My legs are shaking. My skin is burnt, sweaty and covered in dust.
I have never been more tired or filthy in my whole life.
Around the next bend is another incline and then another and another.
I don’t believe it. I can’t do no more. I ask myself: why am I doing this ?

After a thirty-six hour bus journey, we have been trekking almost non-stop for two days in the blazing heat of West Nepal. But then we see it for the first time:
The river - first from high above the mountain:
A cool promise. Like a magical oasis in a long forgotten desert.
Suddenly all the blisters are forgotten and I am running down the hill.
I do not bother to take of my clothes but keep on running straight into the cool stream.
Ducking under and cooling off.
The rapids roaring in the background. Calling us. Anticipation.
This is why I am here. Rafting Nepal’s biggest river. I can’t wait.
After an open air dinner we watch the greatest sound and light show on earth:
An evening storm. Out of the blue. White fluffy pollen flying by, like snow on a hot summer’s night in Nepal. Thunder and lightening.

Flashes in green, white and purple. All across the sky. And then the full moon rises - majestically and calm. I fall asleep on the still warm silvery sand with bats circling above me.
In the morning we all wake up early in anticipation of a wet and wild day.
After a crash course in rafting safety, my team gets in the raft, ready to raft and roll.

There is nothing quite like approaching the rapids: You can see it coming. You can feel it coming. You can smell and hear it coming. Yet just before you hit the white water-the raft slows right down —a brief moment suspended between time and space stillness and speed. And the it happens: We are catapulted into the wild wetness.

The river shows no mercy. And Omrit, our Nepalese rafting guide, shouts his throat sore:

Day one. Easy rapids. No problem. Just fun and excitement and sore arms. But there was more to come…..

"Human For Lunch" — what a name for a rapid. "Grade two" only but we did the almost impossible: our raft flipped. I could see it coming. Staring in disbelief at our guide who kept shouting:

"Right back ! Right back ! RIGHT BACK !" and somehow, we just did not do it. We were paralysed in the middle of the fast moving water..

A split second later, we pay the price: the full force of the water knocks us out and over.
I can’t see. I can’t breathe. I am caught under the raft.

HOW do I get out ? They say " Don’t panic ! But I was kicking and screaming silently under water, swallowing more and more water, water, water. PANIC !
Suddenly back up on the surface. The sky above me. Air. Safety. Rescue.

"Don’t panic !" Omrit, my rescuer, shouts. But I am shaking and my lips are blue.
What a force ! It kept me down there and could have crushed me like a grain of sand… I can not do the next rapid. The other’s keep saying: "No pain no gain !", "No fear, no fun !" and I think: "Bullshit" and feel that we are going to flip again in "god’s house", the next big rapid. Grade four plus.

I watch from the safety of the river bed as the others speed down the rapid and tumble and fall: tiny colourful dots in the roaring stream. Tarka, the safety Kayaker was in his element. I was glad I was not in the water then. But: surprise, surprise:

-The next day, I am ready for more…After my great fear of falling, flipping and drowning…finally only one thought: "Paddle ! Paddle as hard as you can. YOU have to stop the boat from flipping. YOU have to save yourself from falling. Nobody else will...." And I paddle and get soaking wet and my arms hurt but we make it through nine grade four rapids safely.
What a FEEEEEEEEELING !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

On that day we are up on the beach around the campfire until late singing Lou Reed’s "Perfect Day" over and over again. What a perfect day and night and life
Slowly it sinks in: the beauty of it all. Untouched wilderness all around us.

No houses and cars. No bright lights and no noise. Watching the monkeys drink from the river just before sunrise. The lunch-time picnics on white powdery beaches. Exploring the surrounding area and discovering: a wild butterfly garden that leads to a thirty metre high turquoise waterfall. We are in paradise.

After three days of rafting for our lives: No more major rapids. The water is still "white" but not "wild" anymore. Lying on my back strapped into my life jacket, I am floating downstream . I am faster than driftwood.

The raft is fading in the distance.
I am the river….

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