Pokhara 27.10 – 28.10
We arrived in Pokhara around three in the afternoon. According to the original itinerary, we would have continued to Kathmandu the next morning, which would have left little time in Pokhara. In fact, the day had gone relatively smoothly, and with worse luck we could have arrived several hours later, leaving the final dinner as the only thing to do in Pokhara. However, it is the second largest city in Nepal, and none of us had been there before, as most mountaineering trips head north from Kathmandu and Pokhara is not on the itinerary. We had long before requested that the itinerary be changed to allow us a day off in Pokhara. How this was actually arranged remained a mystery to us. We might have gone at a slightly faster pace on the base camp trek, but I don’t think we could have saved a whole day within such a short trek. There was probably a bit of slack in the Annapurna circuit itinerary, which we didn’t need as the weather favoured us throughout the trip and no one had any problems that would have delayed the trek. So we got the day off we had hoped for in Pokhara. We had also hoped for a good hotel with a separate room for everyone. We had to pay for our second night in Pokhara, which, at a room rate of $35, was not an issue. The Choice Inn was a very nice hotel, and I don’t know whether you could have done much better in Pokhara even if you had spent more on the hotel room. I suppose there are a few international chain hotels in Pokhara where you could have paid western prices without any real added value compared to the Choice Inn. Amrit and the porters were staying in a hotel presumably normally used by the tour operator a few hundred yards away. We never saw what kind of hotel it would have been, but I’m sure it wouldn’t have been bad either. Realistically speaking, food and accommodation has always been good on this trip. Of course, the facilities at higher altitudes are very spartan, but there is simply nothing else available.
Despite the extra day, we had an unbelievably busy schedule. We were given about an hour to settle in, shower, pack our dirty clothes for the laundry and change into fresh ones. We had planned to go for a massage to a place where Amrit’s sister worked, but apparently they did not currently have availability for four people. We hadn’t been able to make a fixed reservation beforehand as we hadn’t known when we would actually arrive in Pokhara. Of course, this was not a big problem, as Pokhara is full of massage places and Amrit guided us to another place. Thanks to Amrit handling the ‘business negotiations’, the price we had to pay was well below the list price. Tourist prices vs local prices. An hours massage for €18 was very reasonable and we decided to do it again the next day.
After the massage, it was time for the farewell dinner. We headed to the Busy Bee restaurant, which was once again an excellent choice. We were there at about half past seven, and according to the sign, happy hour went on until eight o’clock. Happy hour was limited to cocktails, which were two for the price of one. So everyone took a double of some cocktail, and after a bit of shuffling everyone had a couple of different ones. Mojitos are always a safe bet and a drink similar to Pina Colada, which went by the name of Mount Everest, also proved to be a smashing choice. We quickly ordered a new round of Mount Everests and soon the table was full of drinks and beer. At five minutes to eight, the waiter came over to tell us that happy hour was about to end. After a quick glance at the table, I had to just say ‘I think we are happy now, thank you’. As the main course Heikki and Pude had pepper steaks and I had the trout. The whole fish fit on the plate, so it wasn’t quite the size of a sea trout. I heard it was a fresh water fish. That isn’t exactly surprising as Nepal is a landlocked country, but there aren’t many lakes either. The food was delicious and we had a very pleasant evening with the whole group. The three of us covered the bill, which came to about 50 euros each. The food was around ten euros and the beers and half-price drinks were no more than a few euros each. The total cost was about 25 euros per head for the whole feast.
After dinner, the three of us stopped at the Irish pub next door. There, too, the semi-final of the Women’s South Asian Football Federation championship between Nepal and India was shown on a big screen. The game seemed to go on forever. The actual playing time ended at 180 minutes, which is crazy for football. It wasn’t the players who were to blame, but the referees, found from somewhere on the dark side of the moon, who kept the game standing still for minutes on end. In the end, the game had to be decided by penalty kicks, which Nepal won. The locals went crazy over the victory.
