pokhara

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Before meeting the girls in Pokhara I made a quick overnight sidetrip to Kushinigar, the site of Buddha's death. While there I stayed the night in the Burmese temple - maybe the closest I'll get to Burma on this trip. Just like Sarnath and Bodhgaya, Kushinigar is a study of contrasts. Outside the park is dirty, noisy, smelly India and as soon as you walk through the gates it is green, peaceful and quiet.

At the ripe old age of 80 (at a time when 50 was considered to be very old) Buddha was walking home to his birthplace to die, but 45 years of a monk's life (dysentery, one meal a day, bugs, heat and cold) caused him to give out before he could return, and so he died in the little place of Kushinigar. Buddhism is a little bit funny at times. Despite Buddha's constant preaching to see things as they really are, with no delusion or illusion, every image of the death of the 80-year old Buddha shows him as a young man in the prime of his life.

The next day I took a bus back to Gorakphur, then a bus to the Nepal border, and then early the next morning yet another bus to Pokhara, a place I had visited last year. As soon as I was in Nepal I was reminded of how beautiful the country is and how nice the Nepalese people are. I had not planned on returning to India and Nepal, but it has been nice to revisit these places and see them again with new eyes.

Pokhara is the starting point for the Annapurna trek, and it sits on the edge of the beautiful Fewa Lake and at the foot of the mighty Annapurna Mountains. We spent several days walking around town, paddling and swimming in the lake and (for me) continuing to watch the situation in Burma. As the news from Burma became worse and worse I had to come up with a Plan C. Being no fool, I quickly devised a Plan C by worming my way into the travel plans of two beautiful Italian girls. Being the fool I am, that meant agreeing to the Trans-Siberian Railway...in Russia...in November. So, this November, when you are sitting in a warm house with a nice cup of coffee, take a moment to think about this crazy fool freezing his ass off on the frozen steppes of Mongolia and Russia, wondering how the hell he got into this situation but smiling all the time.

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