Rapids
name:Little Brother, Big brother,
Walk and Bake,
Good Morning Cobra, Walk in the Dark
One of the famous names of Himalayan
Rivers, the Kali Gandaki rises in
Mustang, an enclave of Nepal poking
into Tibet on the other side of the
Himalaya. Here, it is a flat and braided
river, flowing in an arid open valley:
the explorer Michel Peissel ran this
stretch of the river in a small hovercraft
in 1973 and at least two other groups
have rafted and kayaked this section.
At Kalopani the river drops off the
roof of the world and cuts one of
the deepest gorges in the world between
Dhaulagiri, height 8167 m. to the
west and Annapurna 8091 m to the East.
This gorge is one of the ancient trading
routes gradient eases and the river
is run able from upstream of Beni.
After the confluence with the Modi
Khola, the river swings south through
an area where until recently, tourists
were almost unknown. There are few
villages actually on the river- most
are located on the river terraces
some hundreds of meters above. The
Kali Gandaki is named after the goddess
Kali and is considered a particularly
holy river, an auspicious place to
be cremated and every river confluence
is dotted with cremation sites and
burial mounds (if you're won during
what's under all those piles of rocks,
we recommend against exploring!).
It is also a gold bearing river- you
will probably meet several small groups
of gold workers who sluice and pan
the gravel of the riverbed for minuscule
amounts of the metal.
This is a rewarding river for the
bird watcher and we've also seen mongoose,
monkeys, and signs of leopard and
otters.
A new dam just below the confluence
with the Andhi Khola is currently
hearing completion and most trips
in the future are likely to take out
here. The dam is planned to divert
some 142 cubic down the tunnel to
the powerhouse, and here will be insufficient
water to run the section below the
dam. We have though included a description
of this middle stretch of river for
those able to do it.