WEATHER: Perfect and 25C
HIGHLIGHT OF THE DAY: The magnificent Annapurna Ranges
uncovered
BUMMER OF THE DAY: Couldn’t find a tattoo joint open….
WORD OF THE DAY: SHOPPING
DISTANCE TRAVELLED: 105km
It was time to say goodbye to this small piece of heaven
and head back to the noise, the beeping of car horns, traffic and dust. Do we have to? It is hard to believe we are nearly halfway
through the tour already! They say time
flies when you’re having fun and indeed we are.
I am getting excited though as today could be TATTOO day. I am still 100% decided that I am doing it
and I am hoping to be able to see someone today to give them my idea, get them
to draw it up and then come back tomorrow to get it done. That is my plan and anything less than that
and I will be disappointed.
After one last beautiful meal overlooking the valley,
which still had cloud cover below us, making it seem like we were sitting above
the world we were on the road at 8.40am.
We had yet another ‘micro’van which was an improvement on our arrival
van-just. We had a bit more leg room in
the back and enough room for Padma and Satya to sit next to me on the back
seat. I still had to back my arse in to
my seat, as they have these small box seats that sit in the aisle so they can
fit more people in their vans, so once you step over 2 of those there isn’t
much turning room, well for me anyway. I
am sure it looks as awkward as it feels-but it is the easiest way for me to get
in and out of the van. We wound out way
back down the way we had come 2 days earlier negotiating 2 trucks that were
coming up the mountain. It really can be
quite tricky with the single road and edge drop-offs, but they know what they
are doing and I try and not look too complex as we pass close to the edge. Seriously it is a cliff drop. Once we were back on the plateau, we had a
security check and then we stopped further down the road and a man got in the
back with us. You could tell that Satya
didn’t know who this guy was and after a few words, it was the owner of the van
and he wanted a lift to Pokhara. Not the
most professional thing to do, not that I cared, we had enough room, but how
weird that Satya didn’t know what was happening for a few minutes. Even though you don’t speak the language,
sometimes you can still follow what is going on.
So another day starts for the Nepalese. Children in their blue and white uniforms
heading to school, women in the fields already, men on bikes with all sorts of
things loaded on them and the passing of small food stalls in the hope of
selling a quick breakfast to people as they pass. I love drive days. It gives you a chance to just observe a
country’s heart beat as you watch it pass you by and it also gives me time to
reflect on things and listen to my music.
I find I can’t yet listen to any Ethiopian songs, so at this point I
skip any that come on-this will change, but for now it is like my little
embargo and it makes me feel a little better.
As the trip ticks down it also means I am closer to my return to
Ethiopia. Have I really thought about
the implications of going back on my own?
The reality of trying to do day to day stuff not knowing a single person
(besides Minalu), no English speaking people, no shop to ‘nip down to’, who
will fix things when they break? How
will I move around? Even if I get a car
you need to know where you’re going!.... oh the brain ticks but I can only take
it one step at a time and just go with the flow and it will all work out right?
Right? I am thinking once I am home I
will start to email some orphanages and the Aid Charities and start to put some
feelers out there before I leave Australia.
See what sort of responses I get back.
I would be looking for Volunteer or part time work so that should also
get me out and about and making new friends….right……
We stopped at 10.45am, less than 80kms west of Kathmandu
along the Prithvi Highway en route to Pokhara at a small riverside village
poised on bedrock 30m above a sharp bend in the Trisuli River to walk across
one of the many suspension bridges that span the rivers in Nepal. This one took us to a camp site operated by
the same company that looks after the ground arrangements in Nepal called
Himalayan Encounters. The suspension bridge
was 160m and the camp was located on the river next to the bridge. Once we had climbed down to water level we
could see one of the things famous in this area and that was the banyan tree. Locally known as the BIG FIG. 50 or more
aerial roots nurture this huge tree of legendary age. Apparently it
is one of the biggest fig trees in the country and even from where we stood, it
looked massive. The camp is base of The
Trisuli Centre for whitewater rafters – so well-placed for one-day and
over-night rafting. It was pretty cool
with tables set up, clean toilets and an amazing view. We stopped here for about 40 minutes to
stretch the legs, skip some rocks on the Tiffany blue water of the Trisuli
River and then climbed back to the bridge to cross and back in the car again
for a few more hours.
