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Prayer Flags...
Couldn't get enough of these either...October 14th, 2011
After a fantastic couple of days in Chitwan it was off to Pokhara to begin our next adventure: The Royal Trek! Due to our time constraints there weren't a lot of options for trekking (most were a week +) but we found this 4 day excursion that also involved camping instead of tea houses, perfect! The trek was so named as apparently Prince Charles had done it years ago with quite a sizeable entourage...
We arrived in Pokhara late afternoon, settled into our hotel and then it was off to the offices of Sisne Rover Trekking to do up the necessary paperwork and meet the guide...the rest of the evening was spent relaxing and picking up a few last minute things before leaving the following morning...
We arrived back at the offices early the next morning where we met up with our fellow trekkers; five Spaniards who were all friends and colleagues...great folks who fortunately spoke English (as our Spanish is pretty limited) so it made for a good group of people.
Next it was into a bunch of taxis and heading for the outskirts of town to begin the trek...started off
pleasant enough with a stroll along an open valley and then across this really cool suspension bridge... the trail then veered straight up, gah! Okay, first of all I did NO training for this, naively thinking "how hard could it be? Prince Charles did it...", but after 30 minutes of vertical hiking I became a little concerned that I wasn't going to make it...haha...we soldiered on though, taking many breaks and after about an hour and a half we came to the top of this hill/mountain where the trail leveled off...I was pretty happy to see that fo sho! Turns out this was probably the most arduous part of the whole trek, and once I figured out how to climb steep trails a little more slowly and methodically (as opposed to skipping every second step and racing up the hills) it made for a much easier and enjoyable hike...
First stop of note was lunch that day, and it was here we saw our porters for the first time hard at work preparing the meal, very cool. There were about 10-12 support people (porters/cooks/guides) for just the seven of us, and when I saw them in action I was
Kids!
Man they made me laugh... certainly humbled...remember me gasping and wheezing climbing that first hill? They were pretty much sprinting up these trails with large baskets of gear tied to their heads...time to hit the gym I guess...*sigh*...
Lunch was fun; we stopped in this tiny village and all the kids came out to entertain us...definitely a couple of hams in the group, most got up one by one to sing us their favourite song, but the funniest was when one kid got up and asked us "would you like to hear a joke?". He then proceeded in great detail and gestures to tell us this joke, in Nepalese! All the kids, porters, guides and a few elderly folks who had joined us all had a big laugh at the punch line, leaving two Canucks and five Spaniards looking a little bewildered but laughing all the same...man that was funny...
Spent a few more hours hiking that afternoon before arriving at this fantastic hilltop area where we saw our tents for the first time, beautiful. It was a shame it was a bit cloudy at this point as we had 360 degree views of countless valleys and trails, but it sure was great
Local Hootch
Boiling down the local "wine"...terrible stuff! Haha... to get the hiking boots off and relax...only to discover they had beer in this building off to the side, heaven! Wasn't expecting to see any sort of amenities during our four day trek but as it turned out most camps were near some sort of civilization so pints and supplies were handy...Had a great meal that night in the building with the beer, got to know our fellow travelers a bit more but it wasn't long before we were all in our tents sleeping off the first day of our adventure...
(Side note: The food was quite good on this trek, thought they did a great job coming up with variety and tasty combos all along...with the exception of one night's attempt at pizza-none of us could eat it-we ate like kings...)
Next morning arrived clear and sunny, and also came with a half-dozen or so jewelry vendors who were all set up and waiting for us to emerge from our tents...kinda strange being in what I thought was the middle of nowhere and all of a sudden there was an open air market there with us, gotta love entrepreneurship! Haha...
Had breakfast, took a group
Self Portrait
First one of the trek... photo with the company banner and then headed out for Day Two of the hike. The one disappointing part of the whole trek was the length of hikes each day; our first day was about 6 hours which was great, the rest were in the 3-4 hour range with long two hour stops for lunch and a couple of one hour breaks...would have preferred to keep moving but not much we could do. Again, passed through some great small towns where the locals would greet us with Namaste! and a little bow, I could not get enough of it! The people were so friendly, and the kids so cute that we all basically walked around with big smiles on our faces, refreshing!
Made camp that night in a little village which was a little weird, although they did set up a shower tent for us and provided warm water which felt amazing...rolling blackouts are a regular thing in most of Nepal so we relaxed with a pint and had dinner at 8pm when the lights came back on...very cool...
Unfortunately again it was a pretty short trek on Day 3 with a long lunch break, but did manage
to clamber up this hill to see a really neat little temple all decked out with prayer flags. Came around the corner to find a bunch of the locals giving the place a good cleaning; they were very gracious and invited us to have a look around the tiny property.
That night we stopped again at the top of this hill above a tiny village (which again had pints, yeah!) and we made our final camp of the trek. This turned out to be the pizza night so nothing to rave about meal-wise but the porters and guides prepared a big fire and proceeded to entertain us with folk songs and dancing that night, amazing! The Spaniards got up and regaled us with some of their folk songs, and that's when it became painfully clear that I couldn't think of one Canadian folk song to share...oops...did manage to dance around the fire like a fool so hopefully that was enough...haha...I had also carried a small bottle of Whisky to crack on our final night, and discovered one of our guides Buddhi was a big fan...gave him a good solid pour as well as passing it around the fire, he
Suspension Bridge
Beginning of the trek... was a little hurting in the morning...haha...
The next morning was up and off on the last leg of our journey...we hiked down and down to get back into a beautiful valley filled with rice paddies, but it was when we crossed a bridge and walked past a school that things really became funny: The place went ballistic! As soon as the first of us strolled by mayhem erupted as all the kids in the school rushed to the windows and began screaming "Namaste!" and waving, it was quite the scene to behold! This went on for minutes, and I'm sure not much learnin' was going on after that! Haha...
Stopped for lunch in this village where we all tossed in money to tip the porters and guides...K and I stepped out to the loo while they were counting it up and not sure what happened but things seemed a little weird with the Spaniards when we got back...may have been my imagination but seemed like attitudes had changed for some reason, not sure if something was said by the porters in regards to the tip but at this point I'll never know...
Said our goodbyes to
the porters and made our way by boat across this beautiful lake and onto the bus back to Pokhara...it was here we all said our goodbyes and K and I headed for a pint to relax and reflect on the adventure...fantastic!
Made it back to our hotel to have an amazing hot shower and scape off the trek before heading back out for a meal that night...(Side note: Our first night at the hotel before the trek was interrupted with a rooster crowing(?) in the wee hours of the morning...K made a joking comment about it on our way out that morning and when we came back to the hotel we discovered there were no more rooster noises...again jokingly said something to the owner and he mentioned he went to see the neighbour with said rooster and they "took care of it"...not sure if he was kidding or not, and we now felt a little bad about it! Haha...). We sadly only had a day and a bit to hang out here, in retrospect I wish we had more as Pokhara is a cool, laid back town with fun shopping, great restaurants and fun bars...we managed to put a
good dent in the place; did some last minute shopping, went paragliding (Awesome! Really cool stepping off the side of a hill into mid-air and circling high above the town and lake!) and then finished it off with a bunch of pints at the Busy Bee Cafe, great outdoor patio complete with local cover band, way too much fun!
Sadly our trip was coming to an end, it was back to Kat the following morning for another day and then home...again really wish we had more time in Pokhara, although a great excuse to go back...enjoy the pics...
(Some photos copyright of Karen C., denoted by (KC)...used with kind permission)
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