Last weekend, I traveled up to Jinja, the location of the source of the Nile River out of Lake Victoria. I went up there with some Dutch volunteers that are working here in Masaka. They told me they were going rafting on the Nile, and that was just too hard to turn down. I was planning on going up to Jinja at some point, so it was great that it worked out to go with people I knew, and the rafting was definitely worth it!
We rafted down a 30km portion of the river that contained 11 different rapid sets, including three class 5 and three class 4 rapids sets. There were 6 main rafts, with about 5-6 safety kayakers, and then me. I opted for the tandem kayak, which was absolutely the right choice! I’ve been rafting back home a few times, so I felt like doing something different. And I actually ended up getting the best of both worlds. There were two different rapid sets (a class 5 and a class 4) that we couldn’t do with the tandem kayak, so I was able to jump into a raft and go down with them. And this was a ton of fun, but the problem with the rafts is that you don’t really have much control. You’re kind of at the will of the water. Yeah, we flipped once, which is no big deal. It was plenty deep and there were no jagged rocks around, so you just float back to the surface, find the raft, and climb back in.
But going down class 5 rapids in a kayak … epic! The tandem kayak works like this. I am in front and the guide is in back. My guide’s name was Ibrahim, very cool dude, and I felt safe the whole time. He taught me the basics of kayaking as we started, so I actually think I could do alright on my own on maybe some class 2’s back home (we’ll see if that actually happens; maybe I’m getting ahead of myself). The paddling is easy. The balance takes a bit of practice, but I figured it out pretty quickly. We practiced flipping the kayak upside down, and then flipping it back over. And we actually had to use this technique just once … but in the middle of a class 5 rapid set!
This was the second class 5 of the day, and I think the fourth big set so far, so I was feeling pretty confident already. There was a pretty big drop-off waterfall (maybe 5-6 ft.), then two more rapids that we maneuvered through. But the fourth wave flipped us over, and the water was rushing! If felt like we were underwater forever, but it was really just about 10 seconds. I could definitely feel the strong current pushing us downstream and tossing us around, but I just held on for dear life. We eventually flipped back up, and I was just laughing and smiling (and inside, very thankful to still be alive :) And from then on, I knew we had gotten past the most difficult part of the river, so I had nothing to worry about the rest of the day.
Obviously it was a great experience to kayak down the Nile. It was very surreal at times, sitting there realizing that I was paddling down the Nile River. It was definitely one of those “once-in-a-lifetime” opportunities to float down part one of the longest rivers in the world. And it was an absolute adrenaline rush, which is exactly what I was looking for. Now I really want to go kayaking when I come back home. One advantage here, though, is that the water was SO much warmer than the northwest water! It was a nice, beautiful sunny day, the water felt great, and I didn’t even get burned :) There wasn’t much wildlife on this part of the river (no crocodiles to worry about), just a ton of birds, mostly kingfishers, comrades, and other fishing birds.
At the end of the day at the hostel where we stayed, they showed a video with footage of the trip. It was pretty cool to see myself and what it looked like to be attacking these huge rapids in a little kayak! And I had a great time with this group of Dutch volunteers. A few of them are leaving this weekend, but some are still here for another couple months. Oh yeah, side note: Dutch is a funny-sounding language.
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You should climb Everest next.
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