Now I have heard more than a few times how crazy the
roads are in Nepal, and after being in Africa I was thinking just how crazy can
they be. Well they are crazy and our
driver today was one of the crazies. He hated
sitting behind anything bigger than us, which basically is 99% of the traffic
and he would get a speed up to overtake when he could find a small opportunity
and then traffic would be on-coming and he would have to drop back, to get his
speed up again to overtake, to see oncoming traffic and drop back again. This happened ALL DAY. So out bodies were moving forward with the
momentum to jerking back when he had to pull back in. It made for a very jarring ride and I think I
was glad that I didn’t have the front seat, as I think there may have been some
close calls that we just won’t even think about. The local busses and trucks all use their
horns and they hurtle through and beep us as they go to overtake us on the
roads from behind, some of them on bends and cars coming…….I just don’t think about
it, this is their job, they know the roads and I just turn up my music to drown
out the honking. If I am going to go it
will be to a tune I am listening to and not the screeching or honking of a
horn.
Lunch was a restaurant called the Highway Hotel and there
would have been 25 of them all dotted along the highway, popular name that is
for sure. We stopped at a very touristy
one with around 6 other groups also eating there. They all looked like trekkers, and more of
the older generation, I noted. We ate
the buffet which was probably the greasiest food I have consumed in quite a few
weeks. Fried noodles, pokora, fries and
some other stuff that I didn’t go near.
I just hoped that my stomach would agree with it all as we still had a
few hours in the sardine to go to get to Pokhara.
About 40 minutes from Pokhara and we got our first
glimpse of the Annapurna Ranges that surround the city. We stopped for a photo stop and then
continued driving for only 10 minutes when we stopped again. It was the view of 3
eight-thousand meter tall peaks of Dhaulagiri, Annapurna and Manaslu.
The Machhapuchhre (Fishtail)
with an elevation of 6,993m is the closest to the city and could also be seen
from here. Satya said that he has
never seen the view of this section of the ranges so clear, so it was definitely
worth the photo op here. They really are
a stunning range and to think people trek these mountains is even more
impressing to me. They are like jagged
bits of ice coming out of the ground. We
had only stopped by the side of the road, so we had to watch for traffic as we
crossed the road, people on their daily routines, people working in the fields
and all that with a stunning view.
People would pay millions to have a view like that and here were stalls
and small homes all facing the Annapurna’s.
STUNNING.
We arrived into Pokhara at 3.40pm. We took a wrong turn to get to our hotel and
we passed a tattoo place that was open.
I wonder if that was a good sign.
So I knew I could always come back there if I couldn’t find something
else. It’s a pretty big deal and wanted
to see what all my options were before diving in, which I am sure it is what it
looks like to people anyway. I have
never been surer of this tattoo and after I got my first tattoo done in 2009,
people said that once you get one you will want/get more and they were right. This will make number 3.
Pokhara
is the second largest city of Nepal and it is one of the
most popular tourist destinations in the country. Three out of the ten highest mountains in the
world: Dhaulagiri, Annapurna I and Manaslu or
Lamjung himal are
situated within 30 miles (linear distance) of the city so that the northern
skyline of the city offers a very close view of the Himalayas. Due to
its proximity to the Annapurna mountain range the city is also a base for
trekkers undertaking the Annapurna
Circuit through the ACAP region of the Annapurna ranges in the Himalayas. In this region
the mountains rise very quickly and
within 30 km, the elevation rises from 1,000m to over 7,500m. As a result
of this sharp rise in altitude the area of Pokhara has one of the highest
precipitation rates in the country. In the south the city borders on Phewa Tal (4.4 km2) at an elevation of about 827 m
above sea level and the section where we stayed. The city lies on an important old trading
route between China and India. In the 17th century it was part of the Kingdom of
Kaski which was one of the Chaubise Rajya (24 Kingdoms of Nepal, ruled by
a branch of the Shah Dynasty). Many
of the hills around Pokhara still have medieval ruins from this time. In 1786 Prithvi Narayan Shah added Pokhara into his kingdom. It had by then become an
important trading place on the routes from Kathmandu to Jumla and from India to Tibet.
