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So with time against them Team Slug headed to the upper reaches of the mighty Marsayangdi river. Dave Kwant picks up the story of the magic disappearing river. This is the third and last report from the Slugs for the Nepalese part of their tour.

Article by Dave Kwant for PLAYAK.COM, January 2003

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[ This article is a follow-up from the latest Slugs report. ]

One thing that anyone who has been to the Marsayangdi paddling will know is that wherever you get on the river, it always looks very good just upstream. So it was last year when I last paddled the Marsayangdi, we got in at a town called Jagat about a 2 days walk above the usual rafting put in, and as per usual the general consensus was that of 'ooohh I wonder what happens past that corner!.. looks quite good'. So it was that a year later and in the trusty hands of Team Slug I found myself waking up in Daharapani at an altitude of nearly 2000 meters and with a vertical mile to drop before we got to the bottom of the valley.

The journey to the top had fulfilled the usual Nepali criteria of blood, sweat and tears, the blood coming from several yaks that were being skinned with axes, sweat came in bucket loads from our men of iron porters who literally flew up the trail in a blaze of glory carrying our kayaks and kit as they went, and the tears.. Well they came from the gaggle of local women who had gathered on the bridge to bid us farewell, in a cosmic sense.

We had decided to go full slug style and just to walk up until it looked too hard.. Since things are slightly slower filtering through slug slime we ended up walking up past two days of water that looked like at best it would be very hard class 5/6 with portages. As it turned out we weren't wrong. As with all Nepali rivers the usual dilemmas arose from scouting from above, this time however it really was a lot bigger when you got down there and within the first 200 meters we were portaging. After running a few nice rapids we were out of our boats again as the entire Marsayangdi river deserted us for a quicker route underground. This was a most bizarre experience. I had seen plenty of big siphons etc whilst paddling but never anything like this. The river bed was bone dry. Some 80 cumecs of water just swallowed up by the earth. Within a kilometer or so the river was back and we were off. I think this time we managed about 1.5 kilometers before we were portaging again, for about a kilometer over car and house sized boulders. This pattern repeated itself another couple of times until we eventually hit our goal for the night, Tal. Day one was over and so far it was evens between river and kayak.

However this was all soon to change. As the sun rose on Nepal Team Slug were edging around on the rim of a very deep gorge just downstream from Tal. Peering in through the morning mist nothing much could be seen and the decision was made to climb down and take on what was down there head on. An hour of climbing saw us standing at the side of the river again. With great relief we peered up at the mass of dry boulders above us that was the second disappearance. Once again, gravity and geology had combined to allow the river a short cut. This time relief was at the 150 meters of height the river lost in doing so. Once it reappeared the river took a little while to get used to being in the open air again so we portaged the first few boulder falls until the gorge hemmed in and the shear walls would not let us pass. Standing there with the a big green pool awaiting us just 20 meters ahead there were only two options, a class 6 rapid or a retreat. We sounded the retreat and spent the next 2 hours hacking our way up near vertical jungle to the path 200 meters above us. Once there it was obvious that we were not going to be let into the gorge again so we walked down to the next village, safe in the knowledge that if nothing else we had discovered at least 20 new species of stinging nettle. We all agreed it was the first time we had spent a day in kayaking kit without getting wet!

Have a break, watch some video highlights! (Low quality MPEG files):

• Blue water and dreamy rapids at Jagat on day 3 : MPEG video, 328 kb
• The long rapids of the Sanje section - big and technical: MPEG video, 520 kb
• Some interesting geology work on day 1: MPEG video, 432 kb
• The start of the action on day 3: MPEG video, 872 kb
• Return of the pornstar - Porno Pete runs his first big rapid after beeing back in action: MPEG video, 496 kb

Luckily after walking downstream past some more class 6 in the morning the river suddenly changed its mind and became the most beautiful whitewater imaginable, just a couple more portages and the next three days were spent in read-and-run bliss.

After the Marsayangdi it was time for a well earned break and party, the Himalayan whitewater challenge certainly filled this gap and after a few hazy days we found ourselves once more on the river. This time however Porno Pete was back and boating better than ever. With a quick run down the Tamba Khosi to finish he was suitably warmed up and ready to hit New Zealand running.

So part one of world domination is complete..

Stay tuned for more gravity inspired carnage from New Zealand.

The slug team is Colin Aitken, Greg Nicks, Dave Kwant and Peter Kyriakoudis. Their tour of whitewater pleasure continues and will be regularly updated on PLAYAK.COM.

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