Fun with Toys

Last Friday Nina from GoRafting organised a ‘Floatila’. What’s a ‘Floatila’ you may ask? Well it’s basically a surfing competition with ‘anything that floats’.

So we all bought our blow up toys and tried to surf Faukstad on the Sjoa River. Becky and I aimed to get a tandam surf on our dragon but everytime we both tried to sit on it we ended up swimming.

There were prizes for longest surf, best effort on the river, best effort with the floatation device, best trick etc. Just a fun relaxed social gathering for a few laughs.

Thanks to Nina and Tallis for organising the evening and thanks to all my work mates at NWR and GoRafting for supporting the Floatila!

Sjoa Festival 2011

A week to recover from Voss then it was the Sjoa Festival (in Sjoa of course!). We were super busy at work during the festival week (and basically all of July and even now in August) so I couldn’t participate in all of the activities but made it to the infamous annual Pimp and Ho party at Pensj and managed to convince my boss to let me have a day off work so I could do the Steep Creeking day course run by Gene 17.

My friend Jakub ran the Steep Creeking course and I was pretty lucky there were only 2 other men from Sweden on the course with me. We went to Upper Ula to practice some ‘boofing’ and then run a drop and small slide.

When I say ‘small’ they would have been baby size for someone like Jakub but for me and it being my first time really attempting to run any drops they were pretty intimidating. Once I got over my fear I realised that running drops is pretty simple but it’s just getting over nerves which is the hardest part.

I definitely took home a lot of lessions from my day with Jakub on the river and highly recommend Gene 17 to anyone who wants to improve their kayaking skills or has a particular goal they want to achieve.

Ekstremsportveko Voss 2011

On the last week of June the Ektremesports Veko was held in Voss Norway. Luckily that week we were quiet at work in Sjoa so I was able to go from Sun-Thurs to Voss to kayak, party and do a few rafting races.

I stayed at my friend Anvesh’s house which is one of the 3 Voss Rafting guide houses. I must say the houses rented out to guides in Voss seem like mansions! Def a 5 star rating! Anvesh owns his own rafting company in India called Expeditions India (he trip lead the Sarayu/Kali expedition which I went on last October) so it was nice to see him after 7 months.

There had been a lot of rain so all of the rivers were super high and super fast in Voss. Unfortunately on my first day paddling it was my last day kayaking in Voss for the week. Misjudging where to be on the R lead to me getting beat down in a hole and swimming. Luckily I was okay but my boat and paddle went down the class 6 gorge below the section we were running. I never saw my paddle again but sky divers saw my boat floating in the lake about 3 days later so I got that back and surprisingly my boat only was missing a few screws and had a dinted nose.

The other days in Voss I participated in drinking sessions in the Festival Tent and entered the Rafting Adventure Race with 2 guides from Troll Active and 2 Norwegian men. Our team ‘Troll Mountain’’ came third so I was lucky to get a Bula beanie as a prize. Following the race we also had an amazing BBQ at Voss Rafting – it was the best burger I have had in Norway so far!!!

I had so much fun in Voss I didn’t want to leave but had to return back to Sjoa for the weekend. Good to be working an earning money but pretty gutted I missed Fat Freddies Drop and Swollen Members perform on the Saturday night in the Festival Tent…….maybe next year.

Flood on the Sjoa

From the beginning of the season we were all complaining about there not being enough water on the Sjoa River. Suddenly on the second week of June we got a lot of rain and the Sjoa rose to above cut off levels for rafting with in about 2days.

At first my friend Erika and I were excited because we had a couple of surf sessions but pretty quickly all the surf spots got completely washed out and the river was one continuous rapid with huge waves (and holes!).

I had a lot of fun on the river but stopped paddling for a few days when I saw whole trees and stuff floating down the river! It was so amazing, the river came up to some parts of the road (and detroyed houses, sections of road, trees etc) and a lot of rocks got moved around in the river (you could hear the rocks moving and even feel the vibrations - crazy!). There is now one gianourmous rock in the middle of Chocolate Canyon!

