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| Our group under one of the first waterfalls. |
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| A scenic few hours within the mountains. |
Prior to my trip to Switzerland back in March, my (American) manager, Drew Swanson,
had asked me if I was going to go canyoning. I
had no idea what it was so he showed me the sport on a youtube video (though I didn't end up having time to try it). Ever since then, I was hooked on
the idea. When Sumit sent us the link
for the Last Resort, I saw they had the activity and immediately proposed we try it.
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| Going down the first waterfall. |
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One of the waterfalls that acted as a bath
as we came down. |
The idea of canyoning is that you propel yourself down
canyons or waterfalls on the mountainside.
You do this either by sliding down naturally made waterfalls, jumping
over cliffs or abseiling. Much to our
dismay, we learned this would be our first activity at the Last Resort. We immediately turned to each other and
shouted, "****" . We had hoped we could get
our bungee jump over with first, but now we had to dwell on it all day.
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| Andy heading down. |
A major plus was that the canyoning trip also
included hiking. Although it was all
uphill, it provided us with an up close and personal experience within the mountains. Along the way to the
waterfalls, we passed the local Nepalis.
It was astonishing people lived their lives up there as it truly
was in the middle of nowhere.
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| Group posing while we waited for everyone else. |
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| Andy about to slide down a waterfall. |
We then were taught how to propel down the waterfall and
began our adventure down. I will tell
you this is a heart pounding experience.
You are literally depending on a rope as you walk backwards down a
waterfall at a 90 degree angle. It is
not easy either, you need to learn to control your speed and it is extremely
slippery.
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| Arun and I propelling side by side. |
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| Sumit posing for a pic. |
By the third or fourth waterfall we had all gotten the hang
of abseiling. At that point we were
getting slightly annoyed because there was another group of eight people
accompanying us and they slowed us down quite a bit. Luckily, there were multiple guides and they
realized this. Towards the end, two of them
took us ahead at a quicker pace which was much more enjoyable.
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| Decked out in my canyoning gear. |
All in all I had a blast canyoning. I wish I could have stayed an extra day and
gone on the experienced course since we traveled the beginner’s course. However, we still ended up propelling down waterfalls
with heights of 30, 40 and 50 meters.
Finally we reached the bottom of the mountain and much to our
consternation, had to climb back up which was not easy for the faint-hearted.
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| Arun heading down. |
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| Sumit heading down. |
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| Me as I head down. |
Periodically throughout our canyoning trip, we would get
views of the bungee bridge. We would see
our fellow bus riders’ step up to the side and propel themselves forward. Their bodies were falling at near terminal
velocity as they rapidly disappeared into the abyss. At times we would not be able to see the
jumper but could hear the screams echo through the gorge. We would all look up at each other, shake our
heads as we knew what awaited us…
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| A 50 meter waterfall was our last challenge. |
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| Heading down the last waterfall. |
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