The 2nd Worst Bus journey ever, we arrive in Pokhara and I say Goodbye.

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We got up at 6am (not easy for someone who had only been in bed 2 hours) to get the bus to Pokhara. A 6 hour journey is the heat, on stony roads only going 10 km an hour. The driver kept stopping for unfathomable reasons. We were all tired, fractious, sitting in little pools of frustrated miseryand boredom and every half hour smothering our weather beaten faces with liberal amounts of E45 cream. A diverting moment at one stop when Charlotte got back on the bus with a cockroach the size of my kneecap on her arm. It disappeared onto the floor of the bus, which added somewhat to the general ambience. Restarining my desire to start howling with sheer frustration I covered my head with my scarf and set my mind to endurance mode....

And so we arrived in Pokhara around 2pm. And it was certainly worth it. Pokhara is now up alongside Luang Prabang (Laos) in my 'fave places to be' list. It was quite busy as there were New Year celebrations with a huge funfair and band going on down at the lake and everyone was in holiday mode.

I went to lie down for the afternoon however smothered in E45. The evening was to be my last evening with the group and I wanted to be up for it.

We went for a loevly meal in a beautiful garden outside. I had written one of my (hopefully amusing) poems to say goodbye to them all. Said I was going to be brief as Brian wanted to take them all to see a film a film called 'Death on Safari (they were all off to Chitwan on safari the next day - if you didn't read my earlier entry about seeing Into Thin Air that won't make much sense). We had a good night which ended with Chhatra, me and Collette searching the town for bars that were still open. (Hardly any).

Didn't get to bed til after 4am again. Just as well they've gone. You try staying off the beers with 14 Scots. I think they may even have made me into a Scottish Nationalist. Seemed to make a lot of sense when Douglas was explaining the complexities of the English and Scottish difference of Church, State and Education.

Here commenceth 3 days of total chill time in Pokhara....

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