Blogs from Pokhara, Nepal, Asia - page 9

After a brief stopover in Kuala Lumpur arrived to the crazy world of Kathmandhu, its manic, polluted streets full of motor-scooters and buzzing atmosphere providing a stark contrast to the orderliness of Singapore. Visited the central Durbar Square with its impressive former royal palace, intricately carved temples and home of the Kumari Devi living goddess - very young girl brought selected from a local village and periodically paraded through streets until puberty. Explored the palace with its (very) extensive and eclectic museum on the ex-monarchy including numerous hunting trophies and a random selection of personal effects, and climbed tower for some hazy city views. After a brief interlude to fix broken camera (braving more mad streets and enlisting a helpful policeman to cross traffic at one junction), caught a taxi to the atmospheric Swayambhunath Buddhist temple, ... read more

29 March - Kagbeni to Jomsom Short last trekking day. Walked Kagbeni to Jomson in 2 1/2 hours including a tea stop (12km on the Nike Ipod). Memorable moments: Superbly clear views of Dhaulagiri and Nilgri That last walk (for this trip at least) along the riverbed, walking over the million stones and vaguely hoping for an awesome fossil find. At one point there were 3 Sadhus walking parallel with me heading in opposite directions, quite surreal. The contrast of the dark stones and their orange robes was striking. The mud incident. Ahhh the mud incident. As I approached Jomsom I made the fatal error of heading up from the riverbed to an innocent looking grassy patch. Brain was obviously not thinking about WHY there might possibly be a very fertile patch of grass in the ... read more

. . . . and as The Great Date neared the pace of email exchanges increased. I came to realise another difference because of the nature of the group: unlike previous trips with 'grizzled Himalayan veterans', i.e. folk who mainly had been there before, and consequently knew the outline of what was to happen, our collection of 'Himalayan Virgins' wanted more information. Previously when first-time trekkers were part of the party they weren't in the majority: this time, with only myself and Tom having visited before (and Tom, being three hundred miles away, not really involved with our newcomers), I found that each 'Update' I sent out produced another torrent of questions. I didn't mind this in the least ! Several years of answering posts on Trip Advisor was a good background, and the need to ... read more

Hi all, Catching up on a few days and the end of our trip in Pokhara. We spent the remaining couple of days going to Sarangkot for sunrise and visiting the Tibetan Settlement of Tashi Palkhel. On our way back we did stop at a Monastery for young lama apprentice where I did end up spending most of the time playing football with the security guard, our taxi driver and one of the youngsters from the Monastery, it was a delight to watch the smile on the young one. Finally, what a great surprise on our final afternoon in Pokhara when we ran into Tom and Lauren, the American couple I spoke about on our Annapurna trek, they unfortunately had to turn back on ascent day - great reunion and the opportunity for us to say ... read more

My predicition at the end of my last blog post was spot on. Our trek, unsurprisingly, did not go quite as planned. Not that we had planned it atall, but our loose aim to at least summit Poon Hill for the famous panorama of the Annapurna mountain range was not quite met. Luckily, the failure of our trek was not a devastating blow; it merely opened the door to an entirely different journey. First, though, the trek! We took three long and painful buses in one day to reach the start of our trek. One from Kathmandu to Pokhara, one from Pokhara to a stretch of dusty road that led us to our third bus, the worst of the three, that juddered us to Beni. The roads and buses out here are utterly awful, even on ... read more