The Sun Koshi River has been listed as the world’s best rafting river by Lonely Planet, the largest travel guide book publisher in the world.
Originating near Mt Shishapangma in Tibet Sun Koshi – that means river of gold – carves its way through the Himalaya and into eastern Nepal, it wrote, adding that the river’s glacier-fed waters drop for five months a year, which makes it ideal for white water rafting.
“And what a trip it is! The 273 km from the put-in at Dolalghat to the take-out at Chatara Gorge are as exciting as rafting comes-big, bouncy white-water rapids, steep valleys, remote Nepali mountain villages, superb campsites on white-sand beaches, and hot, sunny days with chilly nights,” writes an article ‘Hold tight: the world’s best rafting rivers’, in the travel guide book further describing Sun Koshi, ‘By the end you’ll agree that there’s more than one kind of gold.”
Sun Koshi is commercially rafted between September and January, after which the river triples in volume and becomes unrunnable. It takes up to 10 days to run the river.
Around 15 per cent of the tourists visiting Nepal go rafting and Sun Koshi is the first choice for them. The government has allowed rafting on 14 of the 6,000 rivers flowing across the country.
According to the Lonely Planet, the Magpie River in Ontario, Canada; Zambezi River in Zimbabwe/Zambia; Alsek River in USA/Canada; Middle Fork of the Salmon River in Idaho, USA; Franklin River in Tasmania, Australia; Rio Futaleufú, Chile; Rio Cotahuasi, Peru; Colorado River in Arizona, USA and Noce River in Italy follows the Sun Koshi in the list of world’s top 10 rafting rivers.