Day 42: The journey to the mountain begins

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After a 7 hour bus ride, including 2 stops for food and 2 stops for a toilet break, we arrived in Pokhara. From here, the hiking adventure will begin. Pokhara had a different feel to it than Kathmandu. It is right by a lake and has one main road near us that runs along side it. The shore line stores almost follow a pattern of tourist shops: hiking gear/clothing, art, jewelry, tours, trinkets, hiking gear/clothing, insert random restaurant and coffee cafe...repeat. There is a park with a soccer field constantly in action and traffic is not so crazy that a random cow or two can‘t meander down the street looking for a snack. Our night consisted of roaming the back roads which really led more to the center of town (apparently the tourist stretch is on the very edge of town due to the lake), watching sunset from the roof top and having Raj drop us off at a Nepalese restaurant to try Dal Baht. This was interesting for so many reasons. First, you cannot buy a mixed drink, instead you buy either a quarter, half, or full bottle of alcohol and then the mixer of your choice. Then you create your own drink at the table. Second, anything on your Dal Baht plate, you can have seconds, thirds, fourths of free of charge. Third, our two meals cost less than 8 dollars total. Not sure about this place, but the spice in the food is great. It is more than affordable and time seems to slow down here in Pokhara.

* If you have free time and want to learn about a sport we spent some of the evening watching look up Kabaddi. It is basically tag. But made me laugh because there is a portion of the game where the tagger tries to get back across his line and the opposing team tries to tackle him to prevent it. It was a youth game and I just pictured Tony dragging 7 players on his back, neck, arm, and legs as he made his way back to his side totally unphased 😊

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