Day 49 – Kathmandu

Saturday 3rd November 2007

A 5:40am departure followed by a 3 and a half hour drive got us to the second highest bungee jump in the world, at 160m walking over the bridge to the waiting area was scary enough but in a short tine we would be attaching ourselves to bits of rope and throwing ourselves off!

We were briefed about what would happen, weighed to see who would go first (lucky heavy me won the prize) and then led out to the bridge. The canyon swing was up first and so was I. Now the swing involves having a harness strapped to your waste then jumping off, you are in free fall for about 4 seconds then you swing like a pendulum out over the canyon.

I was tied on, lead to the edge, 1, 2, 3 was counted and much to my surprise I actually had the balls to jump off! My brain obviously disagreed with this decision as about half way through the freefall part I blacked out, coming to at the far end of the swing, scary experience but an amazing one as well. A small trek / mountain climbing expedition later I was back at the top of the canyon and doubting whether I had it in me to jump off again for the bungee.

When it came round to my turn to bungee I was still unsure but when I was stood on the edge and the count of 1, 2, 3 sounded again I jumped again! This time consciousness stayed with as I free falled head first into a 160m deep canyon, bounced up again, free falled, up, free fall and finally down. Amazing experience!

The bungee and the canyon swing were awesome and definitely one of the things to do before you die ticked off my list but this is not something I can really see myself doing again for a long time but I would recommend it to anyone once.

Getting back into Kathmandu late it was time to grab dinner with the group and pack up, tomorrow we fly to Bangkok and the day after the rest of the group will join us again.