POKHARA
Trip Start
Jan 02, 2007
1
5
56
Trip End
Apr 09, 2007
POKHARA,
Nepal
Sunday, January 7, 2007
(GMT +5h45m)
The domestic terminal at Kathmandu airport was interesting, to say the least! There were people there checking in all sorts of mad stuff. Some of the baggage included what looked like big sacks of rice, and just when I thought I'd seen it all, this dude arrived in with a big bale of hay on his back!
When I arrived to check in for my 'Yeti Airlines' flight (which the travel agent told me would be 'about' 12.30) all of the previous Yeti flights had been delayed due to fog so I figured I was in for a long wait in an airport that was slightly fancier than a hay barn! As it turned out though, my flight left earlier than it was supposed to so all was hunky-dorey and after 20 mins of more spectacular Himalaya views from a twin engined twenty-something seater plane, I touched down in Pokhara.
Pokhara is a smallish city on the edge of the Phewa Tal lake at the foothills of the Annapurna Range in the Himalayas. I checked into nice big room with great views of the lake and mountains, in a fairly cheap hotel and headed out to explore the place. The lakeside area is where all the tourists hang out but it's off-season at this time of the year so it was pretty quiet out on the streets. The shortest of the mountain treks worth doing was 4 days long and I didn't have that much time so I started looking into other ways of seeing the place.
I was heading back to the hotel after lunch one of the days and I noticed a motorbike hire place so I decided to check it out. I went up to the guy and asked what type of bikes were for hire and he said he had Harley Davidsons to rent. All of the taxi's in Pokhara are the little bet up Suzuki Alto type thingys and the newest car you'd generally see on the roads would be about 30 years old, so the chances of this guy having a Harley were slim to none! I asked if I could see the bike and he brought me over to a Yamaha bike with a Harley sticker on the tank! The conversation then went something like this:
Me: That's not a Harley. It's a Yamaha.
Nepali guy: No! Look! (Pointing at the sticker) HAR-LEY DAV-ID-SON.
Me: No! (Pointing at where Yamaha was written on the engine) YAM-A-HA!
Nepali guy: No, look... ...etc.
It went on like that for a few minutes and we were both getting a great bit of craic out of it. Anyway, he gave me a price of 500 rupees (< EUR4.50) for half a day so I said I'd think about it and come back in the morning. The next morning I went back to the same place with a different guy who quoted me 400 rupees for a full day. I gladly accepted and went to get out my licence, etc. to do the business. Yer man didn't know what I was on about with my licence! He just gave me the key and told me to pay when I got back - no licence, insurance, deposit or anything required - didn't even ask my name! I headed off into the hills on my 'Harley' with a map and a tank of juice to get some better views of the mountains.
I was also going to buy a one hour flight around Mount Everest from Kathmandu but due to the fog, there were long delays on these so I was a bit wary of booking in advance. I came across another place in Pokhara offering flights around the Annapurna range in a microlite so I figured that would be a much better option than being enclosed in a plane, so I booked that instead. (A microlite is a sort of hang-glider thing with seats and an engine.)
Although I got some fantastic views on both these outings, the weather remained pretty foggy and I don't think National Geographic will be printing any of my photos.
Other than the above, I didn't get up to a lot more over those few days. Spent a lot of time just chilling out and reading on the balcony and down by the lake. It was just what the doctor ordered after the hussle-bustle of Delhi and Kathmandu. Although Pokhara is a city, the lakeside area was fairly laid back most of the time.
My flights to Mumbai were confirmed from Kathmandu on Friday so I flew back there on Thursday afternoon. Headed to Pokhara airport early and ended up checking in and getting on a flight almost immediately, almost 2 hours before I was supposed to fly. Sweeeeet!
