Rain in Pokhara

The bus ride to Pokhara is long. It took us ten hours to travel less than three hundred kilometers westward along one of the main highways in Nepal. The road is two lanes wide and winds through some of the most rugged terrain I've ever traversed. It's no wonder that Nepal has retained so much of its old culture--it is deviously difficult of transporting anything into or out of the hills. On the way we saw two accidents, one resulting in a charred bus that remained on the road and the other a crushed bus that had rolled off the highway and down a steep precipice to rest two or three hundred feet below.

Pokhara is a lakeside town in central Nepal a few dozen kilometers south of the Annapurna Range of the Himalayas. The Lakeside district is the highly touristed strip on the east bank of the Phewa Tal (lake). The Pokhara valley stretches south and east from the lake and is covered with small farms. The ridges that surround Pokhara are high and shield most of the large mountains to the north from view.

My first morning in Pokhara started out clear and from the hotel balcony I saw Machhapuchhre (or Fishtail), which at 6997m is the largest mountain I've ever been so close to. It was strikingly beautiful. When I checked back after breakfast, the clouds had rolled over the town, where they would stay until I left.

My time in Pokhara was less than ideal. Besides the clouds and rain, I got quite sick and ended up spending about twenty-four hours in a tenuous state--on one hand wanting to get out and hike in the hills, but, on the other, being afraid to be far from a bathroom. I did try hiking to the World Peace Monastery which was built by Japanese monks at the summit of a hill overlooking the lake, but as I got close to the summit, the dreary conditions delivered their latent precipitation. I was within a few hundred yards of the monastery but I turned back as a thick fog obscured my view and the conditions turned a bit hypothermic. Despite the rain, clouds, and being sick, the hike was still enjoyable. The thick forest isolates the trail from the surrounding settlements until it emerges on the ridgetops where stone houses sit above steep, terraced farms.

After several different kinds of medication and twelve hours of sleep my body started to recover, just in time to catch a flight back to Kathmandu. The weather cleared about an hour before we boarded. It felt a bit criminal to leave such a beautiful place so superficially explored.

Back in Kathmandu I checked into a hotel in Thamel for what I hoped would be an overnight stay and then headed out to find an air ticket to Delhi for the next day. The second airline office I tried had a seat, but it was in first class. I was about to turn it down, but I asked how much it cost. As it was still within my budget, I took it and arrived comfortably here in India late this afternoon.

Both India and Nepal are celebrating a holiday or festival called Holi this weekend. This morning in Kathmandu, kids were standing in the streets and on rooftops throwing bags of water and dye at each other and everyone else. I've heard that here in Delhi today is usually reserved for prayer and tomorrow is the big wet color day. I hope my camera survives to take some good pictures.