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Published: July 17th 2013
Today we woke up in Pokhara, with nothing major on our schedule, so we were able to sleep in! We met for breakfast at 7, and then began to explore Pokhara a bit.
The first thing we did was to visit the Devi's Falls. This waterfall is in a fast moving river in a narrow canyon, that goes underground and through a series of caves after the falls. The falls is named after a lady (Ms. Davis) who was bathing in the river up stream from the falls with her husband. She lost her footing and was swept away by the river. She was killed in the falls, so they named them after her. Having heard this story, we were sure to keep our distance from the falls!
Visiting Davis Falls at this time of year was perfect! The river was swollen from the monsoon rains, so it made for a great site. There weren't many other people visiting the falls either, because this is the slow season as far as tourists go.
After our visit to Davis Falls, we crossed the street and entered the caves. The first level of the caves is a Hindu temple, so
no pictures are allowed. The second level is where the river runs. At the top, before you enter the caves, you have to buy a ticket, and there was a sign that says the river level of the caves is closed for four months during the monsoon because the river is too big to enter safely. When we asked about that, the ticket agents said that it was open, so we decided to pay the river level a visit.
The caves were pretty neat to see, although a lot of the caves were Nepali height... meaning, Mike had to watch his head, a lot! Everywhere you went, water was dripping on you and mist filled the air. It was nice and cool in the cave compared to the outside.
When we finally got down to the river level (it was a long way down — and very hard on our still sore legs from our 55k trek that we finished yesterday), we tried taking a picture of the fast moving river. Unfortunately, it didn't work out very well. It was too dark to take a picture without flash, and when we used the flash, all that showed up
in the picture were thousands of water droplets. It kind of looked like it was snowing. The really neat thing is that we couldn't see those water droplets at all with our eyes and without the flash.
Our next stop was to a Tibetan refugee camp. This camp is sponsored by the Dalai Lama. Because today is a Saturday (holy day), the camp was mostly deserted. There was a large soccer game going on in the field, and a few people wandering around the houses, but the carpet factory was deserted and most of the streets were empty.
Next, we visited old Pokhara. This is a part of town with very old wooden buildings and many locals. We wandered up and down the streets, admired some of the old buildings, temples, street cows, and hokey electrical wiring, before heading back to the hotel to pack up for our flight back to Kathmandu.
After we were packed, we went for lunch to a decent Italian restaurant. We decided to switch up the standard Nepali fare. For dessert, we had chocolate mint gelato. We didn't expect much, but it was delicious! It tasted like real, fresh mint. Not that
chemically, fake stuff that you get in Canada.
Our last stop in Pokhara, besides the airport, was Fewa Lake. We went for a quick walk around the head of the lake. There were tonnes and tonnes of people fishing from the shore. We saw lots of adults, with four or more rods each, and lots of kids too. At one point, we had to walk across a super sketchy bridge that already looked overloaded with child fishermen. As Katie walked by, one of them pretended to kiss her on the cheek! It was pretty funny, and the kid burst out laughing with his friends.
During our flight back to Kathmandu, Mike watched the altitude that we were flying at with a GPS app on his iPhone. He took a picture out the window at 3,218 metres, which is basically as high as we climbed during our four day trek. It certainly puts things in perspective, when you see how high that really is — it's the altitude that small commercial planes cruise at!
For dinner, we visited a Tibetan restaurant with the rest of the gang. We ordered hot pots, and they were fantastic! We will definitely
have to come back to this place before we leave Kathmandu!
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Nitish Kafle
non-member comment
Adorable .. Elysia smiled when the waterfall smiled ;)