to Pokhara

After spending an afternoon and evening in Kathmandu, experiencing the busyness of the city, the depravity of the temple and some of the local cuisine, dhal-bhat (dhal=lentils and bhat=rice), we were all exhausted. We also spent about an hour or so being briefed on our trekking expedition to start the next morning at 6:15 (although in my tiredness, I heard 6:50). Jess and I were fortunate to get our own room, which I was grateful for since co-sexual signs of affection are seen as disrespectful in public. On a side note: While it is disrespectful for a man to hold his wife’s hand or perform any other public display of affection, it is perfectly acceptable for people of the same sex to hold hands, lay on each other and to more or less “cuddle” for lack of a better word, all platonic mind you. It took a while for this shift in interaction to sink in, more on that later.

I packed my bags as much as I could, finding myself exhausted, jet-lagged and nervous/excited for the day ahead. I did most of what I needed to, unpacked the tent (didn’t need it), charged camera batteries and journaled the experience so far. Thinking I had all I needed done for the night, I turned in. We woke up and went downstairs to get some food. I took my time as I enjoyed my coffee and conversation with those around me. After breakfast I continued to pack my gear and started in on writing a letter to the girl that we sponsor at a Kathmandu children’s home that Jess would be visiting. A knock came on the door jam ,”We’re leaving! Get downstairs.” It was only 6:15, I had until 6:50 right? Nope, I had misheard the departure time and frantically finished my letter and gave Jess a half kiss goodbye and we ran out to the front of the hotel. I turned to give Jess a big goodbye hug, but the look she gave me when I approached her, coupled with “we can’t do that remember” reminded me that I couldn’t. I ran to catch up with the rest of the group as we meandered our way, about a 30 minute walk, to the bus departure area. We loaded up on our bus and settled in for an 8 hour ride to Pokhara.

The route out of town led us by a couple embassies and eventually we were sitting on the outskirts of the Kathmandu valley, about to climb up a hill. For how crazy the driving is, and how many close calls you experience, they don’t go that fast. On what was the closest thing to a highway, we only got up to about 50Mph, but it felt faster. To put that into perspective, the distance to Pokhara from Kathmandu is about 130 miles, a little less than the distance between Bozeman and Billings, MT. To drive to Billings takes about two hours, the time it took to get to Pokhara was eight! Fortunately the bus ride was comfortable as long as you didn’t dwell on the near misses and remember the the driver is better at driving than you will ever be. I was somewhat used to crazy traffic in the Philippines, but their traffic moved much faster with fewer vehicles, it had nothing on the intensity of Nepali traffic. Our bus ride even included a lunch stop where we had more dhal-bat.

The ride out took us past village after village, giving us a quick insight into typical Nepali towns and villages, different from Kathmandu’s hectic urban core. There were many trails that went off from the road to what I imagined were other villages not connected by the road systems. We started to see the terraced hillsides, green with vegetation. About an hour out from Pokhara, a thunder storm erupted and we were suddenly thrown into near darkness, lightning abounded and rain and hail pelted the bus, enough to startle some of our fellow travelers. The bus driver’s assistant even had to pull out a towel to keep the condensation from forming on the drivers window.

With the rain subsiding, we entered into Pokhara. Our bus pulled into the bus depot and everyone else got off the bus, even our driver. Our guides told us to stay on the bus, that we had contracted the bus service to drop us off nearer to our hotel for the night. Unfortunately, this was not conveyed to the bus driver and he left. We eventually got another driver and he dropped us off as close to the hotel as he could and we walked the few remaining blocks to the Hotel Middle-Path. We had a brief time to get our stuff into our rooms and take a peak around before we had another briefing on our travel plans for the next five days.

After the meeting we headed out to the tourist strip to pick up a couple supplies before dinner. The rain had picked back up during our meeting, so we donned our rain jackets and first headed for the lake side path. It was beautiful. Along the way we picked up a cup of coffee and as we set off on the path, the rain once again stopped and we were presented with a beautiful view of the lake. Normally, you can see mountains beyond the foothill, but the clouds were to low to reveal them. There were many multi-colored boats, most of them at the point of sinking from the preceding storms. As we pulled away from the path we witnessed a power transformer exploding on a street corner. It happened a second time, so I pulled out my camera expecting it to again. A third time, it did not.

Back at the hotel we had dinner and continued to reduce the amount of stuff we had in our packs, turned out we didn’t need sleeping bags either. We also slimmed down on snacks as we were told that we wouldn’t need them. We all headed off to bed, wondering where our next days journeys would lead.