Blogs from Pokhara, Nepal, Asia

We arrived in Pokhara after a very comfortable “tourist bus” ride for about 7 hours. The tourist buses are about 10x the price of the local buses, but the seats are much more comfortable, and there is only space available for those with assigned seats; well worth the extra money. Pokhara is a beautiful laid back lakeside town, which has a lively tourist downtown area filled with more hash smoking, yoga practicing hippies with dread locks. I can’t bear to overhear one more story about how they are on a 6 month sabbatical before they start med school. We headed to the Gurkha museum, as Pokhara is home to the largest recruiting British recruiting center in Nepal. The Gurkhas are Nepalese soldiers fighting for the British crown. They are considered the fiercest fighting force in the ... read more

Yesterday was a sad/happy day as it was my last day with the Street Kids. Had the most amazing and fun few weeks there making lots of friends. We had our last lesson, though most of them just played with pipe-cleaners i'd left in my bag. In the afternoon it started pouring it down again so we were all under the tin roof trying to keep cover. We brought in boiled eggs for them to decorate for Easter, but forgot the pain and glitter, though they liked colouring them in. After that they were all quickly eaten. We bought a bag of sweets and spend about twenty minutes tying them to string, and then they had to catch all the sweets. The game last 20 seconds. Left my camera in charge of the children, so have ... read more

Was supposed to sleep in till 7AM today and of course, I couldn't. I hate that. I was up by 6:15. Nabin came to get us at 7:00 and we went to take pictures of Annapurna South from the other end of Ghandruk where the view was amazing. I have never seen a mountain like this one. I have never seen anything like the Himalayas, and I've seen a fair number of mountains! We were taking pictures next to a hotel and there were two young girls who lived in the hotel with their family. They must own it. I got some great pictures of the little girls. After we took pictures we stopped at the Old Ghandruk Museum (75NPR) which is small, but has quite a collection of artifacts. There are two museums in Ghandruk, ... read more

Morning flight over the Himalayas today. Woke up at 5:30, completely oblivious that we were supposed to meet Ravi in the lobby at 5:45. He told us. More than once. But we apparently had a major brain fart and totally forgot what Ravi had said even though I heard him clearly and repeated it. At 5:55 when Ravi called our room to tell us it was getting late, I realized that Nabin's English was not as good as we thought. The night before when he dropped us at the hotel he said six fifteen, but what he meant was fifteen to six. Big difference. So after Ravi called we rushed downstairs not realizing that we didn't need to bring all our stuff because we'd be returning after the mountain flight. So we threw everything in the ... read more

Nepal tiene una extension aproximada de dos Andalucias (29 millones de habitantes). Está situada entre dos gigantes, India y China (mas de 1.000 millones de personas cada uno), situado en pleno Himalaya, la cordillera de montañas más grandes y altas del mundo. En el mundo existen 14 ochomiles (montañas más altas de 8.000 m.) y 8 de ellos están en el Nepal, el resto se encuentran entre Tíbet (China) y Paquistán. Nepal es, seguramente, el país con las montañas más impresionantes del globo. El paisaje durante el trekking de los Annapurnas es muy variado ya que empiezas a poca altitud caminando por zonas con mucha vegetación, casi selva. A medida que vas subiendo, y sobre todo después de los 4000 m. el entorno cambia radicalmente, transformándose en un paisaje agreste casi sin vegetación en donde los ... read more