If there was controversy during Paris Olympics about men who boxed in the women’s divisions, there was some similarity with Nepal’s number one striker. Sabitra Bhandari was not just the best striker in the game, but Nepal’s number one player in absolute terms. Quote from Wikipedia: She is the all-time highest goal scorer in Nepalese football history and broke record as the highest woman goal scorer in South Asia with 49 goals. She made history by being the first Nepalese player to play and score in the European league.
My comment about a ‘mixed football’ game drew quite some laughs from others. A picture is worth a thousand words.
The next day it was time to visit Pokhara. The town is on the shore of a lake and there is a small island with a Hindu temple a few hundred meters away. The place seemed to be very popular with the locals. There was a constant stream of small boats from the shore, rowing people to and from the island for the price of one euro. On the island, people were buying ready-made baskets of various products from a stall, and each item clearly had its own place were it was supposed to be placed. Flower decorations had their own place, incense their own place, coloured ribbons their own place, coconut their own guillotine, etc. I watched and photographed how the locals performed their rituals, and at the end, they visited the little temple for a blessing and a colour patch on their foreheads. There were a lot of local families and especially the women and children were dressed in festive clothes.
I was photographing the mountains on the horizon from the shore of the island when I noticed a lot of paragliders gliding in front of them. I had already seen advertisements for paragliding on the main street, but it was only now that I realised the scale of the activity and that the location was not terribly far away. Since it was already noon, I didn’t think that paragliding would be possible on the same day anymore, but I still went to ask what it would cost. The price was around 70 euros and there would be still be departure at 1 o’clock. A quick swipe of the bank card and I sat down on the sofa to wait. I was of course dressed like a northener in temperatures above 20 degrees, i.e. t-shirt, shorts and sandals. I asked if I was dressed appropriately or if I still needed a quick change at the hotel. I was told that technically I was fine, because hiking sandals are the kind that stay on your feet and wouldn’t fall off during the flight. Still, I was recommended a jacket, but the driver could drive by the the hotel on the way out. After a while, a minivan curved up in front of the office and picked me up. There are small travel agencies everywhere around Pokhara fake and we drove around picking up more customers, guides and equipment until the van was again totally full inside and on the roof. We stopped at my hotel and I quickly pulled on my long pants and proper shoes and grabbed a fleece jacket. We drove fifteen minutes out of town and then another fifteen minutes straight up the high hills of Sarangkot. There was a wide launch area built of artificial grass mats, where you could spread out several gliders at a time, side by side. The customers were set up with harnesses and attached to the gliders, and then it was time to take to the skies. The glide time was much longer than in Queenstown a few years ago. The estimated duration of a standard flight was 15-20 minutes, with a variant called ‘cross country’ spec’d at 30-40 minutes. Surprise surprise, I had paid the additional fee for the longer flight. However, during the flight, the guide said that the wind conditions were not good enough for the longer route. It didn’t help that we were both at maximum weight for the activity. Presumably the conditions had been better in the morning. I spoke with a member of staff in the office before we left who had already returned from one flight and he said conditions had been good. In reality, however, there was no great loss, as the longer flight would have just kept circling at pretty much the same area for a bit longer. The flight took just under 20 minutes, after which we were picked up by the van for the return journey. The van broke up just before we got back to the office. The staff fixer said that I should probably just walk the remaining few hundred meters to the office instead of waiting for another van. He also called the office and told them that I was coming in to get a refund for the extra payment for the longer flight. I can say that it was the fastest claims process in the universe. The guy in the office greeted me, and apologized for not being able to make the longer flight. ‘Bad luck’, and he gave me 4500 rupees in cash from a desk drawer. Job done. Because the paragliding had been a last-minute decision and took a couple of hours in total, I didn’t make it to the massage again. Pude went with Amrit to a spa located within a bigger hotel where Amrit’s sister worked.
Pasang and Sanjay had already left in the morning by bus to Kathmandu and from there to their home village. They would have about a week’s rest before their next 9-day trek with Amrit. In the evening we needed to go out for dinner again and since Busy Bee had been such a good place, that’s where we headed again. And we were not disappointed. And we made sure we were there before 8pm.
