In December, just before Christmas, my partner Kája Paloudová and I came up with a little adventure. We took part in races on the - sometimes very wild, sometimes less so - Nu Jiang River in Yunnan Province, China.
It was a very spontaneous idea, because we found out about the races by accident. We started planning the whole event less than three weeks before our departure. Last year, a group of athletes from the Czech Republic had already participated in the race, so we were able to find out some basic information from them. We arranged our visas and flew. We just hoped that somewhere along the way the paddles we had with us would not get lost on the plane. Fortunately, all our equipment arrived.
On the spot, the organizers lent us plastic kayaks that weighed almost twice as much as the boats we normally use. I struggled a lot at first, but I think that once you know how to paddle on wild water, you quickly get used to any type of boat. Still, the Chinese racers with their own boats had a big advantage over us.
First we did two races on a beautiful, but not so wild part of the river, where the Chinese with faster boats beat us. But for me the most interesting race came on the last day, when we went down the very difficult Tiger Jump rapids. And wild water, that's mine.
Tiger jump
I've been down a few rivers, but none of them compare in size to the Nu Jiang. All the waves and rollers were huge. I didn't know what to expect from the river or my boat. From the shore, we studied the trail and with a good dose of adrenaline in my veins, I took off.
If you follow the right trail, you can ride down very wild water without any complications. The problem comes when you don't hit the right line. That's when the water starts doing whatever it wants to do to you. And the wilder the river, the bigger the rodeo.
I didn't ride perfectly in my rides, and it also punished me twice. Once the roller held me for almost half a minute and I couldn't get out of it. Then the next ride I eskimoed in a pretty nasty place. In the end, these were only minor issues compared to some of the others, so my excitement for the wild water and the well-ridden passages definitely prevailed.
In the previous races we had thirty competitors, but we decided to start only three brave ones for the Tiger Jump. Therefore, it is not too surprising that I ended up in 2nd place, despite minor complications.
Great experience, beautiful nature and local culture. It was the first time I've been this far from the Czech Republic and I was thrilled. Thank you to my partner for doing this with me and for allowing us to participate in the race. I can't wait to see what we're going to do next.
