Day 40: Pokhara
Trip Start
Sep 21, 2006
1
41
228
Trip End
Jun 01, 2007
Pokhara,
Nepal
Wednesday, November 1, 2006
I'm still waking to a trekking timetable, however. Fortunately so are Pokhara's bakeries. I have breakfast in the grounds of Hotel Fewa, beside the rippling lake, beneath boddhi trees, to a blend of classical music and cawing mynah birds.
I take a taxi to the International Mountain Museum, a hangar of a hall within huge park grounds. Inside is an archive of mountaineering expedition photography and equipment, and a display of Nepali mountain culture. A photographic comparison of alpine life in Europe 50 years ago with that today in Nepal shows little difference. There is a collection of garbage recovered from Everest over four years - a heap of empty oxygen canisters, broken ladders and stoves. Over a mile from Pokhara, near the airport (and rows of two-storey apartment blocks chequered with tasteless turquoise and terra-cotta crazy-paving walls), the museum is starved of tourists and the village 'living museum' lacks participants, which is sad. I would have liked to have browsed the extensive library here, but I've a taxi waiting to return me to the lakeside.