Sjoa Rafting seemed to suffer a lot with most of their camp getting washed out. The guide house was evacuated but lucky the river started to come down before the river started coming through the door!

Now the river is back to normal and we actually are happy when it rains so we can hopefully have enough water to last the season!

From India - Sweden - Australia - Norway!

So I am now feeling the shame of not updating my blog since November after seeing how fantastic my friend Toni's blog is. So instead of writing a long-winded post about what I've done the last 8 months I decided it would be easier to break things up into a few posts chronologically....

So after returning to Sweden after Bjorn and my adventures to India and Nepal things didn't exactly turn out as planned. My VISA to Norway took 7 weeks to process (about 4 weeks longer than the usual processing time) so I told my employer in Norway I had no VISA and a day later it arrived but my job had already been given to someone else.

I decided to return back to Australia and Bjorn and I took our own separate directions. It was pretty weird returning to Australia as the longest time I've really spent in Aus since 2006 is around a month or so in between travels, this time I was spending 5-6 months in Australia.

While trying to land back on my feet at home I did some bar work and then at the start of the year finally landed a job at Vic Uni lecturing in Nutrition and tutoring Nutritional Therapy students in clinics. It's a different aspect of being a dietitian that I am used to so it kept me interested and I really enjoyed my work in Australia. The only weird thing was sometimes teaching students my age or older!

In Melbourne it's also pretty hard to go kayaking (the main reason is it being a spread out city with very little nature!) so I kept busy by doing Swedish classes once a week and joining the gym and starting yoga and boxing classes. Yoga is something I've made fun of time and time again when I'm in India but I decided to give it a try to see if I could get any of the benefits people talk about and now I will do it for the rest of my life! I've never been able to touch my toes before and now I can wrap my hand over them, I sleep better, feel more peaceful and don't get as stiff from work and exercise.

It wasn't all work and no play in Melbourne. I did my fair share of re-living Melbourne nightlife, saw a few bands (which I haven't done in a few years and realised I missed live music so much!!!) such as Tool, Sparkadia and Dead Letter Circus and spent more money than I am used to on things which are not kayak related!

Boat shed at NWR

But in May my downtime at home came to an end and I flew over to Norway to work in Sjoa again for the summer. This year I've been really lucky to get a job at Sjoa Raftingsenter (NWR) as a photo kayaker which is like a dream job for me. Not many people get to take photos and kayak everyday AND get paid to do it!

NWR is a pretty great set-up and one of the best rafting companies I've worked at so far. We've got a proper guide-house all to ourselves with our own bedrooms, kitchen, bathroom, drying room for gear, laundry room and a walk-in fridge (which is now turned off and used as the beer brewing room! It's okay we have 4 fridges in the kitchen, it seems like each morning I wake up we have another new fridge in the kitchen!). We've got it pretty good here and best of all our bosses are super nice.

View over the Sjoa River

I also saved enough money to buy a decent car this season. NWR is a bit further away from the river than the other companies so by not having a car you kind of leave yourself stranded. I was lucky in May and June that I had a lot of free time to catch up with old friends in the Valley such as my Norwegian friend Erika so I could go kayaking lots (for fun not work!). One of the best kayaking days we had was just Erika and I doing a Birthday run down Åseng (Sjoa River) with chocolate birthday cake in the back of Erika's boat. Nothing hardcore but it was nice just to have us girls on the river with a big slab of cake!

Start of our hike in Bessheim

Another thing which is a little different this summer is now there are heaps of female kayakers in the valley. I didn't realise until the other day that pretty much all of my boating this summer has been down with just girls. It's pretty awesome because usually it's such a male dominated sport.

So far I am really enjoying this season in Norway. So as promised I am going to update my blog so there is lots more to come including high water on the Sjoa, Ekstremsport Veko Week in Voss, Sjoa River Festival, running my first 'thing' and slide and more about Norway and my job!