From 1959 to 1962 approximately
300,000 exiles entered Nepal from neighboring Tibet following its annexation by China. Most of the Tibetan exiles then sought asylum in Dharamshala and other Tibetan exile communities in India. According
to UNHCR, since 1989, approximately 2500 Tibetans cross the
border into Nepal each year, many
of whom arrive in Pokhara typically as a transit to Tibetan exile communities
in India. About 50,000 - 60,000 Tibetan exiles reside in Nepal, and
approximately 20,000 of the exiled Tibetans live in one of the 12 consolidated
camps, 8 in Kathmandu and 4 in and around Pokhara. The four Tibetan settlements
in Pokhara are Jampaling, Paljorling, Tashi Ling, and Tashi Palkhiel. These
camps have evolved into well-built settlements, each with a gompa (Buddhist monastery), chorten and its particular architecture, and Tibetans have become
a visible minority in the city.
Until the end of the 1960s the
town was only accessible by foot and it was considered even more a mystical
place than Kathmandu. The first road was completed in 1968 (Siddhartha Highway) after which tourism set in and the
city grew rapidly. The area along
the Phewa Lake, called Lake Side, has developed into one of the major tourism
hubs of Nepal. The city is surrounded by
the hills overlooking the entire
valley. Most of the tourists visiting
Pokhara begin and end treks to the Annapurna Base Camp and Mustang. The tourist district is along the north shore of the
lake which is mainly made up of small shops, non-star tourist hotels,
restaurants and bars.
Most upscale and starred hotels are on the southern and south-eastern fringes
of the city where there are more open lands and therefore unhindered view of
the mountains.
After getting the brief for the
next 2 days, we had to decide who wanted to do parasailing tomorrow
morning. I was a definite NO. Besides having my tattoo on my list, I just wasn’t
sure that I was up to running off a mountain, jumping out of a plane-no
worries, running off a mountain, not sure.
There were 7 out of the 10 that pit up there hand and for the grand cost
of 90USD you really couldn’t go wrong.
Lonely Planet says this is one of the top ten places to do it in the
world, so that is a pretty BIG claim to fame to say that. Not even that was going to get me up there.
We met again at 6pm for a walk
into town for dinner and the second we turned onto the main street it had a
great vibe. There were small shops with
brick a brack, tourist shops, picture shops, jewelry shops, hiking shops, bag
shops, cafes and plenty of restaurants.
I am glad that we were getting 2 days here, it may be time to finally
get some shopping mojo back and spend some spondoola’s tomorrow. We saw one tattoo place that I liked the look
if, upstairs from a t-shirt and embroidery shop-but it was CLOSED. I was hoping to see someone tonight, get my
design drawn up overnight and then come back in the morning. Well it was only 6.10pm, maybe the guy was
having dinner. I will check after our
dinner and just hope that he will be open.
Dinner was at a restaurant called Boomerang and as Australian as it
sounds that was pretty much where the similarities stopped. They had a cultural show that started at 7pm
that we got to see a little if but as we were outdoors, it was a little fresh
and pretty much after dinner finished we all made our way home in small groups
as people stopped to look in the small shops.
I was with Kalps as he is coming back to Pokhara after the tour to
volunteer with children for 3 weeks and is thinking of getting a tattoo when he
comes back. The place we had seen
earlier was still closed, so we asked the shop below and they didn’t really
know what times it was open, but some soldiers pointed down the dark alley way
and said there is another one down there.
Kalps and I weren’t that keen to venture down there with no lights, so
we walked the 10 minutes home a little dispirited, but I still had tomorrow, so
we would check back in again in the morning.
So I think I am going to enjoy my
time in this charming busy town and I am not even a walker, hiker or
trekker.
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