Pokhara - Relaxing and Exciting

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Hello there! So its been longer than normal since I've written a blog, mainly due to us absoultely loving Pokhara and therfore staying longer! After I wrote in Varanasi, we travelled for two days to get to Pokhara. One day on the bus to the Nepal border, then we slept on the border and then the next day we got on another bus to Pokhara. Both bus journeys were about 10 hours or so. The bus they put us on in Nepal was definately no Tourist bus, it was a local government bus! But to be honest it wasnt too bad, but it did suck the amount of times that we stopped on the way. At one point on that bus, a guy with a Goat came on, funny stuff. The other things that made the journey ok was the amazing scenery. Most of the journey was on winding mountain road and some of the sights out the bus were breathtaking. There was once incident on the way though. There had been a mudslide down the side of one of the hills and it had been on quite a steep bit of road, so there were a convoy of buses waiting it out before we could get up the road, even 4x4's driving through were finding diffiuclt. After a while a few buses just went for it and after a bit of slipping and sliding (and me saying a quick prayer) we made it up and on we went.

After a nights sleep we decided to talk to our hotel manager, mr Chabby, about treking and white water rafting as we heard Nepal was pretty famous for these kind of things. In the end we booked the white water rafting, which we do tomorrow on the way to Kathmandu. One day when we were out in Pokhara, a independant guide came up to us and asking if we wanted to do any trekking and we ended up booking a day trek with him. I am so glad we decided to do that trek. The day of the trek we woke up and 4.30 am to meet him. We went up to a place called Sarangot, which was about 1600 meters high. The views from there were amazing, especially as it was so early in the morning. Its not quite the season for trekking in Nepal yet so there was some clouds around but we could still see some of the glaciers of the Annapurna mountians. We had breakfast at a small place there and then went off with our guide along the mountain. This part of the walk was really good as we got to walk through many traditional Nepali villages and see their ways of life as well as seeing the amazing views. After a few hours of walking, we arrived at a bus stop that took us to our nect destination. Jay and I asked if we could sit on the top of the bus, and ofcourse they said it was fine so we did. That was amazing, going down the mountain on the bus roof. We even had to duck under elecrtical wires when we went into a town! Next our guide brought us to his sisters flat, there she made us tradtional Nepali tea, very nice. We then walked though a Tibetan village and got our second bus to the hill where the 'Peace Pagoda' is. At this point it was around midday so it was sooo hot, this bit of the trek was by far the hardest. I think theres one picture of me beside the big Buddha statue with a hell of a sweat patch on my front ha, but it was definately worth it. The day trek was amazing, I would definately come back to Pokhara to do a proper trek, maybe 10 days or so.. one day. Oh ya, also our guide was asking us if we liked Nepali girls, ofcourse we said yes. SO he proceded to ask us if one of us would like to marry his sister...we politley turned him down on this occasion!

Aswell in Pokhara there is a big beautiful lake called Fewa Lake. Since this was right on our door step, we decided to rent a boat for the day and go explore. Before we got on the boat, we decded to go about the town picking up some food for a picnic, gotta love picnics. So we got some nice things and got in our boat, after a while we got the hang of the rowing thing and off we went. Half way down the river we found a little spot on the lakeside to stop off and have our picnic. The spot was great, it had a great view of Pokhara and was really quite and peaceful. So after our lunch we got back on the boats and went out to the very middle of the lake and decided to have a swim. Oh my god it was so refreshing after rowing in the hot sun for so long, took some good pics of that too. It was time to turn back as it was the first day of the premiership so we had to get back for the footy, I'll talk more about that later! On our way back we stopped the boat at a little island that has a Buddhist shirne on, there we joined some Nepali guys and started jumping off into the lake.

So as I said it was the first day of the premiership so we had to get to a bar. Its soooo good here for football, there's actually more games on here than there are in England. So we got to the bar and watched two matches then went off to hit a club. There we met this couple who turned out to be from Lymington, so that was quite weird. But is was cool to meet some English people and we ended up having a good few drinks with them. Later after many drinks we started walking back to our hotel in the puring rain and some kids came up to us asking for money. Instead of giving them money we decided that what they needed were hugs so we gave them all hugs...that was funny in the morning!Needless to say that was a freakin good day haha!

Another day we rented mopeds for the day and we set off along a long stretch of road that went off into the hills surrounding Pokhara. There we saw some really cool rice fields and took some great pictures of the happy workers in them. After a while on that road we came to a bit where a river had overflown onto the road. So after much discussion between Jay and I about how to tackle this problem, we decided to just drive down the side of the water and we could probaby get through. SO off Jay went ...just Jay decided to go straight down the middle of the water where the water was knee deep...he didnt get very far and the Moped messed up and wouldn't start. Luckily after many tries and almost admitting defeat it started up and we headed the other way after buying a drink from the guy who helped us out with the bike. This time we went up some windy roads up the mountain which was pretty scary when a massive bus would come ripping around the corner and thers me with my quite frankly gay little scooter haha! but some great views on the way.

When we weren't off doing things we were chilling out in Pokhara, in the tourist part called Lakeside. This place is so calm and peaceful and this was exactly what we needed after being in India fo so long. The people dont hassel you and actually take 'no thanks' for and answer! Also EVERYONE says hello...well nor actually hello in English but 'Namaste'. It's a very refreshing place to be.

Like I said we were in quite a tourist area, so there some good bars and restaurants around. The food here is amazing, you can get most things you want aswell as the traditional Nepali, Tibetan or Indian food. Most days we've been eating western food really, we've just had to after being so sick on the Indian food all the time. There are some decent nightlcubs here too and we've had some really good nights and met some cool people. One night out we had, our hotel guy Mr chabby came in absolutely off his face, it was brilliant, that guy can drink! We went on a night out with him and his friends, great random night. The next night we went out to one of the nightclubs that played more western Rnb, there we met these Dutch girls, they were a really good laugh and were fluent in English which helps ha!SO we met up with them again last night as they left for Kathmandu today, good times! O ya and met these really weird Australian couple aswell, they work on farms in OZ and they were proper Australian hicks, it was great!

Another really great thing about Pokhara is the cleanliness of the lake. Usually in the day its really hot here and then ussually rains in the night, so during the day we would jump in the lake and go for a swim. So nice and refreshing in a cold, clean lake. It was like our little swimming hole ha! One day we went over to our 'swimming hole' and there were shotting a bollywood music video and we ended up getting all the cast and staff to take a break and jump in the lake, was really good.

So thats about all about Pokhara, ite definataly been our favourite place so far, hence why we stayed for 11 nights. Its pretty much had everything we love except for maybe a beach. So tomorrow we get a bus to our white water rafting session then get on another bus to Kathmandu. We'll be in Kathmandu for about a week before flying out. I'm off to watch Wigan vs Chelsea in a bit, yes! Speak to you soon x

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Photos

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mudslide on way to pokhara

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Me at a waterfall

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Cheesy Rowing

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Local fisherman