Upper Seti River

After all the Diwali celebrations had finished in Nepal Bjorn and I got the tourist bus to Pokora. The bus from Kathmandu to Pokora took about 7 hours but this time could have been significantly reduced as the bus stopped unnecessarily several times for 'breakfast', 'lunch' and a few pee breaks. The trip could have been managed easily in 3-4 hours.

When we arrived Pokora we found a hotel and then went straight to the Ganesh Kayak Shop, owned by a French guy called Charlie. Charlie was one of the most helpful people we met in Nepal. He has so much knowledge that he is willing to share, helps everyone find paddling buddies and even helped us with taxis to and from the river. Charlie helped Bjorn and I find someone to paddle the Upper Seti with the following day which was really nice.

Our first day on the Upper Seti we went with an Italian paddler who had come alone to Pokora. We were able to see a large amount of the river from the drive up to the put-in. Once we were on the river we heard a couple of people yelling out to us from the road above and we realised it was Caroline who we met on the Karnali trip and Mo. We waiting in an eddy for a long time hoping they would catch up to us but we eventually gave up and paddled downstream. Finally while we were scouting Caroline and Mo caught up and we were able to complete the rest of the river together.

The Upper Seti is class 3-4 and is fairly continuous. We all got a lot of boofing practice on this river which was very fun. The river is wide to begin with then there are 2 rapids which are gorged in (worth having a scout and probably the hardest 2 rapids on this section of river) before the river widens out again.

After returning from the river that afternoon we found an American kayaker called Preston who Bjorn and I met in Kathmandu and kayaked the Balephi River with. He was also keen to run the Upper Seti River so Mo, Caroline, Preston, Bjorn and I went to the Seti again the following day and kayaked the section of the river twice!

Pokora was a lot more relaxing than Kathmandu and we noticed that we did not get harassed as much for things here. Hotels were also cheaper, however food cost the same as Kathmandu. Bjorn and I decided to break the budget a bit in Pokora and splashed out on a few meals such as woodfired pizza, pasta, chicken sizzler etc. One of our favourite places to eat was Moon Dance Cafe which was reasonably priced and also had free wireless.

We followed our 2 days of kayaking on the Upper Seti with a rest day in Pokora (mostly spent by reading a book by the lake) before our long journey using the local buses back to Rishikesh, India. Surprisingly this journey went rather smoothly and took about 36 hours (including the time spent crossing to border and waiting for buses in Banbasa and getting a taxi from Hardwar to Rishikesh).

Bjorn and I really enjoyed our time in Nepal but would have loved to have kayaked some more rivers and possibly done some trekking. Unfortunately due to lack of time and money we will have to come back to Nepal another time to do these things.

Thanks to Preston for all of the photos from the Upper Seti and also to Charlie from Ganesh Kayak Shop for helping us while we were in Pokora.

Balephi River

When Bjorn and I got back to Kathmandu we met a group of kayakers who were staying at Holy Lodge and Bag Packers in Thamel. Part of the group of kayakers worked for Pyranha who had organised a private bus to take them to the Balephi River and we were lucky enough to be able to go with them.

The Balephi was approximately a 3 hour drive from Kathmandu. We put-in where most of the rafting companies usually start their commercial trips and kayaked all the way down to the Sun Kosi confluence then along the Upper Sun Kosi for about 30min before taking out at Equator Expeditions.

The Balephi was class 3-4, pretty continuous boulder gardens and beautiful scenery surrounding the river. A nice thing about this river was that is was pretty gorged in and remote so we didn't have to listen to traffic passing on the road etc.

The Balephi was a fairly easy day trip from Kathmandu. We left around 7.30am and returned around 7pm that evening. If planning on doing the Balephi it can be easily combined with the Bhote Kosi or the Sun Kosi. Equator Expedition offer food and camping and would be a good place to stay in between running these rivers.

Thanks to Sara and Preston for their photos and to the boys at Pyranha who organised the day for everyone.