The jump

We'd been back in Kathmandu for over a week now and were getting a tiny bit bored of hanging out in the tourist district dodging motorbikes and rickshaws and fending off clingy Nepalese junkies selling hash and even clingier Nepalese entrepreneurs flogging tiger balm, carved buddhas, cow bells, wooden flutes and anything else rubbishy you can think of. So we decided to take a couple of days holiday to a place called The Last Resort - a little group of luxury safari tents set around a beautiful stone dining hall four hours drive away from Kathmandu, close to the Tibetan border set in gorgeous hills, surrounded by forest and villages and sitting right on the lip of an incredibly deep and narrow canyon over the raging Bote Khosi river, one of the steepest in Nepal.

We dropped into their office in Kathmandu to book an overnight trip up there to go canyoning, when the woman tried to sell us on bungee jumping over the 160m high bridge over the gorge. No thank you! But then she persuasively pointed out that the bungee jump and '"the ultimate swing" are both usually 80 US dollars but for the next two days, during the Tihar Nepalese religious public holiday, the swing only is down to 20 bucks. Sarah told me that she'd done a swing before in Canada and you just swing back and forth on the end of a rope over a river - nothing scary but lots of fun. Of course we said sign us up'!



The next day we got off the bus and to get to the resort walked over the most horrifying bridge I've ever set foot on in my life. The metal slats on the deck let you see right through to the dizzying smallness of the river so damn far below that your head started to spin. Then when we dropped out bags we were kindly informed that the swing is actually a lot scarier than the bungee jump. The rope is much longer and apparently you have twice as much freefall as the bungee before yuo even begin to feel the rope. So apprehensively we went out on the bridge, the first person to swing (a blonde Israeli girl) stepped off the platform and screamed while she plummetted seemingly forever until the rope kicked in when she was about the size of an ant below us and swung her wide over the river. Everyone looked at each other, white as a sheet, and Sarah said there was no bloody way she was doing that. She'd bungee jumped before and while she enjoyed it at the time she had no desire to ever feel that horrible falling sensation again. Great so there I was with no support, completely filling my shorts with poo at the prospect.

Here's the platform you jump off:



Without a doubt the scariest thing I've ever done, I thought I'd never stop falling as the canyon walls sped past on both sides and the river rushed up to meet me. Glad I did it after but I was completely drained. Thankfully there was nothing to do but eat food and drink beers and relax for the day.

The canyoning next day (basically abseiling down enormous waterfalls and jumping off rocks into pools) was just amazing and we loved it, but then afterwards I was packing a plate of food at the lunch buffet when the bungee/swing guy (an Aussie working there) came up and said "Ok Mike time for your jump!" My stomach dropped, my appetite ruined. Oh yeah, had I mentioned yesterday that I would go again to use the jump Sarah had already paid for? Yikes! You need to see the video to get the full effort of that maniacal swan dive... Oh yeah and then rafting again the next day. And so the adventure continues.