Kathmandu to Pokhara
After our first day in Kathmandu, we said goodbye to Greg, who was meeting up with his brother who was also travelling in Nepal. John and I then made our way to Pokhara by plane. We could have taken a bus, which was much cheaper, but it would have taken nearly 8 hours and wasted a day of travel there, and a day back to Kathmandu at the end of the trip. I'm very glad we spent the money to fly to Pokhara because it only took 25 minutes! We flew there on a domestic airline called Yeti Airlines. Yeti Airlines gave us better service for our 25 minute flight than Air Asia ever gives us ... we got free choice of seats (sit anywhere on boarding the plane), free coffee, free candy, and free checked baggage.
Pokhara is the second largest city in Nepal, but it had quite a small-town feel to it. Unfortunately, we had cloudy/rainy weather there as soon as we arrived and were unable to see a clear view of the gigantic mountains surrounding the city. I started to feel sick right after arriving in Pokhara, so our first day was spent relaxing. John and I went to a lakeside restaurant where he ate fish and chips (right from the lake), and since my stomach hurt I just drank tea. We walked by the lake for a while and had a nap. By the evening, I was feeling better so we ate some wood oven pizza (legit) at a place called "The Godfather" ... yum! Just in case my stomach would continue giving me problems, I visited a pharmacy and was prescribed a bunch of pills which amounted to $4... sweet!
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| The lake in Pokhara |
Trekking Day 1: Pokhara to Bhadaure
The next day in Pokhara we began our trek. We signed up with the company Purna Yoga on recommendation of our friend who had a great experience with them. Our trek was 4 days, and began with a yoga class and delicious breakfast in Pokhara at the company's studio by the lake. John was hesitant about doing yoga but it was nothing crazy - mostly stretching, so we could manage even though we weren't yoga experts. On our trek was a woman from Germany who was living in Nepal, and an American family who was living in Abu Dhabi. We were accompanied by our guides Manohar and Uma, and porters (guys who carried our clothing bags and all the food and supplies the company needed for the trek).
The first day of our trek was quite rainy and cloudy. I was very thankful that I brought my rain poncho from Vietnam with me. It was disappointing not to see the amazing mountain views (hidden by clouds), but everyone tried to remain positive. Manohar had such a great attitude and kept telling us that if we smiled at the mountains, they would smile back at us!
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| Trekking in the rain |
We stayed in a "tea house" overnight in Bhadure. A tea house is essentially a basic guesthouse in the mountains. They served us some tasty food, including a yummy lemony tea, which was great because the air was a bit cool. The company provided us with our own meditation blanket (made of yak wool!) which we could purchase after the trek. Between the yak wool blanket, blanket at the guesthouse, and the sleeping bag I rented from the company, I had a pretty toasty sleep!
Trekking Day 2: Bhadaure to Bhanjyang
After waking up to the disappointment of more rainy weather, we did some stretching outdoors and had breakfast.
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| Our group! |
Before moving on to our next destination, a small town called Bhanjyang, our guides Manohar and Uma gave us secret leech weapons - sticks with a small bag of tobacco (I think?) tied to the end of it. If we saw a leech on our shoe, we could touch the stick to it and the leech would drop off. Unfortunately, the sticks stopped working by the end of the trek and leeches got into people's shoes and socks. One girl and I even had leeches get on our face somehow. Luckily, I noticed the leech before it started sucking blood from my face, but the other girl had blood on her neck. The thing with leeches is that you don't really feel them sucking your blood, but they are pretty gross and look like short worms. Anyway, we jokingly named the second day of our trek "Bloody Tuesday"!
Our tea house in Bhanjyang was more like a little complex of mud houses. A set of stairs led up to each one, and inside ours were two small wooden beds and a wooden chair, nothing else. If you needed to use the bathroom, you had to use the outhouse which had a squatter toilet that you flushed using a bucket of water. It was pretty rustic, but once again - the food was great! The family who ran the tea house invited us all into the kitchen where we sat around the fire watching them make us homemade macaroni with yak cheese. YUM!
At the end of every trekking day, Manohar would have us all relax by doing guided meditation with us. We would all go under our blankets in a dark room and close our eyes, listening to what he was telling us to imagine. Most people just fell asleep every time, but I thought it was actually relaxing!
That night I had difficulty sleeping because I was woken up by hard rain (it actually didn't stop raining for the entire first 2 days of our trek), ugh!
Trekking Day 3: Bhanjyang - Panchassee - Bhanjyang
Luckily, on the third day we woke up to a bit of sun. Feeling optimistic, we started our hike up to Panchassee mountain after breakfast. The trek took around one hour, and it was all up stone stairs. It was getting sunny, and we were sweaty by the time we reached the top. We visited a small temple on the mountain where we each got a string of prayer flags, tied them all together, and then secured them to a tree. In Nepal, prayer flags were everywhere. They have 5 colours that represent 5 elements: blue (sky), white (air), red (fire), green (water), yellow (earth).
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| Waking up to no rain, amazing! Our mud hut was the one on the right. |
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| With our prayer flags - Grey, Jennifer, Wilma, me, John, Mark, Uma |
We were hoping for a spectacular mountain view at Panchassee Tower (elevation around 2560m), but were met with clouds once again and then it started raining! We took cover and had some tea before going back to our tea house in Bhanjyang down the mountain.
After not thinking we'd see any mountains, things started to turn around in the evening when it finally stopped raining and we got to see a nice sunset. That night, we had a paneer dinner by candlelight and were feeling good about the next day, because there was a chance of SUN!
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| Sunset! |
Trekking Day 4: Bhanjyang - Pokhara
In the morning, Manohar woke us up with the "singing bowl" like he did every day. It's a lot more soothing to wake up to that than an annoying alarm clock! After exiting the mud hut, we saw SUN! Manohar gathered us on top of a nearby hill, where he had set up yoga mats for us, with a view of the Annapurna mountain range which was slowly revealing itself as the clouds passed. It was so peaceful and beautiful there. We got to see some of the highest mountains in the world. This is what we had been waiting for on our whole trek. Feeling positive, we had breakfast and began our trek down the mountain back towards Pokhara.
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| Mount Fishtail |
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| Annapurna Range |
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| With Manohar, our guide |
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| Breakfast - green lentils, shaved coconut, pomegranate seeds, yak cheese... so good! |
Day 4 was the best one yet. Even though it was hard on the knees going downhill for so many hours (mostly down stone stairs), we got to pass through some cute villages surrounded by tiered rice fields. It reminded us a bit of Sapa in Vietnam, and Bali... two of our favourite places! Because it was sunny, the leeches were not out. It was so nice to be able to walk without checking our shoes every couple minutes for leeches!
At the end of our trek, we reached a small village where we celebrated with ice cold pop, tasty soup, and a snack of chips. A bus took us on a bumpy road back to Pokhara, where we had our "farewell dinner" at Purna Yoga. Even though the first few days of the trek were not as we expected, it was sad to leave at the end. Our group was great, and the guides were so friendly. I'm glad we did the trek, as it definitely made our trip to Nepal quite memorable.
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