Kali Gandaki Rafting

Welcome to Kathmandu! Upon arrival, you will be picked up from Tribhuvan International Airport and transferred to your hotel.

Depending on your arrival time, you can head out to explore the city on your own after you get settled in your hotel. Some popular sights to walk around are Kathmandu's Durbar Square and its narrow streets and alleyways teeming with small shops, ancient temples, and local restaurants.

A good place to start is by grabbing a meal in one of the traveler-friendly neighborhoods like Thamel with a variety of restaurants where you can get your bearings. Then head for the busiest bazaar in the city, Asan Tole, which offers an authentic, if not chaotic, display of spice, fish, and vegetable stands that make for great photo ops. Practice some basic Nepali phrases and chat with friendly locals!

After breakfast, you'll be picked up and driven by private transfer to the domestic airport for your flight (30 minutes) to Pokhara, Nepal's second largest city. This is a stunning half-hour flight along with the Himalayan range where four of the world's 14 giant mountains over 8,000 m can be seen: Dhaulagiri, Annapurna I, Manaslu, and Shishapangma.

Upon landing, a driver will be waiting to bring you to your hotel. The rest of the day is yours to explore or just to relax by the lake. Pokhara has plenty of great cafés, restaurants, funky shops, and yoga studios that cater to expats and adventure travelers.

We meet early in the morning in Lakeside Pokhara and drive by private vehicle to the put in. After an hour and a half, we will reach our destination. Your guides will start unloading the bus and pumping up the rafts. You will be given your equipment and given a full safety briefing.

Once the rafts are loaded (everything we need for three days has to come with us as there's no roads access!) it's time to set off. After just ten minutes, we are greeted with the two biggest rapids of the whole river! Big and Little Brother. These will certainly get your heart pumping! After 4-5 hours on the river, we will pull up to a beautiful sandy beach where we will make camp and start cooking dinner. There will be opportunities to play football, relax, swim and take in the surroundings. This camp is famous for its large statue of Shiva that watches over the camping site. And then it's time for some rafters Rum punch!

You will wake up early in the morning, the camp will be packed up, the rafts reloaded and we're off! The first rapid of the day - 'Good morning' will wake you up ready for the day ahead. There are many Grade III rapids to enjoy today. We will stop halfway through the day to have lunch on the banks of the river before we tackle the next series of rapids. It's then the same procedure as last night as we set up a temporary camp on the river banks for one more night under the stars. On clear nights it's even possible to see the milky way from here.

Our final morning. After a hearty breakfast, the camp will be packed up one final time. We paddle our last rapids before we hit a fairly long flat section to finish of the day. For those of you interested, you will be offered the chance to have a go in the kayaks if you wish. It's the time to unload the rafts one last time, pack the bus and drive around 5 hours back to Lakeside Pokhara where we can have a well-earned shower for the first time in 3 days! For those short of time, this is the best way to experience Nepal's river culture.

After breakfast, you may have time to do more sightseeing, relax, or check out one of Pokhara's coffee shops. About 1.5 hours before your flight, you'll be picked up from your hotel and taken to the domestic airport to catch your flight back to Kathmandu.

In Kathmandu, you'll be transferred to your hotel and can enjoy the rest of the afternoon and evening at your leisure. Explore Kathmandu's streets on foot, bicycle, or rickshaw, perhaps shopping for souvenirs or seeing anything you may have missed at the beginning of your trip.

In the evening, choose from a selection of Nepali, French, Vietnamese, and Middle Eastern dishes in Kathmandu.

Kathmandu has a special atmosphere during the early morning hours when the city is slowly coming to life yet not too chaotic. It's a great time to walk and explore the streets or have a chai overlooking one of the local courtyards or durbar squares.

After breakfast, there are then a number of ways you can spend your day given the numerous famous sights around the Kathmandu Valley. You can use this as a free day or we can provide a local English-speaking guide who knows the city well and can explain the history and significance of the sights (along with a private jeep to take you around).

It's time to say farewell to Nepal. Enjoy your last moments in Kathmandu with breakfast in a café, a final stroll through the narrow alleys and temples, and some final souvenir shopping. A driver will be waiting for you at your hotel to take you to the airport for your return flight home. It's best to be at the airport at least two hours prior to departure.