India Expedition 2006

by Marco Merini

Period: August 2006
Paddlers: Alberto Vitari, Guido Galvan, Lucio Mazza, Marco Merini.
Sponsors: DragoRossi, Shock Wave, Rescue Lab, NRS.

Our target was the descent of the Tsarap – Zanskar – Indus, over 300kms, and 6, days of self-supported river-trip.

From Delhi, after 18 hours of local bus, we got to Manali, the door to the Himalaya. Here it was raining very heavily because of the monsoon and we could only run the commercial section of the Beas (upper sections are in flood) - a super-nice class IV steep creek close to Kullu.

After a pass of 3900m we arrived in Keylong, an altitude of 3350m. The Bhaga river was very high, too, and we had to put-in below an unrunnable gorge. We also paddled the first part of the huge Chenab, until we met a terrible rapid: too long and big at this water level. We had to take-out and walk sherpa-style for an hour.

We drove over another pass of 5000m and we finally got to Sarchu, a small tent-village. This is the amazing put-in of the main trip. We were at 4300m of altitude (14.950 ft) but since we climbed up pretty slowly, we felt good and we didn’t suffer from mountain sickness. The Tsarap river looked high but OK. It rained a lot recently but at least it wasn’t in flood.

We paddled about 30kms, 20 close to the road and about 10 of canyon with no road.
It was cold, windy and rainy and we had no tents (it never rains in Ladakh… it’s a mountain desert…) but we found an abandoned stable and we decided to sleep there, after cleaning it . Better dirty, but warm than clean but wet and cold.


Unfortunately, Alberto fell sick that night with a heavy cough and high fever. He couldn’t even stand up for three days. All of us were stuck there, only 6000m mountains around us and nothing else. Alberto ran out of antibiotics and he didn’t feel better, now he began to vomit. We were very worried about him, also had to consider that we had food for 5 days : 2 more days food left.

The morning of the 4th day he felt slightly better, so we decided to walk back towards the put-in.
We had to leave our kayaks there, at the stable. After 1 day of slow walking we get to the road and then to the military hospital. There Alberto could have more medicines and after 2 days he felt a little better, but ther was no way he would be able to kayak.

We decided to continue the river, just the 3 paddlers, and meet Alberto 5 days later, in Leh. We had started walking towards the kayaks we left at the stable, when we come across another big surprise. Along the path we meat the Irish team with Dave Carroll & Co.: they had started one day before us, but because of the high water level they had to stop, leave their boats in the middle of the gorge and walk THREE days back to the road!! Too many, and too dangerous portages of rapids that are normally runnable and not more than class IV. There was just too much water, and we had to cancel to the trip.

Now the delight of carrying our boats and all the stuff (35kgs in total) on our shoulders for one and a half days to get them to the road.
We caught a bus back and returned to Leh, the nice Ladakh capital; we were very tired and we rested a little, before starting to paddle again. We run the lower Zanskar full of whirlpools, the Indus as far as Alchi with a super-cool rapid right after the Zanskar confluence; the Yapola, beautiful class IV creek in a little narrow canyon. We got to Karghil, at the Pakistan border, theatre of a terrible war in 1999 and now fully military. But full of rivers, too ! We run the small Bartso, fast and steep in a nice valley, and the huge Suru in flood; before a long unrunnable canyon broke our last descent of this Indian expedition.

From Karghil we went to the wonderful Shrinagar, the Kashmire capital, and then the last thrill: an Indian low-cost flight with Spice-Jet !