Pokhara (13 - 20 December 2007)
We spent our first night in Nepal at the Nepal/India border in a very small town that does not even have a name. We were excited to move on to Pokhara more in the centre of Nepal. We took a local bus from the border to cover the remaining 100km.
Thinking that everything should run smoothly now that we were in Nepal, we calculated that we should be in Pokhara at around 8:30 as we were supposed to depart at 6:30. Boy, were we mistaken! Our bus only arrived at 8:30 and literally stopped every 100 meters to drop off and pick up other Nepali passengers. Have these people never heard of a bus stop?! After switching buses along the way, having to pay an extra fee for our luggage that was stacked on the roof and sitting in an overloaded bus for nearly eight hours, we arrived in Pokhara at 16:00. Jip, it took us more than 8 hours to cover the 100km!!
Pokhara is the second biggest town/city in Nepal, the capital Kathmandu being the biggest, but yet it felt like a small town to us. It is surrounded by beautiful snow capped mountains (the Annapurnas) with amazingly blue sky and a stunning lake at the tourist side of town, called Lake Side. Pokhara is well known for a couple of things: the start and end to many famous treks in the Annapurna mountains, like the Jomsom trek that we are planning on doing, adventure activities like paragliding and kayaking, and food - any dish you can think of is available here!
We stayed on the east of Lake Side in Green Park Hotel with a stunning view of the snow capped mountains. The weather here was a lot cooler than we have had anywhere else on this trip. The evenings were exceptionally cold and we had to layer up with thermal undies, fleece tops and ski-jackets.
We knew that we wanted to do the Annapurna Base Camp trek from here, but besides that we did not have any other plans. On the bus from Varanasi to Sunauli, we met Simon - a young Danish guy who was very keen on doing a hike with us. He had to go to Kathmandu first to sort out visa issues and would join us as soon as he could. So we had about a week in Pokhara and needed to find things to pass the time. What did we do?
We shopped around for some ‘cold weather hiking gear’ and ended up buying just about everything one can think of! Eon had such a great time - he LOVES shopping for these types of things. And even though we did not really need all the gear, we figured that it was so cheap and we will just send it home after the trek. We bought:
• North Face duffle bag (clearly a fake, but we needed something to keep all the gear in)
• Hiking poles
• Socks
• Gaiters
• Ladies hiking trousers (obviously not for Eon)
• Thermal undies (tops and bottoms)
• Windproof trousers
• Gloves
• Neck warmer/beanie
• Down feather jackets
• Marmot -10 degrees down feather sleeping bags
Most of the gear you buy here are fake North Face, so we carefully selected everything, going through seems and general quality checks. All of this cost us R913 each. What a steal! Eon-afslag-Alers op sy beste 
We did a short hike up to the World Peace Pagoda. Balanced on a narrow ridge high above the Fewa Tal lake. It was constructed by the Buddhist monks in an attempt to promote world peace. We started the hike with a charming boat trip to the other side of the lake. The windless early morning had turned the lake into a mirror, reflecting the entire range of snow-capped mountains. From there it is a scenic 1 hour hike up the mountain. And needless to say, the view from the top was breathtaking! I just cannot seem to get over the blueness of the sky. A short walk from the pagoda took us to another hill covered in Tibetan prayer flags. And from there we hiked all the way back to Pokhara.
The Pokhara highlight for me was the paragliding! We hooked up with Sunrise Paragliding. We were shoved into a jeep with three other crazy monkeys and taken up to Sarangkot hill from where the adventure began. The process was quite simple - no training, no indemnity forms and hardly any communication from the non-English speaking instructors. Each of us was assigned to an instructor who hooked the shoot and harness on to us. The shoot was laid out on the grass, the instructor hooked onto me and then, when a nice warm wind came up, I was instructed to run down the mountain! “Run, pull, run, run, run!!!!” And then I was up I the air with the hawks guiding us into the thermal pockets.
We glided through the air for about 30 minutes and then my instructor asked if I wanted to steer. I was lucky enough to get a Canadian guy with 20 years experience, so felt totally at ease. He showed me the ropes and I took over from him. Then we had to descend, which was a serious of extremely fast spirals towards mother earth. A super soft landing made me feel like a real pro! I can easily say that this was the most exhilarating thing I have ever done! The thrill was beyond belief and I could not stop smiling for the entire day.
Eon, who has done sky-diving before, thought the paragliding was okay, but was not as thrilled by it as I was. He got a bit of motion sickness with all the spiralling while taking photos. He definitely prefers being thrown from a plane for about the same price!
The rest of our time in Pokhara was spent just wandering about and making plans for the upcoming trek. We decided on flying to Jomsom and trekking to Muktinath, 3760m above sea level and then all the way back to Ghorepani, close to Pokhara. From there we will take on the challenging trek to Annapurna Base Camp (4130m above sea level) and back. From base camp we will be able to see the highest peak here, Annapurna I, which is 8091 meters high! I am hoping that we will come across snow somewhere on the hike. Yes, the snow on the mountains is beautiful, but I would really like to literally walk and play in the snow as well. Maybe have a white Christmas?
We will be spending Christmas and New Years in the mountains. So our Christmas will be a secluded one, but we are hoping that we will be able to make a couple of phone calls home.
Click on image to view Pokhara gallery:
(yes, the sky is really blue here! No editing, just using a polarizer filter)