Our ragged bunch of novice white water explorers
stumbled almost by chance onto some lovely rivers that pour
into a unexplored river of Indians far northeastern state of
Arunachal Pradesh. The Kamala is a fairly decent sized river
we visually confirmed at the bridge in Tamen. Horrified that
the first road up the Kamala valley has just been recently made
by a hydroelectric company that is exploring the rivers potential
for electricity, we decided to check out the paddling prospects
without a delay.
There was a un paved road going up along the
river for some 15 kilometers and we decided to find a good Put
In right there and leave exploring the whole length of the river
that would require serious planning and a few days trek. We
trekked down to the river and camped for the night, planning
an early run next morning.
From the drive the river looked pretty much
flat with a few small class 2-3 whitewater, but the river was
unusually green and heavily forested. Within 2 minutes of starting
the next day, there was a fairly big tributary coming in from
the right and it definitely looked good for paddling. A man
fishing at the confluence called it the Kurung River and said
that it was very dangerous for your boats. Kamala in Hindi means
soft and delicate, like the Kamal\Lotus flower, whereas Kurung
sounded more like a river with intense character. The 14 Km
paddle to Tamen was probably the first time anyone went down
the river in a kayak; yeah, there were some bamboo rafts around
on the river!
At Tamen we got busy asking about this river
called the Kurung and came up with good news, there was a road
to get to the Kurung about 60 kilometers upstream of the confluence
we had seen. It was a good drive till the town at, inhabited
by the Apatani tribe whose woman often have elaborate face tattooing
and piercing. 15 Km after Ziro we turn right at a place called
Sixty Five and head towards Palin for a long overnight drive
on horrible roads. This area was real neglected for a many decades
and now the first road was making it to this valley the newly
formed Kurug-Kumey district.
Bleary eyed we made it to the main marketplace
of Old Palin at the crack of dawn and looked for a chai shop.
Quickly we gulped the tea and got information about access to
the river as a big bunch of curious onlookers descended on our
jeep. So, good news, there is a small creek going through the
town called the Palin and it will meet the Kurung at most 12
kilometers away. Full of energy we decide to check out the Palin
too and make a smart short cut to the main river.
The road goes down to a bridge and was a convenient
put in just on the outskirt of the town. We cooked up a heavy
breakfast and a big lunch box of chana\germinated gram with
eggs. As we got into our gear and the crowd of kids had swelled
greatly, a hunter kind of man came up and found the whole thing
very amusing. He didn’t speak any English or Hindi but said
something that translated into “You Will All Die” we should
have taken him seriously; he had been walking the deepest jungles
along the stream since a long time and knew the nature of the
lower Palin Creek.
We got into the shallow creek under the bridge
and paddled into the unknown. The shuttle driver who was also
our road support man and a big crowd wished us luck from atop
the bridge. Some kids ran along for sometime, everyone screamed
“ache se jana” “go carefully”. First few kilometers there were
some shallow parts with swift water but we luckily didn’t have
to get out of the boats anywhere. After an hour the first reasonable
decent rapid came up and there after the river had evenly spaced,
tricky class 3’s until we scouted a 7-foot drop feeding into
an undercut boulder with a tree jammed in the drop. The next
bit of the river had about 6 decent class 3+ rapids with some
bony lines and the occasional strainer. It was fun paddling,
the water wasn’t cold; the rapids were steep but the low volume
made eddy scouting easy.
We had paddled a good 2 hours and were surely
getting close to the confluence we thought just before hearing
a big rapid and seeing the horizon just fall off. There was
a 20-foot fall and didn’t look too inviting with some splash
in the backwash pointing out a rock and possible pin spot besides.
The creek’s sharper gradient and the fall made our adrenaline
go kind of high, quite sure that we may find some more falls
downstream. Our hunch was just right, just ahead was the horizon
vanishing again and scouting revealed a good 30-foot fall that
marked the entry of a long class V rapid. It’s a hard portage
through dome jungle and over big and slippery boulders.
We get back into the water at the bottom of
the rapid and paddle to the top of the next rapid, it has a
constricted entry and a log in the bottom, looks very tricky
and unsafe .We are scouting it from different sides. AD and
Endra have a impossibly hard ferry if they want to come to the
river right and the other 3 of us in the team begin to portage
while setting up a ground rescue for Endra who sees a sneak
line. He doesn’t hit his line and boofs the semi-submerged log
at the bottom. With Endra safely in the eddy below as further
back up, AD also decides to check out his sneak line, goes over
and is upside down into the log. He was out of the kayak in
an instant and holding onto the log, boat and paddle, while
he gets a safety line from the right bank and Endra paddles
up to grab the paddle from him. It takes 7-8 minutes to get
the team back together and we are looking over the horizon at
a long and very noisy rapid. Things aren’t looking too good
now as the portages have taken lots of time and its close to
2 PM.
