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Published: October 15th 2005
After the trek we wanted to take it easy for a while so we stayed in Pokhara for a week. Most of the time we just slept and ate. Pokhara is a good place for doing all that, at Lakeside, where most of the tourists are staying, there is lots of good restaurants and decent hotels. Uncle Monkey was playing in Busy Bee during several evenings so that's where we sat, listening to live music.
After having spent such a successful trek and getting used to the good will of the nepalese people living in the mountains, we made a mistake of trusting the manager of our hotel. He promised he would arrange anything we needed, which he did, but not so well. When we wanted to rent a good and new motorbike, we got to pay for an old bike that looked nice but had a lot of kilometers and the engine, chain and transmission of which was in quite a bad condition. If I owned a bike like that I wouldn't dare driving it before getting it fixed, but then again we are in Nepal so that is supposedly acceptable. We still managed to drive around Pokhara for
a day, which was a really nice way to see the surroundings, but it was far from an enjoyable drive.
Another unexpected thing happened when we got to the airport to fly from Pokhara to Kathmandu. We arranged the tickets through the hotel but apparently they never did book us on the flight. Fortunately there was still space on the flight so we got to the plane. So after a hassle-free trek this week put us back on the earth, things don't always work out like you assumed. 'If you want something done, do it yourself.' And for your information, the hotel we stayed at was the Plaza Annapurna, which was an OK hotel with good food, but the arrangements they made were less impressing.
Besides these two minor setbacks the week was really nice. We spent some time with Sam, Steve and Carl, mostly in Busy Bee. We went boating on the lake, sat by the lakeside, walked up to the World Peace Pagoda, and drove to Sarangot, Devi's Falls and a Buddhist Monastery.
The walk up to the Peace Pagoda was quite an adventure on it's own. We took a taxi to the starting point
of the trail, walked uphill trying to find our way with the instructions from Lonely Planet and eventually got to the Pagoda. There we came up to an armed soldier on the gate of the World Peace Pagoda. The garden next to the pagoda was now working as an army campground. After the trek we thought we'd had enough of the leeches but think again! There were lots of those bastards on the slopes of the hill. We'd run down the slippery hill and stop after 100 meter to check our boots and wipe off the leeches. At one time Kirsi had 5 leeches on one and 4 leeches on the other boot. When arriving to the lake the boatman demonstrated what happens to a leech when you pour salt on it. It literally exploded when the salt broke it's skin. That was a rewarding moment. 😉
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Mika
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Mahtavia kuvia joka osiossa! Ja mukava lukea kuulumisia. Vaikuttaa olevan kyllä semmoinen elämys, että oksat pois! Terveisiä Oulusta toivottavat Mika, Johanna, Aleksi ja pikku tyttö, joka syntyi 12.10.2005 klo 23.41 (51 cm, 3930 g) :)