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Published: September 22nd 2014
We travelled local style to pokhara..this meant we were on a small, overcrowded bus with Nepalese dance music blaring. We swerved and honked our way to Pokhara which was a 4 hour drive and tried not too look out the window and the extreme drop down to the river.
Pokhara is a town which overlooks a huge lake, and is surrounded by the Annapurna mountain range. It is beautiful and lived up to all expectations we had had. It's a world away from Kathmandu..my advice if coming to nepal..get here as soon as you can. It's a little higher elevation wise so it was a little cooler than Kathmandu, the air was clearer and things were at a lovely slow pace. We stayed at lakeside which is where most of the travellers stay. People come here for the hippy vibe, yoga, massages and trekking which is around the annular a circuit and also poon hill. We were hear to do a few things and gave ourselves over a week.
Whilst we were in Pokhara we had the joy of being there for the HOLI festival.
Holi festival is known as the festival of colours and is an ancient
Hindu festival. Participants don old clothes and it is a free for all carnival of playing, chasing and throwing dry powder and coloured water over anyone and everyone. Some people make water ballons with paint inside, others have super soakers. I had planned to be in a Hindu country for holi so we would be able to take part. For me this was another thing on my bucket list and had been looking forward to it for a while. Again, It lived up to all expectations. We had so much fun and we also met up with other travellers we had met on the trek to share the experience. Apart from when I decided to get amongst it and had my boob Pinched by some mob of boys, everything went without a hitch. Highly recommend for a totally different and fun experience. There was a live band on in the afternoon so everyone got involved listening and dancing to this and later on we tried to go to a techno party but having pizza as a take away en route slowed us down and we ended up having a reasonably early night...probably for the best.
We linked up again
with Lucas and hired a taxi for a few hours to do some of the sights around pokhara. First stop was Sarangkot. This is where they do the paragliding (more to come on that later). After some huffing and puffing (there were more steps!) we made the last bit (almost at the top) and were greeted by a great panoramic view of the lake and pokhara town which was much bigger and spread out than we thought it was. From here we went to the bat cave, unfortunately batman wasn't there but lots of small bats were in the depths of the cave. Near to the bat cave was the gurka museum, this was a museums dedicated to all things gurka and it was really interesting. They had a great photography display of the many years of the Gurkhas, their history, examples of places they had served, displays on Gurkhas on have gone above and beyond the call of service, military clothes exhibition, and explained the tough entry system. For example, potential Gurkhas come from all around Nepal and run up mountains with baskets of rocks on their backs. It is not unheard of for trainees to run with broken
Holi Festival
Pokhara, Nepallegs to ensure they finish, it is a huge shame on the village and family if you do not make it in. Next to this was the seti gorge, not much to see here apart from a river and a funny man who dresses you up and charges you for the pleasure even if you don't want to take part. He was quite entertaining and even asked me if I know a girl he knew from England called Sarah. Surprise to say I didn't.
The last stop of the day was the peace pagoda. This is way up a hill which overlooks pokhara from the other side of the lake. The car broke down half way up so we had a mini trek up to the top. Craig stopped for a break and me and Lucas huffed and puffed the last way up. As we were walking up we noticed a storm coming in so we hop, skipped it up to the top. The peace pagoda is very big and perched right on top of the hill, there is empty land around it so I ran very quickly across (so as not to get lightening bolted) took some pictures
and ran back. Lucas was a little braver and spent a little bit longer lingering (not much mind) then we both hurried back down before the downpour started.
Last on the agenda in Pokhara was an adrenaline rush experience. I decided I wanted to have a go at para hawking. Para hawking is an activity that combines paragliding and falconry. Birds of prey (such as vultures - Bob) are trained to fly with paragliders, gliding them to the thermals. Bob is trained to fly when a whistle is sounded and he flies in and takes food you have in your hand. Just like when you do falconry at home, but your more in their natural environment, the sky. And it is only in Nepal that you can do it (apparently). My tandem flight was with a Nepalese guy and Bob the vulture would be guiding us through the air currents whilst I hand fed him buffalo meat. I wasn't at all scared ( a first) and happily ran off the side of the mountain. My adrenaline did seriously kick in when we just kept on going up and up and up so that the mountain we ran off was
like a little dot. At this point I said to the pilot I wasnt really enjoying myself (my exact words were...we are not going any higher are we?) to which he laughed and said maybe as we had to follow Bob and the other paraglider doing the same thing. Oh no! I had to refrain from looking down at my dangling legs and not throwing up! But around about at the moment I thought I was a goner we started heading down. I think the other para glider didn't take a air current up and was going down instead so we had to get on the same level so Bob could fly between us. All was back to being amazing after that! If your interested the whole sage was filmed with a go pro including me looking like I'm going to cry! Ha. I tell you when the whistle blew and Bob came for the food and sat on my arm and just chilled out this was one of the best experiences lve had. I had a vulture on my arm way up high in the air. Unbelievable, I never thought I'd write a sentence that said that! For the
last part of paragliding I was asked if l liked roller coasters, 'sometimes' was my reply. That was enough for some stunt like, gravity defying twists and turns before landing and me screaming my head of! I did actually enjoy it though. On the go pro video it actually looks like we went upside down, I have no idea I had my eyes closed most of the time!
All in all pokhara was an amazing place. We loved every day we had their (apart form Craig being poorly off course). Highly recommend.
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Momma Toni
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Very brave Jen!
I think you are so brave jen to paraglide and feed bob the vulture at the same time! I loved the photo of the Annapurna mountains they are truly awesome! the paint festival looked good but im sure not so easily washed off? I have known friends who visited Katmandu and Himalayas in the late 60s the experience had a lifelong affect, best wishes Antonia xxxxxxx