That’s why I’m going to Kathmandu.
Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right.
Here I am, stuck in the middle with you. h I
t all started when we veered off plan the day before. Steve Arns, Si- mon Rutherford, Ric Moxon, Brian Fletcher and I had just arrived
at Birendranagar, a small town in mid-western Nepal. From there we hoped to fly to Juphal, a remote village deep in the Himalaya with a dirt landing strip and access point to the Thule Behri River. “Juphal not possible,” a smiley Nepali fellow had informed us at the
airport. My stomach instantly dropped. We’d traveled halfway around the world to get to the Thule. After arguing back and forth, the man offered another option: “We
can fly to Masinechaur.” There weren’t any maps in this airport, but Masinechaur, the locals
assured us, was no more than a four-hour walk from Juphal. Since it was river right, and Juphal on river left, I figured it couldn’t be more than two hours from the river. The new put-in would start us a day or two downstream of the easier section of the Thule, whitewater we’d planned to warm up on, but lacking alternatives and confident we’d find porters to help us make the trek down to the river, we stuffed our boats into a seven-seat Cessna Caravan and got ready for the flight. A pilot’s son, I immediately noticed the plane’s non-retractable land-
ing gear. “Makes it stronger for high-impact landings,” I explained to the boys. Before anyone could change their mind, the pilot pushed down the throttle and we took off. Twenty minutes later we were flying through the mountains—in the Himalaya you fly through, not over, the peaks—and got our first views of the river. After 45 minutes the landing strip came in sight and I held my breath. The airstrip looked like nothing more than a short
42 | RAPID
steep gravel path cut into the side of the mountain, and at over 10,000 feet planes have to land fast. In an explosion of dust, our boating gear lurched forward as the plane screeched to a halt just in front of a stone wall. “I hope the river won’t be this exciting,” Simon joked nervously.
l
late April, when the Thule’s waters flow at a moderate level, the river is continuous class IV to IV+ whitewater that cascades through the land of Dolpa, a remote western region of Nepal that was closed to foreign- ers until the early ‘90s. It wasn’t until 1995 that an international team, including Charlie Munsey, Doug Ammons and Scott Lindgren, realized the Thule’s first descent, ticking off one of the last major un-run rivers in the Himala- yas. Surrounded by some of the world’s largest mountains, the Thule Behri has its source in the deep blue waters of Phoksundo Lake. The lake is sacred and home to a historic monastery of the mysterious Bonpo, followers of Tibet’s ancient spiritual tradition, a religion that predates Buddhism. The Dolpa region has steep terrain and a ruthless climate. The win- ter is brutally cold, the summer monsoon unleashes floods and the rest of the year a cold arid wind blows powerfully from Tibet. Life in Dolpa is not easy. There’s no doubt the cruel conditions influence the high spirituality of the region. Polished bedrock canyons border the Thule for dozens of miles at a time and some of the world’s highest peaks drain into the valley. This
T
he Thule Behri is to the ambitious weekend warrior what the Sti- kine is to the hardcore class V+ boater. From mid-November to
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