A Week in Pokhara - Jim 12/10/08

Back again after only a day - this could be habit forming. I was thinking last night that some of you might be wondering why, if travel is as difficult as i describe, we would travel by train and bus and not just fly everywhere, which for the most part would be possible. The number one reason, which you might have already guessed, is money, it is much cheaper to travel by train and bus, and when you are travelling for two or three months the plane flight expenses can add up. But the other reason is that it is one of the few times that you can come into contact with ordinary Indians or Nepali's who are not part of the tourist industry. I find that it gives me a little glimpse of how the people of the countries I'm visiting live their everyday life, how their lives are similar and how they are different from the life that I live. It's easy to see the sights but not so easy to get to know the people and for me the effort has always been worth the trouble.
We slept really well Wednesday night, our first night in Pokhara, it had been a tiring day and sleep was much appreciated. The next morning though we were ready to go. After breakfast at our Lodge we decided to hike up one of the surrounding hills, which had at its top a Peace Pagoda, from which the view were said to be great. As our place was a bit out of town we first had to walk through the tourist district of Pokhara, called Lakeside - did I mention that in addition be being surrounded by mountains, the tourist part of Pokhara is also located on beautiful Lake Fewa. This was our first view of Lakeside in the daylight and it was packed full of boarding houses, hotels, lodges and shops selling all sorts of local crafts. At one point during our walk through Lakeside I turned around to look at something and realized that towering over the hill behind us was a beautiful alpine view of a portion of the Annapurna range, a great discovery with which to start the day. Our walk continued around the bottom of the lake and around to the other side where the trail, which we found with some trouble, went up the hill on a number of switchbacks. I was pleased with my ability to get to the top without slowing down to an absolute crawl though I sure my speed felt like a crawl to Adam. The Pagoda was a beautiful white monument at the top with statues of the Buddha and what on clear days was said to be a beautiful view, unfortunately by the time we reached the top the haze and clouds had obscured the view of the high mountains of the Annapurna Range. We walked back down, got some food at a little local restaurant outside of the tourist area and walked back to our Lodge, the View Point Lodge. After a little bit of rest we went up the the View Point's restaurant, drank some tea and read for a while. Around 7PM we ordered dinner and had a good meal, during the meal we struck up a conversation with another traveller who was staying there, she had been in Nepal longer than us and gave us some good information about places to stay in Katmandu and about treks in the Pokhara area.
The Mountaineering Museum was on our schedule for Friday, but finding it was a bit more challenging than we had expected, it is secreted away in an obscure part of town. What we finally found was a modern, large museum with quite a few interesting displays, including some of the equipment climbers had used on the initial assents of Nepal's 8000m peaks. This increased my respect for these climbers, compared to today's equipment it looked antique. At one point suffering from museum fatigue Adam and I found a place to sit and talk and get some relief from museum learning. During the conversation, I reiterated what I thought I had told Adam before, that if he wanted to go on a trek that I wasn't able to do he should just do it, that in fact I would be more upset if he didn't do it. At that, Adam said that indeed he would do just that and take a trek to Annapurna Base Camp. We left the museum in a bit of a hurry since it was Friday and if he was going to do this we had to get the permits that afternoon, everything official is closed Saturdays in Nepal. By the end of the afternoon all the permits had been acquired and we headed back to View Point Lodge for dinner and the night. The next day Adam would be stocking up on supplies for the trek and both of us needed to catch up on emails etc. It was a fairly uneventful day but we got done everything we needed to do and by night Adam was packed and ready to leave "early" the next morning. He would be taking a 5:30 AM cab to the bus station to get the first bus to the jump off place for his trek.
I got up to see Adam off and then fell back asleep for an hour, had breakfast, put a pack on and headed off on a walk with no real plan of where I was headed, though I knew I wanted to go away from town to see something new. As I walked I saw signs for a town about 6 K away called Pame Bazaar and decided that this was today's destination. It was a beautiful walk just above the lake and the wetlands around its far end, Pame was a very small and nondescript town but a friendly place. When I got there I bought some oranges, ate a few and started back. The walk back was a bit warmer and I was happy to get back to View Point and have a Mango Lassi, read a bit and take a nap before dinner.
Monday my plan was to rent a bike and ride up to the town, called Sarankot, at the top of the hill on our side of the lake. The first bike I rented wasn't up to the stress I put on it, I could go into the size of the average Nepali, but I think you get the idea. So after an uphill stretch I had to coast back down and trade the bike in on one of a newer and stronger vintage. As I approached the turnoff for Sarankot I realized that what I had thought was morning fog had turned into heavy cloud cover and any views from Sarankot would be mostly grey. So I pulled out my guide book and put together a new plan. First I visited a nearby Hindu temple, the south half of Nepal is mostly Hindu, the northern half mostly Buddhist. This wasn't a tourist temple, it was full of Nepali's praying, ringing bells and sacrificing chickens and, because of that, was more interesting that similar places I had seen. Next, I bicycled 5 or 6 more K out of Pokhara to what was marked in the guidebook as a Tibetan refugee town. As I approached it I saw a large monastery on the hillside and decided to see if I could visit. As I approached the gate I realized that most of the monks were in a field to my right playing soccer and cricket, I stopped to watch and after a while a monk, probably in his late teens approached me and asked if I would like a tour of the monastery. We walked around and he explained, in pretty good English, what went on where and how many monks there were. They were a monastery of the Sakya School of Tibetan Buddhism and the monastery was primarily for children from the remote Nepali area of Mustang, which is ethnically Tibetan. It was an informative and interesting hour that I spent there and then the monk showed me the short cut to the Tibetan village and I was on my way again, pushing my bike down the cow path. Shortly I reached the village and walked down its lanes toward the biggest building in town which turned out to be another monastery, much older than the previous one and of the Kagu School, I had a tour and enjoyed some Tibetan milk tea and conversation with one of the monks, who was within a year of graduation. As I was leaving the town I saw a crafts workshop where they were making and selling beautiful, hand knotted Tibetan rugs. I would have bought one but rugs don't exactly fit in a backpack or on a bicycle. Then it was about an hour ride back to Lakeside, all downhill, to turn in the bike and a pleasant late afternoon walk back to the View Point Lodge.
The next two days, including today, were declared, by me, rest days and am spending them catching up on email and blogs and doing a little bit of shopping, no major purchases to report. Well that's it for now; Adam is due to return late today and we have a bus to catch to Katmandu at 7AM tomorrow.