Royal Beach Resort

Royal Beach Resort

This weekend I signed up for a water activities ‘action package’ at the Royal Beach Resort on the Trisuli River. Leaving early on Friday morning, we got a bus for the journey west, which took about 3 hours. After that we were picked up, and joined 4 others for our first activity – white water rafting! The others were all living in Dubai, but hailed from UK, USA, Germany and France originally. The rafting was great fun, and we went through about five different rapids over the 3 hour trip. There was even time for some swimming in the quiet water in between, before being collected by kayak and returned to our inflatable raft. It was also interesting seeing all the different parts of Nepali life that we passed – lots of people washing in the river, quite a few bridges/ hand-powered cable cars (which you get in and pull yourself across), a school, and even a funeral/cremation (one group that we didn’t wave at!). We finished the trip by arriving at our river side lodge with time for a quick change before lunch.

Our hut

In the afternoon Yan and I refreshed our kayaking skills with a few hours at the side of the river with our ever-patient instructor!

On the Saturday, it was Caynoning day (something I haven’t tried before). Caynoning is basically abseiling down waterfalls, which is a very exciting experience (providing you don’t mind heights!). The first waterfall was about 15m high, and the fourth and final one stood at a much higher 45m! This time joining with a young Israeli couple, our guides Ram and Ganesh took us through each waterfall one at a time, with you lowering yourself by letting the rope slide through your right hand, as in abseiling. Obviously the rock you are balancing off is very slippery however, but I managed to only pick up one scratch in the process! At the bottom of the final waterfall, there were about 7 local boys waiting at the bottom to watch the strange Westerners who were falling down the waterfall into their swimming pool! They were very friendly though, and as I was first down I sat on the rock with them and managed some simple conversation while waiting for the others. One of them also took the photos of me coming down, see below:

Once again we had a short paddle in the kayaks in the afternoon, and then on Sunday it was our day of kayaking. The resort always fluctuated in how busy it was, as there was always a flow of people arriving and departing, but on the Sunday it was just Yan and me for the kayaking. We practiced all our paddling strokes, going into and out of the fast-flowing water, and the 'team rescue' process. This is because we were not able to master the Eskimo roll (where you pull yourself back up the right way underwater when you capsize), when you roll over, you hit the bottom of the kayak, then someone else moves his kayak next to yours so you can grab the front and pull yourself up! Needless to say most of you will know I am not terribly impressed being underwater most of the time, but this process saved us wasting 5 minutes each time we capsized dragging the boat to the side, emptying in then getting back into the water! However, unfortunately despite our instructors best efforts, I still didn't manage the Eskimo roll!

Restaurant/bar hut

I had a great time this weekend - the rafting and caynoning were both great fun, and the kayaking was hard work and my upper body aches all over, but was rewarding nevertheless!