Pokhara

Asia » Nepal
January 1st 2010

Published: January 2nd 2010

Edit Blog Post

Allyca

Lake Fewa

Boating on the lake...only nonpowered canoes allowed

From Chitwan it was on to Pokhara, a beautiful tourist town with views of the Annapura range. The drive from Chitwan in the lowlands of Nepal on winding roads up through the mountains was glorious. So many small homes/business huts perched on the cliff side, where people were providing food oe services for the travellers. The road was very busy with all the traffic to Kathmandu, particularly the trucks. However, it was in much better repair than we expected and felt much safer (I'm not too brave when it comes to heights and edges), although we did come across a few overturned trucks which caused major hassles for the traffic flow. The trip took several hours but really was utterly beautiful as we hugged the sides gorges overlooking beautiful rivers. inyterspersed with suspension bridges, self pull cabe cars, and a very very steep sophisticated cable car up to a temple very very high on the mountain. (Will update detail on names of rivers etc in a later post for anyone that is interested in this info- unfortunately we left our book and map along the way). The country side and mountains are covered in terraces, apparently most farmers have holdings of

The(tba) ...Gorge

Looking from hotel side (tba...to be advised)

only around 1 acre, divided into several paddocks with different crops and are only able to produce about 70% of their needs. An article in the national paper mentioned that they were generally worse off than their counterparts in the lowlands (like Chitwan) however at first glance they seem to have much more sophisticated housing (2, 3 and sometimes 4 story brick and timber homes were commonplace) You'll see the pix! The road to Pokhara forks off from the Kathmandu highway about 3/4 of the way along, so it was a much quieter drive after that, but ust as beautiful. Still can't get over the fact that in the middle of winter in Nepal, there are bananas, pawpaws, bamboo, hibiscus, bouganvillea etc (all tropical fruits and flowers) in abundance!!

Anyway, once in Pokhara, we stayed in a big resort a little out of town, which at first we were quite disappointed with because it wasn't as convenient for walking the streets - however there was a this wonderful gorge behind the hotel which we walked through, spoke to various people along the way, then came across the scultpure designed by this artist (at least we think so) who has

Lovely old couple

In the street ( they were very happy to pose for a photo)

designed huge scale sculptures all over the world in sacred sites (we saw a TV program on it a couple of years ago, but can't for the moment recall his name.) We undoubtedly would have missed it if we'd stayed in the centre of town, so it turned out to be great after all

Some of the highlights in Pokhara - other than trekking - were a visit to the Tibetan Refugee Community (they did some beautiful craft work);visits to Devi's Falls (named after a Swiss lady who lost her life there); the local temples and bazaars and a boat trip on the lake (Lake Setha) created by damming the water from the mountains. There was also a food festival for the New Year which started on the 28th December went for almost 3 kms around the lakeside. All in all a great place.

Additional photos below

Photos: 47, Displayed: 24