London to Leh: The first youth descent of the Zanskar Gorge
Gorge…ous!

It’s 5am on a chilly August morning and after ten months of hard graft (fundraising, planning and training) we are ready to leave on our epic journey to run the Zanskar Gorge, the ‘Grand Canyon of India’. So, with parents in turn crying and whooping with joy (because they were happy for us or because they were so pleased to have two weeks of peace, we were never sure) we left Laburnum Boat Club in London and set off for Leh in Ladakh, high up in the Kashmir mountains of northern India.

After multiple arguments with check-in staff over our shiny new Dagger kayaks and a hair-raising internal flight into the mountains we arrived in Leh and immediately came face-to-face with the Dalai Lama, who has a house nearby, which we took this to be a good omen for our trip. Waiting for us in our guesthouse was the famous (or should that be infamous?) Matt Tidy, the last member of our team, which was made up of 11 young people aged 15-19 with a range of abilities (including some disabilities such as diabetes and epilepsy) and three adults, from Laburnum Boat Club, the West Reservoir Centre, Islington Boat Club, and Canal side Activity Centre.

Acclimatising to the 4,000m altitude
As we had flown straight into the mountains we spent the first few days acclimatising to the 4,000m altitude by scaling the hundreds of steps to the local Stupa and taking trips into town. Even so, we all experience headaches, shortness of breath and other classic symptoms of mild altitude sickness during our stay, with one member of the group suffering so badly that he was checked on every two hours throughout the night.

On the third day we finally got on the water, with a one-day warm up paddle on the Indus River. After one break out we found some burial ashes floating past, at which point we all started to realise how far from our local canal we had actually come, where we are more used to finding traffic cones and shopping trolleys in the water! That evening saw our first night camped on the riverbank at the amazing tented village run by Splash Adventures, where we enjoyed a sumptuous spit-roasted dinner under the stars. We then spent a day visiting a local monastery and sorting out all our equipment, including trying on all our new Palm kit, before meeting our raft support team from Aquaterra Adventures and hitting the road for a three-day bus journey to the start of the river. Yes, that does say three day bus journey, and all I’ll say is that we had a very big bus on some very, very small, very high roads (I use that term in the loosest way possible!), and if it wasn’t for some of the team taking on the job of human-ipod and the brilliant driver I don’t think we would have made it!

After three terrifying days, where we passed countless glaciers and remote villages we made it to the Doda River, at Remala. As soon as we had set up camp we were joined by a group of local children, who delighted in trying on our kit, sitting in our boats and even listening to more of our bad singing! After a good night’s sleep and a safety briefing we hit the water. The first two days were leisurely Class II, with braided, shingle rapids in a wide, open valley surrounded by Himalayan peaks. This was a great start to the trip, giving us all a chance to get used to the size and speed of the water, which was as wide as the Thames in places.

Sleeping under the stars
For some, the easier water was also an opportunity to learn how to control the fully laden raft or to practice their kick-flips on reasonable sized waves, before hitting the breakers further down. Each night we set up camp and slept out under the stars after a feast of curries, breads and rice. On the third day we passed the confluence with the Tsarap, which marks the start of the Zanskar River and signals the onset of the canyon. None of us had imagined how stunning the 600 metre vertical walls would be, with green and purple rock stripes, cascading waterfalls and natural rock sculptures.

THREE AIMS The aims of this once-in-a-lifetime trip for eleven inner city young people were three-fold: firstly to make the first youth descent of the Zanskar Gorge by raft and kayak; secondly to enhance the personal and social development for all involved (the young people helped organise the trip and raised over £24,000 to make it happen) and thirdly to be a motivational tool for other young people, through a lecture tour produced by the group on their return to show what you can achieve if you work hard. If you would like to find out more please visit our web site at www.laburnum.org. THANK YOU! The group would like to thank all those who made this trip possible, especially all our sponsors, including Dagger Europe, Palm, Buff, the Drakes Group, PHS, the Jack Petchey Foundation, the Canoe Foundation, Hackney and Brent YOF.

The tempo of the water picks up in the gorge, with large boils and multiple wave trains, followed by peaceful pools that allow you to admire the amazing view. As the water was at a low level it was never bigger than big volume Class III, with big eddies and plentiful teaching spots. Over the three days we spent in the gorge we passed rapids including ‘the constriction’, where the river squeezes through a five metre gap and a rapid called ‘18 down’, where two rafts had flipped on the previous trip, leaving all 18 clients and guides in the water. We even found several sweet play spots for those that could hold their oxygen-starved breath long enough.

Delhi
Five days after the start of our river journey; after spending nights star gazing in some unique camping spots; seeing some car-sized whirl-pools; six foot waves and saucer-eyes on most of the group we had completed the gorge in one piece. Back in Leh, after a welcome shower, we had a celebratory slap-up curry (only the 15th of the trip!) with our raft guides, saw the start of the Ladakhi festival, and had a day in Delhi at the Ghandi museum. All too soon it was time to return home, to school, college, work and the very flat canal we had left 16 days before. l