge wave and all three of us flipped. They knew we would flip, in fact, it was their intention that we did so and they deliberately took us on the wrong line. Why? Flipping and going under water and being scared that you can’t get out of your kayak is an underlying fear that makes us nervous. When you are nervous your body gets tight and you don’t have a rhythm or natural balance. To be able to paddle through big rapids you need to be calm, relaxed and rely on your natural balance. By flipping we all learned how easy it was to pop our spray decks and get out of the kayak. How easy it was for them to rescue us and get us back into the boat. It was perhaps an important lesson. With the fear of being stuck under our boat behind us, it allowed us all to relax and learn better and enjoy ourselves more. Plus it’s the first step in building a trust between you and your safety……..and I am sure they get a good laugh out of it too. It is a bit of a miss conception that you need to have good upper body strength, it helps but what’s more important is balance and flexibility of the hips. The other thing to successfully paddling rapids is to master the fear of going against what your brain is telling you. For example if your are eddying in (coming into a downstream rapid, from the upstream current) your natural instinct is to balance yourself by leaning up stream away from the current. What this does is tilts your kayak into the current, the current then pushes the water pressure onto the kayak which is likely to result in you rolling. What you have to do is ignore your initial “survival” instinct and lean downstream and also paddle on the same side. Once you have done this a few times you will see how easy it is to feel the water. Basically you have to not fight the river, but ironically “go with the flow” so to speak!
Again in a rapid, your natural instinct would be to lean backwards in your kayak. By doing this, you fail with your paddle and unbalance the boat. You have to trust your balance and lean forward. Paddle powerfully with an almost vertical paddle and use the water presser combined with you paddling to “power” you through the rapid with the current. If you stay calm and paddle well, feel the kayak in the water and just use your hips to keep straight, you will never flip. When I kayak big rapids, I get mixed emotions. Still new to kayaking I still have not completely mastered my fears and I vary from the elation of paddling and surviving such powerful water to moments of bewilderments and panic. In short every time I panic, I flip!
These few tips are just a guide line that I hope helps you feel more comfortable about kayaking. Once one has mastered rescuing, rolling and paddling then it’s time to move on to a bigger and more technical river.
If you want to learn to kayak in Nepal the best rivers to do so are the Trushili River, the Seti River for Novices and the Kaligandaki for Intermediates. Though you can kayak from September all the way to May, there are some places for kayaking in the monsoon. Remember it gets really cold from November to March.
(by Jenny Lama)